Mick LaSalle

Without peril, The Phantom can only get by on dazzle, and there's not quite enough of that to hold interest -- unless you're 8 years old and seeing dazzle for the first time.

Henry Fool is far and away writer-director Hal Hartley's best movie.

To call this effort misguided would be kind. The job this "prequel" does on the original Dumb and Dumber is the movie equivalent of surgery that removes all the vital organs and then gives the patient a prosthetic third arm. What's needed isn't there, and what's here we don't need.

Toback has found a documentary subject as tragic and ridiculous, as bizarre and driven, as the heroes of his other films.

Just another bloody cop thriller.

A rare film about the class and educational divide that can happen even within families.

It's just horsing around that comes to nothing. No, it's worse. It's horsing around designed to disguise nothing as something.

Lawrence's take on pop music success is exactly right, satiric without being absurdist, and therefore a prize worth the effort.

Wild Orchid is a funny movie, an unintentional scream that sets itself up as a journey into the land of eroticism. [28 Apr 1990, p.C3]

The picture is also the story of one character in particular, Bobby, and when it comes to Bobby, A Home at the End of the World is sappy and bogus.

A hit- and-miss affair, consistently amusing but not as outrageous or funny as Cho may have intended or as imaginative as one might have hoped.

Despite the title, Ismailos' documentary is not a study of what constitutes great direction. Rather it's a nicely arranged film in which a variety of filmmakers Ismailos likes discuss their inspirations and influences.

The acting is fine. The ensemble is strong. The story moves along. Yet a coating of sleaze clings to the film, like bread dipped in batter.

A hit-and-miss affair, or, to be more precise, a miss (story one), hit (story two) and break even (story three) affair.

It would really help to get into the right frame of mind before seeing The Time Traveler's Wife, because viewed from some angles - maybe most angles - the movie is ridiculous.

If you want to know years in advance what old-age nostalgia is going to look like for Baby Boomers, look no further than Pirate Radio, in which the sun always shines, the music is great and the sex is available, guilt-free and glorious.

North is director Rob Reiner's first flat-out failure, a sincerely wrought, energetically made picture that all the same crashes on takeoff. It's strange and oddly distasteful, at its best managing to be bad in some original and unexpected ways.

Casino Royale is fresh, actually fresh.

The problem with Popcorn is that it's just as ridiculous as the horror movies it satirizes. [02 Feb 1991, p.C3]

When it's good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do.

The opening is spectacular, but the rest is fairly routine.

A disappointment, but it's not a disaster, and that's at least something.

Stays in the mind, changing the way we look at the world.

As for Fraser, his clumsy humanity is endearing, but by now, assuming he has invested wisely, he should have enough money saved so as to not have to waste his talent anymore.

There's no point complaining that Honey is a tired reworking of an old formula, because it's intended for a young audience that doesn't know the formula.

Much of the movie has a structureless, documentary feeling to it, which is good and should have been pushed further.

Despite some feints in a soulful direction, the picture has none of the interior quality of a multifaceted war film like Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line." Woo is all about elegant surfaces, not inner conflicts.

The premise might sound gimmicky, but it's realized honestly and specifically. [27 Sept 1991, p.D6]

More thoughtful and pleasing to the eye than any blockbuster in recent memory, but its epic length comes without an epic reward. It's a slow ride to the same old place, nonstop action, accelerating in scale, culminating in the smirking promise of a sequel.

This is a monster movie -- 92 minutes, lots of action, lots of green legs stomping, get in, get out.

Witless banter might have won Ginger Rogers for Fred Astaire, but Thompson is too smart for that.

The bad outweighs the good and the cringes outnumber the laughs in Brüno, a disappointment from Sacha Baron Cohen, whose "Borat" was one of the funniest movies of the decade.

Follows a predictable format.

The result is something rare, especially considering how fine the novel is, a film that's fuller and deeper than the book.

Few movies are as delightful as Julie & Julia.

Mindhunters is as effective as a movie can be and yet still be 100 percent forgettable.

Great trash, one of those mediocre movies that in its own crass way is more enjoyable than most things that get nominated for Oscars.

