Mick LaSalle

The picture... is well- made and entertaining, but it holds a special interest in what it says about Hanks.

What pushes it above mediocrity is that it ends better than it begins.

A cute and amusing little romance that has all the fiery impetuosity of an egg sandwich.

The Plot Against Harry isn't stark and merciless enough to be a black comedy or zany enough to be just plain fun. After a while the oddball characters and unlikely twists of the plot lose their charm, and the movie just seems self-conscious and cute. [07 Feb 1990, p.E1]

The first measure of Arteta's shrewdness as a storyteller is in the no-fuss way he reveals the nature of the father's business.

It's the worst kind of convoluted thriller -- it can never unravel satisfactorily because there's nothing simple at its center, just more confusion.

When compared with the ambition and achievement of recent animated films, such as "Coraline" and "Toy Story 3," Despicable Me hardly seems to have been worth making, and it's barely worth watching.

When Travolta plays, everybody has a good time.

Something kicks in about two thirds in, and Far and Away becomes exhilarating. [22 May 1992]

Amusing and holds interest largely thanks to its re-creation of a glitzy, flamboyant era, not to mention its soundtrack of disco songs that sound a lot better today than 20 years ago.

There's only so much Soderbergh can do. Gray's Anatomy is made up mainly of Gray, and there's a whole lot of Gray going on. The story is unremarkable. Gray's observations, pedestrian.

Never dull, but it's rarely more than gently entertaining.

It’s a great film, but it must be added that it’s also an entertaining film. That is, it’s not at all a chore to sit through. People not only appreciate the film, but also enjoy it — though it’s a sober kind of enjoyment, given the subject matter.

The movie's effectiveness is distorted by its hero-worship of the Chicago defendants.

The slow pace kills the sense of urgency, and the length and breadth of the film makes the story seem insignificant. Tarantino is still someone to watch, but Jackie Brown, before it's over, becomes a who-cares proposition.

Precious and uninsightful but ends beautifully.

Benefits enormously from Aiello's down-to-earth magnificence.

The movie has the wisecracking quality of a Sturges screenplay, but it's warm and heartfelt, too. [13 Nov 2016, p.Q16]

A Hungarian film -- an existential thriller, one might call it -- about an intelligent man who happens to have this lowly nuisance of a job.

It's a love story only in passing. And yet the love story is what lingers in the mind and gives energy and meaning to everything that happens on-screen.

Missing a purpose.

A funny comedy for about 90 seconds. Then Bette Midler goes off a cliff.

It's an intelligent movie about economics. As such, it would probably make more sense to have it reviewed by economists than film critics.

The story here isn't much, and the truth it reveals, to them and us, isn't earthshaking, just quiet and somber.

Puccini for Beginners is literate and sensitive, characterized by witty dialogue and smart, emotional two-person encounters.

In this one masterpiece, Federico Fellini achieved the ideal balance -- between social observation and unconscious imagery, between artistic discipline and freedom, and between the neo-realism of 1950s Italian cinema and the orgiastic flights of his later work.

For all Wong's energy and virtuosity, the relentless stylishness and whimsicality of Chungking Express become irritating. The cast is appealing -- particularly the forlorn young cops. But the velocity of Wong's attack seems out of proportion to the airy, lightweight quality of the stories.

Excess Baggage falls down as a showcase for Silverstone, who made a big splash in "Clueless" and whose production company is releasing this film. She comes across as unappealing and unseasoned in ways that go beyond the role.

O has one advantage over "Othello" -- since it's a new movie, not a classic, it has the power to surprise.

The film ends up landing in a confused middle category. It's neither a coherent, discrete work nor a zany tribute to the late actor.

John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy directed this fine adaptation of the stage hit, a comedy-drama about a first officer on a cargo ship (Henry Fonda) who wants to be reassigned to combat duty. [05 Jul 1998]

The saving grace of this French film is that it's anything but a sentimental story.

Here's a tiresome feature that could be made into a wonderful 20-minute film -- or, with a few adjustments, into two or three 10-minute shorts.

