Kevin Thomas

It is classical in form yet fresh and spontaneous.

A rousing, warmhearted comedy, as infectious as the gospel music it celebrates.

Drawn from Rabe's diaries, the film is rich in telling and ironic details.

Captivating new documentary, The Gleaners and I, is charged with the pleasure of discovery.

It's a handsome and skillful retelling of a legend that imaginatively draws on conventions of both the western and the gangster movie to create an energetic yet thoughtful contemporary action-adventure.

It's a downright refreshing experience to be presented with people you can identify with, recognize yourself in them, without being asked to like them.

In her vibrant !Women Art Revolution Hershman focuses on a number of the many women who created what has been called the most significant art movement of the late 20th century.

It brims with the charm, wisdom and light touch that have endeared French films to international audiences for more than a century. It doesn't hurt that its star is "Amelie's" Audrey Tautou.

This small, lovingly crafted film continually surprises with its depth and resonance.

As beautiful as it is harrowing.

The carefully crafted Everything Put Together is unpredictably venturesome, and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer makes virtuoso use of digital video to create the images and movements that play so large a part in the film's success.

The music is sensational, the energy level high, and Down and Out With the Dolls is a wise and funny treat.

The cast is a delight, but it's Willis who is the film's true "fifth element," giving it life, depth and humanity.

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.

Like the original, Blade II has superior production values and visual and special effects. Snipes and Kristofferson build on the resonance of their original portrayals.

In its telling, the love story draws from westerns, musicals, film noir, chase thrillers with stunts so preposterous they verge on parody -- and it gets away with everything because of Basu's visual bravura and unstinting passion and energy.

Robert Stephens is Sherlock, Colin Blakely is Watson, and the movie is one of Wilder's least cynical and most romantic, a sadly elegant celebration of gaslit sleuthery. [09 Apr 1989, p.4]

Unfolds in the satisfying fashion of classic Hollywood movies that strike a balance between grit and heart.

All the more rewarding because of the challenge the material presented.

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

Consistently outrageous and relentlessly surreal, the Belgian film is, intentionally or not, frequently funny; it's also compelling and distinctive.

Mandoki, who with this film returns to the Spanish-speaking cinema after a string of Hollywood films, has brought a sure sense of the visual and taut construction to Innocent Voices, based on a true story. It is filled with wrenching images.

A documentary about transsexuals from the Philippines working as caregivers in Israel sounds highly specialized in its appeal, but Heymann brings to Paper Dolls not only an engaging poignancy and depth but also a powerful universality.

[An] often hilarious film...Abrahams and Proft’s nonstop throwaway humor keeps spirits lifted and a smile on our faces, and it also has the admirable effect of deflating those action movies that exploit violence in the name of a pious, if dubious, patriotism.

A wonderfully entertaining, raunchy, hilarious and savage foray into the lives of a couple of beat-up middle-weight boxers who get a second chance.

As funny as it is nourishing, and it has stellar performances from Uwe Ochsenknecht and Gustav Peter Wohler, who play off each other like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Flows smoothly, looks great and probably cost lots less than it looks. One can't help resist saying it delivers the goods.

A quietly powerful, incisive portrait of Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallarme (Roy Dupuis), who was sent to Rwanda in 1993 on a peacekeeping mission as the ruling Hutu attacked the rebel Tutsi, yet he was hobbled by the U.N. leadership and faced with the indifference of the world's superpowers.

This 1939 William Wyler version of Emily Bronte's passionate and inspired novel of l'amour on the lightning-lashed moors and gloomy heaths is the best and most successful on screen. [16 Oct 1994, p.65]

Ten Canoes is nonetheless audacious and impressive, but challenging work, requiring steadfast concentration.

Unpredictable and gratifying, Three Monkeys emerges as a mordant cautionary tale on the contagiousness of corruption. It is rich in atmosphere.

An excellent job of retaining key elements of the original plot but have created a whole new set of characters that gives the film an entirely contemporary feel.

A dark allegory and a dazzling example of Japanese anime.

A witty and delightful Christmas present for the entire family.

