Kevin Thomas

This starry ensemble dazzles, but the film never comes fully alive until its climactic 20 minutes, which are deeply moving.

A satisfying story of love and marriage told with humor and insight.

Not for everyone, but the open-minded should find it enlightening as well as entertaining.

This 1946 version became a key film in postwar Hollywood film noir. Directed by Tay Garnett, it remains one of Lana Turner's (right) very best films. [02 Feb 1997, p.78]

Mildly entertaining, offering generous swaths of Mahler performed by the Bratislava Philharmonic, but it's also inescapably ponderous.

Kusturica works marvels with his endlessly amusing cast, and his film has an appealingly free and easy tone.

Lee's energy never flags, and She Hate Me resonates with authority and impact and daring, but the messages it sends are mixed.

This sleek and sunny comedy is an all-too-rare example of smart and inventive Hollywood filmmaking.

Besson's restored Big Blue proves mystical, intriguing.

Mixes satire and suspense in unexpected ways in a film that is as darkly amusing as it is bitterly critical of bourgeois society's indifference to suffering.

At a time when crassness and dumbing down pervade popular entertainment, especially movies aimed at youthful audiences, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen dares to be smart.

A clever and adroit B picture with A virtues, starting with its ensemble cast.

In its vitality and finesse, Maria Full of Grace is all of a piece -- and both artistically and spiritually itself full of grace.

Proteus is involving and affecting even if it is not completely coherent or fully realized.

Reback's script has real substance and perception, with Alex and Isabel emerging as individuals of depth and dimension, and their story is told with humor, passion and wit.

What Meyers and Shyer have accomplished is to create a pleasant, sentimental domestic comedy out of a family that really has no problems to overcome, not an easy feat.

Wenders’ ideas, emotions--and his characters--eventually do converge in a stately manner, rewarding the patient with a stunning, enlarging vision of human experience, a melding of the material and spiritual worlds.

Surely there is room in the movies for a small film with an unabashed, even old-fashioned but timeless humanist spirit -- and a triumphant portrayal by a veteran star that is likely to be regarded as one of the year's best.

Lemmons' command of cinematic style, her appreciation of the chimerical aspects of life and her ability to inspire actors to give remarkably faceted portrayals mark Eve's Bayou a first film of exceptional promise.

No Man’s Land is such a modest, low-key thriller that you’re caught up in it long before you realize it. A contemporary Faustian tale, it’s one of those nifty little movies that arrive without much notice but prove to be far more enjoyable than many more highly publicized pictures.

Just as silly and tedious as the first two unconnected tales of young gay love -- but lots worse.

Good-natured but it's a dud.

A solid family film that strikes a shrewd balance between tough-mindedness and sentimentality and boasts a fine cast.

The martial-arts sequences are zesty, a description that applies to this well-crafted movie as a whole.

Few people will be able to go along with Bolton's point of view regarding relationships between adults and underage youths, but there's no denying the writer-director, in his feature debut, has avoided sensationalism in telling this story.

An admirable, thoughtful venture, but it may leave you with the feeling that you've seen it all before.

Asks us to spend 101 minutes with people most of us wouldtake pains to avoid in real life.

Wise, understated, warm and witty, it presents stars Michel Serrault and Mathilde Seigner in roles that fit them so perfectly they could have been tailor-made.

Cohn has assembled a quartet of gifted actors who are captivating under Prasad's perceptive direction.

Assured, vital and well wrought, the film is, arguably, the most accomplished work to date from Hong Kong's versatile Stanley Kwan.

Neither acutely suspenseful nor particularly thrilling but instead mainly numbing.

Wonderful, heartwarming.

Simply too tedious and stretched out to be amusing. Had Schorr brought in his picture at 80 or 90 minutes Schultze might have been a different story.

Although this is the kind of entertainment designed to send its audience home happy, Ice Princess has its share of stinging moments and has a good deal more edge than one might have expected.