Proves that it's possible to make a movie so tasteless and so crude that audiences don't laugh. This is worthwhile information. It means there's a limit.

In Godsend, we have the spectacle of three good actors tied to the mast of a sinking premise.

Sad, funny and painfully honest.

Half a good romantic comedy. Luke Wilson is the good half...The weak half is Natasha Henstridge.

There's something heartening about a film that aspires to do nothing but entertain -- and does.

The World's Fastest Indian might be the world's worst title for a charming, slice-of-life biopic.

There's no other film like it. It's embarrassingly frank and self-revealing, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy, sometimes both.

[Hartley] changes the script enough so that the integrity of his experiment goes out the window. But he doesn't change enough so that the narrative can have any suspense.

Might have been more effective as a documentary.

It's so low it scrapes through the barrel and deep into the earth's core. It's the lowest piece of garbage to hit screens in months.

Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis, may be too long, too self-important and too "Gump"-like to be completely satisfying. But it contains elements that are so striking they pretty much redeem the film.

The bottom line here is that Cyrus is ghastly in The Last Song, bad not just in one or two ways, but in all kinds of ways.

Sixty-seven minutes in, I looked up and noticed the movie had 53 minutes left to go, even though every plot element had been resolved. And that's precisely where the movie went to hell. [23 Nov 2014, p.M21]

A great film, the best I've seen since Terrence Malick's "The New World," and far and away the richest and most brilliantly acted picture to be released this Oscar season.

Director David Kellogg tries to inject energy into the picture with speeded-up sequences and smash-bang cutting, and the art direction is bright and eye-catching. But it's just gourmet dressing on dead lettuce. The movie is unable to balance Ice's aspirations to genuine adult-level coolness in a story clearly designed to appeal to the sensibilities of pre-teenage girls, and the result is bland and often absurd. [22 Oct 1991, p.F1]

A triumph for Judd and the director.

It helps that most of Creation is about the relationships - Darwin's with his wife and with his daughter. Even if we resist it, even if we don't want to be dragged in, the story of Annie becomes quite moving, almost unbearable.

From scene to scene, the tone shifts from supposed sincerity to arch and amused, until the picture begins to seem like some mad, desperate, scattershot attempt to hold an audience's attention from moment to moment, by any means.

The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things.

It's dreadful, but it's a special kind of dreadful -- the kind designed to appeal to intelligent people on principle.

One of the best war movies of the past 20 years.

A first-rate action movie, slickly done and with so many imaginative bonuses that, for a time, it feels like a classic in the making. It's not, but it's still solid and entertaining [1 June 1990]

The result is embarrassing: quick cuts and shaky, hand- held camera work, bad acting and lots of attitude.

Remarkably empty, remarkably noisy, remarkably pleasureless. It's unwatchable.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a lovingly made, gorgeously realized, meticulously crafted failure. It has big names, a big budget, big sets, a big, thundering score and even big hair. But it doesn't do it. It doesn't excite or fascinate but just lies there on the screen. [13 Nov 1992, p. C1]

Clearly a minor classic, mainly for reasons besides its crime story plot -- namely, the urbane fatalism of its cast and the overall mood of inevitability that hangs over every scene.

The presence of Washington lends the picture a much-needed dose of authenticity. But in the end Virtuosity is disconnected and uninvolving, despite -- or maybe because of -- a climax that comes in three distinct waves. One section seems to be a half-hour sound-and-light show.

It's a movie about a scrubwoman who paints - so don't expect lots of sex scenes or car chases. Just expect a great performance by Moreau, who will convince you that she painted every one of those paintings - and lived them all before she painted them.

Though Mom is ditzy and, at times, irritating, we come to recognize her as the family's most original creative spirit.

How bad does it get? How far past the basement can one elevator go?

Mean-spirited and not remotely clever, though it strives for archness at every turn.

Bleak.

Haunting psychological drama.

The saving grace of Old School is that it has about a dozen funny moments. These moments aren't mildly funny or chuckle funny but really funny.