An oddly structured tale about Francisco Goya and the Spain that he lived and worked in.

Even apart from the fact that it's not nearly funny enough, Bruce Almighty is a peculiar film.

A film that might have seemed faintly academic six months ago becomes an anxious expression of its historical moment.

Aside from a few moments involving Dudikoff, American Ninja 4 is a formula action picture without appeal, and its contradictions and illogical turns of plot don't help matters. [09 Mar 1991, p.C3]

A brilliant and irresistible counterfactual overview of American history.

It takes an extraordinary film on the order of Joyeux Noel to make it all suddenly vital, immediate and human.

Far superior to its companion piece, "Flags of Our Fathers," released earlier this year, "Letters" is a grim and humane film that has to be counted among the director's better efforts.

No longer fresh -- though that's to be expected in a sequel -- it contains none of the virtues that made the first one anarchic and original.

Polanski directs the film without a wasting a moment. The occasional humor does nothing to relieve tension but, as in a Hitchcock picture, has a way of increasing it.

Riveting.

Cmera work can't do anything about the barrenness of the screenplay, nor the sense of fundamental insincerity at the core of the film. [03 Sep 1993]

Connects on a gut level in two ways, political and existential.

A big leap forward for Penn as a director and deserves to be one of the most talked about films of the season.

Perry isn't the only thing wrong with Serving Sara, but he's the thing that takes a pleasantly mediocre movie and turns it into an unpleasantly mediocre one.

For most of its 110 minutes, City Hal is a strong, hard-boiled drama that gives an insider's look at the wheelings and dealings in and around the mayor's office.

There's a dignity about it, and it's only later that we come to realize that this dignity is misplaced, born of a fatal reserve and a lack of complete investment.

The film's special effects are astonishing, but the most notable and unexpected thing is its tone.

An extremely funny movie, and this is coming from someone who barely cracked a smile during ``Friday,'' the first installment of this franchise.

De Palma plays both sides against the middle, and eventually the thing collapses. Instead of simply pursuing what seems to be his vision of the story, about a flawed but decent man getting martyred to a corrupt system, he tries not to offend and ends up making empty and confusing gestures. When at the end of this remarkably cynical movie, Morgan Freeman, as a principled trial judge, stands up and makes a speech about decency -- ''Decency is what your grandmother taught you'' -- it's hard not to laugh out loud. [21 Dec 1990, p.E1]

Indeed, without Hudson's magic, without that extra feeling that comes from seeing the launch of something extraordinary, Dreamgirls might have been a break-even affair. The film has strong roles, good actors and a compelling story that takes place over the course of 10 or 15 years. But it has, with only a couple of exceptions, a pedestrian score that sounds like generic show-music schlock and lyrics that are not distinctive.

Eye-catching and entertaining but less inspired than the original.

Cocktail is unbelievable - a picture that sets itself up as a gritty, authentic character study but is laughable, false and stupid in all its details. The only connection to reality here is that there are actually such things as bartenders. [29 Jul 1988, p.E1]

A pleasant enough "Crimes of the Heart" rip-off about three young women bumbling, stumbling and fumbling through life, looking for answers, smiling through tears, blah, blah, blah. [21 Oct 1988]

Despite a few shortcuts and some small but nagging inconsistencies -- not to mention weak performances in a couple of key roles -- Just Cause delivers.

Has a shameless B-movie exuberance.

Its story is paint-by- numbers...But it's funny, and funny covers a lot of sins.

In King Arthur, everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer- produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits.

Surprisingly, the results are embarrassing. As puppetry, Team America is stilted. As satire, it's gutless and lazy. And as comedy, it barely delivers laughs.

A study of middle-class, middle-aged disappointment in its varying forms, a sober look at different life choices.

Uninvolving. Even the sex is boring. Are these scenes supposed to be wildly erotic? If they are, they don't work. [20 Mar 1992, Daily Notebook, p.D1]

It blends an intriguing concept with a suspenseful plot, and the result is a gripping 103 minutes at the movies.

A thriller that presses all the buttons: parental love, childhood terror, fear of Vince Vaughn.

