Kevin Thomas

A shimmering fable of innocence and experience set in contemporary Los Angeles and Pasadena (its title is a nod to Virgil's "Aeneid"). Phillip Jayson Lasker's tartly knowing script, with the kind of witty dialogue that's all but vanished from American movies, recalls Hickenlooper's "The Low Life."

A centerpiece of the film is a tribute to the late, legendary Amália Rodrigues, a woman of commanding, majestic beauty and presence, who is seen with her pianist in rehearsal, searching out every nuance of a song she is to perform. Unfortunately, Fado's other performers are not identified.

With a graceful confidence Salvatores has made a movie in which good and evil flow into each other as easily as day and night.

Most important is the film's consistent unexpectedness. Rosenstrasse captures well not only the varying states of mind and levels of awareness in Germany during World War II but also the era's lingering effect upon its survivors.

Decidedly a minor item that's been on the shelf for a while but is nonetheless an effective calling card for its writer-director-star.

This process unfolds in terse, compelling fashion with ravishing camerawork by Agnès Godard.

Sensitive, gritty and courageous, this film gathers a power and focus not foreshadowed in its deliberately rambling earlier sequences.

Michael Winterbottom's handsome, uncompromising film. Jude glows with Eccleston's and Winslet's performances and with those in supporting roles.

The Favor is a pleasant romantic comedy, aimed at thirtysomethings and younger, and it affords solid roles for Harley Jane Kozak and Elizabeth McGovern. [29 Apr 1994]

This is another gratifying gem from a master.

A luminous, ambitious but only fitfully alive adaptation (by Harold Pinter) of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished Hollywood novel. Robert De Niro is wonderful as the extraordinarily complex, subtle and perceptive Monroe Stahr, whom Fitzgerald based on Irving Thalberg. [01 Oct 1989, p.7]

Van Peebles' persona and sensibility remain engaging, as do his way with his beguiling score and songs, but his film desperately needs tightening to eliminate tedious moments, especially in the African sequence.

Highlander: The Final Dimension is elementary and vague, but this purportedly last installment works well enough on a comic book level. Music video veteran Andy Morahan, in his feature directorial debut, has the right idea: Go for as much energy, pace and visual panache as possible. [30 Jan 1995, p.F8]

Star Trek III has a genuine spirituality, and, at its end, you may be surprised, especially if you're not really a Trekkie, to realize how moved you've been.

With its inspired sight gags and comic mishaps, the deceptively artless-seeming "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" is as blissful as a sunny day at the beach. [02 Feb 1995, p.F4]

Writer Deborah Dean Davis and director Andy Tennant are fully aware of the absolute predictability of their material and therefore make the getting to an inevitable ending as much fun as possible.

On the screen, the rip-roaring rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch retains all the excitement and energy it had on stage while adding depth, clarity and emotional texture.

While Bruce Almighty does end on a modest "Candide"-like note, the getting there is too strained to be much of a pleasure.

It's no thigh-slapper like the Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School," but it's exceptionally good-natured and perceptive, and Harmon, in his first starring screen role, is a real charmer. [22 July 1987]

One of the most entertaining escape movies ever made, a rousing 1963 big-scale production directed by John Sturges and written by James Clavell. [12 May 1991, p.4]

A skillfully made teen comedy with such an endearing sensibility that it's fun even for those old enough to be the grandparents of its stars.

A dark comedy that reveals the stultifying rigidity of Japanese office life - which the film persuasively suggests endures to this day.

At the top of his game, Carpenter and his cohorts boldly tap into the twin strains of paranoia gripping the present-day American society, suggesting that we face one or the other of two of our worst nightmares coming true. [09 Aug 1996, p.F1]

This heartfelt valentine to the stage leaves no cliché unturned. If it has anything to recommend, it is the loving portrayal of the camaraderie of those who participate in art for art's sake who, to quote Cyrano, "work without one thought of gain or fame."

Eating Out might just make it as an amusing trifle, but on the big screen it's merely tedious and silly.

Even though it is ultimately anything but an endorsement for street racing, the movie stunningly captures its undeniable excitement.