Wildly romantic.

It's refreshing to see a film about nothing but human emotion.

If the writing and direction carry Sphere most of the way, the actors manage to bring it home.

At times, the sight of reserved English actors slapping, hugging and acting all Russian looks bizarre, though one casting choice is prime: Bob Hoskins has the ideal air of impish menace in the featured role of Khrushchev.

A grounded and unusually matter-of-fact adaptation.

Might have been about the rise and fall of a family of gifted children. That would have been the typical way to approach the story. Instead, it's something rare -- a movie about people who have already fallen, whose best days are behind them.

A smart, arch and rather cold-blooded comedy.

This lushly photographed, brilliantly acted and wonderfully entertaining movie has its own claims to uniqueness. It's the most thoughtful of the three films, and its climax brings the entire series into sharper focus. [25 Dec 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

A creditable genre entry, the rare action movie with a discernible story, an assured pace and a charismatic central character. It falls apart in the end.

Made mostly by white people, it's a film largely about how awful white people are -- just the kind of thing many white viewers will love and consider important. But however you might feel about this kind of movie, Map of the Human Heart is fake merchandise, an unfelt, boring travelogue that covers itself in its anti-racist, anti-war message and then dares audiences to notice its barrenness at the core. [14 May 1993, p.C6]

Painless and predictable, with an amusing if overwrought featured performance by Woody Harrelson.

It's marred by loaded language and a propagandistic tone that undercuts rather than promotes its purposes.

What could have been a brilliant short becomes deadly, stretched to feature length. The last hour of Nadja takes on the pace of a stranger's vacation video. In a sure sign of desperation, the careful tone of the opening is abandoned in scattershot attempts at cheap laughs. The film's world is undermined, and Nadja gets as precious, smirky and as boring as a Hal Hartley picture.

It's a maddening, satisfying, junky, enjoyable picture.

More hokey than heartfelt.

Though the movie has a handful of shots that are downright gross to witness, what makes The Orphanage scary is not what it threatens to show but what it suggests about life.

Screenwriter William Monahan has fashioned an intelligent and highly topical epic. Director Ridley Scott has brought it home with banners flying.

Presents us with characters of such humanity and dignity that it begins to seem obscene that until now we haven't exactly given all that much thought to the Kurds.

With Woo, violence is not just a means to an end. It's something pretty; it's fascinating. His talent is an original and peculiar one. Woo brings an esthetic sensibility to bear on the phenomenon of a good guy beating people up -- and to the spectacle of a violent shoot-out. Explosions aren't just impressive but beautiful. [20 Aug 1993, p.C1]

That the movie becomes silly isn't necessarily a problem, but it also becomes tiresome, degenerating into a series of martial arts interludes -- everyone unaccountably leaves his guns at home.

Take everything extraneous out of Undercover Blues and you're left with about 15 minutes of physical gags and banter, more than enough to make an amusing coming-attractions trailer but about 70 minutes short of a decent movie. [11 Sept 1993, p.F5]

As a comedy, Junior has its share of laughs -- but no more than its share.

Friedkin is steeped in gore, like some cinematic Macbeth, and it's obscuring his artistic vision.

Gets it right. It's a wonderful movie. Watching it, one can't help but get the impression that everyone involved was steeped in Tolkien's work, loved the book, treasured it and took care not to break a cherished thing in it.

The script is full of off-the-wall lines that take you by surprise but are perfect. [21 Aug 1987]

The dialogue stretches are just pauses between the action scenes, where the director gets to show her stuff. [12 July 1991, p.F1]

A premise so rock-solid, so guaranteed to please, that it almost doesn't matter that the movie is otherwise a routine slasher, and not a particularly scary one.

About as awful as a film can be without being the ultimate awful, which is boring.

This film is the closest we're going to get to anything new by Williams, and it's a respectable effort.

At times you may be moved as by no other foreign film this year - and then 10 minutes later be leaning forward in the seat just to stay awake.

