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.

The plot tries too hard to incorporate elements that drift toward melodrama.

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.

Cute and daffy enough to make your molars ache, Bakery in Brooklyn is the kind of romantic comedy that lacks all conviction.

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 script’s weaknesses are difficult to ignore.

Franco makes the most of his showy scenes, and Garrett Clayton (known for “Teen Beach Movie” and other shows from the Disney Channel) is a convincing hunk. But only Christian Slater’s lonely voyeur suggests what “King Cobra” might have been.

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.

The sparring couple at its center are played by Naomi Watts, a fearless actress who seems game for anything, and Matthew McConaughey, who just seems off his game here.

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.

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

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.

Stuffed with touristy images but not enough dramatic substance to make any of them count.

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.

What the film does have going for it is a ghostly atmosphere that leads to a few surprising developments, including some color effects and a charmingly off-the-wall musical number.

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.

The movie is a series of ostentatious effects, without much sense of narrative momentum or rhythmic pacing, and it leaves you feeling like you've landed on a treadmill. [26 May 1995, p.E3]

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]

The travelogue-style photography is soothing, the bodies are pretty and the music isn't offensive, but feature-length movies can't survive on the ingredients for a standard airline commercial.

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]

Judgment Night is almost completely lacking in conviction and originality. But Leary does a fair Dennis Hopper imitation, Gooding does his best with an insulting role, and the ending is witty enough not to give us the undying villain it leads us to expect. [15 Oct 1993, p.D27]

Cobbled together from so many sources that it never develops a narrative drive of its own.

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]

Simplistic on one level, indecipherable on another, it's a most peculiar muddle.

This fuzzily illustrated sermon is mostly an attempt to prove that the internal combustion engine is obsolete, and that oil companies everywhere are conspiring to wipe out alternative methods.

This stupefyingly unfunny attempt to create a midnight cult movie stars Judd Nelson as a talentless stand-up comic who becomes a celebrity when he grows a third arm out of the middle of his back. [26 Mar 1992, p.E2]

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]

What began as a feature-length toy commercial instantly disintegrates into MTV fodder. [22 Mar 1991, p.24]

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.

Begun by screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson (Grumpy Old Men), Jack Frost ended up taking four credited writers to finish - and still it's a derivative mess. [11 Dec 1998]

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]

The odd couple here is just as charmless, and their adventures are equally unfunny. When the filmmakers try to get sentimental about the relationship, you'll either be rolling your eyes or thinking about heading for the exit.

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.

Fails to single out one plot thread and make a claim to it.

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

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]

The performances are more interesting than the convoluted plot. [24 Apr 1992, p.26]

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

This may be the easiest installment in the series for parents to sit through.

It carries the stale odor of something that was stuck in a drawer long ago and could easily have gathered more dust. Worst of all, there's something inauthentic and phony about the way Gale and Zemeckis crank out racial taunts and four-letter-word dialogue. The result is a movie that isn't just a throwaway but borderline offensive. [26 Dec 1992, p.C7]

Stardom just doesn't have enough anger or conviction to carry it to a satisfying finish.

Rowdy, funny, surprisingly sweet.

Doesn't seem to have anything to say.

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]

Stone Cold may be the morally bankrupt nadir of what is so far one of Hollywood's worst years. [17 May 1991, p.3]

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]

There's not much any actor can do with material as woeful as this. Pierce seems as charmless at the end of First Kid as he is in the early scenes, while Sinbad seems lost without a stand-up shtick. [30 Aug 1996]

It can be treacly -- but in a crude way, it makes its point.

Only very small children are likely to be satisfied.

Story II does feature some of the creatures from the first film (the luckdragon, the rockbiter), and Miller almost pulls off the finale, which suggests the emotional impact of the original film. But there's a lot of dawdling on the way.[09 Feb 1991, p.C10]