Michael Wilmington

Spectacular, fast, never boring. But it's also one of the more disappointing movies I've seen recently.

The movie's humor is engaging but odd. The script is pretentious but sweet. And the symbolic use of the flying machine-which pulls you back to "Brewster McCloud"-doesn't work very well. But a flawed film like "Arizona Dream," with its wistfulness and pain, is still twice as interesting as most of the bloated, slick, empty successes that tend to get released here, films that look as if they were dreamed up by used-car salesmen in a desert. [6 Jan 1995, p.L]

Less a movie than a loud, heavy, money machine, a think tank where nobody thinks. The movie seems intended to extract maximum profit with minimum artistry -- and if you like having your pockets picked by experts, this is probably the show to see. [15 Mar 1996, p.C]

Townsend seemed to me ill-matched as a romantic hero: way too moony-eyed and mushy to cope with the likes of the towering Theron and torchy Cruz.

Certainly Crocodile Dundee is nothing you can examine deeply or mull over afterward. It's simply an expert crowd-pleaser. It has such a sure, easy, confident touch that it's almost failure-proof--like a tip of the hat, a sip of beer, a quick, golden G'day.

For all its glitz and gadgets, is markedly inferior in everything but teen appeal.

Watching this movie has an almost hypnotic effect, like being carried along on a river past terrains both familiar and inexplicably, maddeningly odd.

It's a gleamingly cracked tale of romance gone mad played out on a moonlit ocean voyage that turns into a bizarre, floating nightmare of slapstick perversion. [08 Apr 1994, p.A]

London's Fang was, fundamentally, a loner and a killer; the movie Fang is a big, friendly dog, temporarily derailed into the fight game by snarling villains. That makes this White Fang, rather oversunny, overaffirmative, primarily a movie for children. But I liked it anyway, despite the softened tone, the coincidences, despite Hawke's constantly gaping mouth.

Corny as it may sound though, it's all true-except, of course, for that mythical movie last-second championship bit.

Whimsy and wit are the saving graces of much British movie comedy, and Saving Grace has a decent measure of both.

It's an ensemble piece with a dark, salty mood that reminded me of Robert Altman and Robert Aldrich, with a touch of Francis Ford Coppola. It's notably non-"gung ho."

Oddly enough, it's as black comedy and social history, far more than thriller or human drama, that Patty Hearst works best.

For all its craft and achievement, The Gift -- which has a script that may have needed more rewriting and deepening -- is a good, minor effort; it has some real conviction, even anguish. And it has Blanchett, whose gift as an actress is sometimes transcendent.

It's a shapeless, derivative-but-funny show with another loony parody plot about super-villain Dr. Evil.

It's one hell of a ride and a real, roaring rock movie. [01 Mar 1991]

It's another slick-and-quick muscle car of a movie, racing along for a couple of hours, taking you nowhere as fast as it can.

The movie is a paean to outsiders and reckless love.

You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.

Something to Talk About, which is something to see, makes us a delectable present of its own bright, brawling little world: wisecracks, venomous Charity Leagues, horse shows, last dances, skeleton-filled closets and all. [4 Aug 1995, p.C2]

I liked The Claim -- as much for its stark visual beauty and impassioned performances as its intelligent script and willingness to probe the tragic side of life.

Freaky Friday commits a lot of sins; luckily, it has Curtis and a few others to cover them up.

The talk and plot twists both have a flavorless, perfunctory quality.

Too rich, too loaded, Maverick may have misplayed its cards, kept its eyes on the pot instead of the players. In movies, as in poker, you can't always trust a pat hand.

As beautiful as all the film's technology is, it needs more real human beings around - to pull the switches, man the pumps and scuttle through those corridors.

When you piece it all together, it becomes mildly fascinating.

Director Suri Krishnamma, depends on Finney for its power. His great performance carries the film over its shallow spots, its wish fulfillment, its pull toward caricature. [03 Feb 1995]

1966 French masterpiece -- the finest, most deeply personal work of a filmmaker who has been compared, justifiably, to both Dostoyevsky and Bach.

In the third story, set in Asheville, N.C., that excellent actress Hunt guides us steadily through what could be a minefield of sentimentality.

Inspirational biographical movie that really works.

It's one more example of minuscule ideas inflated to preposterous proportions: An Attack of the 50-Foot Marketing Hook. [17 Jul 1992, p.F10]

Ashley Judd as Agnes White, and a relative newcomer, the remarkable Michael Shannon, as Peter Evans. They're both spellbinding.

Kazan does have his father's fierce erotic curiosity, that sense that once you unravel a story's real lusts and greeds, you've solved it.

On a direct line with the whimsical small-town comedies of the '40s and '50s.

A fairy tale comedy with the Holocaust as the background, a collision of terror and community, death and beauty.

This toweringly ambitious picture confronts a brilliant director, Atom Egoyan, with a major historical event and a profound theme.

A comedy that seems to have most everything going for it but the ability to make us laugh.

A confessional film that's almost too confessional--is like getting buttonholed by a casual acquaintance at a party and then subjected to a flood of highly intimate revelations that just don't stop.