It's a bomb - not the usual bomb, but a time bomb, despite a 20-minute stretch at the beginning that goes along nicely. [17 May 1991]

It feels both big and little, concentrating as it does on the small movements in people's lives and the huge tides of history.

The movie's excruciating length is without dramatic or thematic justification.

The picture looks like it cost about 3 cents to make, but it packs a nice punch, with tense moments, unexpected turns and a hot performance by Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. [30 Oct 1989, p.F3]

A movie for adults, of a kind that usually isn't made in America,

Not only not funny, it's unfunny. It kills humor. Sit in a room by yourself, look at a blank screen for 90 minutes, and you'll have more of a chance of laughing at your own thoughts than you will at this movie.

Austin Powers sounded like a silly idea, but it turns out to be one of the best comedies of the year.

Just awful. But uniquely awful -- awful in a way that might just attract a cult audience. [3 Sept 1993]

A remarkable documentary about an almost unfathomable ordeal.

With Lake at the center, something that could have been innocuous becomes painful, and a sure shot at mediocrity is transformed into one of the worst films of the year.

An almost successful comedy.

Metro, the new Eddie Murphy cop picture made in San Francisco that opens today, goes beyond cliched: It's shameless. The relationships, plot turns -- even the action sequences -- are trite and uninspired. Murphy is fresh, as usual, but "Metro" is not.

Like her (Cholodenko) other movies, this one has vivid characters and strong performances and flows like a slice of life set in an appealing, interesting world. But this one also has a good story and, if you're paying attention, a distinct point of view.

Reveals one mystery, only to reveal another that it can't quite penetrate.

The best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year.

It's silly, witty and good-natured, not scary so much as icky, and not horrifying or horrible but consistently amusing.

Klapisch's masterstroke was to place at the center of a movie a man, forced by circumstances, to stop and simply observe.

This is one of Kubrick's best, not gimmicky or arch, not somnambulant or mannered, just finely detailed, measured, richly photographed and, at every step of the way, entertaining and interesting.

If his two previous films suggested a director dipping a few toes in dark waters, Un Prophete marks the moment when Audiard took the plunge.

It's one of the best documentaries ever made about show business, about what it really consists of and what it demands.

It is a boilerplate action comedy.

The Dying Gaul has the best kind of story in that it unfolds as a series of surprises, and yet every step, twist and turn seems inevitable in retrospect.

Jarmusch's presence as a director is always felt, from moment to moment, in ways that are small but never random. Even establishing shots -- exteriors of buildings -- suggest his sardonic, quietly despairing vision. With Mystery Train, Jarmusch comes of age. [21 Dec 1989, p.E1]

If you like this sort of movie - and actually, cards on the table, I like this kind of movie - you will not be sorry you saw it. But you will not come away from the experience feeling that you've seen Victoria, young or otherwise.

Best of all, the filmmakers know when to pull the plug. Date Night clocks in at 88 minutes and would not have been as funny at 89.

A wistful romance with metaphysical overtones, the movie is warm and charming. [10 Jul 1992, p.D1]

It's an exuberant, well- crafted film that gets the audience involved on a gut level even before the opening credits are over.

A brutal movie, brutal in all the right ways -- brutally stark, brutally funny, brutally brutal. [30 Oct 1992]

Wild Reeds is a sober, heartfelt piece of work, sensitively directed and lovingly photographed -- though slightly dull, if we're going to be perfectly honest.

Has many grotesque sex scenes, interspersed with sights of Chong rambling in a dissociated way as she sits in her squalid apartment.

The actors perform as though this were a first-class effort, and at times almost make you believe it. Matthew Modine is boyish and explosive, and Melanie Griffith further establishes herself as an interesting and original actress. Her line readings are odd, yet strangely right. [28 Sept 1990, p.E1]

A big fizzle.

The film's freedom and control, its inspiration and focus, announce it as the work of a confident and mature artist.

The movie is reasonably entertaining, though it helps to be 6 years old.

Pet Sematary Two' follows the usual horror movie pattern: The first half is a pleasure, because you know what has to happen and you can't wait. And the second half is a bore, because you know what still has to happen and you can't wait for it to end. [01 Sept 1992, p.E3]

Kingpin has nastiness going for it. There are prosthesis jokes, bad-teeth jokes, ugly-women jokes, sight gags involving vomiting, etc.

