Michael Wilmington

Days of Heaven is the grand climax of the whole "Bonnie and Clyde"-"Badlands" tradition of outlaw-lovers-on-the-run movies. Shot by Nestor Almendros and the uncredited Haskell Wexler, it's a cinematographic masterpiece. [20 March 1998]

A movie of such cheerful craziness and nonstop ferocity that you can't take it seriously for a second.

Thompson has always had an evil sense of humor, and the movie repeatedly crosses the line between dramatizing a situation and exploiting it, exposing racism or moral rot and almost indulging in it. But the disturbance you feel in watching Kinjite doesn’t just come because it has a sordid subject, some bad scenes or a heavy cargo of shock and sleaze, but because it leaves us, much of the time, with no moral anchor.

An adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's tale of the follies of adventure--beautifully directed and shot (by Oswald Morris) and perfectly cast. [11 July 2003, p.C5]

Playing a role of almost Bergmanesque intensity -- a tough, lonely woman dying of cancer as she examines her past -- Bisset is both convincing and radiant.

Exquisitely designed, lovingly executed, beautifully scored and played, every hair and note in place, it's a movie full of irony, passion and bluesy riffs.

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]

Most of all, it's a film for moviegoers who love powerful stories and ravishing imagery: timeless, eternal, the kind of tales handed from one generation and culture to the next -- and alive in all of them.

In the end, you can’t have much movie fun with freakiness if you aren’t willing to freak the movie out a little.

A movie I loved on first sight and, even more important, love in remembrance. Taken all in all, there's only one last thing to say about it. Go.

One of those movies that promises much but doesn't deliver. Despite a lot of misplaced talent, this movie is as silly and forced as its title.

Whatever its flaws, Funny Girl is one star vehicle that works perfectly for its subject.

Mantegna and Nussbaum are so good as the con artists that their reading of Mamet's dialogue--and often Crouse's reading as well--justifies the movie. These actors have worked many times on stage with Mamet, as have J. T. Walsh, and cardsharp Ricky Jay (as a Las Vegas gambler), and when they latch onto these lines, they're like seasoned pitchers palming and scuffing the ball. Oozing confidence, they, and Mamet, put on a coldly skillful, killingly well - calculated show.

A great, haunting film; it affects us in ways we're not used to...it is capable of both lifting our hearts and chilling us to the bone.

Just withers compared with many older, better movies about teen alienation and nihilism, from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "River's Edge."

Brando made Don Vito something we rarely see in movies: a tragicomic villain-hero, a vulnerable hood. The don is so close to a comic character -- the movie itself is so close to comedy -- that Brando's capacity to move us in the role is doubly impressive. At the end, it is the older Godfather's tenderness and sagacity we recall. [21 Mar 1997, Friday, p.A]

Solaris, an exploration of outer space and inner anguish, reminds us that science fiction can embrace adult ideas and human drama as well as technology and futuristic action.

It's the film for which Albright painted a series of progressively decaying portraits of Dorian, climaxing in a ghastly vision of venereal rot and putrescence. [27 Feb 1997, p.11B]

A perfectly balanced blend of romance in exotic settings (shipboard, in Italy) and the trauma-drama of accident and heartbreak. [08 Aug 1999, p.23]

If you liked El Topo, this is more of the same, with less violence. [02 Mar 2007, p.C5]

A film that can tear you apart emotionally; it's both one of the great movie soap operas and a powerful indictment of racism. Sirk's cool, elegant style--smooth as silk on top, jagged and hot with feeling below--has rarely been joined to a more perfect subject. [05 May 2006, p.C9]