This is a movie in which the audience knows half the gags in advance, but thanks to director Dennis Dugan's timing and Farley's execution, the audience doesn't just laugh anyway, but laughs harder. Knowing in advance is part of the fun.

Hill and his cast, including Christopher Walken as a sadistic hood, struggle to score a victory of style over substance. But substance, or a lack thereof, wins.

Not a campy film, but it revels in extremes, and has the same sort of appeal.

Another urban action thriller that's better than some, worse than most and so forgettable that it's possible to forget it while watching it?

'Night' is the kind of horror movie where a zombie puts his hand through a window, grabs the hero's face with a decayed hand and fellows in the audience laugh, knowingly. The laugh I can understand. The "knowingly" part I don't even want to think about it...As horror movies go, it's a little better than average. [22 Oct 1990, p.F1]

This is a decidedly blue-state take on a red-state phenomenon.

Some so-so movies are just easy to be around, and this is one of them.

An action blockbuster that's one of the biggest misfires in its genre since "Godzilla."

If In the Cut falls short of the masterpiece Campion intended, it's unquestionably the most ambitious and important film to come along in months.

An elegant and rather even-tempered documentary.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

Imagine watching Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except without good scenes, without a marriage (legal or spiritual) and without people worthy of anybody's attention, even each other's. Now imagine something even worse.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, is a stiff, guaranteed to disappoint just about everybody, except those rooting against him. [11 Jul 1990, p.E1]

Yet with all its virtues, Thunderheart unravels after the first hour and continues unraveling until it chokes itself. The movie's complicated story, involving the FBI, the government, and the feuding tribal factions, is impossible to sort through. [3 Apr 1992, p.D1]

Director Mike Figgis (''Internal Affairs'') adorns ''Mr. Jones'' with some unconventional touches, abrupt fade-outs that give a touch of poetry to the endings of scenes -- and keeps the audience believing that ''Mr. Jones'' is a class act long after it's obvious it's not. [8 Oct 1993, p.C3]

Competent but uninspired thriller.

I got tired of Coneheads early on, but I never really got tired of looking at those heads.

It's an ambitious film -- but also a scattered, unfocused one.

The new movie lacks something, a special something. It's a quality that has characterized some of the best of the first 19 Bond movies: extravagant ludicrousness.

Maybe this mixed-up and weird, awful but awfully likable movie is what Dirty Harry had coming to him, after all.

What this uncaring man is doing to her (Ida), he's about to do to a nation of 50 million people. And all of them will hate themselves in the morning.

A fairly mediocre film, not nearly as funny as it should be, nor as heartfelt. On the plus side, it's only 85 minutes long and isn't boring. On the downside, it has an intrusive pop soundtrack and a screenplay full of fake conflicts.

In trouble from its first minutes.

If you can find a better time at the movies this year than this wild comic thriller, let me in on it.

The last hour of Titanic is huge and staggering, but there's no horror in it. No gravity, either. Entrusted with one of the century's monumental stories, Cameron can present it only as a crying shame. And that's a crying shame.

This is an excellent comedy, and the fact that it's made by a filmmaker with even better movies on his resume is nothing to hold against it.

With Desplechin, it doesn't ever feel as though he's straining to show us things. It's more like we're just hanging out. We're in this house, and by some strange coincidence, every time we turn around, something interesting is happening.

Has some funny moments, and if you're a Beavis and Butt-head fan, you'll enjoy the movie.

Burns has a hard time finding a central idea, some overall point that isn't borrowed or trite. Or both.

The actors do their best, particularly the impeccable Mirren, but Schepisi draws a shroud of chaste dullness over their scenes and lays on an energy- sapping score.

A so-so, OK, perfectably acceptable, nice, rather charming romantic comedy with two stars who are entirely watchable.

Directed by Danny Boyle, it lacks even a single moment of charm or interest.

Snags on the fact that neither story depicted -- not Kaufman's and especially not Orlean's -- is enough to sustain more than an incidental interest.

