Michael Wilmington

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.

A great movie on a powerful, essential subject -- the Holocaust years in Poland -- directed with such artistry and skill that, as we watch, the barriers of the screen seem to melt away.

Elaborately mounted, expensively produced and filmed with style and empathy, it's an adaptation of Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning book that manages to expand the original vision, yet preserve much of its intense emotion.

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

This is the same dopey save-the-princess-and-kill-everybody revenge plot we always get. The Return of Swamp Thing is enough to drive you back to the comic book stand. Or even the swamp.

The strength of “Harry” lies almost entirely in its unusual humanity, the depth of its social observations and its determination to draw everything--even the comic exaggerations--from life.

An extraordinary work, grandly conceived, brilliantly executed and wildly entertaining. It's a hobbit's dream, a wizard's delight. And, of course, it's only the beginning.

Strange and unsettling as it is, Noe's clarity of vision makes his film ignite. Like a slammed door or a scream of anger, it slaps you awake.

Sometimes cinema's highest achievements become clear only in retrospect. Days of Being Wild--now clearly revealed as one of the peaks of Hong Kong filmmaking and a masterwork of contemporary cinema giant Wong.

So intense and warm are Leigh's feelings for his characters, that we may remember Hannah and Annie long afterward as old friends -- imperfect yet lovable, pals with whom we've suffered and laughed a lot.

Like the moving 1999 American "A Walk on the Moon," with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, Hard Goodbyes juxtaposes a family crisis with the excitement of the period before and during Neil Armstrong's 1969 moonwalk.

Kaufman's startling Quills gives us an anatomy of fear, images both silken swift and molten hot, scenes that disrupt and inflame the imagination.

Showing us a world through a child's eyes, A Time for Drunken Horses speaks so truthfully and well that it breaks the heart and scars the conscience.

Starter for 10 is cute and smart, just like its star triangle, and it's also well-written, acted and directed.

Admirers of Rambo III will probably point out that it moves fast. But then, so does a gazelle-and a gazelle has better dialogue and more personality. [25 May 1988, p.1]

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.

A boisterous, brilliant, heart-warming comedy--strikes me as just about perfect.

Hitchcock's most disturbing film. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

From the very first images of Saul Bass' credit sequence, the whorls and patterns revolving in darkness, the huge eye bathed in red, the movie lets us feel the heartbeat and divided soul of its hero. And its creator. It is a movie about desire, darkness and the pull toward destruction. Most of all, it is about impossible love and overwhelming fear--conveyed with consummate control and art. Watching it, we feel the fear, suffer the desire. [Restored version; 18 Oct 1996, p.1]

Shot with a Peter Greenaway-like austere impudence and edited brilliantly (by Jed Parker), this is an entertaining movie, and a moving one--even if, like me, you're not especially fond of these paintings or that scene.

The best thing about star and co-writer David Spade's Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star is the end-title sequence, a big, sassy sing-along in which dozens of old TV child stars spew out defiant jokes about their old careers and fame's fickle fingers.

Astonishing, crazily delightful.

This is a Wenders masterwork--a chilling tale of painting, crime and forgery. [19 Jan 2007, p.C5]

This cautionary thriller about an unjustly imprisoned airline mechanic has a chance to be a canny blend of gutsy melodrama and J'Accuse against the prison system. But, by the end, it has gone as slick and corrupt as the crafty old con (F. Murray Abraham) who advises Tom Selleck's framed Jimmie Rainwood on jail survival. On a fundamental moral level, An Innocent Man is guilty as hell.

A deceptively simple French film about teaching that keeps enlarging as you watch it, becoming beautiful and inspiring in a way most films never touch.

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]

Sad excuse for a movie. [4 Aug 1986, p.C6]

Unfortunately, the humans only have scripts to support them. So for every bear triumph, Country Bears also features cliched jokes, corny sentiment, ludicrous shtick and the most flabbergasting set of star cameos since Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson wandered into "Men in Black II."

At its best, "Hollywood" has the breezy irreverence and easy, sunny L.A. atmosphere of Shelton's 1992 "White Men Can't Jump," a buddy-buddy basketball-hustle movie.

It's a movie that literally makes your mouth water. A smart, sprightly, lip-smacking comedy about a Taipei master chef who's lost his sense of taste and his tangled family problems with three romantically troubled daughters. It crackles with iridescent style and wit.

