Mick LaSalle

There's nothing about this thriller to prevent it from soon becoming enmeshed in the memory with others in which Michael Douglas wears a starched collar and grits his teeth.

I found the sensory bombardment of Tank Girl ultimately numbing and at times had to fight to stay awake. But let's be fair: This isn't a film for people over 25. Or over 20, for that matter. Tank Girl is for teenagers, who will find something exuberant in its anarchic spirit as well as in its barrages of image. Teenagers are also sure to appreciate, probably more than adults would, the film's off-color humor. [31 March 1995, p.C3]

Where Caine was like an arsonist in his relationships, Law's Alfie is more like a kid playing with matches -- innocent and genuinely surprised when things start blowing up around him. Law makes Alfie's befuddlement a surprisingly poignant thing to witness.

Jaw-droppingly awful.

Director Bernard Rose has created a committed, intelligent and fascinating piece of work with no irony about it.

The film is obvious, weak and scattered and seems more like a practical joke than a work of genuine passion. It is without exaggeration one of the most blindingly boring films I've seen in years.

At its best, Mermin -- who used an all-female crew -- conveys the sense of an entirely feminine world being created under the beauty school roof, and it's refreshing.

Ridley Scott gives it the grand treatment, 157 minutes worth, but in the end, it doesn't stack up as the portrait of an era (the 1970s, in this case) or an important tale of a criminal mastermind.

It's more interesting than it sounds. Besides the sheer spectacle, which is notable.

Christian McKay who, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles"gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of an historical figure, ever.

Somewhere along the line, someone seems to have thought this was ''Last Tango in Paris'' all over again. It ain't. [19 Aug 1994, p.C3]

It's entertainment, but mild entertainment.

The picture is more impressive as it goes along, revealing a symmetry of construction underneath the rudiments of a thriller.

Goes to all the places a sensitive character study might have gone, but more dramatically, convincingly and vividly.

Watching the film one comes away feeling the bond that links these guys.

A discordant comedy that gives bad taste a bad name.

It's so bleak that it would play like a contrived neo-noir if it weren't so consistent, committed and obviously sincere.

The movie gradually works its way, with quiet intelligence and apparent conviction, until there's no turning from it. An hour in, and we're on that boat.

There's a spark missing, and where it's missing is in Roberts' conscientious but all too reserved performance.

Unfortunately the movie is also a bit too long, and for long stretches it's about as entertaining as, well, a long stretch. Still, if this were one of those movie-review TV shows, I'd have to give Lion's Den a (tiny) thumb's up, for its aura of authenticity and for the ferocity of Gusman's commitment.

This is the legal movie that lawyers most often praise for its realism, in terms of not only story but also tone and atmosphere. It's full of great scenes. [08 Apr 2012, p.P19]

Takes viewers into a unique world. It's not just about air traffic controllers. It's about controllers in a specific place and from a specific social background.

It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.

All over this movie there are cliches that are just plain embarrassing, and unsettling moments in which it's obvious Kloves is writing about stuff he doesn't know a thing about. [13 Oct 1989, p.E1]

Some of the segments are more successful than others, yet all of them have the haunting quality of a completely insignificant event that someone might remember years later. Night on Earth tries to stop the clock and cast a net over the whole mystery, and while the film never loses its humor, the wistfulness, yearning and deep affection at its heart is are unmistakable. [29 May 1992, p.D1]

A film of audacity and total gut-level appeal.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is the best part of every movie he's in. Then again, when you consider the pictures he's been in, maybe that's not saying enough. [15 Sep 1990, p.C3]

In this small and very smart film, Cronenberg does several things at once and makes them all look effortless, capturing various shadings of consciousness and versions of reality.

The 1931 version, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, is the standout, featuring two great performances, one by Fredric March (who won the Academy Award for the title role) and the other by Miriam Hopkins, as Ivy, the lovable trollop. [28 Dec 2003]

Scorsese stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie's importance and only highlights its unimportance.

Best of all, there's just the pleasure of seeing something that's both fantastic to the eye and emotionally dimensional. This is how to make action movies.

We all know how actors overact when they play Italians, and we all know how actors overact when they play brain-damaged characters, so just imagine Knight's performance as a brain-damaged Italian American.

Can and should be appreciated as a work of delicate and unmistakable beauty.

