John Hartl

Sean Penn gives the most riveting, selfless performance of his career.

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]

Eat Drink Man Woman is so cleverly plotted, edited, scored, performed and photographed that the audience is frequently just as surprised as the characters, yet Lee and his co-writers plant just enough clues to keep you from feeling tricked. [05 Aug 1994, p.E22]

Raoul Walsh's lengthy, relatively gritty 1945 war movie stars Errol Flynn as the leader of a paratrooper group that goes after a key Japanese target. [02 Sep 1999]

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

Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the Vladimir Nabokov classic isn't as racy as the new one by Adrian Lyne, which opens in theaters tomorrow. But it's a lot funnier, thanks in no small part to the casting of Peter Sellers as a mystery man of many accents and Shelley Winters as Lolita's silly mother. [01 Oct 1998]

The most operatic of Hollywood epics, Anthony Mann's El Cid is dominated by a go-for-broke Miklos Rozsa score and Robert Krasker's gorgeous wide-screen photography, which takes full advantage of the movie's Spanish locations and its eye-filling sets and costumes. [27 Aug 1993, p.D13]

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

Rappeneau has his weaknesses - the battle sequences lack imagination, and the finale is unnecessarily protracted - but his romantic flourishes keep most of the movie humming. [25 Dec 1990, p.F1]

Hilarious and high-spirited.

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]

Raucously entertaining.

Working with Western funding and Western camera technology for the first time, Yimou also has created the most visually striking of recent Chinese films to reach this country. [15 Mar 1991, p.25]

Techine never quite makes the crime element stick here. It seems unnecessary, imposed on the material, an unnatural outgrowth of a series of relationships that have more to do with dysfunctional family ties and midlife readjustments.[17 Jan 1997]

Compelling epic filmmaking.

Affliction could be their (Nolte, Coburn) finest couple of hours on film; they do seem to be father and son, rather than actors playing these roles.

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

Glory ultimately offers a stirring answer to the historical distortions of Mississippi Burning, by presenting African Americans as people who aggressively participated in their own struggle for freedom. [12 Jan 1990, p.22]

This is a movie about a process, not about who should be president or why. On that level, it's informative, smart and surprisingly entertaining - the best thing of its kind since Robert Altman covered the 1988 presidential follies with his mostly fictional "Tanner '88." [7 Jan 1994, p.D22]

Andrew Bergman's The Freshman is a charmed comedy, the kind of seemingly effortless movie in which everything falls neatly into place, as if ordained by nature.

Could be called the "Red Badge of Courage" of World War II movies.

Like Lee's last film, "Mo' Better Blues," this one seems to disintegrate before your eyes. Both movies lack the drive and assurance of his masterpiece, "Do the Right Thing." Yet so much of the first half of Jungle Fever is first-rate that you wish Lee could go back, rewrite and reshoot the rest.

The interracial love affair in Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala doesn't burn up the screen the way it did in Spike Lee's overheated "Jungle Fever." But the movie itself is ultimately more satisfying, generating much more light than sizzle. [14 Feb 1992, p.23]

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

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

(Morris) sees Leuchter's story as more personal, more about one individual's self-absorption and folly, than an indictment of a particular system.

Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, who plays Grace, had never acted before, and neither have a couple of the other key players. But under the careful direction of television veteran Lee Tamahori, they all do credible and forceful work.

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.

In its attempts to deal with her character's aimlessness and inability to discover a satisfying code of behavior ("Are there any real reasons for living right anyway?"), the script is sometimes thoughtful, sometimes banal and schoolgirlish. [12 Nov 1993, p.D16]

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.

It's light and fizzy and fun without once calling attention to the fact that a lot of hard work went into it (Gerald Scarfe's sharp production design keeps it from looking quite like any other Disney cartoon). [27 June 1997, p.F1]

Warmer and more forgiving than Bergman's own work, it is one of the most moving films ever made about the exacting, full-time job of living with another person.[31 Jul 1992, p.17]

One of the movie's chief charms is Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour's lyrical score, which almost suggests an anti-"Lion King" approach. The music isn't in a hurry to dramatize its story or make epic statements. The same might be said of writer-director Michel Ocelot's delicate animation style and his handling of small moments. [30 Jun 2000]

Just because you can make a movie in a day doesn't necessarily mean moviegoers should take an hour and a half to watch it.

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.

Engaging and constantly surprising.

Walter Matthau has a field day with the title character: a crop duster/bank robber who bills himself as "the last of the independents" - and runs circles around a Mafia killer (Joe Don Baker). [07 Mar 1996, p.F3]

Buscemi gets such fine ensemble work out of his actors that you never doubt that Tommy and his friends, family and ex-friends are united by one thing. They've spent far too much time together. [25 Oct 1996, p.F6]

Simultaneously smart and myopic, sneaky and forgetful, the mother Debbie Reynolds plays in Albert Brooks' Mother always keeps you guessing. [10 Jan 1997, p.F1]

In the hands of Minghella and his star, Matt Damon, Ripley has become a more complex character, in some ways more understandable and approachable, in other ways as enigmatic as ever.

Brilliant, biting, bitterly funny epic about a Jewish teenager's stranger-than-fiction adventures during World War II. [28 June 1991, p.22]

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]

An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.

In short: Don't expect a lot of laughs.

There are some cheap shots, and there's an argument to be made about whether the film is sending up stereotypes or simply perpetuating them. But for every dubious moment, there are plenty that connect.

Technically, Titanic is a marvel.

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

Rowdy, funny, surprisingly sweet.

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

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

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]

A giddy delight, with Michael Douglas delivering what may be the most relaxed and inventive performance of his career, and Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr. trailing not far behind.

Like "American Beauty" without the fangs - or the magic.

