Michael Wilmington

Gregg Toland's cinematography here makes you yearn for what he might have done on a Ford Western. [17 Oct 1996, p.11]

It's a depressing story made even more of a downer by the absence of any Stones-performed music from their prime '60s years.

Chris Farley is fine at physical gags, David Spade is snappy with wise cracks and Brian Dennehy is a good actor who has the best part in the movie-because he gets to die halfway through it. Tommy Boy, an attempt at populist comedy, has some laughs. But it doesn't really have any ideas, meaning or real feeling. This movie has a heart of plastic. It doesn't beat; it squeaks. [31 Mar 1995, p.C2]

Magnificently sensuous and macabre.

This is a movie that boggles the mind: a bad-taste comedy that makes the average effort by the Farrelly Brothers (mysteriously thanked in the credits) look like a Merchant-Ivory film.

It’s swift and mean--a little empty perhaps, but not enough to distract you from its pleasures: the stark, brilliantly metallic gleam cinematographer Misha Suslov puts on his images, the psycho-electric jabs of the Lalo Schifrin score, the clean thrust of the plot, the furiously lucid action and the canny, almost stylized, minimalist performances of the actors (Jones, Hamilton, Vaughn, Richard Jaeckel, Keenan Wynn, Ving, Smith and the others). The movie may be shallow, but it’s also trim. It has that easy virtue of the old-line Hollywood B film: little visible excess fat.

Throw Momma is another Hitchcock pastiche or parody, but--taken from Stu Silver's coldly clever, verbally intricate script--it has more depth and humor than usual.

Quiz Show becomes not just a nostalgic tale of a Camelot warrior and two Faustian eggheads, or a flashy social message drama like the "Golden Age" TV plays of that same era, but a scary precursor of our own time, when the power of TV-and its influence over national and personal life-has grown. [16 Sept 1994, p.C]

This cast could hardly be bettered and it's a great story as well: a taut, engrossing, highly perceptive scan of the fears, desires, repressions and ugliness boiling under the deceptively quiet surface of pre-war years. Our movies rarely get an American story this rich, evocative and true, and rarely realize it as well. If "Eternity" has dated at all, it's only in a good way; we can only wish our own movies were half as good or reflected American reality half as well. [5 Dec 2003, p.C8]

If one judged movies purely on the basis of photography and sets, Restoration would deserve a place near the top. [26 Jan 1996, p.C]

They’ve made a sometimes funny, mostly media-referential movie without much real life; a high-tech, high-pro job that has a glamor-robot feel.

It's only a mild disappointment. The talent is still there, the film better than most. It just needs less crime, more love.

The subject of Iraq haunts and divides us so much these days that a film like Laura Poitras' documentary My Country My Country is valuable, no matter its level of achievement.

Sometimes thrilling, sometimes suffocatingly tasteful adaptation of Stephen King's 1999 novel.

A staggeringly bad picture: a shallow, cliche-ridden mess that keeps blowing up on screen.

It wins a few, loses a few. It makes us laugh, gets mileage out of the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man.” In the end, the actors save it, especially two of the actors: star Robert Downey Jr., who may have moved into the Robin Williams-Steve Martin-Whoopi Goldberg category, and supporting actor David Paymer, who never hits a false note.

It's a work for specialized tastes: for audiences who adore old movies, dark jokes and some high camp.

Salles' movie isn't fiery or didactic. It doesn't rage or storm. Salles romanticizes the youthful Ernesto.

Muppets from Space has silly gags and cute cosmic fish swimming around in its space. It just doesn't have the right awe and wonder -- except, perhaps, for the children who should be its prime audience. Adults, beware -- at least this time.

Why should we keep seeing Austen fresh, through our own, modern eyes? Because she's a writer who has never really left our field of vision. And, as this new Mansfield Park proves again, she never will.

