Kenneth Turan

As sequels go, this one is acceptable, nothing more, nothing less.

So meticulous in its craftsmanship and so earnest in its storytelling that it feels both physically and spiritually airbrushed.

A wild at heart, anarchic comedy that believes in living dangerously.

Chomsky deserves a more thoughtful documentary than Power and Terror, and in fact he got it in 1993's "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" --The film's main flaw is the absence of other voices -- From a cinematic point of view, two sides of an issue are always better than one.

Graced with a clever script, a cast that will make you smile until you ache, and a snappy sense of pace, this summer '92 hit is the funniest by-the-numbers comedy in who knows how long.

A stirring documentary.

A beautifully made, unapologetically artistic piece of work.

Parse it any way you like, Miyazaki's gifts as an animator place him in a category of his own. To see his latest film is to be somehow reminded of Italians who could hear Verdi's operas as soon as they were sung or English readers who could experience the novels of Dickens episode by episode.

All these intriguing good intentions, however, have largely gone for naught because of a variety of missteps, starting with an increasing implausible plot as well as the fact that Ledger's Harry looks about as likely to pass for an Arab as the Mahdi is to pass for Queen Victoria.

If ever a film looked exactly the way you hoped and imagined it would, The Shadow is it. But if ever a film made you wince whenever its actors opened their mouths, The Shadow is that as well.

Stop-Loss is a film that does it right.

Sweet-natured and unsurprising, about as hard to resist (and as intellectually demanding) as an affectionate puppy, this is one of those Never Say Die, I Gotta Be Me, Somebody Up There Likes Me sports movies that no amount of cynicism can make much of a dent in.

Such a smart and savvy piece of work it encourages us to feel we're eavesdropping on history.

If 1492 is dramatically inert, it is just the opposite visually. Its director is Ridley Scott, a wizard at re-creating the look of other realities, and he's done a remarkable job here, filling the screen with ravishing sequences from both the Old World and the New that are dazzling and intoxicating.

A serious and thoughtful documentary.

Alive does everything it ought to except the one thing you really want with a story like this, and that is transcend its material. A once-in-a-lifetime situation, filled with incidents that almost defy belief, calls for more of a once-in-a-lifetime movie, and that is beyond this film’s powers.

Lively, imaginative, with a playful sense of humor.

Yet another silly disaster movie, where the special effects are believable and the characters aren’t.

Just as interesting, if not more so, is how Rohmer integrates his very contemporary concerns into a period drama, how he creates characters who manage to be true to our times as well as their own.

The end result was that the performances reached a remarkable level of intimacy and intensity.

A typically energetic urban action melodrama, offering car chases, beatings, murders, a dog mauling, attempted arson, frequent double-crosses and pitched street battles worthy of Fallouja.

If The Core finally has to be classified as a mess, it is an enjoyable one if you're in a throwback mood. After all, a film that comes up with a rare metal called Unobtainium can't be dismissed out of hand.

Killer of Sheep is a wonder any number of ways...but the greatest wonder of all is that this 1977 film, made for $10,000 by filmmaker Charles Burnett while he was still at UCLA’s film school and shot on weekends in Watts with a mostly amateur cast, still has the power to move us.

Brougher has taken material that sounds contrived and potentially exploitative and used her gift for careful observation and restrained emotionality to give it surprising authenticity.

It is sweet but not saccharine, an intimate film that doesn't stint on the desperation and anxiety that go along with the search for love.

A spirited and amusing comedy that posits the engaging notion that the stars of TV soap operas have lives as screwed up and crazy as the characters they play, if not more so.

Numerous good things can be said about Apocalypto, the director's foray into the decaying Mayan civilization of the early 1500s, but every last one of them is overshadowed by Gibson's well-established penchant for depictions of stupendous amounts of violence.

Exuberant and insidiously funny satire.

More elaborate than the original, but just as shrewdly put together, it cleverly combines the most successful elements of its predecessor with a number of new twists (would you believe a kinder, gentler Terminator?) to produce on e hell of a wild ride, a Twilight of the Gods that takes no prisoners and leaves audiences desperate for mercy. [3 July 1991, Calendar, p.F-1]

Deeply fascinating, unexpectedly potent documentary.

A remarkable and remarkably compelling document.

Two teen girls forge an explosive connection in a compelling Pawel Pawlikowski film.

It may be standard-issue stuff, but it looks great and it almost makes you nostalgic for the days when stuntmen reigned supreme and mayhem and computers never knew how much they had in common.

The genre's recent past has set the bar quite high, and Treasure Planet doesn't quite make it over.

Even when Griffin has a heart of stone, Tim Robbins is lacking in the knid of ice-cold magnetism that allows a thorough bastard to hold the screen like nobody's business. [10 Apr 1992]

Smart and genial satire.

This haunting phantasmagoria of a film -- comic, singular, surreal -- is not only something no one but the Canadian director could have made, it's also a film no one else would have even wanted to make. Which is the heart of its appeal.

