John Hartl

Unfailingly energetic, 10 Things is like a puppy that can't stop wagging its tail, begging for attention...Even more than "Cruel Intentions," this movie plays like an awkward high-school production of a classic.

Unfortunately, everyone's trying too hard to recapture the original's wry tone, and Culkin lacks the gawky, impish charm that Billingsley brought to Shepherd's childhood alter ego. [06 Jul 1995, p.E1]

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.

If you can take it for what it is, however, City Slickers does deliver the goods, especially during its sprightly first half. [7 June 1991, p.22]

The evidence Herzog serves up is impossible to dismiss.

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

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

For all the cynicism on the soundtrack and the occasional lapses in tone, this is a remarkably generous comedy.

The character is manipulative, unsympathetic and quite depraved, but Caine plays him with such wicked glee that it's impossible to resist watching and vicariously enjoying his descent into corruption. [23 Mar 1990, p.26]

A powerful new documentary.

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

What lends it novelty and makes it such wicked fun is the change of locale from a Capra-esque small town to rude, hectic New York City.

One of the least classifiable, most fascinating horror films of the past decade. [07 Dec 1990, p.28]

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.

The darker the character gets, the more convincing this performance becomes. Mellencamp never shies away from Bud's rotten side, nor, as a director, does he allow the other actors to glamourize their roles. [03 Jul 1992, p.26]

If Guncrazy ultimately fails to be quite as wild and bleak as the 1949 Gun Crazy, or as zeitgeist-distinctive as Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde, it's still a most promising first effort. Davis' black-comedy touches, her careful casting and her confident handling of actors all suggest a filmmaker to watch. [20 Feb 1993, p.C5]

A unique and satisfying new documentary.

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

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]

The graphic battles may grow repetitious toward the end, the final scenes are almost sadistically drawn out, and the script often lacks humor. But this movie moves.

For me, the biggest problem with the script is a mid-film plot twist that takes place almost immediately after we've been told the characters are in danger. The introduction of this possibility is too neat, too fast. [04 Jun 1999]

Livingston is especially good at capturing Peter's passive rebelliousness, which suggests the suddenly uncooperative worker who defies employer logic in Herman Melville's "Bartleby."

All the ingredients are here for both a smashing courtroom drama and a legitimate tearjerker, but the film ultimately doesn't have the technique or the heart to deliver either.

Absorbing 1958 adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play about lonely people at a British seaside hotel. [20 Aug 1998]

Has its clunky and wince-worthy moments, it does explore some new territory, and there are moments when it's quite fresh and moving.

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]

It may take more than Caro Diario for Americans to acquire the Moretti taste. [21 Oct 1994, p.H42]

Night on Earth makes inspired use of its well-known cast, especially during the first three of its five episodes about cab drivers around the world and their fares. For all their predictability, the stories are fun to watch because the actors dig in and work them over. [22 May 1992, p.22]

This new animated feature has a more exciting story line than the first film, a stronger score, sharper dialogue and a more noticeable visual flair. [16 Nov 1990, p.28]

It's a pointless, $30 million mediocrity with a disengaged star-director at its center. [15 Jun 1990, p.3]

While La Sentinelle is often a lively shaggy-dog story, it ultimately isn't much more than that. [01 Jan 1999]

Manny & Lo is often on the verge of becoming too cute for comfort, and writer-director Lisa Krueger doesn't always succeed in avoiding those pitfalls. She's also better at establishing relationships and working with actors than she is at generating narrative momentum. [30 Aug 1996]

This coming-out, coming-of-age story explores familiar territory, especially in the increasingly busy market of gay teen movies. But Edge of Seventeen is also specific enough, and truthful enough about its flawed hero, to establish its own terrain. [30 Apr 1999]

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.

This wildly overpraised Belgian mock-documentary might have been a lacerating 10-minute Swiftian satire of the media's never-ending thirst for blood. Instead, it's a 95-minute reiteration of the obvious that manages simultaneously to offend and bore. [11 June 1993, p.24]

While the limitations of the budget occasionally show, the elegantly appropriate photography, quirky performances and Haynes' unique vision carry the day. He is clearly a director to watch. [14 June 1991, p.25]

The first-time director, Frank Marshall, has said that he modeled the film on The Birds, and the structure of Arachnophobia does follow the pattern set up by Hitchcock. But it's definitely a Disney/Spielberg movie, smooth and neatly packaged and more interested in the gimmicks than the central enigma of Hitchcock's movie. [18 July 1990, p.E1]

Even as you question the central premise, Brooks makes you want to buy into it.