If this movie were a human being, it would be intelligent and sincere but so depressed as to be unable to get out of bed without a forklift.

An amusing bauble.

It's about what you'd expect _ a collection of gags, some good, some bad, with the bare suggestion of a story to hang it all on. Chevy Chase, as usual, is a lot better than he has to be and lifts the picture to the point that it's intermittently fun and fairly painless. [1 Dec 1989, p.E1]

Deep Cover is a sleazy crime picture and a peculiar and twisted moral journey. It's also a terrific movie, and once you trace its lineage you begin to see why.[15 Apr 1992, p.E1]

In the end the most interesting thing about In the Mouth of Madness is its weird relationship with itself -- its cheesy horror celebrating the power of cheesy horror, while pretending to be appalled.

Even without surprises, or drama, or clever dialogue, or even a single scene of any merit, Rebound goes along pleasantly.

An appealing film with a hideous title.

The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil.

Goes nowhere.

The world of The Black Dahlia is beyond bleak, beyond film noir.

Has to go down as a failed comedy. It's just not enough of a comedy.

A nonstop action picture with a fair amount of laughs, car chases and exploding buildings. [15 May 1992]

A smooth, elegiac mood piece.

Credit the director for one thing. He could have stretched it to three hours, but he gets in and out of this mess in less than two.

Underlying the story is sadness, a sense of mystery and a quality of pain. Enjoy the movie for its surface pleasures, but when it's over, it's those subterranean qualities that will keep it lingering in the mind.

With most movies that fail, the fault can be ascribed to carelessness or lack or inspiration or cynicism. But Chelsea Walls, directed by actor Ethan Hawke, is clearly a labor of love.

Coppola has no trouble convincing viewers that Marie Antoinette is an interesting historical subject, but there's a big distance between that and creating a fascinating personality or fashioning a compelling narrative.

They don't get more frustrating than American Rhapsody, a near-great film for about an hour that changes into a self-indulgent mess.

Heartfelt but interminable movie.

Though Craven satirizes horror cliches, he also knows how to cut through them and do new things. Throughout, the action comes unexpectedly and quickly.

Skids into absurdity, but it never quite gets boring. Movies like this rarely are.

The result is a gutsy little picture and a nice slice of life.

The movie has that fatal triptych that is becoming Reiner's romantic-comedy signature: drippy sentiment, zany scenes that trivialize the characters and a horror of adventure.

There's a lot to process when watching The War Tapes, and that's probably why the documentary gets even better a few days later.

As played by Douglas, he is a man with a free flow from his spirit through the instrument. It's instinctive. He becomes involved with two women, and this is where the movie could become hokey, but it doesn't. [12 Jun 2005]

The important thing is that Clark has found a new way to be creepy, which isn't easy. In the process he has created something irresistibly watchable, the kind of original piece that might mean less but reveal more than its creator intended.

Taps into a fear hitherto unexplored by cinema: fear of Bill Gates.

The biggest sequel of the summer has more dinosaurs, better special effects and more action than the original... But the inspiration is gone, and with it most of the fun.

The story may be scattered and sagging and the picture may have little emotional impact -- certainly nothing to justify the epic running time -- but Garcia at least succeeds in making Havana in the 1950s seem like a vibrant, special place. He doesn't exactly make the audience care, but he does make the audience understand why he cares, and that's something.

The Rodriguez segment is terrific; the Tarantino one long-winded and juvenile.

It's hard to sell people on a movie about grief, but A Single Man deserves recognition for being about something real that usually goes unexplored: The grief from which there really can be no return.

Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose.

As a cold meditation on sex and power, The Lover succeeds. The girl remains invincible behind her youth and vapidity, calmly amazed at her own strength. But as an evocation of the mysterious and universal currents of love and time and passion, ''The Lover'' is inflated but empty. [13 Nov 1992, p.C3]

A movie with an irresistible premise that ultimately collapses around the whole issue of motivation. Until it does, this is a thoroughly entertaining picture.