The fingerprints of the Camorra are everywhere, this film wants us to know, and its grip is lethal.

A fearless and ambitious piece of work, made with equal parts passion and calculation, an unapologetically entertaining major studio release with compelling real-world relevance, a film that takes numerous risks and thrives on them all.

This is not a chance to "experience the most timeless of stories as you've never seen it before" but just the opposite: an opportunity, for those who want it, to encounter this story exactly the way it's almost always been told.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Milk, it's just that its celebration of a culture and a neighborhood, its valentine to the early days of gay rights activism, is mostly more conventional than compelling.

An engaging and emotional documentary.

The best thing that can be said about this lethargic coming-of-age tale, noticeably undernourished at 78 minutes, is that it's better than the even more pathetic "Stolen Summer."

He [Caton-Jones] has made the film all of a piece, making sure that the three lead performances complement rather than overwhelm each other. [9 Apr 1993, p.F1]

James Mangold directs it with such energy and passion that it's as if he didn't know it's all been done before.

Perhaps The Heart of Me's greatest success is the way it avoids turning any of its characters into villains. They all act badly at times, but we feel for them just the same; they never lose our sympathy. Weepy or not, that's an accomplishment any kind of film can feel proud of.

It turns out to be an especially warm comedy with a hidden heart. It's a film whose humor has feeling behind it because writer-director Peter Hedges doesn't let his comedy overpower an understanding of how emotionally weighted family situations are always going to be.

Somehow, against considerable obstacles, it has captured something true about families and friendship, creating a texture of believable emotions on screen.

In a commanding performance that is as compelling as it is unexpected, Mirren has turned The Queen into something you never imagined it could be: a crackling dramatic story that's intelligent, thoughtful and moving.

This is a nearly flawless little film, a cheerful nightmare that knows just where it wants to go and uses precisely calibrated comic effects to get there.

Achieves its success through a combination of attitude and technique, uniting, to exceptional effect, a way of viewing the world morally while looking at it physically.

While this film fits squarely into Soderbergh's recurrent goal of ignoring audience interest when possible, that's the only area in which it can be considered a success.

The most accurate assault against the media age since "Network," To Die For's killer lines and wicked sensibility are given added poignancy by the off-center, sensitive performance of Joaquin Phoenix, River's younger brother, the only person more deluded about Suzanne than she is about herself.

Graced with good-humored comic energy, they overcome sizable script problems and turn Ron Shelton's White Men Can't Jump into a sassy and profane urban fairy tale that finds laughs in some very clever places.

Strongly tied to a powerful underlying reality (though it inevitably tends to simplify), this film has the additional advantage of being concerned with the emotional truth of its key relationships, adding an unusual father and son story to its incendiary mix. [29 Dec 1993 Pg. F1]

Ends up insisting on pat and overly tidy resolutions that are at variance with the emotional chaos it's nominally attempting to convey. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

300 is something to see, but unless you love violence as much as a Spartan, Quentin Tarantino or a video-game-playing teenage boy, you will not be endlessly fascinated.

Having abandoned for a while the portrayal of real people, Streep demonstrates here that what great actresses do is show us ordinary people in an extraordinary light.

Written, directed and acted with real compassion and sympathy for the humanity of its characters, no matter who they are or on what side of these multiple issues they turn out to be.

Ulee's Gold stands out for its sureness, its quiet emotional force and writer-director Victor Nunez's ability to find and nurture the mystery and power in the events of an ordinary life.

Likely as not, these things mean nothing in a conventional plot sense, but as powerful images, as pictures from a dreamlike world, they are unforgettable. And that, David Lynch would probably say, is exactly the point.

Only a teenage boy could find this kind of stuff continually diverting, and only a teenage boy would not notice flimsy emotions and underdeveloped acting. It seems George Lucas, like Peter Pan, has never really grown up.

Get Smart neglects the laughs and amps up the action, resulting in a not very funny comedy joined at the hip to a not very exciting spy movie. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

That rare comic book movie that actually feels like a comic book. Which turns out to be mostly, but not entirely, a good thing.

Seems merely tired and stale, the opposite of fresh, marked by ideas for jokes rather than things that are actually funny. Then, without warning, it goes from inept to complete disaster, sinking from indifferent to fiasco in the blink of an eye.

The truth is that two other films with Greengrass' name on them, "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum," have spoiled us for this kind of thriller filmmaking, and stacked against that, Vantage Point doesn't have a chance.

Who doesn't love a good amnesia movie, and this one, starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, pulls out more stops than one would have thought possible. [03 Apr 2020, p.E1]

It's hardly a perfect film, not even close, but it is the most entertaining made-for-adults studio movie of the summer, and one of the reasons it works at all is the great skill and commitment Cruise brings to the starring role.

Energetic and absorbing documentary.