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

Farrow is hilarious when she's aggressively pursuing Mantegna; amusingly dumbstruck when she's fighting off a group of male partygoers (one of the secret potions makes them fall in love with her); and touching when she's trying to reconcile with her sister (Blythe Danner) or sell her lame script ideas to an old friend who works for the networks (Cybill Shepherd). The performance is a triumph of sensitivity to rapid mood swings that stops just short of turning the movie into The Three Faces of Alice. [25 Jan 1991, p.22]

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

The most entertaining portrait of a wildly talented, socially untamed filmmaker since The Bad and the Beautiful. [21 Sep 1990, p.28]

Captivating 1972 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, starring Michael Sacks as the time-tripping hero. [09 Jul 1998]

It's so downbeat that it's not likely to make a dime. Nevertheless, Rush is the most harrowing love story about a couple of drug addicts since the near-classic Panic in Needle Park. [10 Jan 1992, p.21]

The casting was spot-on in “Dollhouse”; here it seems haphazard.

On a visual level, Lumet states this case so well that he doesn't need to hammer it home verbally. [27 Apr 1990, p.3]

With only a few lapses during its opening scenes, it's a modest, intelligent exploration of the differences that can threaten a genuine attraction between two people. It doesn't soft-pedal the problems, particularly for a young man who already is set in his ways, or an older woman who never will fit in with the social and cultural pretensions of his extended family. [19 Oct 1990, p.31]

The role is built for a tour-de-force performance, and Curtis delivers. [17 Sep 2000]

Strange Days presents itself as an original vision, yet many of its ideas about the perils of virtual reality were more intriguingly explored in several early-1980s thrillers, among them David Cronenberg's "Videodrome" and Douglas Trumbull's "Brainstorm." [13 Oct 1995, p.F1]

The logistics of this outdoor adventure may not be entirely convincing, but the characters usually are. That's a rarity in this kind of picture, and Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin rise to the challenge with some of the best work they've done in a long time. [26 Sep 1997]

Doesn't know when to stop with the jokes about other horror movies and settle down to tell a coherent story.

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]

The script by sports-movie veteran Ron Shelton is an understandable but rather monotonous attempt to deal with the differences between hard truth and media-created mirages.

The remake is both more romantic and more resonant than the original. It's less of a star vehicle for its leading actor, and it sticks to its guns right down its stunningly orchestrated finish. In almost every way it's an intelligent improvement. [05 Feb 1993, p.3]

When Frankie and Johnny works, it works because of Pfeiffer, whose impact is cumulative. Pfeiffer finds her own kind of truth in the role, especially in the final scenes, when the character's looks cease to matter. [11 Oct 1991, p.3]

Bille August, the prize-winning director of "Pelle the Conqueror" and "The Best Intentions," takes on the much-filmed Victor Hugo novel in this sturdy, well-produced nonmusical treatment of the story starring Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush. [05 Nov 1998]

At its best, White Men Can't Jump gives two talented actresses a chance to shine. At worst, it's just somewhat less coherent and compelling than Shelton's previous work. [27 Mar 1992, p.19]

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]

If you've ever been in a play, you may have a good time at Noises Off anyway. And what stage cast could top this one? Caine has rarely had a chance to display his versatility so entertainingly, Ritter always seems to blossom under Bogdanovich's direction, Elliott finds a surprising variety in his one-note part, while Hagerty makes the most of her oddly appealing brand of hysteria. [21 March 1992, p.C5]

This is the swiftest, funniest, most lunatic comedy to date from the team that created "Top Secret," "The Naked Gun," "Ruthless People" and "Airplane!" [28 June 1991, p.23]

Before it finally twists itself into a pretzel in the third act, this paranoid thriller creates a scary mood and allows its leading actors to go all the way with it.

Earnest, well-acted and occasionally compelling, School Ties gets an A for effort and a C-plus for achievement. At best, it's like a well-mounted, feature-length afterschool special about prep-school anti-Semitism in the mid-1950s. With hate crimes on the rise, it's unfortunately timely now, and its heart is always in the right place. At worst, it's a single-minded exploration of the subject, with too many aspects left untouched. [18 Sept 1992, p.26]

A tasty/tacky treat.

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.

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]

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.

This could be the year's most pretentious Hollywood film.

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]

It's a terrific showcase for Richard Gere, Shelley Long, Farrah Fawcett and a number of other actors who almost seemed to have been written off.

(Herron) just doesn't make the case that this book was worth filming.

Cornel Wilde directed and stars in this nearly wordless 1966 story of a stripped white man hunted by African natives. It has several elements in common with Passion in the Desert. [09 Jul 1998, p.E3]

Despite all the nudity, it's less erotic than Duigan's charming schoolkids romance "Flirting." If only "Sirens" could have been a little livelier, if only Duigan, Grant and Neill had gone too far. [11 March 1994, p.D26]

Grass is often closer to the sobering tone of the PBS show than it is to the silly "Weed," with its stoned, barely literate potheads discussing the quality of their dope.

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.

The Muppet Christmas Carol is cute rather than touching. It could have been both. [11 Dec 1992, p.24]

Serial Mom isn't much of an ensemble piece. More so even than Waters' Divine pictures, it's a star vehicle. The other actors rarely get a chance to do much more than register stupidity, yet it works out because Turner so craftily tunes into Waters' rarefied wavelength. [15 Apr 1994, p.D3]