Kevin Thomas

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.

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.

The sweeping, confounding conclusion therefore unfolds with a beauty and an ease that seem truly organic. The Way We Laughed has that feeling of being a work of art.

On the whole, Chain Camera is encouraging.

Birot is an engaging storyteller who can inspire luminous, spontaneous portrayals, but her ending is so drastic that it feels unearned, a note of bleakness struck merely for its own sake.

Boldly structured, intensely focused and briskly paced, Alice and Martin has a tremendous emotional density that places the utmost demands upon its actors--and asks a lot of audiences, too.

It is a bravura work that attests to Pineyro's command of a style rich in texture and nuance and also of multilayered material.

A drive-in classic that is one of the most cherished horror pictures of the '50s. [30 Oct 1997, p.F17]

A most ambitious first film. Dominik pulls it off impressively, assisted by a selfless cast, a driving score by Mick Harvey, and gifted cameramen Kevin Hayward and Geoffrey Hall.

A rambling fat memoir about a soldier returning home to a Midwestern city, where his roughhouse, bravura ways tear the delicate social fabric apart, has lots of sleazy, low-life glamour on the screen. Scenarist John Patrick and director Vincente Minnelli made it work in this memorable 1959 film.

The result is a career milestone [for Hal Hartley] and a film that could become a landmark in American independent cinema.

An affectionate documentary about a free-spirited group.

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

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.

An infectious knockabout kung fu comedy with amusing special effects combined with breathtaking stunts.

They are tremendously appealing, and under Stephens' direction, Anson Scoville as an Amish runaway and Paulo Costanzo as a closeted gay college fraternity man are also memorable.

Nicolo Donato's bleak yet compelling Brotherhood, an unsparing neo-noir with the structure and inevitability of classic drama.

Bristling with shrewd observation, inspired humor and all-around smarts, Office Space is a winner about a guy who's beginning to feel like a loser.

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

Offers a riveting depiction of the classic collision of fate and character, with geography in this instance playing a crucial role.

Too lethargic and strung-out for its own good. Thankfully, it casts a pleasant, amusing and touching spell anyway, but more energy and a markedly shorter running time might have turned a sunny diversion into something more special.

Not long into this most exhilarating and enjoyable of movies, it becomes reminiscent of such vintage jewels as Carol Reed's simultaneously thrilling and amusing "Night Train to Munich."

A striking Western but empty as it is elegant. [25 Jan 1987, p.5]

So much for the plot; what's important is Maddin's witty, knowing evocation of vintage movie kitsch. [11 Dec 1991, p.F11]

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.

As rambling as a Keystone Kops comedy (which it resembles in many ways), it's slapstick to the max, and thus likely to be a bit tedious except to dedicated martial arts fans. [20 Dec 1993, p.F5]

A straightforward drama done with a maturity and conviction impressive for a first film.

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