The movie drags.

A merry, wistful, tear-and-a-smile romp about the Holocaust, of all things.

All the movie's narrative gymnastics can't disguise the fact that it's inauthentic at its core and that its story just isn't worth telling.

Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition.

A mess.

Strives for an airy, merry amorality, but it never quite achieves liftoff, though at times it comes close.

Most of the bits and performances have a hard time making the transition from stage to screen.

It's shockingly funny - you don't sit there deciding to laugh. Your own laughter catches you by surprise. [14 Apr 1989]

Somewhere in the translation from stage to screen, The History Boys has become an intelligent misfire. What's left is a literate but listless film.

Bogdanovich films Noises Off in long, unbroken takes. Though for the most part he doesn't give us the whole stage but moves in to follow the action more closely, the camera moves as one's eyes might, while following the play. Bogdanovich does what he has to -- he gets out of the way of Frayn's original farce. And the result of his thankless toil is a movie that doesn't quite feel like a movie, and that's not quite as good as the play, but that's pretty good anyway. [20 March 1992, p.D5]

Harmon proves that he can act stupid, and that's not enough to make the movie funny… You're supposed to like Freddy (Harmon), and you're supposed to like his brainless students… But you hate everybody. [24 July 1987]

If we're going to be honest, we need to look inside and ask ourselves: Do we really want to see a listless movie about a woman whose dream is to move into a double-wide trailer?

Often the picture drags, getting caught in its own goodness and going for a generalized sense of wonder, till you kind of wish you could apply the spurs. [17 Sep 1993, p.C3]

A movie unlike any other.

A sour story with a repellent lead character, deadly comic schtick and tin-eared direction to produce 90 minutes of sheer, plodding mirthlessness.

Disclosure is a frankly adult picture. The seduction scene is protracted and genuinely sexy -- though what this woman sees in Douglas is a mystery. The talk in Disclosure is also frank -- and unusually explicit. People talk about sex in this picture as they would in life.

Little gem.

It's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.

Ultimately, Fortress is a formula picture, an action film that has to resolve itself in a conventional way. Still, until its last five minutes or so, when it takes a slightly silly turn, Fortress is nicely realized and holds your attention. [4 Sept 1993, p.E1]

The movie itself is just a routine showcase, modest in its aspiration and effective within its limits, entertaining in the moment but, in the end, faintly silly. On the plus side, it's only 86 minutes long.

A frustrating movie, a work of immaturity from a director who should be past the empty gestures and self-protective distance of his early work.

Entertaining and pleasing for children and parents, and not in the schizophrenic way of most kid's movies, which toss naughty in-jokes over the kiddies' heads.

An entertaining film for kids and young teens. It's also a product of the era in which we're living, and weird times make for weird movies.

A perfect example of an Intelligent Bad Movie.

Seizes on a primal fear and flogs it for two hours.

A charming and wise film.

A movie like this depends on clever bits and incidents, but there's little invention here to disguise the film's formulaic nature.

The movie suffers from two fatal ailments -- a dearth of vitality and a story that's shapeless and uninflected.

But for director David Cronenberg and the commitment of his actors, A History of Violence might have been a cartoony action film. Its origins are in a cartoon, of sorts -- specifically, in a graphic novel, by John Wagner and Vince Locke.

The whole movie is like that: cute, dead and endless.

A wonderful movie, sincere and inspired, with four terrific performances and a story that doesn't let up. The picture has the gentle, nourishing quality of a fairy tale that you want to believe, and the unsoftened impact of gut-level entertainment. [13 July 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

The film's tone is extraordinarily flexible, holding within the same reality elements of the absurd, the ridiculous and the comic while sustaining a sense of tension and dread throughout. This is, of course, one of the classic Pacino roles - he's so appealing - but don't overlook the late John Cazale as his accomplice, who gives us a character who's stupid and scared, troubled and dangerous, and disturbingly inscrutable.

