John Hartl

Most of Alison Chernick’s sweetly reverential new documentary, Itzhak, suggests a contemporary day in the life of a world-famous musician.

In the end, The Final Year can offer only the perspective of time and history as a consolation.

Helms and Wilson are sometimes a stretch as brothers, especially in the more emotional scenes. But Close is majestic as the mother, a supporting role that feels bigger than it is.

Suggesting a matchup between Archie Bunker and Gracie Allen, Ethel & Ernest is a sweet British memoir/cartoon about an ordinary couple who survive the Blitz along with their growing son.

[Martin Campbell's] a master at rejuvenating tired warhorses, and he pulls it off again with this one.

Whose Streets? marks the filmmaking debut of Folayan and Davis, and it’s charged by its personal touch.

An irresistible NASA instant classic about the conquest of space — via the Voyager missions.

The protests that lead to the overthrow of a president carry hard-to-avoid echoes of recent demonstrations in the U.S.

For a brilliant approximation of the man himself, watch Downey in this film. This is a performance created out of equal parts talent, hard work and love. It's uncanny. [08 Jan 1993, p.3]

The only trouble with all these parodies is that Hot Shots begins to seem chaotic rather than clever. Too many of the send-ups turn out to be unnecessary detours. [31 July 1991, p.E5]

An all-star farce about backstage melodramatics at a long-running daytime soap opera, Soapdish has some hysterically funny moments. Unfortunately, its creators don't always sustain the big laughs, or make the most of such supporting players as Whoopi Goldberg and Robert Downey Jr., whose proven comic gifts are mostly hidden this time. [31 May 1991, p.25]

The variety of inspirations (not to mention the visual quality of the film clips) is astonishing.

Zandvliet is a relatively young and inexperienced director, but his spare use of music and widescreen images is assured and even inspired.

What’s most memorable about Kedi are the individual, self-contained moments.

Entertaining but almost too ambitious for its own sake.

A powerful new documentary.

I.F. Stone, an underground journalist who died in1989, left a rich legacy that is celebrated in a timely new documentary, All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone.

For all its rough edges and gruesome touches, Patriots Day is a heartfelt and ambitious attempt to turn mayhem into something that’s emotionally valid.

If The Eagle Huntress sounds familiar, that’s because the outline of a modern feminist epic is always there in the background. What’s surprising is how fresh and charming the movie manages to be.

The ingenious cinematographer, Bobby Shore, uses the Newfoundland locations to achieve some of his most striking effects. The result is sort of a horror film, but not really. It’s too funny to be categorized that way.

The pace is swift, archival clips are well-chosen and conspiracy theories pile up in a way that seems intentionally funny.

The finale to this uneven movie makes the most of Hart’s gift for physical comedy.

A Man Called Ove has some tear-jerking moments, but the film is so carefully designed — with long, circular takes that seem to surround the main characters at crucial fateful points — that technique often triumphs over sentimentality.

Ingeniously using his low budget to address his ambitions, Johnson has directed, co-written (and starred in) a unique science-fiction film.

Fascinating at certain moments, especially when Lewis is exploring his character’s grief and bitterness, it still feels like a work in progress.

Crowded, cornball and too busy for its short running time, The Hollars nevertheless generates a few moments of grace and reflection.

It’s disarmingly spirited, especially when its teen star, Markees Christmas, is sharing the screen with Craig Robinson.

The full title, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, is pure, over-the-top Herzog: simultaneously an embrace of fresh internet technology and an attempt to suggest a mythical dimension.

The whole may be less than its parts, but the parts are pretty impressive.

In the end, it’s all about that little girl and how she responds to the lavish song-and-dance epic designed to praise Korea’s leader, the late Kim Jong-II. Under the Sun may seem slow and hollow at times, but her emotions appear to be quite spontaneous.

The laughs are sometimes bigger than expected, and so are the emotions stirred by the bittersweet finale.

A unique and satisfying new documentary.

The first-time director, Cesar Augusto Acevida, composes his frames carefully, using closing doorways to suggest alienation, as John Ford did in “The Searchers.” The harvesting and crop fire scenes recall Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven.”

Engaging and constantly surprising.

Unfortunately, it’s so ambitious that it’s constantly straining to find a focus.

Gaup deftly keeps track of the major betrayals without making them seem too obvious.

Slick and raunchy when it might have been grindingly realistic, Viva is finally all heart.

With its opening line, “Imagine you’re dead,” The Family Fang instantly invites its soon-to-be-captive audience on an absorbing, provocative, slightly fantastic path that’s like few others.

Achingly sad and dismayingly familiar.

The results are uneven. Almost any scene with Hawkes is alive and satisfyingly showy. You feel his absence when he isn’t there, though Joanna Cassidy, Crystal Reed and Robert Forster all have their moments.

The script’s first half is vigorous enough.... But the movie needs the audacity of a “Trainspotting” to lift it above the norm.

It has its value as a vigorous variation on a theme.

