Kevin Thomas

A glorious, mostly lighthearted adventure celebrating the mythical freedom and excitement of the outlaw life in the Old West. [09 Feb 1986, p.4]

Denis and Testud, in a wondrous collaboration of a gifted director and equally gifted actress, succeed in making Christine a tragic figure.

Mr. Death, which is shot through with one dark absurdity after another, emerges as a cautionary tale if ever there was one.

Although there is real pain and suffering in It All Starts Today, it is too impassioned, too brisk and too embracing of life and human foibles to be depressing.

In its masterful use of evocative imagery and music, Road to Nowhere is flawless.

At heart a reverie, a meditation on the past and its treacheries.

A courageous documentary on the plight of gays in the Muslim world.

An honest title for a film that is almost entirely conversation. Yet its rich contemplative tone proves deceptive, for its director, Portugal's preeminent filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, at 96, still knows how to pack a wallop.

Of course, James is exploiting Stevie, but the peculiar power of this film lies in James' indirect acknowledgment of it and his hope that his film has some point and value.

Successfully venturesome, but you need to know that it's also a real downer.

It is to González-Rubio's credit that he can celebrate nature so joyously, yet suggest neither the preferred lifestyle of either parent is superior to the other.

A great gangster film...Shanghai Triad is one of the lushest-looking, most stunningly photographed (by Lu Yue) films of the year, but its depiction of unabashed material splendor is instantly eclipsed by the natural beauty of this island retreat with its swaying pampas grass, magnificent skies and modest structures of simple beauty.

Hairspray is a deliriously fast and funny satire of the '60s that marks John Waters' best shot yet at mainstream audiences. [25 Feb 1988, p.1]

A superb bit of tongue-in-cheekery, stylish and fun but also deeply affectionate. [11 Aug 1985, p.5]

The gritty, low-budget realism approach of the Dogme manifesto gives immediacy and edge to the raw emotions Bier and her cast uncover. Best of all, Bier never forgets that a little humor can relieve an awful lot of pain.

A film of flowing, redemptive beauty and poetry, at once immediate yet classic in its simplicity of form.

Since the film is based on the Atari video game of the same name, it also has much to appeal to headbangers: fast pace, lots of gadgets, monsters, explosive special effects, plenty of inscrutable plot twists and turns.

A masterpiece by any measure, is fresh, immediate and contemporary, but its wintry yet warm perspective is suffused with the wisdom and experience of a great filmmaker who turns 85 on June 2.

The film's concluding sequence is bound to polarize audiences.

A film of stunning impact.

In its leisurely, exceedingly subtle way, The Pool charts Venkatesh's gradual awakening to the larger world.

A poignant love story, laced with tenderness and gentle humor and told with the warmth of Italian movies in their seductively good-natured mode.

Sachs has pulled off a film of inferences and intimations, thanks largely to the casting of accomplished actors.

Highly entertaining and encouraging documentary.

Jackie Chan's best American picture to date, breathes fresh life into the virtually dormant comedy-western.

This splendid film is no mere polemic, for Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, often called the first lady of Iranian cinema, is above all an accomplished storyteller and dramatist who understands the evocative power of sound and image.

Just as Baird is sustained by his self-mockery, this tender and witty film is saved from sentimentality by its satirical edge. [19 Apr 1998, p.3]

A subtle artist and a sharp observer, Martel manages a large cast with an ease that matches her skill at storytelling, within which psychological insight and social comment flow easily and implicitly.

Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures.

Alternately satirical and romantic, full of pain and humor, Buffalo '66 is a winner.

As beautiful as it is harrowing.

Accomplishes beautifully what it sets out to do, which is to reveal the man behind the crusty, hard-drinking, tough-talking persona Charles Bukowski so artfully crafted.

Amiably glossy if naggingly old-fashioned.