Even as it stands, Fish Tank is a valuable movie, though it aspires to a social insight it doesn't attain and a psychological penetration it won't maintain.

It's all pleasant but fairly unimportant, and then -- POW -- comes the great scene, almost out of nowhere.

The movie's most inexcusable failing is that, despite all the flashbacks, we never get a sense of what this relationship was like when it worked.

Neither original nor presented in a convincing way.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

Anyone who has ever felt morally right and completely in the minority will have a point of entry into this movie.

This picture is disgusting. [15 Aug 1986]

Waitress deserves an essay, not just a review. There are perfect moments that stand out, and the reasons for their perfection are interesting.

The movie is never much more than fluff. But, like director Donald Petrie's previous film, "Grumpy Old Men," it has an honest core that enables it to keep its balance. [29 Apr 1994]

Martin Lawrence finally gets to show what he can do as a screen comedian.

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.

A stupid movie -- but a deliriously stupid movie, which gives it a certain grandeur.

Although I, Robot provokes thought, it doesn't exactly deliver thought, despite the occasional Cartesian reference to "ghosts in the machine."

It will bring joy in a way certainly not intended, as one of the most gloriously and unwittingly silly films ever devised by a major American filmmaker.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

Lacks, a story that makes it feel personal.

The drama surrounding the romance gets a little too precious -- though I loved it 15 years ago; maybe I'm getting cynical -- but everything else is excellent, including Jack Nicholson, who is subtle and sly in a small, key role. [18 Jan 2004]

Qualifies as a mild success. It's an easy picture to like, even if it's not exactly satisfying.

The first half of White Palace is done so well that it's tempting to overlook the fact that once the picture gets its two lovers together, it has nowhere to go -- and it goes nowhere for the last 50 minutes. [19 Oct 1990, p.E1]

Nothing but a showcase for the inherent comedic gifts of Cameron Diaz. The problem is she doesn't have any.

Those willing to meet (Untitled) even part way will discover a comedy of intelligence and wit, with some strong performances.

What we have in this film is a whole lot of nothing, and the little that's there is irritating.

Another inert, soul-dead action drama that turns actors into zombies...It's garbage.

Lucas Black, who looks as much like a high school kid as George Bernard Shaw, speaks in a thick Southern accent that hasn't been heard on any leading man since the second act of "Our American Cousin."

Jennifer Aniston...doesn't have much screen time, but in playing this slightly insecure, affable young woman, she does her best film acting to date.

What's interesting about revisiting the film today is that the elements that engaged people most at the time - the thriller plot and the glimpse into Soviet life - maintain hardly any fascination. But the love story - what might have been regarded at the time as the obligatory "romantic interest" - stands out as something of lasting appeal. [26 Mar 2017, p.Q41]

This is the world through the idiosyncratic eye of Cassavetes, which is both all-forgiving and inexhaustibly, passionately nosy. [28 Jun 1991, p.F8]

Before it degenerates into a complete mess, it's an entertaining mess, and something about its willingness to please maintains the audience's goodwill throughout.

An admirable film, not a great one -- yet. It drags a bit.[Restored version]

Buscemi eschews the conventional and ends "Trees Lounge" on a stranger, more tantalizing note.

Has the strengths and weaknesses of a one-man show.

An outstanding effort that maintains the integrity and purpose that distinguished "The Fellowship of the Ring."

An excellent film noir.

The funniest film to come along since "South Park," and one that succeeds in a more difficult and satisfying way.

The true soul of the New York mob is portrayed in Donnie Brasco, a first-class Mafia thriller that is also in its way a love story -- perhaps director Mike Newell's best.

It's mostly entertaining, and has some strong moments, but it lacks the special magic that a musical needs, that sense of its inhabiting a parallel universe where any wonderful thing can happen at any moment, including music suddenly arising from nowhere. [10 Apr 1992]

The moments of action are interspersed with lengthy plot developments that are hard to follow.

Had a chance to be not just OK, not just fluff, but something special, and it's a shame that the people making it either didn't realize it or didn't have the guts to take this movie where it wanted to go.

Self-consciously bleak.

Does a beautiful job of capturing that mood -- the exuberance and wistfulness of one man's last year of youthful irresponsibility before joining the rat race.