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

It would be a lie to suggest that there aren't some crudely effective moments in Ghost and the Darkness. After all, this is a movie where two man-eating lions pop up every 10 minutes or so, growl and drag off another fresh corpse or two. But crude effectiveness is all the movie has to offer -- and even that is a mark it doesn't always hit.

It's such a knowledgeable work and so pleasantly obsessed with its subject that it will interest even audiences whose attraction to wine is only casual.

It's worth seeing simply to make the acquaintance of Tobias, a really extraordinary old guy.

It's fun, but not obvious fun.

The kind of brilliantly weirdo picture that, by all rights, shouldn't have gotten made at all but this time, miraculously, was.

After "Ninotchka," this is the best Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script filmed by somebody else: a terrific romantic swindle comedy set in Paris, starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and John Barrymore. [26 Sep 2003, p.C5]

Bening shines, and the film shines too.

It's an intellectual family film for literate parents and children, immensely pleasing if not perfect, perhaps a smidgen too brightly evasive and determinedly charming.

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

Like Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," it is an all-star fresco, but the stars--none of whom carries the movie--get to play the kind of morally ambivalent, sometimes unlikable parts that big-name actors usually avoid.

It's like a class reunion in purgatory. All the familiar faces are there, but the air is sulfurous and murky, and hell is just an elevator ride away. [10 Dec 1993, p.A2]

Slick but forgettable. [01 Oct 1993, p.C]

Watching Le Cercle Rouge, we're caught up in a world that, however improbable some of its twists and turns seem, strikes us as a perfect, imaginative creation.

A love-hate poem to L.A., and when Mann takes in the streets, the freeways and LAX, he doesn't give us shiny "Lethal Weapon"-style travelogues. He shows us an L.A. that's grim, bare, a bit smoggy and ruled by street smarts. [15 Dec 1995]

Madhouse grabs you by the lapels and tries to shake the laughs out of you. But it’s never very funny, despite the best efforts of that facile TV farceur Larroquette and the sexiest contortions of Kirstie Alley.

Sumptuous and beautiful, suffused with a serene melancholy and deeply ambivalent love for a long-vanished past, Luchino Visconti's 1963 The Leopard is one of the greatest of all historical costume epics.

A paper-thin wish-fulfillment comedy about escaping small-town repressions and blasting conformity.

It's a sordid but expert shocker.

Simply calling Surf Nazis Must Die a bad movie doesn't do it justice. This is a horror-action movie with dull action and horror, feebly done on every level: leaden satire, a repulsive romance, a revenge saga of zero intensity. The actors are often upstaged by the beach graffiti.

Wedding Date is neither good art, good entertainment nor even good trash.

The cast is tremendous; these actors work with Resnais like a well-oiled stock company that knows every trick and can communicate almost telepathically.

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.

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.

Another Universal classic, based on H.G. Wells' tale of an invisible madman. [13 Aug 2007, p.C6]

One of the classic midnight movies of the Pink Flamingos -- Rocky Horror era, star-director Jodorowsky's metaphysical western about a violent wanderer plays like an especially gun-crazy Sergio Leone saga filtered through several layers of radical European/Latin American cinema and Christian and Buddhist mysticism. Zero cool in its day, it remains a striking film oddity. [16 Feb 2007, p.C4]

Both sides of the story -- the larger context and the intense and intimate drama -- are painted with an absolutely unswerving sense of truth. And, as we watch this movie, full of violence, injustice and compassion, there is barely a moment that seems calculated or contrived.

A flashy-looking low-budget indie about drugs, love and crime in small-town Iowa. But, speaking as an ex-small-town Midwesterner, I found it hard to buy.

Its social impact is part of what makes this movie memorable. But as with almost any exceptional, truthful war picture, Days of Glory moves us because we know the soldiers -- because we share their fear, triumph and pain.

Considering how good "Puccini's" middle often is, it's a shame it falls down fore and aft. But Maggenti, who loves Carole Lombard and William Powell in "My Man Godfrey," is tapping a likable vein here. She should open it up again.

For anyone who wants to see pure cinema, it should be an experience both wrenching and inspiring. [22 Jan 1999, p.H]

Jingle All the Way has been well shot and imaginatively designed. But somehow that makes it worse. So does the fact that all the actors, Schwarzenegger included, are skilled enough to make you watch them. [22 Nov 1996, p.C]

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]

A good, solid, admirable, deeply felt movie.

There's only one proper Hollywood ending to this story. Next year, Charlie and the surreal "Donald" Kaufman (listed as co-writers in the playful credits) should win twin Oscars for best adapted screenplay. They've earned it -- really.