Its pretensions eventually undo it.

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.

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.”

Perhaps you have to have lived through the 1960s to relate.

Down in the Delta is Woodard's movie, and she deftly sidesteps most of the traps in her way. Instead of trying to make sense of the character's sudden transformation, she looks for the bit of truth in each of Loretta's apparent contradictions and works on it. Scene by scene, she builds a character who almost adds up. [25 Dec 1998, p.18]

Connery's Robin and Audrey Hepburn's Marian are so appealing - and physically and temperamentally so right - that they gloss over the fact that Goldman's script tends to be coy and anachronistic. [09 Aug 1991, p.23]

It's not a profound film, but it is heartfelt, and Burns has done his best to keep it clear and emotionally direct.

This might have been a very good movie if it had lost about one of its three hours.

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]

The young writer-director, Greg Mottola, deals forthrightly with trust and betrayal and the destructive tensions in family relationships, whether they're well-worn or freshly hurtful. But he never loses his sense of perspective or humor, and neither does his cast. [04 Apr 1997]

This $80 million disaster epic takes us back to the simple, tacky pleasures of Irwin Allen's "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "The Towering Inferno" (1974), although Allen's blockbusters had more of a feeling for character and mythic resonance than "Daylight" ever demonstrates. [6 Dec 1996]

The Man in the Moon isn't likely to replace Mockingbird in the eyes of any of its fans, but it's far superior to such recent Mulligan mistakes as Clara's Heart and Kiss Me Goodbye. It's the most careful, sensitive work he's done since the 1970s. [04 Oct 1991, p.23]

Soderbergh demands a lot from his star here, and she delivers.

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

An ordinary house cat and a basement spider become ferocious adversaries of tiny Grant Williams in director Jack Arnold's vision of an upside-down world. [31 Oct 2010, p.H6]

The best of several film versions of Jack London's story about a Nazi-like sea captain (Edward G. Robinson in top form), this Warner Bros. production co-stars Ida Lupino and John Garfield and was directed by Michael Curtiz, shortly before he made "Casablanca." [26 Dec 1991, p.E1]

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]

It's neither scary nor original. In fact, it's something of a chore to sit through. [27 Oct 1990, p.C3]

Moving 1965 love story with the late Elizabeth Hartman giving an excellent performance as a tormented blind girl who falls in love with the only person who treats her kindly (Sidney Poiter). It was Hartman's debut, and she and director Guy Green succeed in keeping it from becoming overly sentimental. [23 Aug 1990, p.F5]

Danny DeVito may not be the right man to be directing Dahl. The filmmaker who gave us The War of the Roses and Throw Momma From the Train doesn't have the lightest of touches. There's a streak of meanness in his films that can be explosively funny for short stretches, but gets tiring over the long haul. That's the case again with Matilda. [02 Aug 1996, p.F5]

It's absolutely fascinating while it's happening, but it ends so abruptly that a reel seems to be missing. [03 Mar 1995, p.H31]

Loosely based on the experiences of Kazan's uncle, the script meanders and the inexperienced Giallelis isn't always up to the task of carrying the picture, but there are many moving moments. [07 Jul 1994, p.E3]

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.

Doesn't seem to have anything to say.

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.

Its honesty and insights are refreshing.

Perhaps only the committed Coen fan, however, can be entirely pleased with Sam Elliott's incongruous appearance as a Dude-worshipping character called The Stranger, or with the tired kidnapping plot, which plays like an unnecessary leftover from other Coen movies. For all its strong points, The Big Lebowski will have as many detractors as fans. [6 March 1998]

A perplexing movie. Wonderful to look at, delightful to behold, but when the plot breaks open the insides turn out be mold. [14 May 1993, p.21]

The script also happens to be quite literate and laceratingly funny, and Damon -- no big surprise here -- turns out to be the perfect actor to deliver Will's zingers.

The performances and Towne's conception of the characters are what carry the picture. Crudup has been creeping up on stardom in movies as varied as Sleepers and Inventing the Abbotts, but this is the role that shows what he can do. [09 Oct 1998]

You can't help getting into the spirit of it.

An enjoyable vehicle for the young Jane Fonda, who does a pretty fair Marilyn Monroe imitation as the sweet new wife of a very nervous Korean war veteran (Jim Hutton). [03 Dec 1992, p.E3]

It's a very movie-conscious movie, and that aspect of it palls.

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]

Charming and imaginative.

Gorgeous and troubling.

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]

In his finest, funniest, most poignant film to date, Tim Burton plays cinematic alchemist, turning drive-in schlock into movie gold.

It not only feels like a transposed stage piece, it plays like a workshop performance that may not have found its final form. But the actors keep it lively and darkly funny, and the picture rarely feels stagey. [07 Oct 1994, p.D31]

The dumbest, goriest bone-cruncher of the season: an unnecessary and Arnold-less sequel to the Schwarzenegger science-fiction hit of three years ago. [21 Nov 1990, p.C3]

The Swan Princess may be derivative but it clicks, as ex-Disney animator Don Bluth's latest films ("Thumbelina," the video-bound "Troll in Central Park") have not. With just one movie in release, Rich is starting to look like the only other animation game in town. [18 Nov 1994, p.G33]

Miscast and nervously directed. [11 Oct 1996]

As playfully time-oriented as its title, Becoming Who I Was makes reincarnation a central part of its story about a journey through more than one life.

Based on the Leon Uris bestseller, the movie itself remains a leisurely, unevenly acted yet fascinating history lesson that helps put recent Middle East events in perspective. [01 Oct 1992, p.G3]

The script can seem random and shapeless at first, but in retrospect that seems intentional. Assayas creates a sense of people who really can't see the forest for the trees. [27 Aug 1999]