Michael Wilmington

An unpretentious, rowdy, lecherous good show. [28 Nov 1999, p.35]

Boasts a really spectacular cast to voice those reasonably funny jokes.

Bravo!

This dingy, drab, pointless little movie -- a would-be shamrock shocker about four teen-agers menaced by the Irish super-scamp while renovating a North Dakota farmhouse -- is made without flair or imagination, seemingly enervated by its own bad taste and low intentions. [11 Jan 1993, p.F3]

The thrilling sequel-return of Mifune's hip samurai from Yojimbo. [01 Nov 2002, p.C9]

It's a movie of elegant surfaces, great background music (by both the Mahlers), gossipy underpinnings and pretensions to romantic grandeur.

One of the quintessential '60s foreign art films, a bizarre melange of pop music, revolution, sex, movie allusions and poetry. It's a masterpiece of sorts by one of the most important European filmmakers of that era. But it's also a movie that can drive you crazy.

Freeman gives his overwrought, over-familiar scenes an unlikely shot of intelligence and dignity that cuts through the formulas and almost makes them work.

Wonderful spirit, humanity and humor.

Fascinating documentary.

Keith -- a consistent hit-maker who wrote the controversial 9/11 song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" -- has a future in movies if he wants it. Hopefully, they'll be better ones than this.

I can't think of much that might happen on a date evening that could be more annoying than this movie.

Somber, meditative and visually magnificent, this film, about a famous Greek author ruminating on his past, is a piece of cinematic poetry: calm, beautiful and chilling as the eternal sea against which much of it is set. [22 Oct 1998, p.2]

Falls flat on its face.

Rivets and amazes, even if it falls just frustratingly short of the mind-expanding grandeur it could have had.

If you're looking for purple romance with a social conscience, it doesn't get much more purple than God's Sandbox.

It's still a disappointment: a well-mounted and well-acted suspense movie that, thanks to its illogical script, falls off a cliff midway through.

A singularly cheerless trip, explicit but sterile, racy but dull.

This Pink Panther really doesn't have to achieve the heights of the original; it just has to be funny on its own terms. But it pales there too. Kline, a master of comic hypocrisy, deserves more screen time, Emily Mortimer is wasted as Clouseau's adoring assistant Nicole and Knowles is over indulged as Xania.

The movie knocks your eyes out, at the same time it dulls the mind’s eye. Ultimately, it’s one more stop in the arcade, beckoning, waiting to soak up time and money.

It may be the most serene and optimistic film Rivette has made in France. Yet even the art-house audience may undervalue it, miss the beauty, style and wit.

What the movie doesn't have, besides too many laughs, is either the pungent style and sociology of true film noir, or the sheer yuppie desperation of the hard-core erotic thriller. Instead of being hard-boiled, it's over easy.

Pugach's selfishness, his inability to detach love from gratification, is the key to this crazy story.

A breakthrough for karate comedy king Chan, but not necessarily the kind we've all been waiting and hoping for. It's an ultra-digitized DreamWorks show crammed with elaborate special effects, the kind that physical-stunt specialist Chan has always avoided.

It's a cool breeze of a comedy, with a slant on things that's dark but compassionate. Watching Bottle Rocket doesn't just make you laugh. It makes you smile between the laughs, think beneath the smiles.

One of the great American social films: strong, ribald, deeply compassionate. [30 Sep 2005, p.C6]

A fit tribute to an entertainer who, no matter what hate or hardship threw in his way or how many mistakes he made, we can't stop loving.

In The Lion King, the savannas gleam and the meerkats swing. And when the animators click, their lions sing tonight. [24 June 1994, p.C]