Michael Wilmington

Harris and Harden have real on-screen sympatico, in their nasty battles and good times alike.

Works beautifully, both as a social and psychological drama and as a taut, tightly wired thriller.

It’s one of those movies that seem fabricated for a shopping mall: decorative, pretty, vacuous.

The movie makers try to revive another day’s genre--the early ’70’s “road” pictures--in today’s terms. And it doesn’t work. The looser, more anarchic feelings they’re going after don’t jibe with the modern packaging, and they wind up with something slicked-up, streamlined and hollow--like “Blowing in the Wind” rearranged as elevator music.

The movie has a nasty, creepy edge that never lets up, and the characters are deliberately grating and alienating. This is a thriller that, like some classic noirs, glories in its own mean aura, its casual profanity and grotesque violence.

A rich, shining valentine to the British theater and the eternal joys of Shakespeare,

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]

Eddie Murphy's latest is a flabby disappointment. The jokes die, the action curdles. Much of it falls as flat as smashed tinsel.

A beautifully tooled action thriller about love and terrorism.

Once again, Ozu's script, co-written with constant colleague Kogo Noda, is a marvel of organic detail and deceptive naturalism. Ozu's late style -- the serene, easy flow, the smooth succession of floor-level interior shots, the quietly restrained acting, the mastery of intimate psychology and the subtle portrayal of Japanese society in transition -- are all in place. [24 Mar 1989, p.23]

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?

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.

Seemingly a simple comedy, it actually -- like all Allen's "simple" comedies -- has a lot to say. Will the audience listen or just dismiss it as minor, out-of-date Woody? If they do, it's their loss.

One of the cinema's imperishable visions of faith against injustice. [20 Feb 1997, p.9E]

Such a sour, mindlessly inflated experience that seeing it may temporarily put you off historical movies.

As we watch, we can sense, once again, the eye of a painter, the dreams of a poet and, tying them together, the vision of a master.

Sweeps us back into a terrifying and desperate string of events and makes us feel them - and, more crucially, understand them as well.

This landmark movie's madcap humor and terrifying suspense remain undiminished by time.

This new heist movie by the great thriller director John Frankenheimer flails around like its own dysfunctional gang of casino robbers.

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.

This is an intoxicatingly amusing blend of cynical urbane comedy, slick detection and breezy romance. [24 Jun 2005, p.C6]

One of the cinema's true classics.

It's a nail-biter and knuckle whitener of the first rank: a super real life techno thriller that reduces the fantasies of Tom Clancy and his clones to ground zero.

An overblown, overspectacular, oversold movie without an original idea in its head.

Code Unknown is a film you think more than feel. Though each scene is executed close to flawlessly, the cumulative effect is often oppressive. But at the center of the film -- the real reason it was made -- is Binoche, one of the genuinely radiant presences in movies today.

In the end, grips us precisely because its actors are so utterly absorbed in their roles, so unfettered and nakedly expressive. This is the kind of acting we always look for, but rarely see.

A fitfully funny retread of "48 Hours," "Fled" and dozens of others.

An exquisitely realized film; a little gem, it keeps its conflicting or varying themes of tranquility and violence, sacred and profane love, recklessness and wisdom, in almost perfect balance.

It's an ultra-slick, ultra-flat movie that cuts like a cellophane knife. No edge, no blood.

A short film with a unique subject matter. But you won't soon forget its people, its places or its sad, surprising revelations about all the sexes.

Maxwell Anderson's poetic-political play about crime and fascism, set in a "Petrified Forest"-style ensemble during a Key West hurricane, was turned by Huston and co-writer Richard Brooks into a crackling thriller. [27 Nov 1998, p.Q]

Despite some impressive technical achievements, it too looks like a movie with little reason for being.

It's a moving tale of love and destruction in unexpected places, unexamined lives.

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

The actors in Nadja seem to be having such a good time that it's a shame the movie doesn't give them more room, and get even wilder and more eccentric.

