Kevin Thomas

Dazzling visually but is flattened by corny dialogue better suited to the 1936 "Flash Gordon" serial, a needlessly hard to follow plot and heavy-handed exposition clotted with pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo.

Moves way past the predictable into the shocking. Indeed, the film is so expertly structured and paced that its denouement knocks you off your feet.

Remains a timeless, major work of a master.

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

In not taking itself too seriously New Suit scores more points than some pictures that take a scathing approach.

Lively and often comical.

Even as you feel grateful to be able to laugh off this film, you realize that its humor is really only inuring you to a nonstop series of stabbings, slashings, impalings, stranglings and yet other means of killing. Be warned: For all its laughs, Friday the 13th -- A New Beginning (rightly rated R) is just one more nauseating sick joke. [25 March 1985, p.C6]

Tony Burrough's vast Toy Workshop and Elf Village at the North Pole is the film's strongest asset. The workshop is a dazzling and accurate display of the Art Nouveau style in sinuous full flower.

Bagdad Cafe, which Adlon wrote with his wife, Eleonore, and Christopher Doherty, is a miracle of timing and control for all its aura of zany, off-the-cuff spontaneity. It is the work of a director who has such a clear idea of what he wants and where he's going that he can take his time to build up every joke for the maximum payoff.

An emotion-charged tale that's also an edgy commentary on women's destinies and how they're still so largely affected by men.

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

As splendid as John Wayne is in these films, the elegiac She Wore a Yellow Ribbon provides him with one of his finest roles. [19 May 1996, p.72]

Certainly sexy, entertaining and provocative -- in several senses of the word -- but it's also tiresome as only a French film can be when everyone in it has only sex and amour on his or her mind and is deadly serious about both.

A likably thoughtful romantic comedy.

Even though Drool rambles and ultimately slides into overly obvious make-believe, Kissam emerges as a fearless risk-taker of promise.

A fresh examination of the plight of the Tibetans still craving independence after a half century of either homeland misery or increasingly long exile.

More than anything, The Grudge suggests that it's time for Shimizu to move on.

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

These formidable actresses [Redgrave and Daly], abetted by a persuasive Connick, and by Hurt as the most genteel and benevolent of ghosts, set a high standard for a splendid ensemble cast.

Breathtaking reverie worthy of Fellini.

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

Crewson is a game, experienced actress but hasn't sufficient star charisma to lift Suddenly Naked out of the doldrums.

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.

A bittersweet, wryly amusing "dramatic fiction"

There's a strong elliptical quality to Kiarostami's style, which underlines the filmmaker's ability to maintain focus with considerable emotional force and depth and with great precision. [27 March 1998, p.14F]

Unfortunately, Jodorowsky is no Bunuel -- nor a Leone, for that matter -- and El Topo’s bloody odyssey, involving endless heavily symbolic encounters with the bizarre and fantastic, expresses the eternal tug of war between the savage and the spiritual in human nature on the most obvious level and in the most ponderous fashion.

May be too heady for some tastes but can stir you deeply, if you're open to it.

Sweet-natured but hopelessly confused. [3 March 1989, p.6-10]