One of the best American films of the year so far.

Within limits, this is an excellent documentary. Even fans who think they've seen everything will see things here they haven't seen.

Re-creates that chilling sense that comes when, in the middle of a pleasant conversation, one realizes the other person is off his rocker.

As a cop movie it's entertaining enough, but as a social commentary it comes up short, becoming self-conscious and preachy. [27 Apr 1990, p.E1]

Delpy and Scott are able to put it over. She's French and deep and mysterious. He's a fresh-faced American, an open book. Liking them makes it possible to (kinda) like this otherwise routine horror movie.

Saint John of Las Vegas was a bad script that somehow got made into a bad movie with good people in it.

The Dark Half is another retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story, but King and Romero fail to work out the premise of the story. [23 Apr 1993, p.C3]

Behind Enemy Lines has a wretched script and a director (first-timer John Moore) who either has no taste or doesn't know what he's doing.

Written by William Gibson, who adapted his own short story, and directed by New York artist Robert Longo in his feature debut, Johnny Mnemonic is inescapably a very cool movie. Running at a fevered pace, with laser and light explosions, it introduces a fantastic yet plausible vision of a computer-dominated age.

Has genuine life in it. It's an energetic comedy that consistently looks for and finds unexpected ways to be funny. [31 Mar 1995, p.C8]

Though the movie is riddled with memorable scenes of violence, its pace is slow -- too slow. It has an epic sprawl, but it's not an epic. It's more like a bloated fairy tale. [7 Aug 1992]

The result is a film of passion and ambition, but one whose success is intermittent at best.

Even those who despised the original novel should not have trouble stomaching Bridges, while the novel's fans will find the film -- despite some additions -- generally true to what they perceive to be the book's spirit.

With Hard Candy, the innocent are tortured along with the guilty -- the innocent, in this case, being the audience.

Not as simple as it looks, though its appeal is simple: Robert Redford goes to prison, and James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos") is the warden. That's a movie worth seeing right there.

As painstaking as a documentary but without the satisfaction of a documentary or the impact of a drama.

In the end, the best thing about The Dragon is that it will make people want to go out and rent ''Enter the Dragon.'' [7 May 1993, p.C1]

While the plot is worthless and the battle scenes cheap-looking and unengrossing, Wing Commander has clearly defined characters and relationships. In other words, the film's young actors have nothing interesting to say, but they say it well.

Sonatine eliminates the one virtue American action films can legitimately claim -- vitality -- and replaces it with fake- existential claptrap wrapped in an inept narrative.

The film captures the harshness and the sweetness of our time.

If this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future.

About one idea short of being an excellent teenage romance. As it stands it's a pleasing but routine effort.

The film remains, clearly by design, a cold piece, mechanistic and only intermittently involving.

Part of the appeal is that it's so bad it's good: The story is ridiculous. At other times, it's just plain good: There are ski and snowboarding scenes, plenty of them, that are beautifully filmed and exhilarating to behold.

If the film has any value at all it's as an example to illustrate the point that even a mediocre horror movie requires a certain amount of inspiration. At least a sense of fun, a little life and enthusiasm. Dr. Giggles is put together strictly by the numbers. It aims low -- at the floor -- and misses. [24 Oct 1992, p.C3]

By the way, The Tillman Story has an R rating because of language. Think about that one, too: Lies are rated G and can be heard around the clock on television, but try saying the truth with the proper force and you end up with a restricted audience.

Takes the financially successful formula of "Legally Blonde," the Reese Witherspoon hit from two years ago, and does something unexpected. It fiddles with it, changes it and actually fixes it.

A successful work of art. To see this movie is to feel that you've lived it.

In The Five Obstructions, we meet the Danish filmmaker for an extended period, and he's exactly what a fan might hope and expect him to be like: impish, insightful, unpredictable, mildly sadistic and rigorously honest.

His (George Clooney) rugged good looks spell movie star, but his body language spells Don Knotts, without the wit.

City Slickers is a funny and affecting comedy, with wonderful jokes and a script flashing intelligence in every direction. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

They talk and talk, and somehow it's delightful.