Ought to be disreputable fun. Instead it ends up, all its explosions and exposed flesh notwithstanding, rather inert.

Carefully made, involving and old-fashioned, the superior work it's inspired gives it an impact that lingers even when the endgame is over.

Rather than a fresh breeze, it's the stale air of gilded calculation, the uncomfortable feeling that things are excessively just so, that overhangs much that is genuinely appealing about this film.

Millennium Actress fascinatingly goes where films have not often gone before.

I have a weakness for inside Hollywood films, and this smart and fearless item starring Jean Harlow as an amalgam of herself and Clara Bow is not as well-known as it should be. [03 Apr 2020, p.E1]

Despite being structured in an intriguing way -- bits of confusing action are shown first and explained later -- The International never finds its footing.

Seven years in the making, it demands to be experienced not just because of the good it does but because of how unexpectedly good, even buoyant, it makes you feel.

A deeply personal and unexpectedly poetic film.

Haunting almost serves as a reverse image of a successful film, demonstrating by what it lacks exactly what is needed to do things right. [23 July 1999, p.F15]

As (DiCaprio's) character heads for The Beach's predictable heart of darkness denouement, only die-hard fans will have the heart to tag along.

It leaves you stirred and uplifted not only by its music but also by the determination and courage of the people who sang and danced it on the way to a freer life.

An enormously emotional and spirit-raising documentary.

10,000 BC is as crazy as it wants to be, plundering the past and other movies with that peculiar Hollywood combination of the earnest and the preposterous that can result in the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

Though he claims to be a seeker, someone who "has to find out" why believers believe, Maher sets out not after answers but cheap laughs that preach, so to speak, to the converted.

With a head-shaking plot so foolproof it was remade twice, this romantic fantasy starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer was so beloved by Cary Grant he convinced director Leo McCarey to remake it with himself as the star (as An Affair to Remember). [03 Apr 2020, p.E1]

Brief enough, clocking in at 83 minutes, but its story is too predictable to make an impact even in such a short space. Unlike "Toy Story," the dialogue here, written by Todd Alcott and Chris & Paul Weitz, is pro forma all the way.

This shrewd mixture of slick comic-book mayhem, unmistakable sweetness and ear-splitting profanity is poised to be a popular culture phenomenon because of its exact sense of the fantasies of the young male fanboy population.

Although this is director Birmingham's first feature -- she has a very sure sense of what she wants out of her cast and the ability to put it on screen. Tully may go against the grain of hipness, but that proves to be very much of a blessing.

Solondz's filmmaking style tries to make a virtue out of flatness and distance, and is always more comfortable indicating where feelings would go than actually providing them.

Prepare to be astonished by Spirited Away.

Ross' missive is earnest and well-intentioned, but it's difficult not to feel that his film both runs on too long and overreaches its dramatic resources in its attempt to deliver it.

When Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers go into their dance, everything else fades into insignificance. The pair made 10 films together, and, with sequences like Pick Yourself Up and Never Gonna Dance, this is the consensus pick for their best. [03 Apr 2020, p.E1]

Subversive, provocative and unexpected, Exit Through the Gift Shop delights in taking you by surprise, starting quietly but ending up in a hall of mirrors as unsettling as anything Lewis Carroll's Alice ever experienced.

Sporadically funny, often strange and almost never poignant.

Unfortunately for Man on the Moon, Kaufman is definitely a person more interesting to hear about than to experience, an acquired taste few will be tempted to acquire.

Carrying Shooter through its difficulties is, finally, not its crisp action sequences and definitely not the torture. It's Wahlberg's performance, which is the film's most old-fashioned element, and its best.

After sitting through M. Butterfly, you'll wonder why they even bothered to try. [01 Oct 1993]

Though aspects of it are entertaining, the presence of all these mismatched pieces give Spider-Man 3 an ungainly, cumbersome feeling, as if its plot elements were the product of competing contractors who never saw the need to cooperate on a coherent final product.

A remarkably thoughtful drama, Lantana makes it clear not only how hard to come by any emotional comfort is in this life, but more important, why we can't give up on the struggle.

As if to prove that the unlikeliest material can make for the best films, The Madness of King George, directed by Nicholas Hytner from Alan Bennett's prize-winning play, has taken this footnote to history and transformed it into one of the triumphs of the year--potent, engrossing and even thrilling to experience.

It's intelligent, provocative and intensely dramatic. Its subject matter may be tough but it is as powerfully authentic as anyone could want.

Buried under the miscalculations, the shamelessness, the off-putting and inappropriate broadness are sporadically visible souvenirs of a good project gone bad, hints of the unusual, bittersweet story that got away.

The heart of The Conversation’s appeal, then and now, is the way it combines an exceptional character study, a thriller plot and an ability to superbly convey the unease of a society where blanket surveillance is getting to be the norm.

