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]

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]

This expertly sustained 1971 suspense classic established Steven Spielberg's reputation as a director. [23 Dec 1993, p.E7]

"We're in Twin Peaks here," says the only surviving teenager in town. It's a lame attempt to create class by association. Unlike David Lynch's kinky series, the creators of Freddy's Dead couldn't care less about the movie's interchangeable characters. The actors are often hard to tell apart; some are just worse than others. [14 Sept 1991, p.C5]

Eric Clapton, who wrote the blues-heavy score, told Oldman that the film was "like you throwing up over everyone." He meant that as a compliment. Whether you respond to this gritty, punishingly long and plotless film will depend largely on whether you agree. [13 Mar 1998]

The final scenes, which suggest an earnest science lesson presented by a weepy extraterrestrial in an alien planetarium, play like the work of an amateur filmmaker.

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.

A supernatural thriller that would like to be the new Exorcist, this hapless film has a promising villain and a sympathetic hero, but their confrontations are mostly anti-climactic. [02 Sep 1995, p.F3]

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]

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.

The 42-year-old Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality. It dovetails neatly with a surreal and quite hilarious ending that carries the technique - and Vidal's cinematic pretensions - to their logical conclusion. [26 Sept 1997]

For all its occasional long-windedness and visual dazzle, Brazil may be the "Strangelove" of the 1980s.

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

The darkly comic tone is often just right, and the casting occasionally pays off.

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.

Depp, who has never looked so angelic, is covering familiar ground here, playing another Gilbert Grape type who's involved with an older woman. [9 Sept 1994, p.H34]

The animation is smooth and occasionally quite expressive, the character voices are well-chosen, and the pacing (songs aside) is confident. For young moviegoers unfamiliar with the Camelot story, this could be an option. [15 May 1998]

Already nicknamed "This Is Spinal Rap," this clever fake-documentary should delight both those who love rap music and those who feel it's been given a free ride by music critics for far too long. [17 Jun 1994, p.E3]

The ride in this road movie isn't always as smooth as it could be, but even the bumps have some charm.

It's the survivors of this tragedy that must make peace with their fate, and the film finally rests with them.

(Thornton) does a remarkable job in all three categories, but what you're likely to remember most clearly is his performance.

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]

Sergei Urusevsky's amazingly mobile cinematography is so expressive, and Kalatozov's heightened sense of drama so contagious, that this becomes one of those rare movies that makes you look at the world differently. [23 Jun 1995, p.H26]

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 idea may have sounded great in film school. As written and directed by B.W.L. Norton, that's where it should have stayed. Still, the music of the period is well-used, and Charlie Martin Smith, Candy Clark and Cindy Williams rise above the script problems. [05 Dec 1991, p.F3]

It's a painful sit from beginning to end.

Runs on wit and creativity.

But they all end up spinning their wheels under Deran Sarafian, whose action-movie credentials include Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Death Warrant." He tries to establish a tongue-in-cheek attitude that seems as borrowed and clueless as Stephen Sommers' script. [4 Feb 1994, p.D28]

Time-travel movies don't come much dopier than Freejack. [18 Jan 1982, p.C5]

Much of the time, for all the leering effort she puts into portraying this demonic tease, Barrymore just seems to be playing dress-up. She also needs a more responsive co-star than Gilbert, who gives a one-note performance in the part that should be at the story's center. [29 May 1992, p.18]

The film has smarts, but what really makes it fascinating is its huge heart...and the film soars because of that.

It's no more obnoxious than the original, and in several ways it's more interesting. [08 Apr 1995, p.C7]

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]

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

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.

She's So Lovely works best as an actors' showcase. The ordinarily reserved Robin Wright Penn goes through a transformation not unlike Mia Farrow's complete makeover in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose; she's never been brassier or funnier. [29 Aug 1997]

Loses touch with its characters.