One of his better efforts, not up there in the Vertigo-North by Northwest-Psycho stratosphere, but a cut above his competent thrillers such as Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur and Lifeboat. [19 Dec 2004]

Hard, ugly and nasty yet a stylistically vigorous and often insightful piece of work.

Along the way, Looking for Eric emerges as a portrait of a world and a way of life. You will probably not want to live in Manchester after seeing this film, but you'll like and respect the people.

The movie benefits from the frankness that filmmakers were allowed in these pre-censorship days. Dvorak, in her best showcase, is sympathetic as a woman bent on self-destruction, because we appreciate that she has desires she can’t contain.

Its story meanders and doesn't build, and the pace is deadly.

They take on special powers that the filmmakers are incapable of making interesting, partly because the characters are ciphers, and partly because the story is listless and uninventive.

Best of all is Winona Ryder, who gets to play a brilliant teenager, as she did in ''Heathers.'' It's almost automatically comical to hear such a clear, emphatic and intelligent voice coming out of a kid. But Ryder also works that oddness for dramatic advantage, creating with Dinky the sense of a great spirit temporarily stuck in a child's body. [12 Oct 1990, p.E3]

Has enough wit, energy and geniality to please everyone.

Elizabeth works in a number of ways. It's a feminist film. It's also a kind of spy thriller and a superior historical drama.

In Mission: Impossible III, we find out whether it's still possible to look at Tom Cruise and not see a weirdo. The answer is yes, but a complicated yes, because it takes time.

Subdued yet percolating with suppressed emotion.

Spielberg's sledgehammer way with emotional moments, never more obvious than here, kills some of the pleasure for adults and robs the movie of the ultimate laurel -- classic status. [2002 re-release]

A stink bomb of a movie.

Child actors usually seem either vacuous or snotty, but 8-year-old Max Pomeranc qualifies as a find. As Josh he comes across as a genuinely nice kid, and his intelligent, watchful eyes make him a believable chess talent. In fact, Pomer anc is a highly-ranked chess player who has competed in the national finals. [11 Aug 1993, p.E1]

Tense and compelling, with the added charm of a mischievous spirit.

The film doesn't make a case for Lavoe as an important artist.

Occasionally brilliant, profiting from Fellini's distinct and unmistakable way of looking and seeing. But it goes in circles and wears out its welcome, except for the most hard-core enthusiasts.

Black Sheep is a little comedy that succeeds in its modest aim to provide 87 minutes of harmless diversion. If you have nothing to do -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- Black Sheep, which opens today, is a must-see.

The beauty of The Joneses is that the salesmen are as much the victims as the people they're deceiving.

Does a fine job.

Though charming at times, just misses, due to a contrived story.

Carries a lot of emotional power.

A limp, slow-moving and desperately unfunny comedy.

It takes a winning recipe and adds some distinctly Hollywood flavors...The result is a botched job.

Lush and heartfelt, but compelling only in fits and starts.

Remarkable in several big ways.

An attempt at an epic. Sayles assembles a big cast and creates a mosaic of interweaving characters and story lines. But the stories are bland, the connections are incidental and the dramatic payoff is nonexistent.

I like it for the thing it is, a reasonably solid B movie, and I like it as one in the continuum of bizarre Ford vehicles that combine high-stakes action with household horror.

Weekend at Bernie's II has the tell- tale signs of a bad film directed by its screenwriter. There's lots of goofy shtick, and the actors seem to have been directed to act silly. Instead of playing for truth, they mug and overdo it, particularly McCarthy, and the result is deadly. [10 July 1993, p.C3]

An odd hybrid but a successful one. It marries the lyricism and heavy atmosphere of a European art film with the soaring spirit of a Hollywood love story.

A cautionary tale as well as an expose on the power of the American fast-food industry. That the documentary comes across as more than a sermon has a lot to do with Spurlock's personality, which is outgoing and instantly engaging.

Freeway is rude in the way the truth is rude -- only funnier. The movie seduces with its humor, all the while presenting a realized vision of a harsh, absurd world.

