Michael Wilmington

Proyas' movie lacks a truly rich or compelling story -- although the city secret is certainly a rich and compelling idea. All too often, Dark City seems a great production design in search of a movie, an ultimate modern film noir pastiche, in which the images are so strong they overpower the drama. [27 Feb 1998]

Pink Cadillac has a strong visual design and lots of juicy, self-confident acting. But it doesn’t transcend its star vehicle trappings or chemistry. The construction of the story is so soft, you get the impression that if the driver and navigator were replaced, the movie might turn rattletrap and fall apart.

In Nightbreed neither the coyly horrible killers nor the horribly coy monsters register strongly enough. It's a dark beast with a flabby hide.

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

This one features the heartbreaking young Vivien Leigh with her flower-like face, flashing eyes and seductive fragility; Robert Taylor is a little stiff as the hero. (isn't he always?), but it's a nice lush MGM production. [31 Oct 1999, p.34]

No movie car ride quite matches the horrific pursuit of salesman Dennis Weaver by that implacable smoke-belching truck in Spielberg's made-for-TV classic. [12 Apr 2002, p.C1]

At once proudly conservative, passionately idealistic and beautifully assured.

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]

The Neverending Story 2 is a story you may want desperately to end. Soon. [11 Feb 1991, p.F10]

It's a thriller that really thrills, a drama that really engages, a portrait of a world and system out of joint that is painfully convincing and totally engrossing from the first simmering minute to the last explosive second.

Often, Requiem for a Dream is as technically inventive and daring as the Scottish heroin film "Trainspotting," but it has more resonance and feeling. And when Burstyn is on screen, it often becomes heartbreaking.

By turns brilliant and simplistic, moving and preposterous, the movie takes one of the ultimate hot-button American issues -- the morality of capital punishment -- and dissolves it into a volatile mix of psychological thriller and socio-political fable.

This film--one of the best and most memorable documentaries of the year so far--brings that truth-teller to us once again.

One of the best and funniest things that Martin, as writer and actor, has ever done.

Despite the actors, the visuals and Forster's directorial swagger, the movie lacks impact.

This rich, gorgeous music and the wistful pastoral scenes create a rhapsodic mood that the rest of the film doesn't really sustain.

It is a movie about the gradual erosion of life's seeming certainties, and it's also about the destructive immorality that may lie beneath the most exquisitely composed veneer. As we watch "Chocolat," this great director and his great actress, Huppert, convince us: Evil is.

Once again, as love dies and illusions crumble, this natural actress (Isabelle Huppert) shines with human fire. [26 March 1999, Friday, p.B]

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]

It's a movie imbued with a fierce intimacy -- a tone and style similar to cinema verite documentary -- but it's not a banal realism, even if the characters and settings in contemporary working-class Liege initially seem mundane.

The wrong crowd will find these antics infantile and offensive. The right one will have a howling good time.

Kline, though, does give one of the great movie performances of the year so far.

Despite its good performances--Minns, Lumbly, Shelby and Best, as well as Plummer--South Central lacks a certain juice, heat and life. It doesn’t boil with the energy you’d expect from a gang picture, and it doesn’t have the density or rich atmosphere of a Boyz N the Hood, Do the Right Thing or New Jack City.

A feast of bad taste, a demonic hog-wallow.

A business-as-usual blockbuster blueprint that rarely surprises you.

A hip, funny, knowing romantic sports comedy that gets a little strained when it tries to expose its heart. [13 December 1996, Friday, p.A]

With its lilting Lerner-Loewe score and great Kelly dance numbers, this is almost a Hollywood musical masterpiece. But it's sabotaged by the airless "outdoor" studio sets mandated by MGM. [13 Mar 1998, p.L]

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]