Despite a weakness for trying to tie things up with melodramatic violence, Singleton remains a fluid filmmaker who works well with actors. He may not be there yet, but he is on the road.

A beautifully mounted and directed film that, despite the presence of Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, is unexpectedly lacking in emotional impact.

A substantial film of unexpected emotional force. And when at a certain point it seems to slip the bonds of this world and take a leap of faith into an almost mythological dimension, it breathlessly takes us along for that memorable ride.

For very much like Peter, it has clearly gotten harder for this director to break free of the lure of material things and believe in simple magic. And whatever problems his Hook has, there are none that making the film on half of its budget wouldn't have cured.

Drags its uninspiring action out too long for anyone's good.

An exceptional--and exceptionally disturbing--film from a first-time director and writer (with Andy Bienen) named Kimberly Pierce. Unflinching, uncompromising, made with complete conviction and rare skill.

It takes two to be sisters, two to have a rivalry, and two exceptional actresses to turn Hilary and Jackie into a compelling look at the most intimate and troubling of family dynamics.

Clever and amusing though it often is, “Murder” is also Allen’s whiniest film to date, and your appreciation of its pleasures will fluctuate according to your tolerance for his Angst .

This may sound like a suspect enterprise, a musical gimmick impossible to embrace, but the reality is otherwise. For what the members of this uncanny chorus lack in pure ability they make up for in irrepressible spirits and a desire to simply have fun.

What results is a thoughtful, analytical yet still emotional film, meticulously investigated and absolutely compelling.

Though being magical is very much its intention, it never manages to cross the threshold that makes that happen in our hearts.

The pleasure of a film like this is not in wondering where it's going to go, but in knowing its exact trajectory. Getting us to pull for a foregone conclusion as if the outcome was in serious doubt is no small sleight of hand.

In an odd way Pretty Horses has been too faithful to the spirit of this somber, fatalistic, melancholy romance, too much a stubborn ode to stoicism, to light any emotional fires.

This thoughtful, sensitive film, perhaps the most emotionally wrenching of all the Iraq documentaries, could have been made after any war.

The film's pronounced split between violence and softness notwithstanding, Prince Caspian is finally a more polished effort than "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and squarely in the tradition of the kind of teenage movies the Disney organization used to make before teens discovered horror and gore.

Suffers from being neither here nor there. In its rush to modernize its story and attract a young audience with stars like Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, the film ends up problematic both in relation to the original and on its own terms.

Chances are you'll have a good time with Frankie & Johnny, but you won't respect yourself in the morning. It's that kind of movie.

Not as satisfying as the old and unimproved version. In a zealous attempt to broaden its appeal, the Zorro franchise has drifted from the qualities that made the previous film so successful.

Wading through blood is too much of a price to pay for Sugar Hill’s pluses, and it’s a shame the movie business has made it difficult for them to be experienced any other way.

The problem is that the first half of Infamous is nowhere near as comic as McGrath intends. Instead the picture gives off a tone of arch stylization that plays as artificial, overwrought and off-putting.

Never loses its priceless stamp of individuality. Reduced to its essence, this is a joke told by a person, not a corporation--and that makes all the difference.

Better than the fiasco that was "Ocean's Twelve" (how could it not be?) but not as engaging as "Ocean's Eleven."

Attempts to both explain the situation to audiences and offer some reason to hope for the future. It's an almost impossible task, and though the film does better than anyone might expect, its success is not complete.

All dressed up with no particular place to go, this 22nd Bond film tries hard but ends up an underachiever.

This pleasantly twisted low-life serenade harks back to several decades earlier, to the golden age of the B-picture and the moody fatalism of film noir. Harsh, gritty, unflinchingly intense and absolutely unforgettable, it’s as heartless as its protagonists, and that is saying quite a lot.

Burton's gifts ensure you won't be able to take your eyes off the screen, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be happy with what you're seeing.

Redford's Gage is so busy being exquisitely sensitive and polite he neglects to project any energy, and without it the crucial morning-after part of the movie gradually collapses under the weight of its own self-importance. [07 Apr 1993 Pg. F1]

Overcomplicates its plot and spends a lot of time floundering around in the shallow end.

A wonderful treasure from the seemingly inexhaustible cornucopia of crackling French crime dramas.

A pleasure to look at. It's filled with fine, imaginative moves and an overarching sense of visual freedom, a feeling of play that entices us into enjoyment. But, when it comes to dialogue and story, this Sinbad apparently used up all its initiative changing its hero's ethnicity to generic Greco-Roman.

As viewers of his Enron film will testify, Gibney is a scrupulous director, and Taxi to the Dark Side is filled with detailed factual information.

The more things change, the more we have to laugh if we are to have a prayer of remaining sane, and the Pythons are the best possible step in that direction.

Any time you're watching a film in which the statistics in the voice-over have more intrinsic drama than the protagonists' lives, you know you're in trouble.