Wide Awake is a wonderful family film that deals sensitively, and even with humor, with a fairly unusual situation for the screen: a 9-year-old's struggles with his faith in God. [20 Mar 1998, p.F10]

Lawrence is a no-holds-barred stand-up comedian who gets away with the strongest, most graphic language because he is so funny and because he makes himself the object of so much of his humor.

There's enough atmosphere, mayhem and just plain energy to make the film a viable midnight movie.

While not especially distinctive, the film is pleasant and amusing. It has a brisk, well-turned-out quality that augurs well for Harris, the son of Richard Harris.

Lives up to its ambitiousness in all its aspects.

Less than terrific technically; focus and sound levels waver. Luckily, these flaws are not inconsistent with the film's raw, unvarnished tone and they do not diminish the effect of Leary's performance or that of Davis.

A fascinating, veritable self-portrait, masterfully culled from a trove of archival materials.

Stirring, often tragic yet hopeful, In Search of Peace benefits from its eloquent narrator Michael Douglas, and from the voices of Edward Asner, Anne Bancroft, Richard Dreyfuss, Miriam Margolyes and Michael York.

Thoroughly engrossing.

Many try but few succeed as well as writer-director Joel Hopkins with his beguiling first feature, Jump Tomorrow, in giving a fresh spin to '30s screwball comedy.

There's such a rawness, purity and even mystical force to everything Benjamin says or sings, that anything else would seem extraneous and detracting from the impact of a man who has lived his life with absolutely no holds barred.

Kontroll is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism.

Shyer and Meyers... are endlessly inventive. They're not afraid to be sophisticated and screwballish in the best '30s tradition, and they know just how far to exaggerate for laughs without leaving touch with reality entirely or destroying sentiment. The humor in Baby Boom is sharp without being heartless.

A modest pleasure that accomplishes its goals with ease and confidence.

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.

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]

An exhilarating celebration of the possibilities of love and friendship, and Lucía, Félix and Adrián could not be more likable.

A lightweight popcorn movie, hardly the scariest of the year but with enough jolts to be satisfying. Writer Richard Jefferies' solid script emphasizes character and psychology over plot and provides Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone with engaging, multidimensional starring roles.

Transfixed is a solid, engaging example of how a genre plot can illuminate a marginalized world.

As unpretentious as it is perceptive, Gigante is a gem.

Gwynne is the anchoring presence as a classically dry, laconic New Englander who seems to know some terrible secret. Elliot Goldenthal has composed a helpfully ominous score, as moody as vintage Bernard Herrmann, and Peter Stein's cinematography is superbly varied, from the bright hues of a glossy magazine to the dark shadows of the charnel house. No question about it, Pet Sematary is a handsomely produced film.

Sternfeld's approach is rigorously minimalist, which is a plus since the Winters family is in no way extraordinary or distinctive.

Fandango overreaches badly and sinks under a heavy weight of symbolism, bathos and sheer preposterousness that no amount of humor and incident can redeem.

Lively entertainment underlined by some stinging social comment. [04 May 1972, p.17]

In recent years, South Korean cinema has fully flowered, producing both uncompromising highly personal films and crisp, intelligent genre movies, with Shiri the most spectacular example of the latter to date.

As somber as much of this deceptively simple yet consistently acute, subtle and observant film is, an effect heightened by a carefully controlled use of color, it is not without hope.

This premise is ripe with possibilities, but in an apparent -- and definitely misguided -- attempt to make his movie more commercial, Wilkinson has made the younger brother a murderer on the run.

After an hour, or two-thirds of the film, they run out of gas. This is the kind of material that's easier to set up than it is to bring together in a satisfying fashion.

With a hilarious script and capable cast, the film puts a clever spin on the everyone-is-a-suspect plot.

"Dark and demanding" doesn't begin to describe this devastating film -- It is not too much to say that without its splendid use of music Love Liza might not be bearable.