Gaspar Noe's I Stand Alone has an exhilaration that comes from looking at life at its meanest so unflinchingly that you can actually be amused by the absurdity of the human predicament. [07 May 1999, p.F6]

In comparison to Where the Heart Is, the Wal-Mart commercials seem like cinema verite.

Anthony LaPaglia and Sigourney Weaver are superb in this moving adaptation of the post-Sept. 11 play.

A clever way of providing crucial layering and heightening a hip, satirical take on bad old Hollywood ways.

This remarkably revealing and timely film, in which the depiction of pain and sorrow is suffused with a sense of beauty and a graceful, flowing style, more than lives up to glowing advance notices.

In his feature debut, writer-director John Mangold brings remarkably sensitive powers of observation to bear upon ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Of course, "It Happens One Night" comes to mind, but The Sure Thing is so sparkling and original in its humor, so perceptive about human nature in its own right, that its key elements seem classic, not carbons.

May well be Imamura's funniest film; it is also one of his most accomplished. It is the work of a mature artist who has kept his adventurous spirit alive, which he has expressed in a complex and risky work carried off with an effortlessness that comes only from wisdom and experience.

As beautifully structured as one of the Z-Boys' graceful and intricate maneuvers. It is economic yet possesses depth and is visually striking, capturing an idea of what life is like in a very fast lane.

Silent Souls is a marvel. Fedorchenko's expressive powers and his visual prowess are astonishing, and though the film's conclusion is abrupt and confounding, it feels right.

A most-affecting experience, an impressive accomplishment in all its aspects.

Succeeds because it turns out not to be the movie it might so easily have been.

Prechezer's cast is ingratiating and attractive, and Blue Juice is as buoyant as its terrific rock score.

Dynamic, informal and observant yet, while never grueling, it offers a constant provocative contrast between backgrounds of spectacular and beautiful natural scenery and primitive living conditions.

In a confident yet relaxed feature debut, Fuentes-León has created a wholly unified work of art.

More than three decades later, Jodorowsky’s vision of chaos has acquired a powerful aura of prophecy.

Pretty dreadful.

A stylish work from an accomplished, sophisticated filmmaker that bristles with intelligence and gleams with Scott's and Davis' multifaceted, astutely judged portrayals.

Every element of The Mother, directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, fits together with perfection. The film's staging -- the way its settings create a world that allows for striking images that echo the psychological interplay of its people, the way in which every performance could not be any better -- is awe-inspiring.

It's a laff riot that also contains a torrent of scathing social satire that couldn't be more timely in light of the dismantling of affirmative action.

Above all, The 'Young Girls' Turn 25 is an homage by Varda to Demy, a loving and luminous companion film to Varda's Jacquot de Nante. [12 Jun 1997, p.F11]

With its finely shaded portrayals, Cyclo, which took the Golden Lion at Venice last year, is another superb picture from Hung, a world-class filmmaker if ever there was one. [01 Aug 1996, p.F2]

Down to the Bone emerges with an aura of authenticity so strong as to be mesmerizing, thanks to a superior script brought to life with infallibly natural performances.

Lucas is as irresistible as its slight, brilliant, bespectacled 14-year-old hero (Corey Haim), a kid who in his spare time catches insects in a net--but only to study them, not to kill them.

It takes a director with exceptional talent, skill and experience to explore ambiguity in all aspects of human nature and behavior, and Oshima has created a film of resilient, downright tensile strength that ends on a satisfyingly ironic note.

A dark comedy that reveals the stultifying rigidity of Japanese office life - which the film persuasively suggests endures to this day.

Beautifully wrought and wonderfully acted, The Flower of My Secret is in fact the kind of film that George Cukor often made - and he surely would have been delighted at Almodovar's deft blend of humor, tenderness and wisdom. [13 Mar 1996]

Terrific escapist fare, stylish, outrageous and compelling.

A stirring, thought-provoking feat of filmmaking, accomplished in every facet.

That Irving adapted his novel to the screen himself and, even more, that Hallström directed it, makes Cider House a far better film than other film adaptations of Irving's work.