Gene Hackman, bristling with wit and energy, is at his amusing best in the robust comedy.

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.

Grand fantasy, in which Brendan Fraser and stylish design and energetic special effects play off one another for maximum fun.

This well-paced film's realistic style and authentic locales are a perfect fit for the characters and their story.

It emphasizes its stars' capacity to endure as individuals and entertainers and does not dwell on the harder times and personal travails they survived. However, it acknowledges the well-known exploitation black artists have traditionally experienced in the pop music industry.

Rush Hour effectively teams Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in a formulaic but funny action comedy that should please fans of both stars.

The way I Went Down, with its lovely score, plays out under Breathnach's gentle, compassionate touch becomes wryly amusing, ironic and entirely satisfying. Its cast is a glory, adept at setting off a sly humor with a touch of pathos, and it brings to the fore Brendan Gleeson, so good in so many supporting parts, as a seriocomic powerhouse in the central role. [1 July 1998, p.F4]

The Mean Season makes deft use of the thriller form to examine the relationship between those who report the news and those who make it, and how that line can blur dangerously. The film is very honest about how seductive a byline can be.

A handsome period production of fluidity and subtlety, intimate and large-scale.

Brutal yet lyrical film.

At once hilarious and serious, cruel and tender, and bristling with vitality, Holy Smoke is the right movie for the millennium, envisioning new possibilities in the way people view and relate to one another.

What counts here is the acute psychological validity with which Gordon evokes a coming of age that's seen with a darkly outrageous sense of humor--and no small amount of compassionate detachment.

In his sleek, punchy and altogether captivating Sonatine, Japan's fabled writer-director-tough guy star Takeshi "Beat" Kitano makes it seem as if we've never seen such a tale on the screen. In doing so, Kitano creates one of the most effectively anti-violence violent movies since The Wild Bunch. [10 Apr 1998, p.F10]

The strangest and most delightful of the many collaborations of those joint exemplars of neo-realism, Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini: a Chaplinesque fable about a purely innocent and good young orphan who leads the inhabitants of a Roman shantytown in angelic revolt against their cruel evictors. [10 Nov 1996, p.4]

Filmmaker Jessica Yu, in In the Realms of the Unreal, outlines Darger's lonely life and interviews Lerner's elegant, sympathetic widow Kiyoko and other Darger neighbors -- highlighted by enchanting animation of some of Darger's exquisite scrolls.

Loic's journey is rich in incident and detail, and Garçon Stupide retains its dynamic momentum throughout.

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.

With its lovely images of wintertime Paris and its lyrical Michel Legrand music, La Bu^che does take the cake.

A splendid example of pure cinema.

A beautiful and consistently engaging film, but that the filmmakers dared cast all three lead roles with actors who are over 40 makes it especially rewarding.

Down Terrace is long on talk but generates its own internal rhythms and pace that makes it feel bracing and vibrantly alive.

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

Fixing Frank is "good theater," and in the writing and in Butler's quietly chilling, ever-so-civilized portrayal, Apsey emerges as a veritable Svengali.

Illuminating, poignant and heartening.

Honest and wise enough to strike the right bittersweet note.

Has a sense of humor that is intellectual, even academic, at heart.

José Cancella's original score complement the tremendous wit, vitality and sensuality of the dancers.

A work of such charm and imagination it should enchant, as the old circus phrase goes, "children of all ages."

Structurally, High and Low, which is remarkable in many ways--the camera work alone could serve as a primer in film technique--is quite a departure for Kurosawa.

It's fast, light and funny and not top-heavy with special effects and epic-scale destruction.

Set in a noirish, gleaming Montreal, this handsome, captivating, well-paced and stylish film is fully realized in every aspect.

Manages to honor the theatricality of the source yet becomes a fully cinematic experience. A gem.

A documentary made with rigor, humor and no small amount of honest emotion.

From frame one Showtime displays an ingenuity, cleverness and briskness that never flags.

Writer-director-star Scott Ryan's darkly comic faux documentary, a gritty, shot-off-the cuff gem and a top prize winner in its native Australia. [29 Oct 2010, p.D8]