Toback presents specific characters dealing with specific problems and, through their stories, somehow manages to take the temperature of the times.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a perfect thriller. It may not be as good a movie as ''Cape Fear,'' which is a sort of cinematic extravaganza, but in many ways I liked it more. It's stripped- down and lean, without a moment wasted, and the plot works like a delicate machine. [10 Jan 1992, p.C1]

The landscape shots are impressive, and it's fascinating just to look at the native people -- but after 10 minutes, you've had the experience. Connery is crusty, twinkling and attractive, but in reciting this ham-handed dialogue, the best he can do is be a good actor trapped in a bad film. [07 Feb 1992, p.D1]

Like many films that attempt to be inspiring, Heavyweights uses the sound track like a rubber hose to beat the audience into submission. The movie is so honest and good-natured that it's hard to stay mad at it for long. [18 Feb 1995, p.E1]

It expertly capitalizes on the emotional associations Americans have with Pearl Harbor and renders the battle scenes with an excellence that goes beyond proficiency and into the realm of art.

Just not worth revisiting, unless one wants to tie one's brain into a knot for no discernible reward.

Mamet finds an angle just new enough to be fresh.

Out of the Past is cinematic perfection, a Hollywood classic that's as great and as enjoyable as its reputation has promised.

Matches a dingy urban setting with a compelling situation and throws in an ensemble of interesting characters who become even more interesting under stress. This emphasis on character -- in a sense, the movie's underlying humanity -- is what especially links it to the 1970s.

Late in the picture, Sobieski has some line-readings that are so emotionally full, strange and truthful that really nothing more need be said.

Almost as mindless as "Fantastic Four," but more annoying in that this one has philosophical pretensions.

One of the best films to open in the Bay Area in 2007.

An utter debacle.

The movie's satisfactions are subtle, but they run deep, and there are many.

Miami Blues is offbeat and fun. [20 Apr 1990, p.E1]

There is none of the drippy cuteness of ''Star Trek V.'' This is the best sort of adventure story, with good characters and excitement and lots of humor. [6 Dec. 1991, p.C1]

It's even less funny than it sounds. By the end, this soporific comedy makes 105 minutes feel more like a two-year hitch.

Never rises above the level of its gimmick.

It's a movie about an idiot in the grip of something common place. He starts off as a garden-variety idiot and progresses to a big idiot.

Despite its actors, its lush photography and its obvious seriousness of purpose, is as close to a form of torture as any film ever devised. I can't think of any individuals I dislike so much as to force them to see this picture.

The movie is directed by Anjelica Huston, and like a lot of actors who direct, Huston shows an ability to elicit strong emotions from her actors. But Huston also demonstrates a sense of where to place the camera. [13 Dec 1996, p.C1]

There's bad, there's awful and there's horrible, and then somewhere beyond that, in its own Kingdom of Lousy -- where all the milk curdles and the jokes aren't funny -- is License to Wed, the latest ghastly exercise starring Robin Williams.

The result is not only entertaining but also refreshing, a shameless crowd-pleaser with a healthy cynicism about itself.

Suffers from the bloat common to sequels.

If it's ultimately a failure -- and I think it is -- it's still worth seeing, because it's the most ambitious and magnificent failure in recent memory. That, in a sense, qualifies it as a certain kind of "good movie."

Original enough to keep an audience guessing most of the way. It has a strong plot that takes surprising and satisfying turns, and there's never really a dull moment. This is the kind of movie that, once you start watching, you have to finish just to see how it turns out. [08 Oct 1991, p.E1]

Just because it's a conscious commentary on other vile, useless, pointless cinematic exercises doesn't make it any less vile, useless and pointless.

More than a high concept stretched to feature length. This is a funny and extremely satisfying comedy, the best in a while.

It's scary. It's well-acted. It's filmed with a degree of flash and elegance.

Not the kind of movie anyone will remember at Oscar time. But no one who sees it will forget it.

A good movie that has been sitting in a film can for two years waiting for a miracle. The miracle came -- Suvari's sudden popularity.

Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global warming -- and everyone should see this movie.

Just awful… There is probably not one interrupted 60-second stretch in which a line of dialogue doesn't clunk, an action doesn't ring false or an irritating plot turn doesn't present itself. [25 May 1991]

The violence and mayhem are constant, though the movie's style is refreshingly old-fashioned -- scream- and laughter-inducing, rather than coldly repulsive in the modern fashion.

A romantic drama, a rare kind of film these days, even though romantic dramas were once a dominant genre in America.