Much of this is funny, some of it is scary and a lot of it is as twisty as a mystery thriller. Very little of it, thanks to a superb cast, is predictable.

Wonderfully confident and strange, Take Me to the River marks an auspicious directing debut for Matt Sobel. There’s not a stale moment in it.

Swedish director Roar Uthaug (“Cold Prey“) depends on well-crafted suspense, spot-on casting and ingenious special effects to tell the story of a dedicated geologist (Kristoffer Joner) who prophesies watery disaster in touristy Norway.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato is an outrageous comic-erotic extravaganza that has more of a narrative arc than most Greenaway movies.

There's too much feedback and some of the numbers are allowed to go on, Grateful Dead style, but the movie means to invoke a trance, and often it succeeds. [29 Oct 1997, p.C1]

Reiner's direction and William Goldman's script succeed on their own cartoonish level, and Kathy Bates, who plays the fan as if she were a close relative of Norman Bates, rips into the role with undisguised relish. [30 Nov 1990, p.24]

Eustache's screenplay is specifically set against the backdrop of the failed student revolts of the late 1960s, and occasionally the sight of Leaud in bellbottoms makes it look like a time capsule. Yet the moods, the emotions, the debates seem profoundly contemporary.

At times, Heart and Souls seems seriously interested in the kinds of ideas explored in "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder's fascinating attempt to account for why five people happened to meet their deaths in the same seemingly random circumstances. But any pretensions along those lines are quickly drowned by the cutesy special effects and Marc Shaiman's shamelessly overwrought score. [13 Aug 1993, p.D14]

So meticulously acted that you feel you're reading the characters' minds.

The Hunchback marks a return to the Gothic stories Walt Disney used to tell in his most vivid early features, and for the most part it's a welcome one. [21 June 1996, p.F5]

Damage is the kind of movie that risks unintended laughter for the simple reason that reckless passion almost always looks ludicrous from the outside. The filmmakers must establish just the right tone, which Malle, Irons and Binoche do for the most part, although occasionally they falter. It's hard to buy the final revelations about Binoche's character, which are meant to explain something that's probably best left alone. [22 Jan 1993, p.20]

Twisty, terrific little thriller. [29 Apr 1994, p.D31]

Smarter and funnier than the recent theatrical release, "Drop Dead Gorgeous," Michael Ritchie's superficially similar beauty-contest satire was mostly ignored when it came out in 1975. It has since become a classic, and a high point in the careers of Bruce Dern, Annette O'Toole, Barbara Feldon, Michael Kidd and Melanie Griffith. [05 Aug 1999]

Compelling epic filmmaking.

Today it seems remote and overblown, with Bergman, Young's score and Ray Rennahan's muted color photography the chief compensating factors. [03 Dec 1998]

What makes "Fly Away Home" worth seeing is Ballard and Deschanel's beguiling imagery: the geese devotedly following Paquin around the farm as she tries to speak their language; a wry shot of Kinney dozing off in front of a televised wrestling match as Amy sneaks off to tend her eggs; and those spectacular flying episodes, which are quite unlike anything else on the horizon. [13 Sep 1996]

Altman lucked out when he cast a singer, Ronee Blakley, in a major role in "Nashville," but he has not been as fortunate here with Annie Ross and Lyle Lovett, who lack Blakley's soulful dramatic presence.

The year's most original and thought-provoking coming-of-age drama, with standout performances by Gael Morel as Techine's on-screen alter ego and Frederic Corny as the Algerian-born boy who challenges his adolescent assumptions. [31 Dec 1995, p.1]

It's extremely well-made by a filmmaker who knows what he's doing and doesn't let the limitations of a $100,000 budget get in his way. The photography, acting, editing and use of sound effects and music are quite professional; McNaughton's movie looks and sounds as if it cost much more. It's also genuinely upsetting.

It's sweet and funny one moment, melodramatic and contrived the next. Blending the moods, and often holding the film together through sheer force of personality, Ryder gives her most affecting performance to date. [14 Dec 1990, p.26]

Rowdy, funny, surprisingly sweet.

Under the steady direction of John Frankenheimer, the movie's most memorable scenes involve the beasts' half-human limitations, their blind allegiance to "father" Moreau, and their discovery of the painful implants he uses to control them. They often make up for what was the chief shortcoming in Wells' original: its thin plot. [23 Aug 1996]

An ingenious mixture of themes from narrative sources as ancient and varied as Hamlet, the Old Testament and The Odyssey. [24 June 1994, p.D3]

Despite the miscasting of the central role and quite a lot of lackluster dialogue, the story proves again to be almost foolproof. The fight sequences are explosive, the physical production is impressive, and the supporting performances are full of juice.