Shallow, colorful adaptation of one of Hemingway's best short stories. [08 May 1998, p.M]

This overrated backstage TV nostalgia comedy, set in 1954, does boast standout performances by Peter O'Toole and Joseph Bologna as characters modeled on Erroll Flynn and Sid Caesar. [07 Nov 1997]

As beautifully designed, swift and sleek as a classic sports car, throbbing with emotion and intelligence, it's a neat suspense film that's also dramatically and sociologically potent, with two supremely talented stars, Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, delivering beyond the emotional call of duty.

Most of the original play's magical speeches are preserved here, and however far this film may seem to stray from the original text, the delights remain. [14 May 1999, Friday, p.A]

Lovely, heart-stirring film.

An often brilliant, always revelatory, deeply interesting omnibus film.

Among the finest hours of horror star Boris Karloff. [18 Oct 2005, p.C3]

Vice Versa may be a better film than Like Father, Like Son, largely because of the direction and Savage’s performance, but it’s still a disappointment.

It's a fast, funny picture, and the worst thing you can say about it is that it's no "Toy Story," no "Shrek." That may be true, but one thing Ice Age proves is that the new digitized cartoons are a form whose time has come.

When it enters the future, it's a new-fangled, old-fashioned jim-dandy of a show.

Warlock is supposedly about the battle between Good and Evil, but movies about the battle between Heckle and Jeckle have more terror or profundity. [17 Jan 1991, p.F12]

This movie, which aspires to be a Christmas movie classic on the "It's a Wonderful Life" level, is overwhelming, enjoyable and impressive, without being really entrancing.

Mamet is a writer who turns off some audiences, and almost everything that might bother them is in Edmond: foul language, raging machismo, violence and seemingly bigoted tirades. But almost everything audiences like about him is there too: candor, suspense, ideas, crackling slang, vivid characters.

Kill Me Again doesn't look like the noir classics; instead of black-and-white, it's shot in slightly muddy color with vagrant green tints. But it feels like them. It has that nerve-jangling mix of pungent cynicism and thick gobs of pseudo-Expressionist style. It's not brilliant or original, but it's still a lean, fast, wide-awake sleeper.

There are some premises that absolutely aren't going to work--no matter how much intelligence, talent or craft the film makers bring to them. And Marshall Brickman may have stumbled onto such a premise in The Manhattan Project.

This seems to be a movie made by people who love the old classic movie swashbucklers but don't have a clue how to make or modernize them.

There's so much emotion and so many ideas in this film that it's both angering and exhilarating. The acting is fine, the writing superb, the production crisp.

Broken Arrow is much better than the average big-time action movie because Woo has blazing style and a unique, even eccentric viewpoint. [9 Feb 1996, p.C]

Reign works better much better than "Upside" because of the cast and because Sandler and Cheadle together keep it lighter. It's an easy film to watch, but less easy to be moved by.

Bad as the overall design remains, individual scenes keep sparking alive, partly because the dialogue, or delivery, seems fresh, and improvisatory; partly because Van Peebles, in his directorial debut, figures out unusual or athletic camera designs for every scene. It's obvious he has talent, equally obvious there's no way this story can work right, no matter how strenuous the staging.

Playing a deranged, possibly homicidal babysitter going bonkers in a hotel, Monroe steals the show in this efficient, vaguely creepy little thriller--despite the presence of both Richard Widmark (as her airline pilot target) and Anne Bancroft (as the hotel's pert lounge singer). [09 Dec 2005, p.C6]

It's the kind of copycat movie that becomes original through its cast and treatment.

Red Heat is directed in a fiery, muscular, pop-graphic style. And it has a James Horner score that puckishly mixes Prokofiev and rhythm and blues. But it's also a movie with a cramped interior. The action scenes seem to be squeezing out everything else, pressing the characters against the wall. [17 Jun 1988, p.1]

Movies made from serious novels are often ridiculed as unworthy of their sources, but this one may be too worthy -- too reverent, too showy, too earnest.

This one's worth the ticket price only if you are a showbiz-aholic.

This movie is a model of technique, beautifully crafted, often brilliantly acted by Cage and the others, but it's a bit hollow at the center.

The whole film, in fact, seems too fast for its own good. It plays like a synopsis, jumping from scene to scene, grief to grief, and it doesn't let us relax into the various worlds it's creating.

The film seems a mad mix of staid PBS bio-drama, flamboyant musical comedy and surreal cartoon nightmare.

Bravo!

A rarity -- an intelligent and moving drama of ideas that becomes increasingly thrilling as the ideas unfold.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage, a great oddball movie star who sometimes takes enormous risks, has a good, risky part again.

Addams Family Values is another big opportunistic, pre-marketed studio show, but it has laughs, flair. At its best, it's a valentine of venom, sent with mirth and malice aforethought.

Chan is so good, so much fun to watch, that he often transcends his vehicles. And that's the case with Rumble in the Bronx, his big bid to crack the American market. [23 Feb 1996, p.C]

Hitch's most plausible, least suspenseful spy thriller, based on Leon Uris' reality-inspired novel of intrigue in Cuba and France. [23 Jun 2006, p.C2]

Creating a mood that suggests an unholy mix of Czech novelist Franz Kafka, American pulp fictionist Jim Thompson and French heist moviemaker Jean-Pierre Melville, Babluani's story is about the perils of get-rich-quick schemes.