The movie's biggest weakness is in the presentation of Caine's grandparents.... The attempt, it seems, is to show a potentially positive influence in Caine's life. But the grandparents come across as canned characters, corny and concocted. [26 May 1993, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

My Fellow Americans is one adjustment away from being a great movie. As it stands it's a pleasing but mediocre film, with a great cast, a great story and a misguided script.

A fascinating fact-based portrait of a gambling addict.

Jodie Foster stars, and it's a pleasure, for once, to see her in something entertaining and mindless.

The film's basic material, that is the history, is not without interest. And it must be admitted that every so often - for about 10 seconds every 10 minutes - we get a hint of the movie they wanted to make and hoped they were making: One about the thrill of early aviation and the promise of a young century.

Here's another thought: This old man who can't leave the house has just made the first important film of 2010.

A well-constructed and genuinely tense thriller.

There's a psychological undercurrent. The movie occupies a zone where science fiction and nightmares collide and intertwine.

This is a heartfelt piece, and while passion alone can't carry a movie, it sure helps. Ararat is uneven because Egoyan couldn't tell it smoothly.

This is an acerbic examination of erotic obsession, told from different perspectives, with wit, suspense and cold-blooded detachment.

A courtroom drama with a compelling story and something peculiar about it, too: For most of its running time, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of a rooting interest. The audience isn't quite sure who it's for or against.

A new restoration takes a flawed bit of monster camp and turns it back into a strong, serious-minded and occasionally moving science-fiction film.

The Village seems poised to become as cheesy in its effects as a low-budget horror film. Shyamalan's gracefulness keeps his movie just out of that abyss.

The Comfort of Strangers might look great and might seem to be heading somewhere, but ultimately the picture is just a lot of atmosphere dolling up a lot of hot air. [15 Mar 1991, p.E8]

A perfectly OK drama, with a good cast and many good scenes, but it suffers from the usual maladies that films get when they've been out on the ranch too long: all-too-obvious symbolism and a serious case of the longueurs.

The screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, sees the lives of these suburban students and teachers through a prism of absurdity that refracts more truth than any straightforward telling.

A thoughtful, satisfying action thriller.

Told from a different angle than any other Holocaust film I've seen.

It's a lovely and wistful celebration of youth, time and moments of connection -- and about the experience of living in the midst of a simple, perfect day that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life.

A Kiss Before Dying is a thriller without thrills, though it has some of the built-in kicks of a crime movie -- wondering what's going on, wondering why it's happening, wondering how it's going to end. Unfortunately, it ultimately gets so silly that the main thing people in the audience may end up wondering is why they're still sitting there. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

Director Edward Zwick tried to make a great movie, but somewhere in the process he forgot to make a good one.

Strange, moody film.

The movie is overplotted, a soulless maze of special effects and relentless action.

With its dry, throwaway humor and constant stream of chuckles, it creates its own category of stealth comedy.

Perhaps the idea of watching Jeff Bridges as a drunken, broken-down, down-on-his luck country music singer in Crazy Heart doesn't automatically sound appealing. But think this: "The Wrestler." With good songs.

Stephen King's Sleepwalkers represents the first time the author has ever written a story directly for the screen. The result is a nicely paced picture that unfolds gradually, with shocks and surprises throughout. [11 Apr 1992, p. C3]

Doesn't work at all. Even the structure is off.

One pities poor Molly Parker, a fine actress who was somehow persuaded to disrobe for this degrading and dispiriting Wayne Wang film.

An enjoyable farce, with lots of laughs and a strong cast. At 80 minutes long, it's that rare case of a short film that should have been longer.

The absurdity of seeing these two young actors impersonating garbage men, combined with a script that's so clumsy it's remarkable, makes the first 10 minutes or so of Men at Work perversely entertaining. But the fun of laughing at the movie fades quickly. [25 Aug 1990, p.C3]

Lucas knows his fans are un-boreable, un-annoyable and inexhaustible. For an artist, that's more a curse than a blessing.

The thinking part of this thriller needs work. It's not nearly as intelligent, thoughtful or penetrating as it promises to be.

Dunston Checks In is a fast- moving, well-done farce that both kids and adults will enjoy.

A lively experience.

This is the defining feminist film of the decade and one of the most important women's vehicles in popular American cinema. [15 Jan 2006, p.28]

A film of real beauty, which is surprising, since it's not a movie of beautiful sentiments or settings.

The ultimate Julia Roberts movie.

