John Hartl

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

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 audience for Digimon is small children.

Neeson might as well have phoned this one in.

Has a cute idea. Which it promptly runs into the ground.

There's an anger and rawness here that fit hand-in-glove with Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands," which serves as the opening song. [3 Apr 1992, p.28]

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.

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]

Full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing, End of Days is the loudest and least of the year's end-of-the-world movies.

The co-writer and producer, Henry Bean (Internal Affairs), and the director, Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem), punch up the story with plenty of action, some of it gratuitous and illogical. But for the most part they stick close to Fishburne's character and his increasingly difficult choices. [15 Apr 1992, p.D6]

If you've seen one "Scream" rip-off, you really have seen them all.

An Almodovar-like blend of laughs, drama and uplift, filled with the kinds of pop-art colors and pop-out performances that Almodovar loves.

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]

A stark and still-stunning medieval allegory. [14 Sept 1991, p.25]

Child's Play 2 is perfunctory, disagreeable and patience-trying. [09 Nov 1990, p.24]

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]

Technically, Titanic is a marvel.

Elegantly photographed by the legendary Henri Decae, who emphasizes smoky blue and darkest blacks, "Le Samourai" has film-noir style to burn. [25 Apr 1997]

Neither the sophisticated teen comedy it wants to be nor the routine Disney slapstick number it sometimes becomes, it doesn't know what it is. [14 Feb 1997]

The movie is a model of clear, precise storytelling, of state-of-the-art technique used to advance a story rather than show off.

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]

You might not want to pay top dollar for The Skulls, but at the right price, it delivers.

There's not much to save this formulaic suspense film from seeming both ridiculous and predictable, but if you can get past the groaner dialogue and hysteria that follow the opening credits, the midsection of "Extreme Measures" does generate some tension. [27 Sept 1996]

The movie is a stylized collection of well-timed shockers, helped along by the contributions of its capable cast, especially Neill, who plays the detective in a hard-boiled manner that suggests 1940s film noir. [03 Feb 1995, p.H31]

Tokyo Decadence includes what may be the only near-death experience ever played for laughs in a movie. [15 Oct 1993, p.D26]

By film's end, the husband's reasons and rationalizations seem all but incomprehensible. That doesn't, however, prevent this from being a thoroughly engrossing tale. [11 Jan 1991, p.24]

Some scenes hold up better than others, and there’s always a question about the film’s intentions: Is this voyeurism or is it satire taking off on the Playboy era? Condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency in 1960, Private Property is less dated than you might think.

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