The kind of fascinatingly bad film only a really gifted and fearless moviemaker could make: a 92-minute long raggedy-raunchy vision of sex, transit and alienation in which Gallo focuses on himself so obsessively, it's as if he'd become his own stalker.

On many levels, it hits its marks -- but it still misses the impact of some shorter, less-ambitious movies that play with our emotions more deftly or deeply, walk their miles, deadly or not, with a lighter, faster, more confident tread.

Three Men strikes a funny chord. The audience seems to want to believe that these guys can be domesticated, but on another level, they don't want the trio broken. They want bachelor fathers, domesticated swingers.

Has great themes and great actors.

A gripping, very intelligent British thriller. Slowly, inexorably, it ties you in knots.

In Faraway, So Close we watch a city being reborn, an angel trapped in melodrama and a dream dying. All are moving. [23 Dec 1993, p.10N]

At its best, it's about madness disguised as utter rationalism, utter dispassion, noblesse oblige. As such, in odd moments, it chills through to the bone and beyond.

May be the most fascinating, richly accomplished screw-up you'll see all year. Von Trier, who has always had a talent for provocation, nails another heroine to the cross while playing his role to the hilt - a moviemaking rebel in his own dog days.

Nichols gives the piece a funny, fragile somber mood that works almost completely.

The French filmmakers lend it their special aesthetic/dramatic sense, and the Masai actors ground the story in everyday realism and humanity. Together, they create a film and a legend to remember.

An odd premise for a Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film--an anti-fascist melodrama with Tracy as the no-nonsense reporter investigating a beloved but tarnished American icon, Hepburn as the icon's wife--but they give it their trademark polish. [24 Feb 2006, p.C7]

A wry romantic comedy set among Bruno's targets, the Grenoble bourgeois.

An inspirational movie about a inspiring figure: Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah of Ghana.

A combination of toughness and sentimentality with John Wayne. [21 May 2000, p.38C]

One of the most entertaining movies this year, and one of the few that shows real invention and audacity, along with big-studio technical flash. [8 June 1986, p.C27]

Best of all though, we get to experience the whole fest itself, over four turbulent decades-an era from which Glastonbury, like Woodstock in its day, offers a halcyon "timeout."

It's not all that funny -- but fascinating in a weird, knockabout way. [28 Aug 1998, p.O]

In some ways it's not a film that surprises us much. But it's a notable directorial debut anyway -- smartly written, very well cast and skillfully done.

An empty-headed movie: one more gargantuan, excessive, over-the-top action thriller with one more superhero -- this time ex-linebacker Brian "The Boz" Bosworth -- battling dozens of deranged villains single-handedly while trucks, motorcycles and cars crash all around him. [20 May 1991, p.F6]

The film is De Palma's tribute to film noir, to Paris and to the cinema itself.

Done with an enticing mixture of lacerating comedy, lush Roger Deakins cinematography, robust acting and juicy lines, the Coens' Ladykillers is often glorious fun to watch. It won't please everyone, of course.

A simple, eloquent drama.

Carrera's style is hard-hitting, lucid and technically superior (if unimaginative). El Crimen del Padre Amaro eventually moves and stirs you, even if it often resembles those steamy Mexican TV dramas/soap operas called telenovelas.

This movie can spot the handsome face that lies beneath an ugly exterior, but it seems to get fooled by the rot that sometimes lurks beneath the sweet and the safe, the formula and the sure-fire.

It's hard to watch and listen to Together without, in some sense, having your heart lifted by its music.

It's a very classy, finely made film, and, as one watches it -- particularly those last sweeping scenes of political turbulence and escape -- one feels both pain at their (Merchant-Ivory) parting and grateful for what, together, they achieved.

Some film premises are so outlandish, so thinly worked out and so deep-down ridiculous that they wind up sinking the show -- and White Chicks collapses under a real doozy.

A lyrical work of sporadic great power, Neon Bible captures both the neon and the spirit, the heaven and hell.

It just doesn't swing (or bop), but the stars always click. [15 Jul 2005, p.C8]

If the movie sometimes seems overwhelmed by its budget and its legendary third-act problems, it's still entertainingly raw and brutal, full of whiplash pace and juicy exaggeration. [1 June 1990, Calendar, p.F-1]

A mix of drag comedy and inspirational road movie, Wong Foo is surprisingly, sometimes exhilaratingly good. [10 Sep 1995, p.4C]

Swedish cinema has been famous for a number of things: beautiful actresses, fine sexy psychological dramas, natural settings, cinematic bawdiness and a touch of melancholy. Under the Sun fits that profile well.

A gloriously giddy movie about theater, love and artifice, an unabashed art film.

The film, despite some over-obvious stretches, is mostly sad, lovely, moving, haunting. It's a striking and promising debut from a fine new filmmaker. [21 Aug 1998]

It's a movie that's almost all style, all technique. It doesn't seem to be inhabited by people, thoughts or feelings, but by great coruscating patterns of light crashing over and over us, repeatedly--almost, but not quite, drowning out a constant buzz of cliches.

There has been a glut of animal movies in the last few years. But, of them all, The Bear -- sympathetically imagined, meticulously organized and grandly executed -- is easily the period's epic. [25 Oct 1989, p.F1]

Doesn't have the negative qualities of many big-studio romantic comedies, but it doesn't quite take flight.

Slickly produced, well cast and very excitingly made, it's based on plot hooks so silly, most of them blow up in your face.