An intermittently pleasing children's film.

A culture-clash comedy that, in addition to being very funny, captures some of the discomfort and embarrassment of being a bumbling American in Europe.

For pure laughs, for the experience of just sitting in a chair and breaking up every minute or so, Superbad is 2007's most successful comedy.

The action sequences are novel, the performances are slightly askew, and the camera work is vigorous and mostly effective.

So desperate and silly that here and there, it's a lot of fun.

How one likes Taxi has everything to do with how one responds to the hapless cop character, played by Jimmy Fallon.

The movie isn't hellish, because there's always hope of leaving it. It's more like purgatory, two whole hours of it.

But to be fair, Stone doesn't seem even to think he's offering the last word here. Rather, he's trying to offer the first word, or at least a first opportunity to hear the other side, unfiltered by television media.

The picture is crammed with shameless satire, engaging moments of pure silliness and jokes that border on the outrageous. It combines relentless energy with an aura of good nature for a formula that works.

Moon is boring. Agonizingly, deadeningly, coma-inducingly, they-could-bury-you-alive-accidentally boring.

A dynamic story, sprinkled with some interesting ideas about the preciousness of culture and how societies might rebuild themselves.

What a waste of a great comedian. What demented casting.

Divine cast keeps 'Ya-Ya Sisterhood' from falling flat

Bezucha made something perverse, a feel-bad holiday film about a repellent family, with a milquetoast dad and a smug, devious harpy of a mom.

Yet there's no getting around one awkward fact. The picture, which turns on a cataclysmic act of terrorism within U.S. borders, was made for a different audience from the one that's about to see it.

An example of good, clean, incredibly brutal fun. [09 Oct 1990, p.E1]

Flawless is a fictional tale, but something in director Michael Radford's conscientious, methodical presentation gives it the feeling of true history.

Finding Amanda is a minor movie for Broderick, but considering where it takes him, it's understandable why he took the role.

An empty exercise.

Ages well in memory because it gradually seems to mean more. Its meaning can't be summed up in a sentence, but it has to do with a view of life as inexpressibly sad and yet always right.

An arresting portrait of a fascinating and somewhat mysterious personality.

Pleasing but routine British comedy.

One of the best crime dramas to come along in years.

Killing Zoe is another jolly bloodbath about disaffected young people having trouble getting in touch with their feelings, so they go on a spree, killing people, killing everything, tra-la- la-la-la.

It has an affectionate aura, a warmth to it. But at the same time, the audience is left standing on the outside, almost as though watching a home movie: Clearly, this meant something to the people who made it, but it's hard to say what or why.

It doesn't analyze or explain it; it just presents it. The result is funny and disturbing at the same time.

The appeal of Mr. Brooks is as obvious as it is hard to resist: Kevin Costner as a serial killer.

The audience has already checked out, long before the formulaic finish.

At its best, the effect is like seeing life panoramically, past and future, simultaneous and magnificent.

I found myself enjoying Lionheart, mostly because Van Damme is appealing and easy to root for. I like the steady, oddly unjudgmental look that crosses his face when he's about to beat someone to a pulp. [12 Jan 1991, p.C3]

The submarine drama, which opens today, has everything you could want from an action thriller and a few other things you usually can't hope to expect: an excellent script, first-rate performances and a story that has more to do with individuals than explosions.

The race is on for worst film of the year honors. Among the top contenders: Men Cry Bullets.

Young Benny has a nice smile, and she and Jack seem like pleasant people, but in the end (and in the beginning and in the middle) it's hard to get worked up about them.

It's really, really funny.

It's striking how much emotion Satrapi is able to convey through blocky drawings.

The results are mixed. Many of the films are too long, and even worse, the collection as a whole doesn't come to grips with the human scale of the tragedy.

Witty, adult treatment of an offbeat subject: a pubescent boy's infatuation with an older woman.

Strange, compelling and hard to classify, it's both a romance and a character study, and it's set against a historical backdrop.

Ideally It Could Happen to You should be fun all the way, with the audience confident things will turn out right. Instead it's mostly annoying, with an ending that feels tagged on.

An intelligent movie that portrays the mighty without reverence.

An American reissue, with a fresh new soundtrack and all the dialogue dubbed.

In many ways a meandering film, a collection of good scenes.

