Kevin Thomas

Village of the Damned is a good-looking, well-wrought film with some knockout special effects, some dark humor and crisp portrayals.

Relatively accurate as a period piece, looks great and boasts a bevy of vintage numbers, some original recordings and others performed in an authentic manner by Ian Whitcomb and His Bungalow Boys.

It's sensational in both senses of the word: a bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures that's also scary and gruesome yet too swift-moving to lapse into morbidity.

Petzold, who has a crisp style and sharp sense of the visual, is too talented and imaginative to allow his film to become predictable. Rather, Jerichow offers implicit, sardonic social comment as well as a compelling playing out of the eternal triangle.

The morbid tone of the original has given way to horror comedy set off by quite spectacular and imaginative fantasy sequences. Dream Warriors is no less grisly, but at least you can laugh at it.

Cumming and Leigh -- bring to their stylish, incisive and compassionate film an immediacy and a bracing snap.

Scarcely original and in no way earthshaking, but its notable cast is a pleasure to behold.

Best of the Best is a by-the-numbers martial-arts movie graced by several celebrated actors marking time between more rewarding assignments and crowned by an appallingly brutal Tae Kwan Do competition. There's nothing here except for karate fanatics. [10 Nov 1989, p.F15]

Writer Mark Saltzman and director Charles T. Kanganis do a fine job of keeping things happening and moving in an easy yet highly kinetic fashion. Although aimed at children, this smart-looking TriStar release is actually more inventive and better-paced than many a comedy for adults.

Beguiling and poignant.

An expertly made suspense thriller based on an actual incident, but on a visceral level it's about as much fun as watching someone pull the wings off a butterfly.

What Radford above all accomplishes in his filming of The Merchant of Venice is to suggest that, in essence, it is that most modern of entertainments: a dark - indeed, very dark - comedy.

Revolution #9, which is absorbing and terse, has some subtle, welcome comic relief from Spalding Gray.

Has the gritty, intimate feel of an Eastern European film--and packs the power of a genuine revelation.

Mike Armstrong's relentlessly downbeat script allows Demme to develop an ensnaring camaraderie coupled with a dark destructiveness that recalls Eugene O'Neill.

Unlikely to be ranked as one of Zhang's greatest accomplishments but is clearly the work of a major filmmaker. It is best seen as a heartfelt tribute to Takakura, as heroic and enduring a star as John Wayne.

It's too bad this Rollerball veered off-track so swiftly, derailed by bad writing and possibly also by some of that extensive post-production reworking.

The "crime" was that it was made in the first place and the "punishment" is having to watch it.

A sensitively told story of first love that could have been more affecting with a little more grit and without so mawkish a score.

Cocoon: The Return is the best kind of sequel: It doesn't merely cash in on the success of the original but actually continues its story in new directions, eliciting fresh meaning and emotion. [23 Nov 1988, p.C1]

A wisp of a wry comedy but Lungulov's touch is delicate, even piercingly so, and his direction of actors, especially Thornton and Karanovic, is beautifully nuanced.

A romantic comedy of wit and substance that actor-writer Dan Bucatinsky and director Julie Davis have moved gracefully from stage to screen with a change of title and sexual orientation.

Catches you up so firmly in its world that you find yourself accepting whatever Thornton presents right up to its deeply ironic finish.

L.I.E. has embraced tragedy, folly, perversity and outrageous dark humor. Like "Happiness" and "American Beauty," it takes an unflinching look at the darker aspects of life in American suburbia.

Wickedly hilarious. [19 Feb 1999]