One of those wonderful, deeply personal pictures that pop up every now and then to lift your spirits.

Locale is crucial here, and Monte Carlo, Athens and Istanbul are a wonderful trio of cities for glamorous romance, intrigue and danger--and they could not seem more richly atmospheric with Dreujou's lush camerawork.

Road to Morocco is light and airy family entertainment, yet at a time when the Production Code was at its height of power, it is surprising what Crosby and especially Hope, of course, manage to suggest. [07 Jun 2001, p.34]

The most comprehensive and devastating documentary yet on that tragic country.

There's not a second in the film that isn't a reminder that New Orleans in its architecture, cuisine and multicultural diversity as well as in its music is a unique and major American center of culture. Murphy has made a film more valuable than he surely ever could have imagined.

A classic war film, at once elegiac and immediate, that takes you smack into the chaos of combat yet is marked by a detached perspective.

Might have benefited from a more satirical edge.

This fresh, highly original film, inspired by Oliveira's substantially different, never-filmed 1952 script, has been made with the greatest of ease and simplicity and with drollery and wit, yet its underlying impact is profoundly spiritual.

It has opulent, stylized settings of elegance, grandeur and scope, flawless special effects, and awesome martial arts combat staged by the master, Sammo Hung. Yet bravura spectacle never overwhelms either the plot or the key characters. Chang Chia-lu's intricate script bristles with wit and suspense; the film from start to finish is a terrific entertainment.

Baumbach surely does make these characters, all of whom are impeccably acted, absolutely real, but at 25 he may be too close to the material to achieve the detachment from which irony and meaning flow.

Since the humor in Moving never rises above the level of a stale sitcom, the film defeats proven comedy director Alan Metter and even its star, Richard Pryor, stuck in the squarest, most strait-jacketed role of his career.

A witty, colorful and poignant account of the life and times of producer Robert Evans.

Moll, in only his second feature, evokes a sense of foreboding, playing the routine against the unnerving, the humorous against the sinister, with a wit and deftness that might have impressed Hitchcock.

If you don't go expecting the depth and subtlety of a Mike Leigh working-class film, The Full Monty can be heart-warming fun with more serious undertones than you might have expected. [13 August 1997, Calendar, p.F-5]

Smart and sassy high school movie that's fun for all ages.

Consistently inventive and surprising, Beauty in Trouble evokes human nature in all its strengths and weaknesses, contradictions and ambiguities. It is itself a beauty -- rich in imagery, deftly paced and structured.

Steeped in shrewdness about the often contradictory workings of human nature, Poison Friends is gratifying in the best tradition of French cinema.

Timelessly elegant and charming 1957 musical with a Gershwin score. [20 Nov 1994, p.6]

A trite, incoherent tale.

Beeswax has a rhythmic quality, and it eschews conventional plotting for sharp observation of human strengths and foibles.

In its spirit and execution, Baadasssss! lives up to its forebear.

As compelling as it is illuminating.

Secret Ballot, which has a rich, spare score by Michael Galasso that blends Eastern and Western motifs, is funny, provocative, well-paced and leaves a memorable bittersweet aftertaste.

Admirably ambitious and utterly unsparing, but as credible as the arc of Danny's odyssey is in itself, the all-important need to evoke a profound sense of the enigmatic and paradoxical in relation to Danny's fate has eluded Bean.

Never does Down by Love, handsome and fully crafted, have the feel of being a filmed play. It emerges as a fresh, challenging and unpredictable experience with a stunning finish.

Maurice's slow, agonized dawning of his true nature and its consequences are as beautifully evoked on the screen as it is on the printed page, thanks to James Wilby's wonderfully unaffected portrayal of Maurice and to Ivory and his co-adapter Kit Hesketh-Harvey's graceful yet succinct script, a miracle of both apt selectivity and development that does full honor to its distinguished source. [01 Oct 1987]