It's middling Allen, which means that fans won't be sorry to see it, while everyone else can wait until the next "Bullets Over Broadway."

The film's real find is D.J. Qualls, who is very funny as a jug-eared nerd who blossoms into a wild man after three days on the road.

Has a lot going for it -- but too much going against it to be a clear-cut winner.

The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.

It's dreary and self-indulgent but has its crystalline moments.

Only a complete idiot could think Epic Movie is remotely funny.

To see Perfect Stranger is to wish for a more sophisticated vehicle for a film actress this good, but actors -- and audiences -- take what they can get. This is better than most.

A particularly strong family drama, and the Icelandic setting helps, adding a touch of the exotic.

This is Baumbach's best yet.

Emotionally false.

Falls victim to a fatal lack of narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless.

This is the most realistic film about teaching that you're ever likely to see.

It's a strange thing, this type of whimsy. Kari offers us ideas in place of characters, and yet he expects us to see through these ideas to the real-life conditions they represent - and then to respond to them in kind.

If anything is better about the sequel than the original, it's Leslie Nielsen, as deadpan as ever, but looking more relaxed than before, mugging and playing up his jokes with the subtlety and timing of an accomplished comedian -- which, at this point, I suppose he is. [28 June 1991, p.F1]

Taken as a whole, Bandits is a success, a two-hour entertainment that floats along, stumbling into various genres, discovering its moments.

More than the usual bad or even numbingly horrible movie. It's an amalgam of many of the modern cinema's worst tendencies and modern filmmaking's most unfortunate misconceptions.

Earns its emotional moments, and it takes the audience along.

A smirky cleverness infects much of the picture, yet some scenes are so skillfully created that it's hard not to admire them, and Dominique Pinon's sensitive performance as a retired circus man gives the movie a soul. [10 Apr 1992]

An appealing Hollywood satire.

A single 125-minute monstrosity of a cop movie.

The movie is ridiculous.

All Hollywood and no Homer, but within its limits, it's a vigorous, entertaining movie.

A risky, foolish, intelligent comedy.

It’s fascinating to return to this movie after many years. [2024 Restored Version]

Succeeds in its modest way because its stars, Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier, are pleasant to be around.

Could hardly be called a success -- it's rather a likable disaster.

Magnificent but somewhat frustrating movie.

200 Cigarettes doesn't have a bad scene or a false note. The picture is a succession of pointed little moments, nicely written by Shana Larsen and acted with comic assurance and sensitivity.

Michael can't be killed, and so a ''Halloween'' picture can never really end. It can only stop. And since it can stop anywhere, it may as well stop sooner than later. This one stops later, and by the time it does it's hard to care. [17 Oct 1989, p.E4]

There's run-of-the-mill bad, and then there's a movie like Hardware. [14 Sep 1990, p.E3]

It's hard to dislike a picture with flying cows and oil trucks.

There's a good idea behind Repo Men, not a whole lot of thinking, but at least one whole idea.

At first, The Oath looks as though it will be a study of the soul-corroding effects of twisted ideology, but it emerges as the reverse.

Sexy, peculiar and always entertaining.

It's a compelling minimalist drama about spiritual evolution, with strong performances and exotic locations.

It's no masterpiece. In fact, it's not even all that good. But it has that great character in it -- Falstaff, or in this case, a thinly veiled Vito Corleone -- so it's something to see. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

It's the picture that proves action films don't have to be silly, that a few thrill sequences don't mean every other value has to be shot to pieces.

For a little while The Client seems as though it's going to be a battle of wits between the two lawyers played by Sarandon and Jones. The interplay between the two is the best thing about the movie. [20 July 1994, p.E1]

It's a dishonest satire that manages to be (disingenuously) contemptuous of white people and (unintentionally) condescending toward black people, without ever being funny.

While Dark Blue may not be easy to watch, it's exceptionally well made.

It has nothing going for it but a terrific story and an amazing performance by Judith Ivey, who plays an enigmatic Good Samaritan.

