Kevin Thomas

An exhilarating summer treat for all ages.

A diabolically adroit piece of filmmaking that goes even further than the films of Italy's excruciatingly macabre Dario Argento.

Chop Shop"exudes a sense of joyousness amid harshness. Bahrani celebrates those who never give up, no matter how badly their dreams are shattered.

Collette is fearless in reaching deeply into her emotions, and her expressiveness as an actress comes across as completely natural because it so clearly comes from within.

A terrific action picture, fast-moving, studded with great stunts and smart enough not to take itself too seriously. Amid a plethora of high-minded, big-deal, year-end Oscar contenders, it offers a welcome contrast (and respite).

Hosoda, who directed the cult film "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," has made a sophisticated yet poignant family entertainment with an appeal beyond Japanese animation buffs.

Has a great look and an edgy feel, along with some broad swaths of humor.

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

Storm is harrowing, provocative and deeply probing yet quite involving.

It is a straightforward, conventional narrative, charting seemingly endless cruelty and hardship, but rewards the patient with an eloquent climactic sequence that is impossible to predict.

Oldman, working with ace cameraman Ron Fortunato, has a real feel for the cinematic, and Nil by Mouth has a driving, jagged style that is complemented by Eric Clapton's often melancholy score. Oldman's key achievement is to make you feel for people you wouldn't want to know in real life. [06 Feb 1998, p.F12]

The luminous humanity that characterizes the films of Alexander Sokurov is in full force in Alexandra. On the surface, it is a work of the utmost simplicity but is charged with the eternal complexities and contradictions of both love and war.

Consistently imaginative and persuasive in its plotting and writing. Tabak makes substantial demands on his wonderful cast but rewards them with roles of exceptional depth and dimension.

A runaway hit in France last year and the country's official Oscar entry, is a well-nigh irresistible film celebrating the redemptive power of music.

An elegant, sophisticated mystery.

Tantalizingly structured to intrigue us right from the start.

Talkington not only has style but also a terrific way with actors, giving them the confidence to go over the top while having fun doing so.

Raises it to the level of an art film with fully drawn characters, a serious underlying theme, and a sophisticated style and point of view.

A dense, faithful and absorbing adaptation of the Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel. [08 Nov 1996]

Arthur Lubin's elegant 1942 color version of the Gaston Leroux chiller remains one of the best, with a chilling yet poignant Claude Rains prowling a Paris Opera house, wreaking hideous revenge. [20 Oct 1996, p.4]

A solid genre film that offers the satisfactions of the familiar while deriving its resonance through its specific and telling references to the '60s.

So strong and secure in its remorseless movement that you buy into what's happening, its people so firmly gripped in the vise of fate and their own character flaws.

Replete with superior acting and visual splendor, the film is a fine instance of the overly familiar made fresh.

Sweet, however, are the uses of melodrama in the skilled hands of Tornatore, for he transcends the lurid and the coincidental with range, depth and insight, and a bold, confident, suspenseful style, to create a fable of love and redemption.

The filmmakers have brought such breadth and depth to the material. Everyone counts in this film, not just Julia Lambert.

An elegant work, Food of Love is as consistently engaging as it is revealing.

Plays out like a Frank Capra movie with the "little people" taking on corrupt and indifferent officials. In the process the film strikes a strong blow for the dignity of labor and introduces an array of brave individuals.

Village of the Damned is a good-looking, well-wrought film with some knockout special effects, some dark humor and crisp portrayals.

Relatively accurate as a period piece, looks great and boasts a bevy of vintage numbers, some original recordings and others performed in an authentic manner by Ian Whitcomb and His Bungalow Boys.

This endearing picture is proof that it is still possible for a major studio release to be fun, smart and heart-tugging and devoid of numbskull violence and equally numbing special effects.

Beguiling and poignant.

What Radford above all accomplishes in his filming of The Merchant of Venice is to suggest that, in essence, it is that most modern of entertainments: a dark - indeed, very dark - comedy.

Revolution #9, which is absorbing and terse, has some subtle, welcome comic relief from Spalding Gray.

Has the gritty, intimate feel of an Eastern European film--and packs the power of a genuine revelation.

L.I.E. has embraced tragedy, folly, perversity and outrageous dark humor. Like "Happiness" and "American Beauty," it takes an unflinching look at the darker aspects of life in American suburbia.

Called the Holy Grail of the Hong Kong martial arts movies of the '70s, and now that it has been lovingly restored and given a regular theatrical release, it's easy to see why.

In short, Bound is admittedly derivative, but it's such an amusing low-down entertainment it really doesn't matter.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Richly inspiring and informative documentary.

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

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

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

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.

A shimmeringly beautiful and wise reverie on love and desire.

A summer treat for sophisticated moviegoers -- graceful and serious, yet not overly so. This easy-to-take movie gets everything just right and is a pleasure to watch.

As an exposé, there could hardly be a stronger case for ensuring and strengthening the separation of church and state -- or a stronger message to gay people as to the magnitude of the challenge to win equal rights.

Virtuosity is a sleek, brutal techno-thriller that generates nonstop action, but for at least some of us the fun is spoiled by its numbing body count and murky story line.

