John Hartl

All but guarantees that you'll want to see Chicken Run more than once.

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

The new "Magoo" ends with a statement that it doesn't mean to slight near-sighted people or prejudice anyone against them. But so few of the sight gags relate to Magoo's near-sightlessness that the apology is baffling. [25 Dec 1997, p.26]

The Kids' first movie is just all right. But there's enough good stuff in it to merit a sequel. [12 Apr 1996, p.F5]

It's as if a television sitcom director had tried to remake Robert Altman's Short Cuts, making sure that all the rough edges, ugly moments and untidy endings were removed. [22 Jan 1999]

Avildsen does a good job with all of these actors, and his re-creation of 1930s/1940s South Africa on sets in Zimbabwe and Botswana is convincing; his handling of squalor in the townships is particularly detailed and vivid. It's the best work he's done since winning the Oscar for the first "Rocky." But because of the script's shortcomings the result is only half of a good movie. [27 March 1992, p.22]

Scathingly hilarious...To Die For could be the "Dr. Strangelove" of its genre, a movie that puts even John Waters' somewhat similar "Serial Mom" in the shade.

Hardly anyone comes off looking good in this glitzy and faintly ludicrous melodrama. [16 Feb 1990, p.34]

Final Analysis has the most convoluted plot about dreams, heights, murder, infatuation, Freudian imagery and a duplicitous San Francisco blonde since Hitchcock's "Vertigo." It's the kind of whopper that keeps you watching not because it's good but because you can't wait to see what the filmmakers will throw at you next. As it turns out, there's not much they won't try. In fact, by the time this cracked thriller reaches its hysterical finale, it's obvious that anything goes. [7 Feb 1992, p.22]

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]

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]

Norton's performance, which is every bit as varied as his Oscar-nominated work in Primal Fear, once more demonstrates that he's one of the most remarkable chameleons working in film.

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.

The visual fireworks and catchy score just underline the extreme superficiality of the material.

You'll laugh, but you'll hate yourself by the time you're out of the theater.

An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.

Miyazaki's appreciation of miraculous possibilities and childhood visions is what drives Totoro.

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

An oddly overblown, semi-operatic adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s once-banned 1964 novel about life among the abused prostitutes, lonely sailors, lonelier drag queens, repressed homosexuals and gay-bashing pimps along the hellish waterfront district of Brooklyn in 1952. [11 May 1990, p.22]

Imported from Germany to lend class to Hollywood's new Fox studio, the great expressionist filmmaker, F.W. Murnau, did exactly that with this affecting, visually intoxicating 1927 masterpiece about a troubled young country couple (George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor) whose marital bonds are renewed during a day in the city. [12 Mar 1998]

Polanski has created his funniest and possibly his cruelest movie: a thoroughly warped tale of sexual obsession that leaves its quartet of lust-driven characters with nowhere left to hide. [18 Mar 1994, p.D3]

A chronicle of the exasperating circumstances that yield cinema gold -- or lead. It almost doesn't matter which; it's the process that counts here.

Unlike the cheapie late-1970s Mexican exploitation movie Survive!, this sobering account of a 1972 Andes plane crash has a spiritual quality that makes the tougher aspects of the story easier to handle. [15 Jan 1993, p.16]

Unfortunately, the script is so hopelessly superficial that very little of this registers. It's the work of Eric Roth, who wrote the unspeakable Billy Crystal comedy, "Memories of Me," and Michael Cristofer, a playwright whose most prominent previous screen credit was the disastrous "Bonfire of the Vanities."

With any luck, Body Shots will quickly slide into video obscurity.

A tasty/tacky treat.

As skiing comedies go, this one is no easier to endure than Hot Dog - The Movie or Snowball Express. Maslansky instructed his writers to come up with a script to go along with the title he'd dreamed up, and every character, comic twist and plot development seems tortuously manufactured and insincere. [10 Feb 1990, p.C7]

The more this new Haunting tries to impress with its state-of-the-art techniques, the more it recalls how much Wise accomplished with eerie lighting effects and mysterious noises on the soundtrack. [23 July 1999, p.F1]