A meditation on aging, friendship, betrayal and coming to terms with life's profound contradictions, interspersed with antic humor and some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed. [01 Jan 2016, p.E4]

The Belgian directing brothers deal with themes they have made their own: the difficulty of being moral in an amoral world and the grinding, unforgiving nature of reality for those forced by poverty to live on the margins of society. These are not easy films to experience, but they are uncompromising and unforgettable.

See it and it'll stay with you as your own memories do: funny, poignant, bittersweet and irreplaceable.

A charming, character-driven film that conveys enormous feeling for its people

A slick and efficient piece of action entertainment, fast moving with energetic stunt work and nice thriller moves.

If you know the name Rezso Kasztner, you won't need any encouragement to see Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis. If you don't, that is even more reason to see this documentary on the strange and compelling life and death of one of the most morally complex figures to come out of the Holocaust.

A small gem.

Loving and well-intentioned though this film is, it never convinces you that its subject matter merits this kind of idealized, worshipful attention. [09 Oct 1992]

A cut above the average thriller. For one thing, it's put together with enough professionalism to make you almost (but not quite) forget the implausibilities that films like this are inevitably prone to. And for another, its concern with cops getting out of line seems hardly far-fetched after what the world saw happening to Rodney G. King.

Creepy and grotesque rather than terrifying. It's more distasteful than anything stronger, a sour bottle of a celebrated vintage that a gourmet like Lecter wouldn't hesitate to send back with the sommelier.

Though Vanilla Sky is smoothly and professionally done, even audiences who haven't seen the original will sense there is something off in the translation.

It's a convincing romantic drama, written, directed and acted with so much skill it's able to break loose from its conventional moorings and become more effective, more moving than we anticipated.

Even if the vivid Whale/Karloff version had never been made, this treatment of the Shelley novel would be a loud and tacky disappointment.

Grabs you by the throat and won't let go.

The movie musical may not have been dead after all, just resting up until this lot came around. [12 Feb 1993, p.F10]

A middling, so-so thriller about a murder investigation on an Army base, it falls to Earth somewhere between failure and success, inconclusive to the end.

So professionally done you rarely have the luxury of taking your eyes off the screen.

The power of film to irrationally transform and exalt is almost a religion to Woo, and another reason why he was the natural go-to guy for this lucrative movie franchise.

A sharp brainteaser of a film, a compelling mind game you compulsively play along with.

While the anger of Outrage is to be expected, the surprise of the film is how much sadness you take away as well, the sadness of people who feel compelled to pretend to be what they are not.

If it weren't for the masterful work of director Dover Kosashvili, this rich, evocative film wouldn't have nearly the impact it does.

A numbing and dispiriting experience aimed at the least discriminating parts of the teen-age audience.

Daring in its willingness to risk looking maudlin by dealing with extremes, Blue doesn't hesitate to explore spiritual and psychological states that are beyond many films.

The remarkable things about the new film, adapted by Vicente Leñero and directed by Carlos Carrera, are how smoothly it has been transposed to today's Mexico and how far good acting and skillful directing have gone toward tempering those melodramatic roots.

A throwback to the days of old-school caper movies like "To Catch a Thief," Duplicity is just the kind of sophisticated amusement you would expect from filmmaker Tony Gilroy.

Naked is a mesmerizing character study, an attempt to stretch the emotional boundaries of truth on film as far as they will go. For once we think we've seen as much of Johnny as we can take, like an etching by Escher we start to see something else, a glimpse of another person easily missed.

It's remarkable for where it takes us, how it takes us there.

Even though this is supposed to be a kindlier Van Damme vehicle, his movies couldn't exist without his trademark ability to deliver the kind of accurate, powerful kicks any World Cup team would envy. All his soulful glances notwithstanding, Timecop still depends too much on violence to make it appealing to the uninitiated or the unwary.

Its portrait of the many ways we can complicate our romantic lives may have a few serious moments, but it's intended to go down easy, and that's what it does.

A quiet powerhouse of a film, an implacable, uncompromising French police drama, both old-fashioned and modern, that underlines the reasons impeccably made crime stories do so well on screen.

One of the great crime thrillers, the benchmark all succeeding heist films have been measured against, it's no musty museum piece but a driving, compelling piece of work, redolent of the air of human frailty and fatalistic doom.

THE Kingdom has some power but not enough sense. A ripped-from-today's-headlines thriller, it wants us to feel as if we're watching something relevant when what's really going on is a slick excuse for efficient mayhem that's not half as smart as it would like to be.

Author Coben, who says he is a fan of "stories that move you, that grab hold of your heart and do not let it go," has gotten a film that does exactly that.

Its step-by-step tragedy is so ruthless in its unfolding, you may find yourself wishing it were less well done, that it left you some room to breathe. But House of Sand and Fog has a story to tell and it means to tell it, no matter what the cost.