Violent and cynical on the surface, impassioned and celebratory below, Last Man Standing is such a carefully stylized film that sometimes it's hard to respond to it. [20 Sep 1996, p.C]

Maybe the problem with Analyze This is that it isn't enough of a Ramis movie. [5 Mar 1999]

Red Dragon is very much a product, and a superior one, of our times. So is Anthony Hopkins' top-notch fiend, the bad doctor.

Though definitely one of the best American movies of the year--a work of high ensemble talent and intelligence, gorgeously mounted and crafted, artistically audacious in ways that most American movies don't even attempt--it's still a disappointment… It's not the capstone we might have wanted Coppola to make. [23 Dec 1990, Calendar, p.9]

Wayne's World 2 may not be much of a movie, but at least it's funny. And, hey, what else does it have to be? What do you want from a movie? Blood? Rock on, Wayne. Party hearty, Garth. [10 Dec 1993, p.A]

Norman Taurog's The Caddy is a sometimes subpar 1953 Martin & Lewis golfing comedy enlivened by a Dean and Jerry duet on "That's Amore" and a snatch of their great stage act. [22 Jul 1988, p.23]

The picture is written and acted as a lark and a romp.

There's something so charged and beautiful about Jodie Foster's performance as a Smoky Mountains wild child in Nell that it carries you past a lot of glossy bumps in the movie. [23 Dec 1994, p.C]

It's a work by cinematic geniuses that reveals beauty and terror in a long-ago time with a virtuoso intensity. You won't soon forget its mad, lovely sights and sounds.

There's nothing particularly original or striking about Ping Pong except its style. It's a breezy, likable story, and the director here, Fumihiko Sori, obviously enjoys his work.

Though not as good or as massively innovative as its predecessor, is still a mountainous undertaking.

By creating a kind of politically correct version of Andy Griffith's "Mayberry," director Bezucha has drained the movie not only of bigotry but also of dramatic conflict.

Has what we usually want to see in movies like this: bravura action, tongue-in-cheek humor, but most of all attitude.

Unabashedly designed to blow its audience away.

The sense of the unknown that "Padgett" created are largely absent. And the movie fails to supply us with an antagonist to work up some dramatic conflict. Nor are the toys themselves very interesting and Mimzy is a toy bunny of no distinction.

I liked the idea of the movie more than the movie itself -- though sections of it are mind-blowing.

Copying Beethoven, at its best, is a sort of grand cinema opera of the composer's life and music.

These are real characters, fully observed, gutsily written, beautifully acted by the two leads.

The movie is funny, but it's also touching and poetic -- and Bertin's scenes are devastating.

John Wayne's Ethan is his all-time top performance: funny, romantic, hard-bitten, scary, the personification of machismo.

But the film disappoints, partly because it inspires such large expectations.

It's an intelligent and informed look at the preposterous ways our leaders are often picked and sabotaged.

Beyond some well-observed sibling interaction, the mutual effort of four writers is mutually uninspired. Whoever wrote the episodes between hot-to-trot Jojo (Taylor) and her balky boyfriend Bill (D'Onofrio) should be ashamed. [21 Oct 1988]

Although Alien 3 is stylish--and ambitious--the movie doesn't have the soul or guts to sustain that ambition. It gets swallowed up in its own technology and genre expectations. And Fincher gets stalled in the drama, trapped in too many scenes of talking heads looming out of the gloom.

It's an almost overwhelmingly professional picture, murderously fast, slick and full of outlandish notions, painstakingly realized. And it's also surprisingly satisfying -- thanks to Washington, a good cast, Tony Scott's swift direction and that unyielding professionalism.

This "Ice Age" is still a good movie (especially for kids) with top-of-the-tech CGI.

For my taste, too much of the new Powers looks like bad TV and sounds like old burlesque.

Signs -- though Shyamalan's most visually beautiful work -- seems thinner, barely more than a sketch for a movie, with characters trapped in formulas. Beautifully trapped perhaps -- but paralyzed nonetheless.

Witherspoon goes further, pouring so much humor and pizzazz into Elle that she lifts up the whole movie.

The movie doesn't really jell. Glossy, good-looking and well-produced, it affects you and even sometimes moves you, but it doesn't really convincingly connect.

Despite a big budget, lots of technical flair and a good cast headed by Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames, it's mostly a bloody mess.

Though Day Watch seems less shocking and overwhelmingly strange than "Night Watch," it's another rocking mix of gritty thriller and glitzy sci-fi, once again in the vein of the director Bekmambetov's idols Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.

It's a shiny, glib, hollowly good-looking movie that always seems to be cooing at us-coldly. [23 Nov 1994, p.9C]

A romance incandescent, a fiery pageant of l'amour fou. Whatever its historical transgressions, it opens up a vein and lets life and blood pour out.

This time around, the razors are a little duller, the clicks not as slick, the patter not as snappy.

It's a high-tech thriller that really works.

Miller's quiet artistry is at its peak, and though "Lili" is not as subtle, profound or moving a work as Chekhov's play, it's an intelligent, first-rate piece of cinema.

Adapted from the Goodrich-Hackett play, it just misses the spiritual and emotional majesty it reaches for.

Some of LaGravenese's dialogue crackles, but it's a dry crackle, a hollow cough. And that's despite Leary-and in spite of Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey, two of the best actors around these days.