Internal Affairs gets inside of you so fast that it's hard to look for or notice its imperfections. There's no point in quibbling about a movie that's this good, this absorbing and merciless, this original and twisted. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

The smartest thing director Steven Soderbergh did in the making of The Girlfriend Experience was to cast Sasha Grey.

I liked every minute in it. Other films are like empty containers; this one's full. It's full of invention, full of moments, full of business, full of the nuances of human interaction, full of feeling.

So in-depth, so appealing, so easy to sit through and so anomalously grand scale that few who see it will ever forget it.

The plot alone is a thing of beauty.

The Fugitive is the best movie of the summer and one of the best of the year. It's an action film that delivers everything a modern audience expects, and it's also a serious drama with strong characters and intense performances. [6 Aug 1993, p.C1]

Booty Call never quite gets tiresome, thanks to the appealing cast and its sexy-goofy spirit. The picture succeeds in finding jokes within jokes.

In the important things, in all the ways that really count, Caché is a handsome fraud.

The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.

It’s an engaging product, typical of its era and elevated by Crosby’s non-singing breeziness and Astaire’s all-around brilliance, plus the appeal of Marjorie Reynolds, who has to pretend that she’s enthralled every time Crosby warbles something in her direction. Now that’s acting.

It's really not bad... It's a genuine vault at greatness that misses the mark -- but survives.

The worst kind of avant-garde film, one that hides its lack of commitment to the story, the characters and the genre under cover of being experimental. It mocks form and plays with form but offers nothing in its place, just boredom, emptiness and the oldest metaphor in captivity, about grass coming up through concrete.

The only thing scary about the new version is realizing that someone keeps giving director Jan De Bont money to make movies.

For those who have seen the previous 'hood films, Don't Be a Menace isn't just funny. It's a relief. Things might be bad, the movie suggests, but they're not so bad you can't laugh.

Has a goofy enthusiasm for itself that's contagious.

Though the storytelling is a bit lopsided, the slapdash quality is charming overall, and the movie benefits from colorful characters and a couple of hilarious scenes.

Anyone can make a bad movie, but it takes a good filmmaker to make one as bad as I'm Not There.

About as weak a movie as can be made without actively trying.

Everything in Water Lilies is more guarded, more complex and far more interesting than it seems.

Within the realm of a mildly good time.

The film presents a compelling portrait of mental illness, but looking at Bale may make audiences feel as though they're watching a documentary.

The picture... is simple, sweet and elegantly written, and it benefits from the presence of Marlon Brando.

A few times every year, Hollywood makes a mistake, violates formula and actually makes a great picture. Falling Down is one of the great mistakes of 1993, a film too good and too original to win any Oscars but one bound to be remembered in years to come as a true and ironic statement about life in our time. [26 Feb 1993, p.D1]

Can't be dismissed. Yet something keeps this movie from being completely satisfying: a disconnect between the plot and the point.

An intelligent film with a sophisticated understanding of art and the significance it played in Hitler's psychology.

No doubt this seeming effortlessness was hard-won. Movies this smooth don't happen by accident.

2 Days in the Valley is skillfully made. The beginning introduces a handful of disparate characters. It juggles their stories and then deftly starts bringing them together through some surprising and unexpected turns.

It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage.

Muddled and endless.

Glorious moments aplenty despite director who's just in the way.

It's not a film for children, and it's not even something children would like. It's challenging and disturbing and uncanny in the ways it captures the nature of dreams -- their odd logic, mutability and capacity to hint at deepest terrors.

A delicate film - not flimsy, but fragile - that holds together on the strength of Efron's physical presence and performance.

Pleasing and occasionally very funny movie that maintains a mild but consistent hold on its audience.

To watch Nowhere Boy is to appreciate anew both the anger that drove Lennon and the strength of character it took for him to overcome it.

The best American film of 2008.

I won't tell you Taken is great, but it's great fun.

It's amazing how far a movie can go on nothing but speed and directness.

Dinner for Schmucks is lumbering, inconsistent and about 20 minutes too long, but it's funny. It's funny from the beginning, and it stays funny, even as it beats scenes to death and overstays its welcome.

Unlike many documentaries about movies, it's neither underfunded nor perfunctory, but thoughtful and bracing.

An occasionally charming, sometimes amateurish film .

McCormack at first seems too light of spirit for the role, but she grows into it, and it turns out she's exactly what the movie calls for: Someone too wholesome-looking to be anything but a fine young lady.