A very fine and strongly acted, if somewhat stagebound, adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's great, moving African-American family drama. [06 Apr 2007, p.C8]

We don't make those kind of Lubitsch-Wilder-Capra movies anymore, because it's hard to kid about what goes on behind bedroom walls when the bedroom doors have long since been flung open. So Ephron invents strategies to keep us, teased, outside the boudoir. [25 Jun 1993 Pg.F1]

It's a movie that starts off nicely, offers two marvelous performances (by James Coburn and Mick Jagger) and then slowly, unaccountably loses itself.

In French Kiss--a picture that isn't unusually funny or original but that has expert actors, smooth direction and ravishing French locales--we can get pleasure from the sheer, relaxed polish of it all, the effortless swing. It's a good time passer. [5 May 1995, p.C]

The movie tries hard to duplicate the original's mood and story, but, like Gere or Lopez, is too much of a visual knockout to rope us in.

Capable of enthralling.

Minimalism be damned; even a postmodern noir needs more than Minus Man gives us. So do the actors.

This is the Paris -- and the mad, beautiful young Parisienne -- we look for in dreams.

The Shadow shows what can happen when you overdress pulp. You wind up with something gorgeous and suffocated, bejeweled trash floundering in its own oversplendid stuffings. [01 Jul 1994, p.H]

Disturbingly lightweight and emotionally risk-free.

A colorful version of Bram Stoker's deathless tale of the bloodsucking count has Christopher Lee as a suave Dracula and Peter Cushing as his nemesis Von Helsing. [02 Oct 1998, p.J]

It has a jokey irreverence that keeps it from teetering over the edge to absurdity.

It's crazy, dangerous and sometimes gorgeous: a feast of nuttiness that takes you, for a while, over the edge.

A combination of toughness and sentimentality with John Wayne. [21 May 2000, p.38C]

This is a picture that may sound sappy but probably will enrapture audiences lucky enough to catch it. [19 May 1995, p.L]

It's a movie that puts Samuel Jackson in kilts, Robert Carlyle in a red Jaguar, and the audience -- if they have any sense at all -- out in the lobby, looking for another picture.

This genuinely ambitious and accomplished Chicago production does have strong points, not the least of which is Lana herself. When the fiery, emotionally transparent Orlenko lets her talent and presence pour down on Lana's Rain, the movie springs to life.

The Baby-sitters Club movie, written by Dalene Young and directed by Melanie Mayron, winds up seeming just as packaged and programmed as many of its summer competitors. The books, however obvious, don't talk down to their youthful readers. But the movie does. [18 Aug 1995, p.F]

Poltergeist III is another sequel that seems to exist for no better reason than justifying its title and number.

How can Reiner, who has been terrific in the past with both comedy ("This is Spinal Tap," "When Harry Met Sally") and children ("Stand By Me"), come up with something like "North," a movie that may set some kind of record for unfunny humor, forced satire and unappealing kids? [22 Jul 1994, p.C2]

Accomplishes something I would have thought impossible. It made me appreciate its 1994 predecessor, "The Flintstones."

It's perhaps only because it can't be seen in its full glory on television that "Lawrence" isn't ranked more highly on some recent all-time "best film" lists. But it belongs near the very top. It's an astonishing, unrepeatable epic.

Jolie and Banderas are two hot actors, in many senses of the word, and their scenes together have a lewd excitement.

The whole film, in fact, seems too fast for its own good. It plays like a synopsis, jumping from scene to scene, grief to grief, and it doesn't let us relax into the various worlds it's creating.

It would take the dark wit of a Billy Wilder or a Coen brother--or at least a Neil Simon--to put across this kind of material.

Shadow is the acme of Hitchcock's special principal of dramatic counterpoint. The surface is sunny and buoyant; dark, deadly currents flow underneath. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

A film which should gratify any audience starved for intelligent dialogue, realistic portrayals of romance and lovely, non-cliched open-air photography.

The movie -- directed in such a frenziedly self-conscious style you often wonder whether the camera will topple over on his actors.