A more impartial filmmaker might have understood the need for other voices to balance against all that attitude, might have understood how hungry the film makes us for even a single non-adulatory moment.

Aside from superb ensemble work from an 18-member cast, "Together's sense of human potential is its greatest pleasure.

Whatever was unforced and funny in the first film has become exaggerated here, whatever was slightly sentimental has been laid on with a trowel. The result, with some exceptions, plays like an over-elaborate parody of the first film, reminding us why we enjoyed it without being able to duplicate its appeal.

It's got an involving, adventurous story to tell and the wherewithal to tell it correctly. And while young adults may think this is intended only for them, in truth it's their elders who are especially starved for this kind of entertainment.

The result is as gripping as a title fight and as mesmerizing as a conversation with a cobra. You may not be happy with everything said, but you will not be bored.

There's barely any on-field footage in The Damned United. What we get instead is fine acting and directing, splendid dialogue and a story too outrageous to be made up.

One overstuffed movie, but it's by no means a turkey.

Mad City is an example of how enervated polemical filmmaking can become when its plot loses contact with plausibility.

A wax-museum movie that is both bland and reverential despite its focus on the great man's love life, Jefferson is hampered by its disconnected protagonist.

Offers up a subversive comic sensibility, one that somehow combines Buster Keaton's deadpan stare with Frank Capra's tireless optimism and filters them both through a black-ice Finnish point of view. Welcome to Aki World.

The sheer physical presence of these creatures is much more believable and convincing than what can be generously characterized as the film's plot.

A martial arts valentine to the power of fighting women. It's a slick and delirious Hong Kong action film.

Beloved is ungainly and hard to follow at times, like the proverbial giant not quite sure how to best use its strength. But that power exists, present and undeniable, and once this film gets its bearings, the unsentimental fierceness of its vision brushes obstacles and quibbles from its path.

Something to Talk About is like a slow-simmering stew, the kind that flavors familiar ingredients with special herbs and spices. Those spices surely accomplish wonders, but underneath it all you are left with the usual culinary suspects.

It does move right along and it's enlivened by stronger, more enjoyable acting than this kind of picture usually provides.

The Edge's fusion of Mametspeak with a true life adventure remains brawny entertainment, even it it is difficult to take as seriously as the filmmakers intend. But when Bart is on his game, nobody is going to notice anything else.[26 Sep 1997, p.F4]

We have a right to yawn, but we don't, and Sarah Polley is the reason.

Though it displays enough perils to put a dent in future cruise ship sales, the film has a makeshift, slapdash quality that is the opposite of its predecessor.

A gloss on the disillusion that came with the embracing of communist ideals that is part playful farce, part dark satire, this unclassifiable film, both comic and strange, always holds your attention even when it doesn't seem to know where it's going.

Russell Crowe is invariably involving on screen, and Ridley Scott is a splendid director when the material is right. No film they collaborate on will be devoid of interest, but A Good Year almost is.

Familiarity and continuity are what the success of this series has always been about. We've been here before, and we like the neighborhood.

Overall, these brief sections, which feature both authors on camera, come off more like self-congratulatory infomercials than they should.

If you're in the mood for a hip-hop film with more happy faces than "The Partridge Family," Honey will divert you.

The Snapper is amiability itself. Good-humored and sassy, it is one of those charmingly off-the-cuff films that doesn't let its small scale stand in the way of pleasure. [03 Dec 1993, p.F1]

Winterbottom, who's never been a director with a gift for warmth, can't make this romance come alive. Morton and Robbins are gifted actors, but they seem straitjacketed here, and the film finds it difficult to avoid tedium as their lugubrious relationship unfolds.

Sporadically effective, it appears not to have particularly excited the people who made it, and that lackadaisical quality is a drawback.

A vaguely amusing formulaic comedy with a premise that turns out to be more discomforting than endearing.

A practiced piece of Hollywood hokum, way too calculated and contrived, especially for a film that nominally celebrates the chaos and creativity of the 1960s.

The unsurprising, one-note nature of The Good Son, the fact that it’s a bump-in-the-night movie where all the bumps are visible a mile ahead, sorely constricts any possibility of excitement.

With characters this alive, it's a pity that no one was able to build a more convincing film around them, instead of leaving everyone more or less out there on their own. [13 May 1994, p.1]

Georgia is not an easy film, but in the American independent arena, it outperforms everything in sight.

An impeccably acted character drama revolving around a mother and her teenage twin sons, Private Property shows how strong and how terrifying the bonds within families can be. Directed by Belgium's Joachim Lafosse, it etches the line between love and hate with a savagery that is almost unprecedented.

This ability to get inside hysteria and obsession, the skill to make us feel sensations as intensely as its protagonists, is what makes “Creatures” memorable.

Its charming story of the delicate intersection of three highly individual lives is the kind of completely personal yet universal film that the festival and the entire independent movement came into being to celebrate. And it does it all in 88 deft and funny minutes.