The Night We Never Met gets phony but it doesn't get boring, and that's not bad. [30 Apr 1993, p.C5]

Running mainly on adrenaline and a gimmick, it's different from other holiday movies in that it's not ambitious, earnest or overblown, and it obviously wasn't made with one eye on the Oscars.

If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.

A completely appealing, beautifully preserved memory piece - a grand, colorful coming-of-age story with a candy box color palette and a standout performance by Renée Zellweger. It's a great story and a great crowd-pleaser.

Ricky Gervais, instead of resting on formula and on a familiar persona, uses his first opportunity as a big-screen actor-director to make an original comedy that expresses some real thinking and feeling.

This expands an already long movie to more than three hours, but this time there's no getting enough of a good thing. [2002 Director's Cut]

The surprise is that Kindergarten Cop is delightful and entertaining, a cop movie with suspense, no blood and a lot of genuine warmth. The script is intelligent and plays to the unique strengths of Schwarzenegger as a star. [21 Dec 1990, p.E1]

This time the martial arts philosophy lesson rings hollow. [10 Feb 1990, p.C5]

Clearly, this is something rare: a movie that insulates itself against its own rottenness by being lousy by design.

If garbage could think, it would look down on 9 Dead Gay Guys as garbage.

With Milk, a great San Francisco story becomes a great American story.

A notable, worthwhile picture.

Take a wretched premise. Imagine the worst picture that could be made from it. Then imagine something even worse. That's Alien vs. Predator.

Fire in the Sky doesn't look like it had an expensive budget, but it uses what special effects it has to good effect, and the scenes of Travis on the space ship are genuinely scary. You stop asking, ''But did this really happen?'' -- not a bad question, actually -- and start imagining what it might have been like. [13 Mar 1993, p.C3]

A maddening film, maddening in a good way, but maddening nonetheless.

There's talent here, but for directing, not writing. If Ritchie wants to last, he's going to have to allow somebody else to write his screenplays.

Clearly, Peirce's motives are pure. She's not using the "stop-loss" issue as a wedge to make the government or the administration look bad. She's using it to dramatize an injustice and to advocate on behalf of the soldiers.

Kristin Scott Thomas' performance in I've Loved You So Long is one of a small handful of highlights by which people will remember this year in movies. This is acting at its most exalted.

[Lange's] allure is staggering. If you've never seen her in this film - if you've never seen the young Jessica Lange, except in "Tootsie" - prepare to pick your jaw up off the floor.

Much of the film is so wrenching there's no time for idle thoughts.

This is Merchant-Ivory's kind of showmanship, the unflashy adult variety of movie magic that they made their hallmark.

As a visit to a world and a way of life most of us will never experience, American History X is vivid, and it feels honest. At the very least, it's not typical.

Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]

Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

When the film is funny, it's terrific. When it shows what it really wants the audience to take seriously, it threatens to come apart. But mainly, it's a comedy, and mainly it's a lot of fun. [21 Aug 1992, p.C1]

At 80 minutes, this might have been a delight. At more than two hours, it's so much of a good thing that it starts to become a bad thing.

Starts off with a burst of energy but becomes tedious midway through.

Numbing and inert.

Shows how a documentary can be as moving and suspenseful as the best narrative feature.

A film made with high aspirations and more than the usual commitment but one that, after an arresting beginning, changes into a passive rumination.

A dull film with unsympathetic characters brought together by a gimmicky premise that's handled with no imagination and a pristine fraudulence of emotion. Aside from that, it's great.

Has an oddness and whimsicality about it that can, at first, be confused for authenticity.

Highly visual but cold. It's undeniably inventive, but also relentlessly fey and self-consciously zany and, in terms of story, it moves with audacious slowness.

Eschews cliches and cuts to the truth.

Wry and sometime bitter movie about love.

In a blind taste test, I couldn't possibly have identified this as a Linklater movie, and he's a filmmaker I generally like. If anything, Bad News Bears shows that Linklater can get in and out of a movie like a cat burglar, without leaving his fingerprints anywhere. OK, he's proven it. He need never do that again.

The desire to go back in time to change things -- or just to visit -- is so central to the experience of being alive and stuck in time that Timecop has a built-in power. It's a power the film, a satisfying science-fiction thriller, takes full advantage of.

Truly awful.

An overblown action monstrosity with no surprises, no exhilaration and no thrills.

