Kevin Thomas

Tantalizingly structured to intrigue us right from the start.

An across-the-board delight featuring a spot-on ensemble cast that treats the most awkward and embarrassing moments in the rites of passage with affectionate hilarity.

Just another lurid, contrived, xenophobic tale about Americans trapped in hideous foreign prisons.

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.

Terrific escapist fare, stylish, outrageous and compelling.

A dreary title for an even drearier picture.

A handsome work of authoritative yet understated style, responsive to mood, subtleties and nuance in exploring its especially well-drawn and intelligent lovers.

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 great poetic epic that blends the stirring visual daring of Russia's cinema of revolution with an intoxicating Latin sensuality. [21 Jul 1995, p.F8]

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.

Unconscious is a ribald sex farce of considerable imagination and inspired wackiness and a meticulous period piece of the Art Nouveau era.

Let It Ride looks good in a low-key way, and Giorgio Moroder's eclectic, funky mood-setting score is crucial in helping maintain tone as well as pace. [21 Aug 1989]

Leaves us with a heightened appreciation of the bold and personal films made by a number of filmmakers of the former Yugoslavia.

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.

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."

The attempt to find humor in mean-spiritedness is way beyond Paris and Fejerman's abilities, and their last-reel attempt to portray Sofia as an ultimately liberating force for her daughters is as contrived as My Mother Likes Women is repellent.

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

Wickedly funny and subversive.

Hampered by an ending that overreaches needlessly, the film is nevertheless worthy and unmistakably the effort of an enduringly distinctive and important filmmaker.

Takes us down a familiar path without discovering anything new along the way.

A tour de force of technical brilliance, with flashes of humor and a wild spirit of adventure signifying that you're not supposed to take it too seriously, but the cumulative impact of its avalanche of mayhem is so numbing that it's enough to shrivel your soul.

Once again Chabrol's son Mathieu has composed a crucially evocative score, and Renato Berta's cinematography is gleaming. Merci Pour le Chocolat crackles with wit and elegance, humor and pathos.

Fortunately, in image and structure Roodt and Harwood go for a steadfast simplicity that builds to a beautiful moment of rekindled faith for the grieving Rev. Kumalo that lifts Cry, the Beloved Country to a climactic moment of redemption.

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

Although competently acted and directed, lacks a fresh point of view and its people lack individuality.