The film now seems less urbane and innovative, more coldly flashy and bluntly affected -- full of sound and Furie, signifying little. [2 June 1987, p.Cal-1]

El Dorado is essentially a darker remake of Rio Bravo, with Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Hunnicutt and James Caan as the now archetypal quartet. But, though the situation is the same, the mood is crisper, tenser, with a heightened sense of pain, loss and death underlying the humor and action.

Campbell and her character are willing to take chances. But Toback's tangled noirish plot, with Vera as a post-feminist femme fatale, isn't particularly clever or original.

It's a bizarre but engaging fling.

Totally original and personal, this is a vast modern comic/poetic epic, lyrical, austere and strange. Despite its failure, Playtime is now regarded by many critics as one of the century's film masterpieces. [09 Jan 1998, p.M]

Chungking Express is a breezy little Hong Kong movie that has more life, energy, humanity and sheer visual zing than most other shows you'll see in a month or so. And, an hour after watching it, you may indeed be hungry for more. Not necessarily because the show is shallow or unsatisfying, or doesn't leave a strong impression, but because the spontaneity and high energy of it is what's so much fun.

Casual moviegoers may enjoy it, too, if they follow a simple rule: Stop looking for the way out and let yourself get lost.

Carpenter writes his own scripts -- here with past collaborator Larry Sulkis -- and their "Ghosts" screenplay lacks the density, character and humor of a Hollywood genre classic.

It's a comedy about maniacs: a tasteful murder-comedy, which isn't that laudable a goal.

But even if Hitchcock’s chase thrillers were the inspiration, with their falsely accused heroes fleeing police through exotic landscapes, the master wouldn’t have approved of this tribute. Logic, character, coherence, psychology--all those vital thriller elements disappear as quickly as the Iowa corn.

Possession needs a sharp eye, a wicked tongue, less reverence and much more of its author's voice.

I liked Flirt better than any of Hartley's films since "Trust." The playfulness he shows here seems better integrated, more meaningful, than the strange narrative whimsies of 1992's "Simple Men" or 1994's "Amateur." [08 Nov 1996]

Slick, expensive and filled with good-looking actors flexing muscles, but once it grabs our attention it doesn't really reward it...this movie doesn't have fear -- or sheer wonder and marvel -- enough.

This is not an inspirational drama about finding yourself; it's a Hitchcockian comedy about adultery, murder and losing a corpse.

One of my favorite U.S. fiction features at 1999's Sundance Festival.

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.

Nenette and Boni, despite their plight, show us something small but vital about Marseilles, families, brothers, sisters, babies, pizza -- and even about the sensuous delights of kneading dough.

The movie is full of phallic gags about little-bitty guns and crude jokes at physical or emotional infirmities. [17 Nov 1989, p.6]

From A.I. Bezzerides' "The Long Haul," with George Raft and Bogie as tough trucking brothers and Ann Sheridan and Ida Lupino as the good woman and the bad.[06 Oct 2006, p.C8]

The things that make me love the movie are the mood, the hardboiled but good-hearted morality, Hawks' consummately professional eye-level style and those wonderful characters. [28 Jul 2006, p.C7]

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]

Mankiewicz's classic Hollywood backstage tale of a tragic sex goddess/superstar (Ava Gardner), her gloomy, intellectual director (Humphrey Bogart) and the retinue of glamorous and/or exploitive movie types around them. [05 Nov 2004, p.C6]

There's barely a scene in this movie that taps his (Murphy) special brilliance.

Kurosawa's 1958 classic samurai comedy adventure; George Lucas used it as the model for Star Wars, in which Mifune and the two squabbling farmers are transformed into Han Solo, C-3PO and R2-D2. [03 Mar 2006, p.C5]

Magnificent to look at, thrilling, ingenious, spellbinding and superbly done on every level, this is not just one of the best films of the year or the decade, but of all time.

It's a pleasant movie, not quite up to its reputation. [06 Aug 2000, p.23C]

The content may be dubious, but the execution is hypnotic.

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]

Overbroad, underdone.

Not perfect, and neither are life or the movies. But you'd have to be blind yourself not to relish its qualities or laugh at its barbs.