Robert Cary's Anything but Love is that rarity, an hommage to the sweeping Technicolor Hollywood love story of the '40s and '50s that works.

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

Way too bleak to be funny, even as a contemporary satire of the battle of the sexes.

Sophisticated in its ease and spontaneity, it was directed with clarity and rigor by Auraeus Solito from Michiiko Yamamoto's acutely perceptive script.

Schepisi not only inspired the cast to give well-shaded, reflective portrayals but also made the film a work of honest, heartfelt sentiment.

The result is a deliberate conflation of fact and fiction that yields unexpected emotional impact.

Exceptionally well-made family entertainment, this 3 Ninjas is constantly inventive, action-filled and funny, with a flourish of good special effects.

All strained artifice, inhabited by individuals who either lack dimension or are merely stereotypes. The result is a movie not nearly as amusing as its makers may think.

It is a film of uncommon intelligence and rigor that illuminates a complex era, and the romance at its center is also one of exceptional passion and honesty.

A thoughtful but uneven film.

A wry, robust comedy of broad, sometimes crass humor set in the ultra-macho world of a small-town German soccer team.

Uptown Girls is more downer than upper.

It is a stylish, durable piece of epic Americana, replete with some of the most beloved songs in musical theater and rich in its sense of period. [15 Jul 1985, p.2]

Pretty dreadful.

The film is a glittering triumph of personal expression at its most elegant and opulent.

Opens explosively and never lets up.

The Matador is rightly exciting -- and unsettling.

A brilliantly conceived epic fable.

An odyssey of self-discovery of much charm, humor and admirable subtlety.

What is going on here? Most would say a lot of incredibly dangerous and stupid activity, and most of the people in this documentary not surprisingly seem none too bright.

The damning commentary and revelations about the perils of globalization, not just for Jamaica but developing countries the world over, do come across loud and clear.

Luckily, there's a jagged spontaneity to Wild Style that goes with the scruffy street art and culture that it celebrates. [22 May 1998, p.F17]

Unfortunately, this film is not as convincing as LaBute's first feature ("In the Company of Men"), for it betrays its origins in the theatricality of its dialogue, resulting in an aura of artificiality.

Sophisticated, uncompromising and refreshingly original, it is one of those rare films which is likely to mean as much to teens as it does to their parents.

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.

Sachs' ability to draw deeply affecting, completely open and unself-conscious performances from Chan and Gray and other nonprofessionals as well is most impressive and highly effective. Working with masterly New York cinematographer Benjamin P. Speth, Sachs has created in The Delta an achingly poignant portrait of alienation and longing so evocative that it is poetic in its impact. [15 Aug 1997, p.F4]

Hamburger Hill pays heartfelt, richly deserved tribute to the young American soldiers who fought so valiantly there. If only director John Irvin, who was in Vietnam in 1969 making a BBC documentary, and writer Jim Carabatsos, a Vietnam veteran, had been content to honor these men who were prepared to risk their lives in what had become a singularly unpopular war. But they don’t trust the soldiers’ brave actions to speak for themselves and instead give them a series of preachy, rabble-rousing speeches that add up to a diatribe against the anti-war movement at home rather than an attack on U.S. involvement in the war in the first place.

A film of simplicity and power, beautifully shot and effortlessly acted by nonprofessionals.

A period spectacle, steeped in awesome splendor and lethal palace intrigue, it climaxes in a stupendous battle scene and epic tragedy.

Opens and closes on a jaunty note: It's the tedious, relentlessly talky 80 minutes in between that's the problem.

Swain balances the personal and the political, allowing his film to be intimate while keeping a larger perspective. It is refreshing to see people on screen who are living in a real world.

Suspenseful entertainment -- but it's also a suitably chilling cautionary tale.

There is a wonderful natural quality to Jeong's storytelling that is enhanced by cinematographer Young-hwan Choi's graceful camerawork and by a dynamic, contemporary score from M&F.

An elegant, witty but also sometimes tedious spin on the legend of Dracula.