Too much of the film is not inspired enough in its humor to overcome the queasy feeling that comes from watching a comedy-adventure involving Jews during the Holocaust.

The one thing that can be said of Waking Up in Reno is that it's rigorously consistent. Every note rings false.

Long-winded and ultimately uninvolving.

As has happened before in less extreme circumstances, filmmakers with purportedly serious intentions punish their viewers for watching their envelope-pushing depiction of sex on the screen by presenting it in the most profoundly negative context imaginable.

Dr. Giggles is one horror comedy that actually is laugh-out-loud funny, a fast and frequently hilarious collision of gore and gags, and a tour de force of smart, sophisticated exploitation filmmaking. It’s an exciting feature directorial debut for Manny Coto.

Relentlessly awful. Not even Terry Kiser’s wandering corpse is funny this time around.

It is a brilliant intellectual adventure that fans of bold independent filmmaking will want to experience, even though the ending is something of a letdown.

Inevitably poignant but also often amusing and always deeply touching.

An elegant tale of romantic obsession weighed down by a needlessly convoluted plot that yields far more confusion than psychological suspense.

It is the kind of superbly crafted, intelligent entertainment — a classic suspense thriller — that nowadays is as welcome as it is rare.

The result is an exquisite yawn that provokes consideration of how accomplished Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw and Mira Sorvino and others are as actors -- but how in this instance the characters they play so intensely never come alive.

ZigZag is also richly cinematic. Los Angeles locales have been chosen with a keen eye to freshness and pungent atmosphere, and they have been masterfully photographed by James L. Carter with a notably effective play of dark and light.

Genuinely scary and also highly amusing.

From start to finish Garrone charges The Embalmer, a richly visual film, with an effective ambiguity and sense of foreboding.

Intent on offering viewers a good time yet manages to sneak in considerable substance in a disarming, even old-fashioned manner.

A stunning reminder of the omnipresence of mortality.

A superb bit of tongue-in-cheekery, stylish and fun but also deeply affectionate. [11 Aug 1985, p.5]

A routine, mildly funny service comedy. [01 Mar 1996, p.F6]

Neither terrible nor outstanding, it's the kind of middle-of-the-road picture that's hard to remember a week after seeing it. [8 Feb 1985, p.C2]

It has a lively start and finish, but the middle could use less talk and more action--which is not to say it couldn't do with a much lower body count as well. Indeed, were it not for a big dollop of gratuitous violence, it would be more diverting and better crafted than most of the stuff filling up the screen in anticipation of the rest of the summer blockbusters.

Works well enough. It has a decided plus in its appealing young star, Amanda Bynes, last seen opposite Frankie Muniz in "Big Fat Liar."

A painfully anemic variation on John Landis' 1981 winner, "An American Werewolf in London." While the original had both wit and poignancy--and an affectionate and knowing tip-of-the-hat to werewolf movies past--this slapdash, silly new edition is so cut-rate it has Luxembourg and Amsterdam standing in for the City of Light.

These characters, which Perry worked into the narrative from other stage performances, may have been entertaining in those venues, but they undermine the film.

An endearing, affectionately humorous and even lyrical depiction of the dawning of adolescence amid the privileged, yet Jennifer Flackett's script, for all its sheen, is problematic.

Bamako is an attack on globalization that is endlessly cogent, confrontational -- and, best of all, as captivating as it is illuminating.

As audacious as it is compelling and as dark as it is erotic. Its sexuality is explicit, alternately teasing and brutal, and one that is ultimately a cautionary tale.

Brisk, ingenious and funny comedy that happily reunites Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. [12 May 1989, p.6]

It's clear early on, however, that this is standard concert-film fare geared to the faithful.

Well paced and affectionately observant, Way Off Broadway is a good example of a low-low-budget first film in which the filmmaker got everything just right.

The merely depressing ultimately gives way to the contrived in Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's King of the Jungle.

Intermittently compelling but unavoidably improbable.

Made with energetic flair and no small dose of violence, mercifully handled with discretion, Hostage exemplifies taut, confident filmmaking.