Despite Fiennes' splendid moodiness and Tyler's radiant vulnerability, despite lovely settings... this movie is dull.

It's a harmless enough movie, and quite a good-looking one; Bettany and Dunst are an attractive enough couple, even if Lizzie has been written as a selfish little snip and he as a whining man-child.

Energetic but unusually foolish "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!" high-school musical, redeemed by the exuberantly talented Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland combo, as a couple of kids preparing jaw-dropping numbers (choreographed by Berkeley) for a Paul Whiteman radio contest. [12 Dec 1997]

A contemporary Russian movie that you could honestly call revolutionary, more for its style than its politics.

The artifice may be ancient, but the thought and emotions -- and especially Sorvino -- are beautifully, refreshingly modern.

The movie, like Hitch, tries to be cool, funny and sweet but falls on its face without generating any real sympathy, smarts or humor.

Disappointingly, X-Men: The Last Stand slides back between the first two episodes. It's not stuporous, and it's not super.

Louiso has a confident touch and a good eye, and there isn't a scene in the film that wasn't intelligently done. Besides Hoffman's near-great performance as Joel, there isn't a bad or mediocre acting job on view either.

Kansas City is a wonderful film, done with all Altman's offbeat virtuosity, maverick humor and creative daring -- plus the acid nip that runs through all his recent works.

A deeply moving blend of cold terror and rapturous hilarity. Lovingly crafted by Italy's top comedian and most popular filmmaker, it's that rare comedy that takes on a daring and ambitious subject and proves worthy of it.

The King simply unsettles and bothers us -- and it finally misses both the true terror and the twisted redemption it needs for its wicked song, a would-be "Heartbreak Hotel" of horror, to really chill our spines.

Everything about the movie is overscaled, overbrutal, overbroad, full of holes. Yet there's something cheerful and wacky about it; it's a light-hearted blood bath.

Psycho III--better in most respects than II--lets you down with the same swampy thud at the end. It's not a catastrophe. It has some good writing, and some better-than-good acting (Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey), directing (Perkins again) and camera work (Bruce Surtees). But it fails any sequel's acid test: It feeds off the original without deepening it.

Bigelow gives this film edge, tension and something you aren't expecting: a woman's touch for teasing out the buried emotion beneath those stoic surfaces.

There are better holocaust dramas than Grey Zone -- "Schindler's List" for one, and due later this year, Roman Polanski's magnificent "The Pianist." But few will disturb you like The Grey Zone -- mostly because it won't try for tears.

Decline's redeeming grace is its jocular, damn-the-proprieties air and, for the first half, its staccato editing rhythm. It's damnation is most of the music and its relative avoidance of heavy metal's darker corners: the pith and point that Alex Cox gave punk in Sid and Nancy.

A fine French comedy-drama.

It's not that the movie is bad; it's merely uninspired and relatively clueless about Kaufman.

A word of warning. Big Fish is so strange and so literary that audiences seeking conventional fare may get impatient with it. But it always takes effort to catch the big ones. This one is worth it.

It’s a low-budget production with major-league acting by Mary Steenburgen, Holly Hunter and Alfre Woodard. It’s not directed sharply enough; Thomas Schlamme is particularly weak on the fight scenes.

Too loud, bright and shallow for its subject: a movie that pushes too many obvious buttons to build naturally to the big, heartbreaking climax it obviously wants.

An offbeat, poetic piece that eschews the terse, hard-boiled style of the standard cop movie or TV show for something softer-centered and more nakedly emotional.

A charming confection, set on an ocean liner. [13 Apr 2007, p.C5]

I found nothing likable or funny about either of these characters, who both deserve a pie in the face. (One of them even gets it.)

It's the equivalent of our "Gone With the Wind," Russia's "War and Peace" or, to take a more modest example, South Korea's "Chunhyang." Sheer ambition and grandiose make the film interesting -- up to a point.

The sort of movie that both rewards and tries your patience.

The series has been with us since 1962 and, like many another old timer, tends to repeat itself. Yet, every once in a while, it pulls in its stomach, pops the gun from its cummerbund, arches its eyebrow and gets off another bull's-eye. The newest, Licence to Kill, is probably one of the five or six best of Bond.

Movies like First Snow rise or fall on characters and atmosphere, and Fergus gets them both. But though the story's resolution does have irony and even a certain power, it lacks the charge, the Serlingesque "gotcha," that it needs.

Norman Jewison directed, but overall it's surprisingly labored, with that cheesy, set-bound look of a lot of many early '60s Universal pictures. [25 Mar 1988, p.22]

There's no denying that Undisputed delivers the action-movie goods, and so do Snipes and Rhames. It should have been more memorable, but at least it doesn't stumble in the ring.

Likable as it is, suffers from that modern big-movie vice: overkill.

The movie's great end-title sequence redeems everything. Under the credits, we see and hear the real-life game veterans as they are now--including, movingly, ex-Lakers coach Riley.

Shines whenever we see the performances of Phoenix and Caan.

In Color Me Kubrick, John Malkovich has one of the roles of his life, and he acts it up like a haughty gourmet who's just picked up a succulent treat.

As much fun as anything director/co-writer Jane Campion has ever filmed. Holy Smoke lets it all hang out.