Great dragon, dumb script. And pity the poor actors who have to deal with that situation. [31 May 1996]

Proudly declaring itself "an irresponsible movie" yet pointedly aimed at politicians who have done little to address a lethal epidemic, Gregg Araki's The Living End is in fact an attempt to make a morally charged statement about the AIDS crisis. [11 Sep 1992, p.03]

This expertly sustained 1971 suspense classic established Steven Spielberg's reputation as a director. [23 Dec 1993, p.E7]

Eric Clapton, who wrote the blues-heavy score, told Oldman that the film was "like you throwing up over everyone." He meant that as a compliment. Whether you respond to this gritty, punishingly long and plotless film will depend largely on whether you agree. [13 Mar 1998]

Cross occasionally lets their more promising moments go slack. The staging of a few scenes suggests home-movie limitations. But enthusiasm counts for a great deal in a project as ambitious and strange as Second Nature.

Watching Avalon is like leafing through someone else's family album. It undoubtedly means a great deal more to Levinson, because he can make the associations we can't. [19 Oct 1990, p.28]

The boy (Osment) has an uncanny ability to suggest Cole's secretive, haunted soul, and he seems to have inspired Willis to give perhaps his most self-effacing performance.

The 42-year-old Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality. It dovetails neatly with a surreal and quite hilarious ending that carries the technique - and Vidal's cinematic pretensions - to their logical conclusion. [26 Sept 1997]

For all its occasional long-windedness and visual dazzle, Brazil may be the "Strangelove" of the 1980s.

A civilized summer entertainment that never quite transcends its genre. [7 Aug 1992, p.24]

The darkly comic tone is often just right, and the casting occasionally pays off.

The engine that drives Jerry Maguire is Cruise, giving the kind of performance that all but deconstructs his recent series of glib leading-man roles.

The animation is smooth and occasionally quite expressive, the character voices are well-chosen, and the pacing (songs aside) is confident. For young moviegoers unfamiliar with the Camelot story, this could be an option. [15 May 1998]

Already nicknamed "This Is Spinal Rap," this clever fake-documentary should delight both those who love rap music and those who feel it's been given a free ride by music critics for far too long. [17 Jun 1994, p.E3]

It's the survivors of this tragedy that must make peace with their fate, and the film finally rests with them.

(Thornton) does a remarkable job in all three categories, but what you're likely to remember most clearly is his performance.

The frenetic style suggests the influence of Richard Lester's British comedies, but the storyline and the use of rock music suggests that Coppola may have influenced Mike Nichols' "The Graduate," which was released one year later. [14 Jan 1999]

Sergei Urusevsky's amazingly mobile cinematography is so expressive, and Kalatozov's heightened sense of drama so contagious, that this becomes one of those rare movies that makes you look at the world differently. [23 Jun 1995, p.H26]

In any future compendium of film clips from anti-Hollywood satires, Swimming With Sharks will surely be included. Several scenes are so incisive and well-written that they stand out as classics of their kind. [09 June 1995, p.H32]

Runs on wit and creativity.

But they all end up spinning their wheels under Deran Sarafian, whose action-movie credentials include Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Death Warrant." He tries to establish a tongue-in-cheek attitude that seems as borrowed and clueless as Stephen Sommers' script. [4 Feb 1994, p.D28]

The film has smarts, but what really makes it fascinating is its huge heart...and the film soars because of that.

It's doubtful that any variation on Finney's story could be called definitive. There's an inexhaustible supply of targets; we could have a new one every year or so. But this one certainly has its creepy moments. [18 Feb 1994, p.D3]

Completely ignored at the Oscars in 1939, "Midnight" seems more sophisticated and durable than several of that year's winners.

It's all over the place, trying to cover every base as it delivers its neon-style message: Nothing is more important than friendship. Indeed, it's so busy pushing buttons that it rarely has time to settle down to establish even one relationship that rings true - by and large, we have to take the actors' word for it - yet fans of this cast probably won't mind too much.

She's So Lovely works best as an actors' showcase. The ordinarily reserved Robin Wright Penn goes through a transformation not unlike Mia Farrow's complete makeover in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose; she's never been brassier or funnier. [29 Aug 1997]

White Fang is one of the best family films around right now. The violence is not too intense, the harshness of the frontier is downplayed without being ignored, and the wildlife footage is reminiscent of the best Disney documentaries. [18 Jan 1991, p.22]

George Stevens' mythic 1953 Western finally gets a video transfer that captures the crisp, bright beauty of its Oscar-winning cinematography. [17 Aug 2000, p.D3]

Suspense is the key element in The Long Walk Home. That may seem like a frivolous thing to say about a fictionalized but scrupulously authentic account of the 1955 civil rights bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. Yet it's what holds this movie together, gives it distinction and makes it considerably more than a TV-movie-style docudrama. That, and the richly imagined performances of Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg. [15 Feb 1991, p.24]

Best of all is a Halloween party where the Falls are complimented on their "costume," then outed.

The first-time writer-director, Miguel Arteta, does a remarkable job of drawing us into this destructive world and making its rules and rituals seem casual and almost natural. [8 Aug 1997, p.G10]

A wry, rambling, smart comedy.