Field is at her best, downtrodden and determined as ever, and Sheila Rosenthal as Mahtob, Betty and Moody's little daughter, is adorable. [11 Jan 1991, p.E1]

[Soderbergh] plays with time and narrative to reveal character, mood and longing in ways you just don't find in a mainstream crime picture.

The comedy is hit and miss, with good bits interrupted by dead patches. It's a movie to root for more than to enjoy.

Yet all this work, all this skill, serve as little more than an elaborate setting for a rhinestone. At its core there is no passion, no sincerity of conception, nothing that might have made The Quick and the Dead into anything more than moment-to-moment stimulation. You get lots of clothes here, but no emperor. Or rather, no empress.

For all its faults, some of the action scenes in The Rookie are spectacular. [07 Dec 1990, p.E1]

Has some great movie moments but also boring stretches.

Going after one innocent man was bad enough. Going after another constitutes a pattern. This marshal isn't a hero. He's a menace.

The Maid would have been worthwhile just as a showcase both for good acting and for the director's virtuosity. But the movie's ultimate virtue is its humanity.

Everything connected with the lovers, who are the point of the movie, is either ordinary or unwittingly funny, and the laughs come early.

There's no attempt at greatness here, just a fabulously successful attempt at a good crime movie. The Oscar-bait self-consciousness of "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator" is gone. In its place is a buoyancy, an impish delight in telling a harsh urban story in the most effective terms possible.

The result is a film that will probably please people already fascinated by Behan but leave everyone else yawning with admiration.

The movie's pleasures are acting pleasures, but the movie doesn't compel attention and never seems like more than the frame for a performance.

One great monster movie. [11 June 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

A complicated family story that takes place in three distinct time periods, and that's handled with astonishing ease and fluidity by director Claude Miller.

The film never settles into an assured rhythm, and instead the actors always seem to be pushing, putting the hard sell on an audience that, however distracted by the strenuousness of the sales pitch, still isn't buying.

This one enters the pantheon of great American war films.

Now that she's past 50, can we all stop holding Michelle Pfeiffer's looks against her and just admit that she's a great actress?

Coco Chanel is not the most lovable of heroines, but it's a strength of the film that director Anne Fontaine allows Tautou to make Coco as cold and ungiving as she does.

The result is a worthy woman's film and Jolie's best showcase to date.

Sober and dispiriting, tense and morose.

The movie's strength is that it makes us want to know more about Levitch, and we pay attention as the tidbits are dropped -- that he's from a middle-class Jewish family in upstate New York, and that he did time in prison. The movie's flaw is that, having gained our attention, it fails to tell us what we want to know.

A caper comedy with some definite problems.

An ambitious and exciting piece of work, a movie about sex and movies made by a filmmaker who understands the power of each to set off fantasy, create addiction, incite danger and transform the spirit.

Perfunctory, thrill- free sequel.

A complicated and stylish Korean thriller that will make viewers' skin crawl.

The details feel authentic: The empty Paris streets, the profanation of German anti-aircraft guns atop belle epoque buildings. And Devaivre's adventures provide high tension.

Though The Concert swerves and skids, it never goes off the road, and when the moment counts, when things really make a difference, the film comes through beautifully.

Dares to present a flat-out heroic president, without the safety net of irony. It succeeds.

I Am Love casts no spell and creates no narrative urgency. It's as compelling as mildly interesting gossip about people you don't know.

A self-conscious attempt at the brass ring.

Monotonous.

It's a movie filled with surprises, including one outright kick in the head that qualifies as one of the biggest movie moments of 1992. [18 Dec 1992]

The right mix of humor and horror and with not even a shred of sentimentality.

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

The film is notable as the first English-language role of Peter Lorre, who is creepily appealing as the leader of the conspiracy. [03 Feb 2013, p.Q19]

Holds a lot of promise in its first hour and never completely falls apart, but it's ultimately not the movie it might have been.

One of those comedies in which almost everything good about it is extraneous. There are funny lines and quirky bits, but in terms of story and character, the movie is empty and pointless.