The movie, done in a classic measured style, finally moves you almost as much as if it had stayed in Kurosawa's hands. Filled with love and melancholy, it's a fitting, fond epilogue to the "sensei" (the master).

Frank Sinatra and his Clan knock over Vegas. [07 Dec 2001, p.C1]

There's the script -- and that's the problem.

But there's something missing, something tentative and uncertain. In order to pull off a magic trick, you often have to distract the audience with smooth patter, clever detail or indirection. And this movie tries to play it so pure and unabashed that we can see right up its sleeves. [21 Apr 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

A modernized version of that great sentimental horse movie, 1943's "My Friend Flicka," and it comes with the shiny trappings, high professionalism and glamorous accessories you might expect...Something is missing though.

It's a nice little film, likable but not exceptional, and it will probably appeal most strongly to actors, would be-actors, wannabes and ex-actors.

The filmmakers' instincts may be sound, but Permanent Midnight is no killer. Stahl hated most of what he wrote in his TV heyday. So one really wonders why he, and maybe Stiller, didn't write this script. Surely, it's one script Stahl could have delivered.

Is it cute? Yes. Is it a crowd-pleaser? Yup. Is it classic? Nope. (Though it could have been.)

A curiously cool, but very intelligent movie. [02 Jan 2000, p.19C]

There's something ridiculous in the picture, but something sublime as well. It would be a shame to miss either, a pity not to open your eyes as well as your heart. [25 May 1994, p.1C]

Godfrey Reggio’s Powaqqatsi, like his earlier “Koyaanisqatsi,” is a lyrical documentary that turns the instruments of technology against it. In some ways, the new film is less effective, but it’s also more visually spectacular: a mesmerizing cascade of sensuous sights and sounds.

A breezy, elegant charmer of a movie.

Directed by Julian Jarrold and co-written by Tim Firth ("Calendar Girls"), the movie is quite enjoyable, effortlessly well-done on every level, even moving at times, but relatively light weight.

The Fourth War doesn't make much sense, but it's powerfully acted and beautifully directed. [23 Mar 1990, p.F4]

The acting is terrific, understated and pungent, especially Quaid's and Ryan's performances. [05 Nov 1993, p.I]

The Human Stain has those qualities we often want but rarely see in our films: intelligence and ambition, decency and humanity, poetry and pity, fire and ice. Watch it and weep.

It’s a story idea that seems dubious at first, but manages to flesh out wondrously--mostly because scenarist Ron Shelton has such a wickedly tight grip on the absurdities and dynamics of small American cities.

Beside its major virtues, it contains a vice: that one flat lead performance. Who would have thought Kevin Spacey would ever go dull on us?

At once proudly conservative, passionately idealistic and beautifully assured.

Hannibal, riding the malicious wit of Hopkins' sophisticated fiend, is a gorgeous, wild, sometimes sick thriller, a feast for enraptured eyes and strong stomachs.

A real gem: a deadpan fantasy that turns into one of the best pictures ever about the post-"Star Wars" studio moviemaking era.

Completely successful or not, films like Saudade do Futuro are needed. And we need people like the Nordestinos.

A jaundiced look at the CIA, bolstered by a terrific cast. [14 Sep 1986, p.6]

The results aren't gothic and bloody, as they were in the Lauren Bacall film "The Fan," or elegant and ironic as in the Bette Davis classic "All About Eve"--though the plot suggests a bit of both.

It's a movie that starts off nicely, offers two marvelous performances (by James Coburn and Mick Jagger) and then slowly, unaccountably loses itself.

It's a corker of a story - a polished yarn full of desire, desperation and despair.

A romantic comedy/social satire that, on a modest budget, manages to be hip, charming, funny and dressed to kill.

The film, like its lovers, is fond, giddy and poetic about love and death.

As is often the case in Loach's films, all the acting is exemplary. Padilla, who learned English only shortly before making the film, is a natural actress, a smoldering presence.

For any of you who've ever daydreamed of playing hoops with Jordan, Michael Jordan to the Max is almost certainly the closest you'll ever get.

The movie is a delight in many ways: an unabashed romantic comedy and Capraesque fable that takes Spielberg into realms he's rarely traveled before.

The movie looks like far more than a million dollars and it offers the kind of smart, picaresque good time you get from books like "The Reivers" and "Huckleberry Finn" and movies like "Bronco Billy" and "Bonnie and Clyde."

More spirit and grace and less blood and guts may be what Passion needs.

Hallstrom gives us a genial interpretation and a supremely good-humored film.

Dark as it is, the humor makes it work, especially Greene's typically witty and compassionate portrayal of Mogie.

Avoid it if you object to seeing people devoured by wolves, but see it if you want to howl at the moon.

Weighed down by the presence of Griffith. She plays her satiric part without much gusto or conviction - as if she were afraid we might believe she really is Honey.

Chirpy, bland, slightly maudlin Christmas musical comedy. [21 Dec 2001, p.C5]

The film mixes unashamed kitsch, thrilling airfight scenes and dark historical drama. But what gives it a special charge is its portrait of the Czech RAF group: what happened to them before, during and after the war.

The movie isn't quite spry, warm or hip enough to carry out its very ambitious serio-comic agenda. Even for an ace like Levinson, Belfast is a long way from Baltimore.