A splendid work that will be a revelation to the uninitiated and a joy to music lovers.

The plot is not absolutely airtight, but Craven's filmmaking is too fast-moving and too involving for this to matter. As a movie, Red-Eye is in every way as well crafted and sharply designed as the Boeing 767 Lisa fatefully boards.

Sparkling 1934 comedy-mystery derived from the Dashiell Hammett mystery and directed by W.S. Van Dyke. It dared to suggest that a sophisticated married couple, Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) could have fun with each other. [14 Jul 1996, p.4]

An all-stops-out rabble-rouser that hurls a broadside at America's medical insurance crisis.

Director Dennis Hopper has the anarchic spirit to make “Chasers” pay off, and writers Joe Batteer, John Rice and Dan Gilroy have provided him with a smart script, a deft mix of slapstick, sharp repartee and sentiment.

Subtlety and nuance mark both the film's dialogue and performances. It's hard to see how Dancy and Byrne could be any better.

While this "Night" hasn't the chilling, almost cinema-verite credibility of the original, it is certainly a well-sustained entertainment, with one foolish or unlucky incident triggering another. Like the original, this R-rated production is definitely not for children. [19 Oct 1990, p.F1]

There's a beguiling throwaway quality to Flirt that has the effect of making it stick with you.

Richard Brooks’ Fever Pitch lives up to its title in capturing the frenzied existence of the compulsive gambler...It also resembles its subject in its hit-and-miss quality: Some scenes pay off, others don’t. But it never lets up, and the result is a film that’s always a pleasure to watch even when it’s defying credibility at every turn or moving so fast it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on.

It’s a sprawling, rowdy, vital film laced with both outrageous absurdist dark humor and unspeakable pain, suffering and injustice.

Ward directs his actors as adroitly as he has written for them, and the vulnerability that he allows his three stars to reveal is really what makes the movie work. No one, not even baseball fans, should go to Major League hoping for "Bull Durham's" sex, raunch and sophistication. But "Major League" has its own ingratiating charm.

That it is a fine example of modest-budget filmmaking, boasting first-rate acting, writing and directing, is not all that surprising.

Occasionally heavy-handed and overdone -- and scarcely free from a self-congratulatory tone -- this latest spoof is nonetheless lots of fun, clever and fearless, and loaded with wicked lines and touches.

Fast and raunchy, Friday After Next surely stands apart from other holiday-themed movies for its gleeful low-down humor and a raft of uninhibited characters involved in one outrageous predicament after another.

The result is both merciless and darkly funny.

Glowing, amusing movie that's a good bet to lift your spirits.

An exceptionally satisfying film of much grace and beauty.

Crackles with forceful portrayals. Funny, violent, impassioned and inescapably poignant, Stander in no way sanctions Stander's turning to a life of crime yet has the courage to see him as a victim of apartheid himself.

The result is a film that is wise, fatalistic and romantic in just the right proportions--in the best noir tradition.

An adroit, beautifully acted, sophisticated film with some drier-than-dust humor about unsophisticated people and is impressive as such. It's too bad that it's not more engaging much earlier on.

Ichaso moves easily between a black-and-white past and a full-color present, maintaining a pace as buoyant and rhythmic as the beat of the infectious Latin music that accompanies the film.

A ruggedly beautiful landscape of desert and sea provides a dramatic setting for a psychological drama told with the utmost rigor--and unabashed eroticism.

Lively, incisive and comprehensive documentary.

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

Towering over one and all, not surprisingly, is Finney as the increasingly tormented but brave Alfie. [22 Dec 1994]

Director Satyajit Bhatkai has brought plenty of energy to an imaginative and thoughtful script by many hands.

Instead of a genre movie-industry calling card, Roy has made a venturesome and effective film.

In the Mouth of Madness is a thinking person's horror picture that dares to be as cerebral as it is visceral.

Would that all love stories were as sophisticated and amusing as the satisfying Charlotte Sometimes.

Philadelphia filmmaker Cheryl Dunye has such a light, easy touch both in front and in back of the camera that you're in danger of not noticing how skillful a craftsman she really is or how deftly she raises serious issues of race and sexual orientation in The Watermelon Woman.

The very title suggests that this compelling and provocative film is going to be different from other Holocaust documentaries.

Boiling Point is taut and crisp, and when it’s required, Harris handles violence with swift dispatch rather than the large-scale fireworks that have become de rigueur.

For all its poignancy, Spork never loses sight of its goal to be zesty, sharp-witted fun.

The effect is dazzlingly beautiful and surreal.

As stylish as it is grisly, Jeepers Creepers has cult film written all over it, and it's not for nothing that Francis Ford Coppola has been a staunch Victor Salva mentor.

Writer-director Richard Day has come up with a delicious cliché of a plot to allow talented female impersonators Jack Plotnick, Clinton Leupp and Jeffery Roberson to strut their stuff. The result is a nonstop hoot.

Such a powerful experience that it is equally effective whether you have figured out from the start where it is headed or whether its denouement comes as a complete surprise.