Warm and wise comedy of middle-age malaise.

It was probably worth every costly cent for Kim Basinger to get out of doing the dreadful Boxing Helena -- but you have to wonder whatever there was about it that persuaded her to do it in the first place. [3 Sept 1993]

The picture is sleek rather than merely slick, moves like lightning and is loaded with nail-biting incidents and dynamic action. What's unfolding for the most part is fun and exciting, but unfortunately it isn't always fully clear.

What makes this film special, as in his other films, is the getting there. Téchiné is the master of subtle shifts in mood, an acute delineator of psychological interplay, and therefore demands the utmost of his actors.

Flawless contributions by Armstrong's crew make Oscar and Lucinda a vibrant period piece, buoyant yet incisive, and easily sustaining interest, if not generating deep involvement, throughout a just-under two-hour running time. [31Dec1997 Pg.8]

A well-crafted film, and it must be said that its actresses, in being prepared to come close to baring all for art, reveal stunning figures and perform scorching routines.

The ways in which very ordinary, uncharismatic people try to cope with their needs and longings is ultimately most affecting.

A gracious, eloquent film that by its end offers a ray of hope to the refugees able to look ahead and resist living in a past forever lost.

Intricately and imaginatively structured, building to a powerful climax of complex irony.

This documentary-like realism, alas, only underlines the preposterousness of its plot with its torrent of contrived, credibility-defying cliffhangers.

Creepshow 2 is a cut-rate sequel from those two popular masters of horror, Stephen King and George Romero, that plays like leftovers. Fans of both deserve better. The second--and the only one of the three stories that King has published--is the best. This vignette is effective because it's simple and suspenseful, but it's not enough to carry the whole movie.

Fresh, virulently funny, with an eye on life that's as offbeat as the early Beatles movies, the talents behind the bizarre and irreverent Repo Man are a real discovery. [16 Nov 1986, p.5]

Starts out self-consciously but gets better as it goes along, winding up as affecting as it is illuminating.

A rich sense of the dawning of gay liberation.

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.

A breezy, well-paced diversion, amusing rather than scintillating yet clearly personal.

Remo Williams is a slam-bang action-adventure loaded with surprises. Just when you think it's going to be just another bone-cruncher steeped in patriotic paranoia, it sends itself up hilariously. Remo Williams has some of the funniest, brightest dialogue heard on screen all year.

Emerges as an epic tale of love, sacrifice and redemption that attains a Shakespearean aura of grandeur and nobility of spirit.

Director Rosser Goodman makes the crucial decisions facing Trevor suspenseful and involving -- and tinged with humor as well as pathos.

The new film is so leisurely paced and overly long that what means to be at once charming yet darkly satirical lapses into tedium and barely comes alive.

Assayas displays an intimate, informal style and a sharp sense of proportion that allows him to have some fun, score some points and then wrap it all up before overstaying his welcome. Irma Vep is as effortless as a shrug and boasts a film buff’s dream cast.

Above all a man's confrontation with self in middle-age and his need to accept the fact that his children, beyond their mixed ancestry, are after all native-born English citizens.

A dull, routine action-adventure in which the suspense is mechanical at best. Although there are a couple of gory moments, those expecting the jolts director Sean Cunningham brought to the original "Friday the 13th" are sure to be disappointed.

A diabolically clever psychological suspense movie.

Baumbach surely does make these characters, all of whom are impeccably acted, absolutely real, but at 25 he may be too close to the material to achieve the detachment from which irony and meaning flow.

The Cronenberg trademarks are here in full force, including an outrageous sexual suggestiveness in his bizarre special effects.

While undeniably silly and violent in a cartoon-like manner, is by and large a hilarious skewering of the clichés of teen pix.

Figgis remains a compelling storyteller, holding you with the intensity of his vision and his mastery of nuance.

Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy are attractive and skilled performers as the film's newlyweds, but the movie is so mechanical it's like watching Barbie and Ken dolls going through the motions.

As synthetic as a plastic Christmas tree.

