Michael Wilmington

For a film that points out so much wrong with German society and shows such dubious, dangerous behavior, it leaves the audience with high spirits and a sense of crazy exhilaration.

It's a real disappointment: too hasty, too scattered and superficial, and, in the end, disappointingly sappy and sentimental.

A film that art-house audiences in 1959 loved madly. And who can blame them? A buoyant, searingly colorful retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in Rio de Janiero, writer-director's Marcel Camus' movie is a romance heightened by its backdrop.

It's a candy-flavored blast of a movie. But though children may love it, they shouldn't monopolize it. Adults will want to eat this peach, or ride it to Manhattan, just as much.

The movie looks like far more than a million dollars and it offers the kind of smart, picaresque good time you get from books like "The Reivers" and "Huckleberry Finn" and movies like "Bronco Billy" and "Bonnie and Clyde."

The movie doesn't deserve any of the talent bestowed on it, from Reiner's amiable direction to the occasional grace notes in the performances of Hudson, Marceau and David Paymer.

A gargantuan epic, a historical adventure-drama of overwhelming visual grandeur.

One more movie comedy about how love can turn you into an idiot. And its major flaw, among many others, is that the idiocy takes over the movie.

It's a movie that robs the story of its politics and point and never really matches the charm of the '60s film.

Russian Dolls, like "L'Auberge," has an excellent cast (mostly the same one, in fact) and an impish style and speed that gives it more obvious audience appeal than the average French film.

Notoriety, they won. The revolution, they didn't. That perhaps is the secret message of the film. Dylan was right. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

The movie's humor is engaging but odd. The script is pretentious but sweet. And the symbolic use of the flying machine-which pulls you back to "Brewster McCloud"-doesn't work very well. But a flawed film like "Arizona Dream," with its wistfulness and pain, is still twice as interesting as most of the bloated, slick, empty successes that tend to get released here, films that look as if they were dreamed up by used-car salesmen in a desert. [6 Jan 1995, p.L]

Viveka Seldahl and Sven Wollter will touch you to the core in a film you will never forget -- that you should never forget.

Instead of coming to a high, flavorful boil, the whole thing quickly overcooks and begins evaporating into hot air.

This century's Planet of the Apes is a rouser, a screaming-banshee fun house.

These are real characters, fully observed, gutsily written, beautifully acted by the two leads.

This is a movie for all cultures and all people, for families and especially for those who have lost them.

Witchboard is smarter, and better acted, than much of its bloody competition. But it isn't crazy or original enough to stand too far above them. It's makers and its monsters alike deserve the same salutation: Better luck next time. [16 Mar 1987, p.8]

A classy supernatural lady-in-distress thriller.

It's a mixed bag; parts of it are awful. But it has, and needs, only one major defense: It's full of Grade-A rock 'n' roll, rousingly well performed. It moves, it swings, it jumps and vibrates. It's a musical. [05 Nov 1990, p.F10]

Has the kind of super-cinematic qualities and bravura acting that make up for almost anything.