Though the film seems less like a theatrical release and more like something that might play on an obscure PBS station at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, it's reasonably interesting as a personality study.

A 98-minute elucidation of a point that's accepted within three minutes.

This is a half-hearted, derivative action film with not a single honest artistic impulse behind it.

Some of the dialogue in Made was improvised, and the comic invention at work here -- Vaughn's and Favreau's -- make Made into a rough gem.

The best thing about Strangers With Candy is its relentlessness. It doesn't back off on its absurd humor, doesn't try to make sense and doesn't soft-pedal the characters.

Anybody who talks about True Romance has to start with the writing. It's dazzling. In scene after scene, Tarantino surprises the audience even while coming up with dialogue that rings much more true than anything you could have anticipated. [10 Sept 1993]

A charmer, a movie whose embrace of cinema is so passionate it could be mistaken for an embrace of life.

Alien 3 is pretentious and gimmicky by turns, resorting at times to silly B-movie tricks that undercut its seriousness and moments that can be anticipated from a mile off. [22 May 1992, P.D1]

As the corpses pile up and the cocoons hatch, the spiders become more brazen and finally start invading houses. The last 45 minutes of Arachnophobia is a blast, with attack-of-the-killer-spider scenes coming nonstop. This is not great art, but it's a good time, and the climax is terrific. [18 July 1990, p.E1]

Stylized and visually arresting, with intense sex scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is an immersion into another time, place and mentality.

Tells the story of Leo Tolstoy's last year from a refreshing new perspective.

Plays like a war movie made in a time of war: too careful, too programmatic.

This is one of the wisest, slickest and most unorthodox feminist films one could ever hope to see.

Trust never lives up to its snappy opening. Everything is tongue-in-cheek here - yet it's never remotely clear what the point is or what's getting satirized. [16 Aug 1991]

Search for some independent inspiration, and you'll be looking for a long time.

As a drama - an epic drama, no less, clocking in at 137 minutes - its fascination is diffused, and the movie becomes something of a long slog.

Needless to say, Soul Men has a lot to overcome in its effort to be funny.

Shanley tries to make something courageous and symbolic out of the notion of jumping into a volcano, but his philosophizing is sentimental, heavy-handed and forced. The idea of doing something reckless and adventurous even becomes a bit depressing when it dawns on you that Shanley may have been taking his own advice with this movie, for less than glorious results. [9 Mar 1990, p.E3]

Aims to do nothing but please, and it accomplishes its modest aim with charm and intelligence.

May hit a few wrong notes, but it strikes an emotional chord.

The Shadow is more than just the product of the trend to make high- tech features out of '30s superheroes. It's adventurous film-making, genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely inspired. [01 Jul 1994, p.C1]

This is the movie for anyone who has ever sat around with friends and thought, "Someone should make a movie about this," a film that captures the tenderness and quick humor of hanging out. It's not an easy task. We may find our own friends delightful, but watching other people's friends is a dreary prospect.

It's off in many directions - false in its details, false in its relationships, false in its emotions - but probably the first and worst thing that needs to be said about it is that it's also overlong and dull.

In the moment, it's intermittently transcendent, heartrending and beautiful ... and busy, repetitious and boring.

The temptation to be emphatic about Synecdoche, New York is overwhelming but should be resisted, because the movie really is a mixed bag. A particularly odd mix.

Smart, fun entertainment.

The picture doesn't come close to approaching the near-classic quality of the earlier film.

It's astonishing what little impact even the most imaginatively choreographed and well-filmed aerial escapades can have when they're presented as neither an expression of a character's personality, nor in the context of a compelling mission.

It's a rare, beautifully made movie that offers you another world. [23 June 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

It's a plodding, episodic film, reverent and sanctimonious, and its pro-Southern viewpoint -- a time-honored Hollywood tendency -- makes "Gone With the Wind" look like a Northern polemic.

Knowing nothing about "X-Files" is no impediment to appreciating this for the well-acted, adult piece of work that it is.

For all the movie's coarse grandeur -- for all the blood in its battle scenes and the grim historical accuracy of its depiction of antediluvian medical procedures -- the story of Master and Commander feels like something intended not for adults but for children.