White Fang is one of the best family films around right now. The violence is not too intense, the harshness of the frontier is downplayed without being ignored, and the wildlife footage is reminiscent of the best Disney documentaries. [18 Jan 1991, p.22]

George Stevens' mythic 1953 Western finally gets a video transfer that captures the crisp, bright beauty of its Oscar-winning cinematography. [17 Aug 2000, p.D3]

While Bounce may mark a sophomore slump for Roos, it's hardly the worst date movie out there.

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

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]

(Ash and Russell) generate just enough tension to keep the audience interested.

The script, attributed to four writers, is based on stories of cats who roamed the Warners back lot, begging for food among the discarded sets of "Casablanca" and "East of Eden." Imagine any storyline designed around that studio legend and you're likely to come up with a more auspicious plot than the one this team has created. [26 Mar 1997]

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

Toy Story approached toy frenzy from the toys' point of view while craftily exploring the media-driven delusions of that Turbo Man-like doll, Buzz Lightyear. Jingle All the Way had that kind of potential, but somewhere along the way the filmmakers lost all perspective. [22 Nov 1996, p.F7]

Miscast and nervously directed. [11 Oct 1996]

An OK debut effort, but like so many "Pulp Fiction" wannabes, it lacks freshness and energy.

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]

A wry, rambling, smart comedy.

The script by David Stenn (21 Jump Street), which also includes a hoary subplot involving blackmail, a kidnapping and a guilty family secret, is essentially a way of tying together a collection of familiar-looking music videos that are so loosely connected to the story that they have about the same impact as commercials. [19 Oct 1991, p.C7]

Broad, obvious and thuddingly unfunny, Drop Dead Gorgeous makes almost every previous "mockumentary" look like a work of genius.

The characterizations now seem a tad thin, but Ives still impresses, and so does Charlton Heston as the most conflicted character, caught in the middle of this Cold War allegory about two feuding families and an outsider (Gregory Peck) with pacifist leanings. [29 Feb 1996, p.D3]

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.

Godard's technical innovations have become so commonplace that they no longer jolt. But the aura of urban fatalism remains compelling, and so does the acting by Jean-Paul Belmondo as a Bogart-worshipping fugitive and especially Jean Seberg as his amoral girlfriend. [02 Aug 1991, p.24]

Practically perfect in its unpretentious way, MGM's Get Shorty is the kind of smart, witty, polished entertainment that restores one's faith in the studio system.

Aside from the Brechtian ending, Taste of Cherry is not a difficult film, although the implications of the characters' references to "true" Moslems, "brave" Kurds and multiplying Afghans may be entirely clear only to an Iranian audience. [3 July 1998]

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]

Mangold ultimately can't displace memories of "An Angel at My Table," "Lilith," "The Snake Pit," "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and other, stronger accounts of young women placed in mental institutions.

Too long, too predictable.

The Marx Brothers at their purest and funniest - no romantic subplot, no musical interludes with Harpo, no distractions from the fun of watching Groucho deflate Margaret Dumont as he becomes dictator of Fredonia and frivolously declares war. Cleverly directed by Leo McCarey, it was the team's least popular 1930s film, perhaps because the tone of non-stop anarchy proved too unsettling to Depression audiences. [10 May 1991, p.65]

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

Handsomer and funnier than the original, Young Guns II is still a mediocre brat-pack western. It lacks the attention-getting novelty of the first film. [01 Aug 1990, p.E1]

Neither the actress nor her director disgrace themselves, and Curtis does suggest a commitment to her character that goes above and beyond the limitations of the script, but they've both done more interesting work. [16 Mar 1990, p.26]

Unfortunately, the recycled plot is still the driving force here, and the movie becomes increasingly frantic trying to accommodate it. In the end, Raffill can't bring this dummy to life, but he does try.

An appalling masterpiece.