Kazan's writing in Dream Lover is spare and evocative, but here in his first film he also makes a case for himself as a talented director. It's hard ever to feel safe during Dream Love'; even during stretches when nothing bad happens you just know something will. Individual moments may be clear, yet everything in the film has an uneasy ambiguity hanging over it. Characters seem to connect, but they don't quite. [5 May 1994, p.E4]

Amiable though slow-going.

A whimsical but flat-footed attempt to account for several lost months in the life of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known to the world as Molière.

A privileged glimpse into people's private pain, a drama shot with the simplicity and immediacy of a documentary.

Its deeply anarchic sensibility has kept Taxi Driver fresh all these years. [20th Anniversary Release]

The kind of picture to whip out the clichés for: Surprisingly original. Delightful. Brilliant. Funny as all heck. When 1989 is through, sex, lies, and videotape may well be remembered as the best film of the year. [11 Aug 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Old age is seen from a sentimental distance; interaction between characters often rings false; and Ariel is an indistinct, happy idiot. The impression that comes across is of a writer who cares but doesn't really know what he's talking about. [25 Dec 1993, p.E1]

Anyone who prefers Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Lopez is bound to regard Two Weeks Notice and not "Maid in Manhattan" as the better candidate for romantic comedy of the season.

The action is difficult to follow.

More than most espionage movies, the film is about relationships, the men with each other, the men with their own disapproving wives, and governments with each other. Everyone courts someone.

Deserves to ride the wave of the latest, hottest micro-trend in pictures: the romantic comedy for guys.

Huppert shows everything to us, and it's fascinating.

For all its sensitivity to the horrors of mental illness, The Soloist ends up as a fairly canned piece of work.

Truth or Dare is like a detective story. You try to infer the truth by looking between the frames. The picture we get of Madonna is a contrived one, but it's revealing anyway, because it's the one she wants to present. [17 May 1991, p.E1]

The murder plot is a cheap turn that says nothing about the nature of Suzanne's ambition. Without Suzanne's media-obsession as its focus, To Die For becomes just another fairly good black comedy.

A suspense thriller of rare intelligence.

The people who made this film -- particularly the ones responsible for the story and the dialogue -- should look no further when trying to understand why In Her Shoes lands with such little impact. The characters seem authentic -- until the chick-flick template distorts them.

A glib satire with a slick surface, lots of snappy patter and nothing to sell but its own cleverness.

The picture is a soggy, all-over-the- place mess.

A fine ensemble piece, but a maddening and unjustified length.

There's no buildup and little shape. Scenes are strong, but the movie as a whole flags.

Seemingly intended as a celebration of the power of books, it's an occasionally incoherent, sleep-inducing picture that reduces narrative to mere mechanics.

Almost every moment has flashes and explosions and a pulsing, relentless soundtrack. It's like being trapped inside a video game.

It's a straight-ahead adventure with the usual number of thrills, but with the added virtue of being smarter and more sober than one might expect.

Why such a structurally scattered movie should hang together at all is a mystery. That it does more than that, that it works brilliantly, is a miracle, or at the very least the product of unquantifiable causes.

Flows in a way that seems effortless, following its own path, arriving at its own place. Only after the movie is over are the outlines of its story apparent. I found it impossible to outguess it. [12 July 1991]

Yet something's missing in director Mira Nair's treatment -- specifically, a point of view about the material, a compelling reason for this historical excavation beyond the fact that Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing Becky Sharp.

It's one thing for a romantic comedy to be predictable - they all end at the same destination, after all. But it's quite another thing to be predictable at every twist and turn of the story.

Does not end well. But there's a lot of pleasure in getting there.

Everything Melville shows us, he shows us for a reason, and these reasons are never obscure but are rather pertinent to the action and to the moral movement of the world and the characters.

Though Man on the Moon is lost when it comes to Kaufman's inner life and motivations, it offers a detailed account of his career.

Taken as a whole, these films constitute one of the greatest uses of cinema a documentary filmmaker has ever devised. Like the other films in the series, 49 Up is alternately touching and mundane, part soap opera, part reality show and part anthropological study.

Exactly one minute longer than its predecessor, but it's a dragged-out exercise, with no epic scale and no spirit worth talking about.

Sister Act is lifted above its formula by a strong ensemble cast. It's not just a matter of Goldberg and Smith, who are excellent. Kathy Najimy all but steals the picture as the bubbly, cheerful Sister Mary Patrick, and veteran Mary Wickes does a nice turn as Sister Mary Lazarus, a tough nun from an earlier era. [29 May 1991, p.D1]