It wins a few, loses a few. It makes us laugh, gets mileage out of the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man.” In the end, the actors save it, especially two of the actors: star Robert Downey Jr., who may have moved into the Robin Williams-Steve Martin-Whoopi Goldberg category, and supporting actor David Paymer, who never hits a false note.

Harsh Times, is almost a good, salty urban thriller.

The Belly of an Architect has flaws, smudges and intense pleasures. Something like a clockwork orange, it’s an art machine that spurts juice and acid.

Tries for both civilized wit and primitive joy -- and mostly misses both.

Waterworld is often entertaining because it's screwy. Could even Ed Wood Jr. have come up with those cigarette-puffing villains, in a world with hardly enough dirt for a tobacco plant? [28 July 1995]

Violent and over-sexy as this movie may be, offensive as some may find it, it never loses its grinning good humor, its revisionist drive, its shoot-the-works spirit. It’s a killer entertainment--with an accent on “kill.”

Like all good popular entertainments, the best of it sings.

And, though the 1953 “Invaders” was an effective movie, it’s not really the classic that people remember. Except for Menzies’ superb production designs, everything in the remake is better: the acting, the camera work, definitely the Martians. It may not grip audiences in the same way, but that’s because Hooper is trying something harder, a conscious campiness that’s tough to bring off.

This is a picture in which the barf scenes standard in the usual crude youth comedies aren't gratuitous. They're logical climaxes.

Pseudo art can be fun, though, even if it doesn't quite awaken all your senses.

While it's done well enough here - written smartly, staged crisply and acted to the hilt - it doesn't last, except as a brief virtuoso piece for three players.

An epic unhinged, and while its best sections suggest a Loony Tune done by Sam Peckinpah and Emilio Fernandez, "Mexico" needs to be even crazier than it is.

Extreme Measures is a suspense picture that should excite thinking audiences as well as thrill-crazy ones. One possible exception: fans of Michael Palmer's novel, who may wonder why his plot and people disappeared. But after all, in movies as in medicine, extreme measures may be necessary.

It's only a mild disappointment. The talent is still there, the film better than most. It just needs less crime, more love.

Sweet-tempered, good-looking, goofy and not too sharp. The movie doesn't make much sense and neither does Danny, played by Welsh heartthrob Rhys Ifans.

Though the new "Sabrina" has been updated to include micro-chips and corporate raiders, French fashion shoots and the Concorde, it doesn't transcend its time the way the old screwball comedies did. It doesn't even illustrate its own time memorably. Instead, the movie leaves us peeking through the trees like Sabrina, while trying to tell us that old movie fairy tales like this one are eternal, as relevant in our day as in their own. It's doubtful the people who made "Sabrina" themselves really believe that -- though they'd obviously like to. [15 Dec 1995, p.C]

Clive Barker's Hellraiser is one of the more original and memorable horror movies of the year: a genuinely scary, but also nearly stomach-turning experience by a genre specialist who seemingly wallows in excess and loves pushing conventions to their ghastly limits. [18 Sep 1987, p.18]

Like the cerebral palsy-stricken Irish artist Christy Brown of "My Left Foot," Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning role, Ami is forced to fight such overwhelming odds to express himself that his very limitations become an aid to his vision.

It's got the smoothest, glossiest finish imaginable, but something inside it doesn't jell. [15 July 1988, p.26]

One of the more intelligent, better-made new movies around right now, but, despite everything, it doesn't really connect with the nerves and heart. It's a romance without anguish, although the pain of love is really what it's all about.

Starts out hilarious and then turns very, very grim.

Minimalism be damned; even a postmodern noir needs more than Minus Man gives us. So do the actors.

In a league with Hollywood's top historical epics, ancient or otherwise. It's stunningly handsome film, with an equally stunning cast and engrossing story.

Throw Momma is another Hitchcock pastiche or parody, but--taken from Stu Silver's coldly clever, verbally intricate script--it has more depth and humor than usual.

It suddenly morphs into one more overly slick, empty show.

If nothing else, The Cable Guy will make you think twice before trying to pick up a free movie channel. [14 June 1996, p.C]

In Black Rain, director Ridley Scott and his team pump in so much pyrotechnic razzle-dazzle that the movie becomes a triumph of matter over mind. It's a blast of pure sensation, shallow but scintillating, like a great rock melody, superbly produced, where the music pumps you up even as the lyrics drag you down.

There's just enough neurotic or sharp badinage and Rodeo Drive realism to make it all go down easy.

Though it's sweet and likable to a fault, it's also a movie that never seems heartfelt or deep.

A flawed film but an admirable one that tries to immerse us in a world of artistic abandon and political madness and very nearly succeeds.

This is a good movie, made by splendidly talented people-including Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn, co-writer Robert Towne, designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and composer Ennio Morricone-but it fumbles some gems, hearts and flowers on the way to the fadeout. [21 Oct 1994, p.C]

A flashy, splashy and violent chase thriller.

Does have heart and enthusiasm. But it might have worked better if it had been glitzed up and energized the way "Fame" was. It's not a script that can survive this kind of minimal, earnest, self-congratulatory treatment.