While Jennifer 8 won't surprise anyone who's addicted to whodunits, it's not a great disappointment either. It occupies that middle ground inhabited by so many thrillers that keep you interested only as long as they're in front of you. Out of sight, out of mind. [6 Nov 1992, p.20]

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]

The problem with most movies about junkies is that they're really not about anything but getting high, crashing and screwing up. The problem with most movies about writers is that they can't demonstrate a writer's talent. Put the two together and you've got Permanent Midnight. [18 Sep 1998, p.H6]

Bugsy is really pretty wonderful. It's the kind of old-fashioned yet multi-layered movie that Hollywood filmmakers seemed to have forgotten how to make in 1991, when well-written, carefully structured screenplays often appeared to have gone the way of manageable budgets. It couldn't have arrived at a more welcome moment.

Better Than Chocolate is essentially a 101-minute sitcom that runs out of energy (but not vulgarity) long before it reaches its predictable finale. [27 Aug 1999]

While it may have seemed revolutionary in its time, it now suffers from the disadvantage of looking like one more Asian movie about alienated youth. [18 Feb 2005, p.I20]

The script is a minefield of ideas that need more work.

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

A soothing 76-minute respite from the noisy clutter of Hollywood's holiday-oriented movies, Microcosmos invites us to "fall silent" while it shows us the spectacularly exotic sights of a world almost beneath our notice, where "time passes differently." [22 Nov 1996]

Quite a spicy brew.

There's only so much a director can do to dress up a sequel as ill-conceived and impoverished as this one. [30 Aug 1991, p.24]

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]

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]

The best that can be said of this campy but witless time-travel thriller is that it's acted with some authority. [12 Jan 1991, p.C7]

Their performances lend the movie a touch of class, even if they can't make up for the superficial writing and Schumacher's anything-for-a-jolt direction.

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]

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

After a sprightly credits sequence in which the animated Pink Panther takes over conducting duties for Henry Mancini, while helping Bobby McFerrin doodle with the Panther theme Mancini composed 30 years ago, it's mostly downhill. It's been 10 years since the last Panther installment, yet Edwards seems exhausted.

Ewan McGregor in a raw, funny, star-making performance.

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.

There's a sense of ease and contentment to it that has never been so prominent in Allen's work before.

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]

A terrific feature-length cartoon.

What gives Betsy's Wedding distinction is the writing and casting of an initially peripheral figure, an unnervingly polite young gangster played by Anthony LaPaglia, a television and off-Broadway veteran making his big-screen debut. [22 Jun 1990, p.25]

A movie that keeps you wondering about its characters' true feelings and motives long after you've left the theater.

A dumbed-down remake.

Writer-director Sturges' smoothest romantic comedy, starring Henry Fonda as a naive millionaire who gets fleeced by a pair of shipboard cardsharps. [05 Dec 1997]

Anyone who's been starved for Albert Brooks' brand of anxiety-ridden humor will not be completely disappointed. [24 Oct 1991, p.D3]

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]

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

Fire Birds reduces it all to kiss-kiss-bang-bang, and the implication that a few theater-rattling explosions will turn the enemy to toast forever. The only blessing is that it runs less than 90 minutes.

Unfortunately, he's working from a cliche-choked, insensitive script, written by Gary Goldman (``Big Trouble in Little China'') and Chuck Pfaffer (``Dark Man''), that makes a point of stirring up old prejudices.

The cast of "Ladybugs" is good-natured enough, but Dangerfield is reduced to reading lame one-liners about "drag races" as his future stepson hops in and out of a dress. Brandis is never allowed to have much fun with the complications that result from pretending to be a girl, and his best friend (Vinessa Shaw) barely seems to notice when he reveals that he's been deceiving her. What should have been a wild door-slamming farce never really gets started. already are turning from brown. [28 March 1992, p.C5]

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]

Utterly unnecessary sequel.

Love Potion No. 9 is no great shakes, but far worse comedies are routinely released without a second thought. [13 Nov 1992, p.28]

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]

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

The Museum of Modern Art has committed Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to its permanent collection. This spin-off, which has none of that film's brutal energy, won't be joining it. The state of Texas ought to sue the makers of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III for defamation of character. [13 Jan 1990, p.C5]

A thoroughly satisfying musical-comedy romp.