Good as much of John Schlesinger’s The Believers is--and it’s one of the better-produced, more exciting and intelligent thrillers of the year--it’s hard to keep from wondering, as you watch, why he wanted to do it in the first place.

Fred meets Ginger in this goofy South American romance; they were secondary leads who stole the show. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

Bewilderingly bad.

Fast, funny, big-hearted.

It's hard to remember when actors have stepped into such a no-win situation and mustered up such panache: Turturro may be on a sinking ship, but he manages to drown brilliantly.

Doesn't really add up to much -- except a good time. But it's smart, funny and cute. With all that going for you, who needs to be money? [25 October 1996, Friday, p.H]

Some movies should never have been made, and high on that list is the addled new remake of Rollerball.

A movie for people with time to waste, Sniper is about as compelling as a Soldier of Fortune magazine cover set to music.

As he was dying, Tarkovsky fashioned this great valedictory about a family in the first stages of nuclear apocalypse and a father's ultimate sacrifice. [31 Jan 2003, p.C4]

Like too many movies these days, takes a clever little idea and all but pounds it into the ground.

A near-masterpiece, it is one of the most effective and convincing studies of a criminal ever put on screen. [22 Jan 1999, p.A]

A highly exciting, visually alive thriller.

A modern digitized lollapalooza concocted out of old-fashioned slam-bang space opera elements.

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

Masterpiece is the right word for The Sweet Hereafter. It is extraordinary: a poem of familial pain, a song of broken embraces. [25 December 1997, Tempo, p.1]

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.

About the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it treats war as a cosmic joke and its participants as hapless but recognizably human clowns.

Imagine Steven Spielberg gone existentialist, Carne and Prevert making rock videos, a punk "Diva" and Jean Cocteau crossed with the Clash, and you may get an idea of the peculiar charms awaiting you in the cavernous, fluorescent interiors of Subway. [Nov 16, 1985, p.16]

Ward's "Map" is a wildly ambitious film and, often, a wildly beautiful one--and if it isn't quite a masterpiece, if we sense that Ward's resources aren't enough for the World War II London scenes, in the end, any flaws or lapses simply may not matter. Movies, especially ones with a broad epic canvas and international logistics, don't often get this intimate. They don't give you such a sense of nerves stripped raw, joy or misery nakedly expressed.

The movie, beautifully written, photographed and acted, remains Bergman's most characteristic work, alternating between terror and charm, sentiment and humor. It has one of the loveliest last scenes in any Bergman film. [10 Dec 2004, p.C5]

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.

An almost mystifyingly bad movie.

One of the great screwball comedies. [23 Jan 1998, p.N]

A daring, entertaining, but somewhat disappointing affair, something of an overreacher despite Lee's usual pyrotechnics and a brilliant cast.

The film has many strengths, but one of its major assets is its solid sight line. Though we might expect it to go sentimental - with its cute cat, torn families and sympathetic, pretty protagonists - it doesn't.

The movie takes paranoia to a far edge. And some audiences will admire it simply because it doesn't waste time on the normality it's going to end up subverting-because it's more fixated on its pods than its people. [25 Feb 1994, p.C]

It's fairly safe to predict that Silent Night, Deadly Night will start making "Worst Movies of All Time" lists almost immediately. It has all the prerequisites. A roaringly bad idea. Derivative scriptwriting. Tastelessness. Naked opportunism. A cast full of actors who mug, gesticulate and savor every rotten line. A general "we're only in this for the money" attitude, visible in every sloppy frame. And, to top it off, that most crucial quality: enough conscious or unconscious humor to keep you watching, and insulting, it. [11 March 1986, p.C5]

West Side Story has a nonpareil set of songs and dances, with ecstatic, exuberant, wonderful music by Leonard Bernstein and witty or heart-tearing lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. [Sing-a-long]

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.

Fast and frenetic and so unvarnished that it can make you feel unclean watching it. The film rubs your face in glamour and filth. But in the midst of the blood and hysteria, Kilmer plays Holmes with the dirty-angelic looks and wheedling charm of a seedy golden boy on the brink of doom.

Most movingly, Monsieur Ibrahim takes a provocative subject -- friendship and love between a Jew and a Muslim -- and makes it seem natural and wondrous.

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.

There's a moral to the new teen movie Can't Buy Me Love: Money can't buy popularity. But it seems to have been lost on the movie makers themselves. What are they doing here but trying to spend their way to audience approval, success and glory? The plot is another one-sentence gimmick, the jokes juvenile, the morality a sham.