Light of Day is a sympathetic, intelligent movie, with one great performance, but it suffers from the malaise rock 'n' roll is supposed to cure: inhibitions, a lack of spontaneity. [06 Feb 1987, p.4]

Instead of becoming bewitched, we're caught up in one more gallery of cliches and storytelling blunders. The Glitches of Eastwick. [03 May 1996, p.C2]

I can't imagine a better actress for this part than Australian-born Cate Blanchett. Blanchett, who can be regal ("Elizabeth") or slutty ("The Shipping News"), manages to catch the feel of Guerin.

Ultimately, p.s. confirms Kidd's talent without expanding it or achieving the comic/dramatic heights of "Roger Dodger."

There's something a little absurd about this story, but for me, it's endearingly goofy.

This romantic-comedy action movie is a fizzle.

Jan Kounen, the maker of Darshan, is a French director with flashy credentials, including music videos, commercials, horror shorts, violent gangster movies ("Dobermann") and offbeat westerns ("Blueberry").

The kind of smart, realistic indie family drama the movies should give us more often, just as they should more often offer performances as full-blooded and rich as Aiello's and Curtin's here.

Sayles accomplishes another of his coups here. Eschewing all sentiment, avoiding all pathos, keeping his film and most of the women hard as nails, he manages to tell a compelling story.

If Flatliners is anything at all, it's watchable: aflame with Jan de Bont cinematography, deep-focus decor, an attractive cast. The movie's problem, like many others recently, is that it isn't any deeper, dramatically or psychologically, than its own trailer. It is the trailer: the long version.

there's no joy in this movie. It's a safe, compromised, even preachy, fable; a wannabe hip romp that never gets going. [07 Jul 1995]

The Gate, whatever minor triumphs it dredges up, is too hopelessly copycat. It's basically powdered Speilberg on Zwieback toast and Stephen King on a stick. [19 May 1987, p.3]

In Rocky V, the fifth and presumably last episode of Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa saga, the writer-star once again contrives a way to make his hulking, sad-eyed gladiator the underdog. And we get whiffs of funkiness and humanity stirring around for the first time since the original Rocky. [16 Nov 1990, p.1]

It's "knowingly" off-the-rails--and if you're in a tolerant or adventurous mood, very entertaining.

A bawdy comedy that convincingly celebrates the resilience of the urban poor and the power of friendship in the teeth of despair.

The movie is exciting, richly textured. But, despite its high quality, there’s something unformed about it, like a poem that doesn’t quite sing, a painting with a color missing...Even if Someone to Watch Over Me is flawed, it’s the kind of film that offers you many subsidiary pleasures.

A commendably brave piece, but less focused and powerful than you'd like. In the end, Garapedian might have been better off concentrating her energy on the 1915 Armenian story--which has been told on film various times (for example, in "Forty Days of Musa Dagh" and Atom Egoyan's "Ararat"), but never with the power of, say, "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List."

Erratically acted and, at times, clumsily written.

Thornton and his excellent company summon up for us the long rides, dangerous companions, rites of passage, the mad love and, most of all, the special relationship between the man/boys that rode over the border and the horses that carried them there.

If the real-life story is genuinely inspirational, the movie stirs us as well.

Sometimes thrilling, sometimes suffocatingly tasteful adaptation of Stephen King's 1999 novel.

Ozpetek brings a straight love story and world politics into the mix, but it's his brilliant cast which completes the connection.

A spellbinder: provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot and masterfully executed.

Good movie westerns these days may be too few and far between, but Ron Howard's The Missing is almost a great one.

May fall short of its great model, "Seven Samurai" (almost all action movies do), but it's miles ahead of most of the gadget-ridden adventure epics around now.

One of the most ingenious, amusing and oddly affectionate horror movies of the year -- a bloody bonbon that you chew with relish. [22 May 1987, p.6]

A movie that will act like a smack in the face to some audiences, while others may simply laugh in recognition.

Has its share of underthought or overwrought moments. The tone keeps shifting radically. It has some silly lines, plot lapses and goofball action scenes. But you can forgive the movie everything because of the sheer nasty pizazz of its central concept. [4 Nov 1988]

Surviving Picasso is an intelligent, beautifully crafted and engrossing Ismail Merchant-James Ivory biographical portrait of the century's most famous and successful painter. [4 Oct 1996]

Hackman, Jones, Heard, Cassidy, Pam Grier and Dennis Franz -- in another of his greaseball cop roles -- are always interesting to watch. And Davis still suggests he might evolve into an action specialist in the Don Siegel-Phil Karlson class -- if he chooses less apocalyptic scenarios.

A picture about America with the blinders off, a film about heroism that makes you chuckle and feel sad - and a film about childhood that lets us reenter that lost world and see the grass, sky and sunlight the way they once looked, in the golden hours.

In the new wave of kiddie animal movies -- "Babe," "Black Beauty," "Gordy," "Fluke," "Roan Inish" and all the rest -- Dunston Checks In is valuable only as a new standard of screenwriting ineptitude. Don't play it again, Sam, at least not with this bunch.

A movie likely to rally huge audiences who want to take another roller coaster ride. And though it may disappoint a few of them, it's also a film that gives you something to think and feel sad about. It smashes you -- gently.

While the movie is never dull, its romantic fodder doesn't do justice to any period at all.

A movie best suited for a lazy afternoon or a languorous night, particularly if you're a Francophile. Charming, glamorous, emotionally suggestive but slight, it's full of beautiful and colorful people.