Everything clicks here.

A sweet, funny exercise in nostalgia, though it's also self-congratulatory and awfully calculating.

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]

Feels like the first truly honest attempt to deal with the horrors of combat - and the terrible responsibility shared by all survivors.

A few startling touches.

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]

Today it has a classical feeling to it, with rich, on-target performances by Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard. [10 May 1991, p.65]

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]

The script seems flimsy and disposable when compared with such similar takes on the subject as "Analyze This,""The Sopranos" and the upcoming "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai."

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.

How do you turn a collection of New Yorker cartoons into a feature-length movie? And avoid the one-joke nature of the early-1960s television series that first tried to put it into dramatic form? The answer to both questions: you can't. [22 Nov 1991, p.3]

Lithgow's opening narration tries to throw you off the scent of the cliches, and director Michael Caton-Jones (Scandal) does his best to avoid them or make them seem charmingly dated. But they're still there. [12 Oct 1990, p.22]

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 characters in Clint Eastwood's dark, rugged, perversely funny new Western are so seriously compromised that their flaws almost add up to a running gag.

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

As a writer, LaBute is capable of creating long dialogue scenes that never seem stagey or artificial. As a director, he has the confidence to stay with those words.

So campy...may be good for a few laughs.

Maybe there's a serious movie to be made about professional soldiers who can't thaw out now that the Cold War is melting. But The Fourth War plays like Laurel and Hardy's Tit For Tat in slow motion. [23 Mar 1990, p.24]

Closer to "M*A*S*H" than "Dr. Strangelove," which in itself wouldn't be a bad thing. But for all its engaging qualities, Three Kings doesn't seem to know what kind of beast it is.

Crass and depressing drama.

Raucously entertaining.

For all its contagious energy and surface authenticity, this early-Beatles docudrama comes off as the kind of biographical movie in which a group of unknowns appear to be all too aware that they're on the verge of international superstardom. [22 Apr 1994, p.D3]

Jungle 2 Jungle is better than expected, yet not quite good enough. [07 Mar 1997, p.F1]

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

Blind Fury is cheerfully stupid, deliberately cartoonish and always self-mocking. [17 Mar 1990, p.C5]

Long before the final battle, the movie runs out of steam. At two hours, it's just too long. But taken as a guilty pleasure, it's tolerable. [19 Apr 1996]

Somewhere around the beginning of Hour Two, the narrative loses momentum, and Pino Donaggio's molasses-thick score begins to drag everything down with it. The ending also lacks the surprise twist that seems to be promised .

Stephen Herek, who directed Critters and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, nevertheless keeps the story spinning along as if he believed it, and he works well with the actors, especially Cassidy, who plays her dotty career woman with a mixture of brassiness and resilience that's quite engaging; Coogan, a natural young comic who is becoming indispensable in movies like this; and Applegate, who looks very much like a movie star in her major-studio, big-screen debut. [07 June 1991, p.29]

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]

It's so much a Wayans vehicle that at times it seems like one long close-up of his gold-tooth grin. [24 March 1995, p.H24]

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.

Whether or not you're a fan of De Jong's earlier work, Drop Dead Fred is clearly an extension of it. There's even a touch of Peter Pan and Wendy in the relationship between Mayall and Cates ("He's like my best friend, and yet I'm scared to death of him"), who has a ball with the role.

The sexual sadism that ruled in the first Hellraiser has been largely replaced by tiresome confrontations between the toymakers and Pinhead, who responds to their sputtering oaths with the most sensible line in the movie: "Do I look like someone who would care what God thinks?" [9 March 1996, p.F3]

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]

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, Craven's constant emphasis on cannibalism, child abuse and incest adds up to more unpleasantness than thrills. [02 Nov 1991, p.C3]

Misbegotten comedy-drama.

The format couldn't be slighter or more familiar, yet this Australian film-festival favorite is one of the freshest romantic comedies of the season. [11 Apr 1997, p.F5]