On paper it has every advantage, from gifted stars Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston to an established comedy writer-director with a promising idea about a romance between a carefree woman and a worried man. But instead of maximizing those pluses, Along Came Polly so completely fritters them away that even its brief 90 minutes feels unhappily long.

There are hopeful notes here. If you are looking for examples for America's finest hour, it's not our rush to start an optional war but rather that an anti-administration film like this can still be made and still be seen.

Genial, generous-spirited and unmistakably entertaining.

A mildly successful attempt at updating a relic, its appeal depends greatly on an audience's willingness to go along for a familiar ride. [17Nov1995 Pg. F.01]

Made under unique and wrenching circumstances, it gained poignancy and a kind of purity from its troubles, and an already affecting film ended up suffused with emotion.

A slick package all around. Adroitly edited, filled with fine music like Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" and more people flashing needles than at a garment worker's convention, this film is less a dispassionate examination than a celebratory infomercial on its central character.

This is a film bound and determined to do whatever it takes to be your Valentine. If it had trusted itself more, it might even have succeeded.

There's nothing casual about the way this film has been put together, yet that painstaking care leads to laughter that is completely unrestrained.

The powerfully disturbing Red Riding trilogy will haunt you waking and sleeping, night and day. If you survive the watching of it, that is, which is no easy thing.

The most energetic of the prequels, the only one at all worth watching. But that doesn't mean it is without the weaknesses that scuttled its pair of predecessors. Quite the contrary.

This film feels completely haphazard, thrown together without much concern for organizing intelligence.

Though audiences will leave theaters with an increased appreciation of this pair's talents, they will also leave pondering the perennial Hollywood question: How come so little of interest could be found for performers who are capable of so much more?

Walker was the best choice to document this journey. For one thing, her first film, "Devil's Playground," and its examination of how Amish teenagers react when confronted with the outside world, showed her to be both curious and fearless. Plus, it turns out she is herself blind in one eye.

How feeble a movie is Stolen Summer? So feeble they've just about buried the title on the film's own poster.

Dark, dangerous and a great deal of wicked, amoral fun. A film that manages to be as clever, playful and mock violent as its title, Lock, Stock was a major hit in its native Britain and its cheeky tone, simultaneously calculated and off the cuff, is as hip as anyone could want. [5 Mar 1999]

One of those special films that broadens and deepens as it goes on.

Beautifully crafted, movingly acted, still involving and entertaining, this is just the kind of film people are talking about when they say they don't make them like this anymore.

What is different about Half Nelson is the execution, the kind of subtlety in writing, directing and acting (by costars Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie as well as Gosling) you seldom see.

It's important to remember that Sinclair was as much a committed socialist as a novelist, someone who probably wrote for political purpose more than for dramatic effect. So while Day-Lewis' gorgeous acting largely disguises it, the people in "Blood" tend to be schematic and the film as a whole has a weakness for the didactic.

Quietly devastating.

One of the truly heartening international political stories of recent years.

A forced march toward certain disaster, a scenario only passionate believers in predestination are likely to savor.

Claude Chabrol makes his particular kind of unnerving, deliciously amoral thrillers look easy. Once you've made as many of them as he has, they probably are.

Glaciers might be melting, the polar caps might be crumbling, but not even the passage of half a century has taken the frozen edge off this brilliantly icy film.

Forced, heavy-handed and overdone, it's a pretend serious film that offers crass manipulation in the place where honesty is supposed to be.

It might even have made a good film, but it hasn't. In the hands of stars in denial about their stardom and a director who can't be bothered to take things seriously, it has come out implausible and unsatisfying, a comic thriller that is not especially funny or thrilling.

Yes, it's inventive, yes, it's out-there and audacious, but no, it's not always as funny as those good things would lead you to hope.

It shouldn't be surprising, but some of these directors are more interesting than their work. French director Breillat, never a personal favorite, is an absolutely hypnotic speaker who holds the screen the way her films rarely have.

As the Farrellys have proved, tastelessness can be made palatable, but they've misfired with Me, Myself & Irene.

The Kite Runner is a house divided against itself. The Marc Forster-directed version of the Khaled Hosseini novel does one part of the story so well that its success underlines what's lacking in what remains.

Lacking the combustible Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas in leading roles, Showgirls descends into incoherent tedium. Though the filmmakers' incessant talk about vision, artistry and honest self-expression lead one to expect a sexually explicit biopic about the Dalai Lama, what is in fact provided is depressing and disappointing as well as dehumanizing.

What we are seeing may be a representation of the truth, but it is not real, and this collision of artifice and reality is jarring and disconcerting. This is a hurdle but not an insurmountable one. Even if it is counterfeit in a number of ways, the story In This World tells finally wins us over because it is too disturbing and well told not to.