Something to Talk About never goes bad, though it does get corny in places, and it hits a couple of dull patches near the finish. The last half-hour contains two completely different scenes involving two completely different horseback riding contests. Yet despite the braying insistence of the sound track, the audience doesn't care about either one.

Family Business has star power going for it, and all three names above the title get the job done. [15 Dec 1989, p.E1]

As entertaining an action movie as you're going to find. [13 Apr 1991, p.C3]

Under the subdued, dignified surface, this movie - about the 24 hours after a one-night stand - churns with a filmmaker's fascination and wonder, sadness and longing.

An engaging romantic comedy that's deeper, smarter and more pessimistic than it appears at first glance, a film with shrewd insight into the mysteries of human attraction.

Unfortunately Young Guns II is a small blaze and no glory. [01 Aug 1990, p.E1]

At its slowest, the film has value as a historical document. At its best, the film gives a human face to stories of unimaginable suffering and unexpected triumph.

It's a likable action picture that's fun and entertaining even when it's a bit silly. [16 Mar 1990, p.E1]

In UHF we get 90 minutes of Al Yankovic, and that's 85 minutes too much. The problem isn't that he's weird, but that he isn't weird at all. The premises for his gags are commonplace and predictable, and his follow-throughs lack imagination. He seems incapable of spinning more than one tired joke from each set-up. [21 Jul 1989, p.E1]

Charlotte Rampling goes for broke as a sexually rapacious older woman. So does Ally Sheedy as a rich woman. They're memorable, and yet equally satisfying is Ciaran Hinds' sadness and restraint as a paroled sex offender with deviancy in the blood.

Belushi is profoundly unfunny. Opportunities are provided for him to do shtick -- running amok in the jacuzzi, drooling over a pretty girl -- and it's like watching a form of communication from an alien civilization. What is he doing up there? [17 Aug 1990, p.E11]

The strain and desperation are apparent from the first scene.

Sleeping With the Enemy is bound to be a crowd pleaser, with its cool, crazed villain and with Julia Roberts in the lead, as a woman who fakes her death in order to escape her husband. But everything surprising and gripping about the movie happens in the first 20 minutes, and after that it follows a predictable course. [08 Feb 1991, p.C1]

It’s coolheaded and incisive, a thorough and informative study of corporations, their origins and their place in the modern world.

A good French film that was inspired by an American classic.

Philippe Blasband's screenplay is witty and economical, and the film's editing is crisp.

Under the cover of what seems like a charmingly slapdash style, the Duplass brothers have created a disarmingly shrewd movie.

Passenger 57 is silly but fun -- an action movie accidentally saved by its glorious stupidity. It will make people shake their heads, roll their eyes and laugh at the screen, but it will keep their attention, because the movie has a crazy kind of life. [06 Nov 1992, p.C1]

Pacino and Crowe are at their best, but the supporting cast also shines.

Taps into the same emotional current that sustains the entire "buddy picture" genre, but does so with feeling and unmistakable insight.

An enjoyable movie with an entertaining angle on a hard-to-resist period of history.

An extraordinary film, mythic in feeling.

In the end, Crash lacks a cumulative impact. It takes audiences to new places, but we've all been to similar places, and we walk out knowing no more than we did walking in.

Has a certain B-movie integrity -- a muscular commitment to grabbing the viewer's eye and keeping things moving. It won't win any awards, but it holds interest.

For all this, there is one unalloyed good thing to be said for High Tension. When all is said and done, it really does live up to its title. In every other way it's trash, but that truth-in-advertising aspect is a major weight to throw into the mix.

A wretched comedy about middle-aged romance.

The movie doesn't have three brain cells to rub together, but the premise carries it a long way.

Dead-on hilarious.

Object to the picture on ideological grounds, if you like, but that's no way to watch movies. Better to appreciate the rare spectacle of a filmmaker leading from his gut.

Floats is corny and false, with a script by Steven Rogers that's almost 100 percent artificial sweetener.