Western is a delightfully subtle and perceptive blend of romantic comedy and road movie. [07 Aug 1998, p.F8]

An honest title for a film that is almost entirely conversation. Yet its rich contemplative tone proves deceptive, for its director, Portugal's preeminent filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, at 96, still knows how to pack a wallop.

Reasonably diverting, but don't count on it lingering in your memory.

A wry romantic comedy of sexual confusion that deftly becomes increasingly serious without losing its sense of humor.

What makes Choose Connor so special and unsettling is the consistent adroitness and perfect timing with which Eberl makes his revelations.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is as much a spiritual odyssey as a space adventure, and it's all the richer for it. It has high adventure, nifty special effects and much good humor, but it also has a wonderful resonance to it. [9 June 1989]

The group's intent is not to insult those physically or mentally challenged in any manner of degree but, rather, to disturb middle-class types as much as they possibly can.

Finally too derivative and sensational for its own sake to work.

The improvisational method with which this film evolved allows its actors to show us so many sides to their people, so much volatility, that it can take a while for its key figures to involve us. But snare us Taylor, Harris and Grace most surely do.

Cage's naturalness as a nice guy in a big jam lends the film considerable substance while Hopper's wily foil, Boyle's tough dame and Walsh's minor-league baddie provide much amusement. With Mark Reshovsky's sleek camera work, authentic locales and William Olvis' mood-setting score, Red Rock West has style to burn.

An assured, graceful instance of effective screen storytelling, and Meadows draws splendid performances from his cast, especially from the young Shim and Marshall.

There’s an elegant sheen and sophisticated tone to Dead of Winter, but since it’s neither witty nor ingenious enough to be either genuinely amusing or suspenseful, it seems a bit morbid by default.

Broken Sky is that increasing rarity, a film that is fully realized visually. Keeping dialogue at a minimum, Hernández and inspired cinematographer Alejandro Cantú create a constant interplay between light and shadow, movement and stillness, dramatic spaces of architectural grandeur and intimate enclosures to evoke the ever-shifting emotions of an all-consuming first love.

Renegades, a shamelessly contrived, ultraviolent macho fantasy, stars Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips, who are too talented and too successful to be wasting themselves on such trash.

Too flat and academic to come alive. The film's lack of dimension tends to render much of it banal, and Downey's lengthy harangues, as beautifully wrought as they are, are overly literary, which serves to make this intricate film seem all the more contrived.

In the highly suspenseful 1976 Two-Minute Warning, directed with terrific energy and control by Larry Peerce, a football game takes on a subtly symbolic aspect as the cops pursue a mad sniper on the loose in a packed football stadium. [05 Jun 1988, p.2]

This skillfully made Italian heart-tugger was a success on home ground. Its star, Marco Filiberti, in an audacious writing and directing debut, has lots on his mind and much in his heart, and as a filmmaker displays a Douglas Sirkian flair for finding substance in melodrama.

DuBowski has cast admirably far and wide for his interviews, giving the work global scope. In some instances, DuBowski is pretty clearly a proactive documentarian, inspiring some of his interviewees to dare to take steps that are risky and revealing.

A routine sci-fi/horror action-adventure, takes us where we've been countless times before.

No effort has been stinted in polishing this painfully derivative picture as if it were a diamond instead of strictly paste. Director Thomas Carter keeps things moving, Fred Murphy's camera work gleams, but at three minutes short of two hours, "Metro" seems drawn-out and wearying. Well, here's something, at least: It does leave you mildly curious as to why the bad guy is called Michael Korda--the very name of a noted author and editor in his own right.

The number of characters makes Rugrats Go Wild somewhat bulkier than its less complicated predecessors, but fans are not likely to mind.

A delicious adaptation by Susan Isaacs of her novel, directed with a light, knowing touch by Frank Perry. It’s a blithe, sparkling, sophisticated comedy-mystery laced with dark humor that couldn’t be more welcome in the current summer avalanche of teen movies. How gratifying to hear once again dialogue that crackles with wit and humor (and doesn’t even require subtitles!).

