Mike Clark

This is a fascinating movie experience. [30 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

Blethyn is so astonishing that you forget you're seeing a performance.

Quiz Show is half-a-dozen movies, nearly all exceptional, and a lion's share assemblage of the year's top male performances. A watershed scandal revisited, it's also a riveting revenge story motivated by seething resentment. [14 Sept 1994, p.1D]

A precisely modulated and mostly mesmerizing 2¾-hour suspense movie, in part because it's one of the most bravely disturbing screen works ever attempted about thoughts withheld by even the most devoted marriage partners and the ramifications of voicing them.

It's a heart-wrenching portrayal of unfulfilled Wyoming love, but this time, we don't mean Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in "Shane."

This breezy farce has lost just enough of its luster to seem no longer disproportionately funnier than its oft-televised Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis remake You're Never Too Young. [29 May 1998]

The "Age of Innocence" oozes anthropological dazzle, but Dazed and Confused may some day rate its own Smithsonian showings for clinically re-creating the High School Experience 1976. [20 Sept 1993]

Ultimately grim, Liam is ripe in humanity --and even comedy.

Has the unanticipated craft and artfully ambiguous appeal of last year's "Croupier," a movie whose art-house word-of-mouth success could be duplicated here.

The relaxed and confident Crusade is the first Jones outing to benefit from actual characterizations. [24 May 1989, Life, p.1D]

Jaded samurai Toshiro Mifune shows younger warriors the ropes, just as John Wayne used to toughen up tenderfoots on the range. [21 Apr 1995, p.3D]

Director James Foley deftly juggles expressionistic actor closeups with drab widescreen shots that convey abject seediness. [30 Sep 1992, p.1D]

The result is a foot-stomping rouser. Where else can you get a cop in his underwear boogalooing with skyscraper terrorists? [15 July 1988, Life, p.4D]

The most imperfect of the year's best movies, Magnolia's flaws are easily forgiven because they are the result of go-for-broke ambition.

Like the first half of "Best in Show," the movie is so deadpan that sometimes you have to pinch yourself to realize how potently satirical it is.

Sissy Spacek goes vengefully telekinetic in one of director Brian De Palma's best movies, and her scenes with mom Piper Laurie (both actresses were Oscar-nominated) release a lot of energy themselves. [29 Jun 2004]

Overstuffed but exuberantly humane.

With this 2002 Cannes Film Festival best-picture winner, Polanski skips the quirky flourishes and simply brings history to life.

The first movie Montgomery Clift made (but second released) was Howard Hawks' all-time Western Red River. In the interim, director Fred Zinnemann stole some thunder by showcasing the actor in this semi-documentary about European children left homeless and without parents after World War II, filmed on location in the then-U.S. Occupied Zone of Germany. [23 Oct 2009, p.3D]

Ray could not have been made without star Jamie Foxx.

A cool and clinical reportorial remembrance whose very title reminds us who Solanas was. [3 May 1996, p. 10D]

The filmmaker keeps upping the ante with surprises until the plot-twist beaut that concludes the picture - a shocker that, upon reflection, is probably the one ending that wouldn't have fallen a little flat.

The movie is more fun than Breathless, a minority (though not sacrilegious) opinion. [10 Jan 2003]

In a role as tailor-made for him as the story is for its writer and director, Nicolas Cage anchors the movie with one of his best performances.

This is one inspiring movie despite extremely tricky subject matter -- better than "Shine" and among the most affecting ever made about co-existing with mental demons.

Accessibly brainy screen charmer.

Robert De Niro is so good as a politically blacklisted filmmaker in Guilty by Suspicion that even his hair seems right. [15 Mar 1991, p.4D]

A little movie almost perfectly realized.

Watching this movie, it seems to be the next level down from great -- maybe too episodic. But it burns in the memory weeks after you see it.