A promising film rather than a fully realized one.

King and Romero are a natural match, and though this isn't the best of the King-derived horror movies--The Shining and The Dead Zone probably are--it's close.

In most ways, a sequel-as-usual: a little warmer, with slightly less zip and flurry.

A '60s landmark. [31 Oct 2003, p.C6]

They've jacked this loud, lame shrieker of a movie up to the highest decibels, both aural and visual, and rammed it in our faces with almost numbing aplomb.

An adventure movie of extraordinary simplicity and power.

Best of all though, we get to experience the whole fest itself, over four turbulent decades-an era from which Glastonbury, like Woodstock in its day, offers a halcyon "timeout."

Likable but relentlessly trivial.

In this film, Shaw come alive for you in ways that go beyond his physical presence (still handsome, a balding, bearded 74), or the sound of his clarinet (its impeccable sheen and limpid line).

Ozpetek brings a straight love story and world politics into the mix, but it's his brilliant cast which completes the connection.

As a ride, this Tarzan succeeds. As a pop myth, it needs more jungle fever. [18 June 1999, Friday, p.A]

The phrase "by the numbers" was invented for the way Harper crafts this script. After coming up with a good notion, opening and close, he simply fills up the middle innings with the detritus of several decades of TV sitcoms and high-concept kid movies. [07 Jul 1993, p.F1]

Always watchable and cinematically lively, but it never quite engages the emotions -- despite torrents of sentimentality and would-be heart-tugging scenes interspersed with the carnage.

More spirit and grace and less blood and guts may be what Passion needs.

A pretty good film, acted powerfully .

So-so. [23 Jan 1997, p.9B]

Though the role might seem a real stretch for an actor who just won an Oscar for his Charlton Heston turn as Maximus in "Gladiator," he and the movie ace the test.

It's "knowingly" off-the-rails--and if you're in a tolerant or adventurous mood, very entertaining.

This romantic-comedy action movie is a fizzle.

Like many Hollywood classics, Oz benefited from happy accidents: Happiest of all was the casting, as Dorothy, of MGM teenage songbird Garland, whose wide-eyed emoting and passionate singing make the movie. Behind her is a near-perfect supporting cast. [18 Jun 1999, p.I]

A delightful concert documentary that proves once more what a neglected masterpiece the Coen Brothers gave us last year in their Depression chain-gang odyssey, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Just Cause might better have been called "Without a Cause." Or "Without a Clue." [17 Feb 1995, p.C2]

A spellbinder: provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot and masterfully executed.

There's a lot of beauty and excitement in Legends of the Fall - not least from the actors. [13 Jan 1995]

It's tantalizing, delectable and randy, a movie of melting eroticism and toothsome humor.

The movie may lack a lot of things, but it doesn't lack comic timing--or, in its own way, a nose for the news.

Visually, even compared to Sayles' own best work, it's somewhat prosaic - and dramatically, it suffers from the fact that its two main characters are kept so far apart. But the screenwriting and the cast redeem this film.

It's one of Hitchcock's most inventive works, a great favorite of French director Jean Renoir. [24 Sep 1995, p.71]

For about half its length, Ravenous is a fairly effective scare picture, with a laugh or two. Then it just goes sour and pretentious. [19 March 1999, Friday, p.D]

Movies made from serious novels are often ridiculed as unworthy of their sources, but this one may be too worthy -- too reverent, too showy, too earnest.

The political movie satire from hell.

For all its glitz and gadgets, is markedly inferior in everything but teen appeal.

This is a terrific movie: jolting, savage, horrifically funny, nightmarishly exciting but also brainy and compassionate.

Likable as it is, suffers from that modern big-movie vice: overkill.

He (Puri) is one of the most consistently excellent film actors that his country - or the world - has produced. And East is East, a grand cultural hybrid, is a real movie, too - raw, funny and wonderfully mixed up.