A mind-numbing, bloody, ridiculous experience.

May strike some audiences as even more real than Kiarostami's work, because the story is so luminously open. Watching it, we enter, without barriers, a world.

A powerful symbolic drama.

One of the year's finest documentaries, a remarkable example of the conjunction of a burningly topical and newsworthy subject with a brilliant filmmaker.

It’s a big, frothy, high-tech, cutesy-poo musical comedy.

Some scholars may scowl, some lowbrows may scoff. But, like wordwise Will, these filmmakers know how to win a crowd -- from the queen down to the groundlings, from the sky above to the stage below. Bravo! [5 December 1998, Friday, p.A]

It sneaks up on you and shakes you: a tale of the cold hell surging up beneath that windy, sensuous Wyeth landscape.

It's outrageously stereotypical and weirdly personal, so loonily exaggerated it keeps surprising you.

Despite the movie's ruinous cliches, Neeson puts some genuine anguish into his phonily written scenes as the '60s burnout. Bateman plays to him well, and Phillips, making her feature debut, has some funny moments in the flashy kook role.

A voluptuously shot horror movie, with Piper Laurie (as Carrie's fanatically religious mom) and some nasty teens played by Amy Irving, Nancy Allen and John Travolta.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter just keeps growing up. So do the Potter movies, in size, in ambition and in visual splendor - and with increasingly stunning results.

In many respects, Forgiving Dr. Mengele is an ordinary documentary, stylistically and technically unexceptional. But its subject enobles the work. So does Kor : determined, indomitable, and by the end of the movie, a symbol herself of both survival and mercy.

Weird attempt to turn Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories into a mini-Meet Me in St. Louis, co-starring Gordon MacRae and Leon Ames. [13 Apr 2007, p.C5]

Engrossing as it is, The Hunted is more a showcase for formidable talent than anything else. It's a brainy, exciting but shallow show -- an expert's action movie that almost runs out of breath.

Hardware isn’t long on ideas, emotions or character; it degenerates into a mindless slaughterhouse crescendo.

This is a romance with minimal physical contact and sex--and that's part of what makes it work so well as a love story.

The protracted scenes of eating, cooking and cleaning carry neo-realism to its end point -- and to a violent climax which emerges logically and terrifyingly from the welter of daily trivia preceding it. [24 Oct 1997, p.L]

People always complain that movies aren't as entertaining, entrancing or outrageous as the best of the old Golden Age. Yet, memorably and magically, here's one that is. Don't let it dance away unseen. [22 Jul 1994, p.C]

The new Israeli movie Ushpizin, a film about man's clumsiness and God's grace, is a touching and amusing tale that expands our horizon and also should open our hearts.

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.

If you're in the mood for something strange, this film may please you, twice over.

You have to have faith that kids will recognize a bad movie when it's foisted on them -- and they don't get much worse than The New Guy.

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.

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]

Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated.

Funny Farm --a weak-fish-out-of-water comedy about a New York City couple who see their rural paradise turned into a rustic hell--is a movie with a doubly deceptive title. This movie isn't about a farm, and it isn't very funny, either.

Just because it's true to life doesn't mean it can sing.

It suffers from stilted Vista Vision staging and a lack of gloss -- but has some sparkling Cole Porter musical numbers. [26 Sep 1999, p.26C]

Made after Visconti's second paralyzing stroke, in darkly splendid Roman interiors, this is a somber, meditative, confessional work about corruption and mortality, the ways the world and desire batter down even the most protected doors. [17 Oct 1994, p.5C]

The film is truly special, truly different -- a wondrous talky roundelay about and for people who love life.

The movie, like Smith, is breezy, fun and keeps comin' at ya. [22 Dec 2006, p.5]

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

The usual bad movie sometimes gives a few chuckles, amuses audiences by making them feel superior. But young director Leonard makes a different kind of bomb. Fascinated with technology, Leonard makes cutting-edge techno-turkeys, with wildly elaborate visuals and ridiculous plots. [4 Aug 1995, pg. I]