Michael Wilmington

Sluggish and preposterous, full of violence and cliches.

The movie suffers from a devastating flaw for a comedy: It isn't very funny.

Hoop Dreams has the movie equivalent of all-court vision. It picks up everything happening in the gym, in the stands and even outside. It gives us the thrill of the game, but it doesn't cheat on either the vibrant social context or the deep human story.

As solid as the earth, rich as a good meal and sometimes funny as hell.

A contemporary Russian movie that you could honestly call revolutionary, more for its style than its politics.

As a transcription of Bogosian's theater piece, Talk Radio is tense, packed and crackling with life. As a dramatic investigation into Alan Berg and his murder, it's shallow and dubious. But as a synthesis of those two disjointed halves into a volatile whole--a comic-paranoid nightmare about media success, media myths, prejudice and the pathological relationship between performers and their audience--the film is an often dazzling success. Bogosian and the cast are bravura performers; Stone a director with guts and talent.

The splendid new documentary Crumb, a sympathetic yet woundingly candid portrait, catches the artist with much the same skill. [26 May 1995]

A splashingly pleasant little surprise.

Splendid, soaringly ambitious Chinese period fantasy.

A movie with surprises, some of which you should discover for yourself. But its main surprises may be the power of Collette's performance and the beautifully controlled mood and atmosphere Brooks creates.

Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 romantic comedy by writer-director Billy Wilder that fondly re-created the atmosphere--the brio, wit, star personality and sardonic joie de vivre--of the great Hollywood-continental comic romances of the 1930s. And there's an obvious reason: It's a tribute from one movie comic master to the man who taught him how to do it. [15 Oct 1997, p.1]

A Selznick-produced Hitchcock: a courtroom melodrama of murder and romantic degradation for which Hitch wanted Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo and Robert Newton, but had to settle for Gregory Peck, Alida Valli and Louis Jourdan. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

There's a razzly-dazzly beauty in Barbara Ling's designs and Kanievska and cameraman Ed Lachman shoot them wittily. But it's swallowed up in the story's empty outrage.

The beauties of Shower lie in its human observation, in its funny interplay, candor, lusty acting and hearty simplicity - and also in its warm imagery and the fascinating symbolic use it makes of water.

It suddenly morphs into one more overly slick, empty show.

It's a gross parody of its original. And since the original was a gross parody to begin with, the whole thing begins to seem gaseous, overbright, hideously inflated, as if all the bodily function jokes were about to belch it right off the screen.

It's hard to watch and listen to Together without, in some sense, having your heart lifted by its music.

The Wizard is bright, fast and energetic, but there’s not much real life to it. It’s another movie that’s disappeared into its own marketing hook: Three kids on the road, living and loving, racing toward personal redemption and video ascension.

Movies today rarely touch chords that are spiritual or deeply emotional, but Nathaniel Kahn's remarkable documentary My Architect: A Son's Journey does both.

The movie can still make temperatures rise -- though for musical rather than political reasons.

One of the most beautiful and profound films to emerge from Japan during the past decade.

What isn't scary--or exciting, amusing or fun--is XXX: State of the Union, a movie so preposterous, cliché-packed and over the top that it makes the original "XXX" seem as good as the original "State of the Union."

In the end, it's a heartening, rewarding experience to watch this journey--and, especially, its end.

In The Weather Man, Nicolas Cage, a great oddball movie star who sometimes takes enormous risks, has a good, risky part again.

Shines whenever we see the performances of Phoenix and Caan.

An odd little ghoul too cleaned up to survive, a bloodless vampire movie that's mostly lifeless as well.

Somehow The Boy in Blue, amiable enough, always feels like an "afternoon" movie -- a throwaway, not good enough to plan an evening around. [03 May 1986, p.9]

Trashy and glorious, the restored Metropolis is a pop epic for the ages.