While Black Sheep isn't as consistently funny as the Farley-Spade debut feature, "Tommy Boy," it's a crowd-pleaser directed with maximum energy and panache by Penelope Spheeris, who's just the person you need to make material funnier than it really is.

The result is a warm, imaginative comedy of wide appeal. [02 Oct 1987, p.8]

Beeswax has a rhythmic quality, and it eschews conventional plotting for sharp observation of human strengths and foibles.

The kind of full-length career portrait that every great actor deserves but rarely receives.

Smart and stylish, Disney's Teacher's Pet is one family film that has appeal for adults as well as children.

Parker has shaped the play to make it more film-friendly and relevant, but he has done so with such subtlety you would have to be a Wilde authority even to notice.

A mainstream holiday movie, complete with stupendous special effects, amazing make-up artistry and sumptuous production design.

Lame and overly contrived comedy.

An amiable 1973 John Wayne movie, typical of his later Westerns. [09 Oct 1988, p.4]

Slaughter High, which benefits greatly from its authentic setting, a big, old derelict Tudor-style school building in a remote area, gets actually quite scary, yet its grisly special effects are of the darkly comic, Grand Guignol variety. There's a trite coda that the film could have done without, but even so, Slaughter High (appropriately rated R) is effective schlock.

A fairly silly and ultra-gory schlocker/shocker.

To be sure, there's plenty of humor to offset serious matters, and Mayron reveals both terrific rapport with youngsters and ability in maintaining a gentle flow to material that is inherently episodic when there are so many characters' stories to tell. [18 Aug 1995, p.F8]

About as well-meaning as a movie can get, but that's never enough to ensure it comes alive on the screen, which is sadly the case here.

Produced and directed by Mark DiSalle, an alumnus of the Van Damme movies Kickboxer and Bloodsport, The Perfect Weapon moves well, and its many action and martial sequences are crisply staged. But unless you are a die-hard martial-arts fan, be prepared to be thoroughly bored by such a strictly by-the-numbers plot.

Despite its large scale, it plays like a formula TV movie. [14 Feb 1986, p.C4]

There are lots of hilarious, off-the-wall incidents, and the film has a likable freewheeling spirit to go with its knockabout plot. But the film isn't as remotely funny as it means to be.

There's not a performance here that doesn't ring true, nor is there a period detail that's the least bit anachronistic in Bill Kenney's production design and Wendy Partridge's costumes. [25 Sep 1987, p.1]

A surefire heart-tugger made with skill and judgment, affords Keanu Reeves a career high point.

An L.A. neo-noir raised to an insufferable degree of artiness.

A thick and gooey slice of holiday hokum.

Duchovny and Driver have distinctive good looks and they both combine attractiveness with talent and intelligence. Best of all, they possess that essential quality all screen lovers must have: terrific chemistry.

To watch this film, in short, can be a transforming experience.

A work of artistry and craftsmanship at the highest level.

The number of clearly talented individuals who committed themselves to the folly of The Living Wake were fearless too.

Eerie, quietly compelling... a fresh and mesmerizing experience...such an unsettling experience you find yourself still taking it all in well after the lights have gone up.

Favreau, who wrote "Swingers," has now directed and written the hilarious Made, which re-teams him with Vaughn. The two play off each other so well that they recall fond memories of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

It is high-energy entertainment that is also silly and sentimental and so over-the-top as to become wearying at times. But that it is also funny and good-natured ends up counting more.

As sweet and gentle as it is, Quinceañera is quite clear-eyed about human cruelty and indifference. In structure, however, there is a circularity to the film that allows it to end on a well-earned upbeat note.

Danny Elfman's intense score contributes crucial energy, John Thomas' camera work is first-rate, but the ambitious Freeway ends up merely trashy.

Crocodile Dundee II is almost as much fun the second time around. As an adventure it's nothing special, yet it's an inspired and good-humored presentation of one of the freshest, most likable screen personalities to emerge in the past decade. [25 May 1988, p.1]

Glitter is the week's only major Hollywood release, and it offers considerable escapist entertainment while hitting an affirmative note.