Death Becomes Her is a black comedy that is so pleased with its blackness it frequently forgets to be funny. [31 July 1992, p.F1]

Robert Duvall's performance as a Holy Roller who shakes off his secular life to become a man simply known as “the Apostle” is a masterpiece of emotion.

Everything about Executive Decision is familiar except how crisply its conventional story is executed. Since most action thrillers think blowing things up is enough to attract an audience, it's a nice surprise to come across a savvy piece of work that relies on suspense and is as professional as the elite anti-terrorist unit it celebrates.

Veteran director Roger Spottiswoode has tried to pep the old warhorse up, but the combined inertia of all those pictures over 35 years proves hard to budge.

It ought to be delightful, but it isn't.

Anyone looking for the kind of comic brio that Dustin Hoffman and company brought to "Tootsie" will not find it here. [24 Nov 1993 Pg. F1]

Dealing with all these crises and decisions gives Thirteen Days a surprising amount of tension and watchability for a story whose outcome we already know.

Letters From Iwo Jima, takes audiences to a place that would seem unimaginable for an American director. Daring and significant, it presents a picture from life's other side, not only showing what wartime was like for our Japanese adversaries on that island in the Pacific but also actually telling the story in their language. Which turns out to be no small thing.

It's a copy all the way, a disheartening attempt to capitalize on the success of the original.

A true storyteller, able to easily mix and match moods in a playful and audacious manner, he (Anderson) is a filmmaker definitely worth watching, both now and in the future.

Still effectively creepy and surprisingly unnerving despite the occasional misstep and rumors of a troubled production, the new film illustrates why and how the power of the original story remains undiminished more than half a century after its creation.

Not only do Grant, Scott Thomas, Callow and company handle the sprightly dialogue with aplomb, they are also adept at the doubletakes and befuddled looks that make Four Weddings both amusing and irresistible all the way through the not-to-be-missed final credits. [9 March 1994, Calendar, p.F-1]

What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance.

Genially preposterous and pleasantly diverting, it balances calculation against humanity and generally comes out on top.

Bardem's performance is so good it tends to mask how lacking much of what surrounds it is.

The problem overall is not so much that the humor, especially in the parent-tryout situations, is forced, but that it simply is not there at all. So little is going on in this mildest of fantasies that it is hard to even guess what kinds of emotional effects were aimed at in the first place.

Not all it might have been, an oddly old-fashioned film from a director who's usually anything but.

As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, Big Night is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting.

Dreamgirls is the entire musical package, a triumph of old school on-screen glamour, and we wouldn't want it any other way.

Genuinely moving at times, Philadelphia is trying, perhaps too hard, to break America's heart. [22 Dec 1993, p.1]

Though Penn's fierce identification with the protagonist is a key source for the film's accomplishments, Into the Wild succeeds on screen because Hirsch ("Alpha Dog," "The Lords of Dogtown") throws himself into the part without reservation, projecting an appealing openness and life force that brings a special poignancy to his fate.

A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it's a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. And, in this case, it really happened. Twice.

Think of writer-director Waters as the Frank Capra of an alternate universe and this film as his genially twisted version of "It's a Wonderful Life," and you'll begin to understand.

No amount of repeated viewings can dull the edge of its sinister ambience or soften the visual excitement Welles brought to this quintessentially cinematic film. [Director's Cut]

Lola is played by veteran Spanish actress Victoria Abril, one of Pedro Almodovar's favorites, and though the character sounds familiar, Abril brings so much zest and enthusiasm to its creation that it feels original and makes the passion she inspires believable.

A political thriller with more plausibility -- and yes, more thrills -- than most.

Although overly self-involved, Penn is surprisingly focused as a director.

Because Senesh died so young, it's hard to fill out a film of nearly 90 minutes that claims her as the subject, so director Grossman has resorted to using newsreel footage as well as re-creations, which, though discreet, add nothing special to the proceedings.

What Ed Neumeier's script provides instead is a cheerfully lobotomized, always watchable experience that has the simple-mindedness of a live-action comic book, with no words spoken that wouldn't be right at home in a funny paper dialogue balloon. Not just one comic book either, but an improbable and delirious combination of "Weird Science," "Betty and Veronica" and "Sgt. Rock and His Howling Commandos."

To borrow a marketing phrase from another, very different film, A Prophet really is the movie that reminds you why you love the movies. Especially movies like this one.

The laugh lines are mostly crude and the prevalent slapstick is weak and uneventful.

Being able to hear this kind of playing is a special moment in time, one we don't want to end and one that we're privileged to experience.

Aside from preserving these folks for a presumably grateful posterity and convincingly depicting Austin as an open-air lunatic asylum, Slacker does not offer much to anyone who likes to stay awake.

An elegant, deliberate film about loneliness and hope, connection and loss.

It's to be expected that the music is going to be wonderful, and it is. But there is more to this film, a surprising amount more.

A solid and satisfying commercial venture with more than enough pizazz to overcome occasional lapses in moment-to-moment plausibility.