Deliciously funny and fiendishly clever con-man comedy that begins on a note of ingenuity that it then sustains with the tension of a high-wire act.

Michael S. Ojeda's film is so relentlessly shallow and excessive that it hardly matters whether Lana is eventually able to turn the tables on Darko. When it rains in Lana's Rain, it pours -- and what comes out is trash.

A comedy with just the right blend of satire, social comment, myriad complications, romance and heart-tugging to give it some deft shading and variety.

What's so amazing about the Police Academy movies is that they keep being made even though they stopped being funny after the hilarious original. We're now up to No. 4, and the most you can say for it is that it is the teeniest bit better, not quite so crass as the last two...Director Jim Drake is at least brisk and amiable; if nothing else, Police Academy 4 is good-natured and doesn't drag.

Smart and sassy high school movie that's fun for all ages.

Despite its dollops of good-natured humor and sentiment, Blow Dry is likely to play better on the tube as a likable-enough diversion.

Warm and appealing, but there clearly was a far more informative and comprehensive film to be made of the life and world of Francis Barrett.

Reygadas asks audiences to plunge headlong into his chaotic vision of the world, no questions asked but complete trust required. Not everyone is going to be willing or able to take this leap of faith, but those who do go along with Reygadas may well feel they have come away having undergone a stunning revelatory experience.

Artfully, even elegantly constructed, Secret Lives skillfully probes issues of conflicting emotions and allegiances in a dark time, yet emerges as a loving affirmation of humanity's remarkable potential for goodness in the face of pervasive evil.

A beautifully realized small film of understated power.

The "Blue Velvet" of high school horror pictures...Certainly, it's not on the deeply personal, highly idiosyncratic artistic level of the David Lynch film, but it is a splendid example of what imagination can do with formula genre material.

A blithe-spirited comedy in which teenagers discover their romantic vicissitudes mirrored in their high school production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It's being directed by their nasty drama teacher (Martin Short, hilarious), who has written 12 original songs for the production.

Unafraid of improbability and coincidence, writers Ned Kerwin & Scott Duncan pile on nonstop action that keeps up a furious pace without giving the viewer time to ponder its credibility.

Tedious and contrived.

Rich in revealing detail and apt in its use of everyday Spokane settings, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers shows that Wang remains a master explorer of the landscape of the human heart.

A sleek Hollywood crowd-pleaser, more movie than art film, but its makers have wisely stuck not only to the spirit but often even to the letter of the original.

Superb, contemplative.

Seems every bit the masterpiece it was when first released by Paramount. In this dazzling film, Bertolucci manages to combine the bravura style of Fellini, the acute sense of period of Visconti and the fervent political commitment of Elio Petri -- and, better still, a lack of self-indulgence.

Never has Denis demanded so much from audiences as with this shimmering enigma, at once intimate and epic, but it's worth the effort and then some.

An exceptional coming-of-age film--subtle, humorous, compassionate, acutely perceptive.

For all of Troche's skill and talent, The Safety of Objects (a splendid title) nevertheless tries to cover too much territory. In movies, as elsewhere, a little less sometimes can add up to a lot more.

Successfully venturesome, but you need to know that it's also a real downer.

Has a certain stiffness and awkwardness at the start, but this deeply personal work steadily grows more powerful and eloquent, creating a tragic vision of the plight of illegal aliens that transcends its melodramatic elements.

A lot of uneven acting is also no small detriment to this frequently awkward film's credibility.

The point of the film is to strike a blow for truth regardless of consequences, but it's hard to believe in this seduction. [11 May 2000, p.F36]

As fast and energetic as it is funny.

Shot in sepia, "The Fall of Otrar" is as exotic in look and feel as a Sergei Paradjanov fable but a lot more rambunctious and savagely humorous. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly hard to track and not surprisingly assumes the viewer is up to speed on medieval Central Asian history. [03 Feb 2005, p.E20]

The musical biography of comedian Fanny Brice emerges as a true classic, as enthralling as the day it was released in 1968. It is a superb example of Hollywood craftsmanship in which all elements have been blended to perfection with inspired artistry.