Some caper movies build suspense, while others tweak the genre with tongue lancing cheek. But this lesbian caper pic (how's that for a rarefied subgenre?) often pulls off both feats in the same scene, even simultaneously. [04 Oct 1996 Pg.04.D]

Still the definitive 20th-century Texas movie. [13 June 2003, p.8E]

Ahead of its time in its attitude toward unwed motherhood, director Otto Preminger's psychological drama has always gotten the same pro/con reaction that typifies Preminger's career. On the chilly side, it also has a great understated Olivier performance, an effective Paul Glass score and some of the era's best widescreen black-and-white photography. [28 Jan 2005, p.4D]

Leisen's direction here is more than smooth. [02 May 2008, p.6E]

To its credit, the ravenously awaited film version of Presumed Innocent should engross and reward two distinct audiences: Those who've read Scott Turow's 1987 best seller, and those who haven't. But remember: Engross and reward isn't quite synonymous with a cinematic trip to the moon. [27 July 1990]

Lots of sand but no day at the beach for its characters -- and not, from all appearances, the actors, either. Among the best of director Sidney Lumet's movies not set in New York. [08 Jun 2007, p.8E]

Uniformly robust acting puts still more feathers in the caps of Rush, Winslet and Caine.

This is a very bloody fantasy (reds do eke their way into the black-and-blues), but it's hard to think of another film with as many severed heads whose overall tone is so sweet.

David Lean's classic Cliffs Notes telescoping of Charles Dickens took Oscars for Guy Green's black-and-white photography and John Bryan's art direction, and you know right off that this is going to be a visual stunner as you watch fleeing prisoner Magwitch (Finlay Currie) dart across Green's spookily lit marshes. [22 Jan 1999]

Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.

A summer crowd-pleaser worthy of its wind.

A 2-hour classic wrongfully stretched into three.

Its interpersonal dynamics are constructed with care to equal chef Lung's elaborate concoctions. [19 Aug 1994]

Oft-touted as director Walter Hill's best film, this is probably tops of umpteen Westerns about the James-Younger-Miller outlaw clans. [24 Feb 1995, p.14D]

This sleeper never caught on with the masses but became a cult movie after making a lot of the year's 10-best lists. [19 Sept 1997, p.13D]

Welcome to the summer's first pleasant surprise. [20 July 1990, p.1D]

Spielberg's must-see is so wondrous at depicting things that go crunch in the night that its human characterizations and pokey exposition seem astonishingly halfhearted… On a "people" level, Park isn't “Jaws,” but on a jolt level - oh, yes, it is. [11 June 1993, Life, p.1D]

At its best, hard-hitting grown-up cinema (rare these days) and a movie blessed with a villain (Big Tobacco) for which all gloves can be removed and heaved into the next county.

You still get Tim Curry in drag, young Susan Sarandon in her skimpies and an enthusiastic score. [16 Nov 1990, p.3D]

This grade-A sleeper sends you out with an unexpected smile. [25 Nov 1992]

The movies are so much fun that even detractors of Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu) and Raquel Welch (taking pratfalls as "Constance") readily admit that both carry more than their load here. [01 May 1998]

Paradis is a most striking subject, but the movie is a winner as well, starting with a story full of black-comic possibilities exploited fully by the great French director Patrice Leconte.

There is enough mirthful good will generated to justify even another sequel. May we suggest: "License to Shag," "You Only Shag Twice" or "Thundershag."

Bout No. 2 is among the best closed-quarters screen fights ever, as good as (and longer than) Frank Sinatra vs. Henry Silva in The Manchurian Candidate. And Hannah does more for an eyepatch than anyone since the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan.

This is one movie in which you don't feel the long-ish running time, in part because there always seems to be a surprise (as well as a new street guerrilla) around every corner.

A flop in its day despite France's rhapsodic reaction, but a movie I've always loved even before its knockout finale, which even detractors admit redeems a lot. [29 Jun 2007, p.10E]

Even though Batman's Tim Burton is a better filmmaker than Beatty will ever be, Dick Tracy is the movie - of all screen attempts - that most convinces me I'm watching a live-action cartoon. [14 Jun 1990]

Hunt is coldly clinical rather than emotionally resonant; so is the measured ensemble work of a super cast. [2 Mar 1990, Life, p.1D]

Cameron Crowe's Singles is such an unabashed joy that some viewers may find themselves blinking. Can a ''twentysomething'' comedy so modestly conceived offer up captivating memories for days? It can, it does, and it figures. [18 Sept 1992, p.5D]

Filmed during that great early period of his career when he played heels better than anyone ever had, Kirk Douglas is the morally tortured 21st Precinct New York cop who lets unbridled hatred for street scum poison his marriage. [28 Oct 2005]

Proves there are Holocaust stories still to be told.

One of the greatest mixes ever of gritty war drama and roll-on-the-floor hilarity. [29 Mar 2002, p.2A]

A smooth mix of humanism and keen filmmaking instincts.

An intimate three-hour epic adapted less from Frank's diary than the Broadway version. [06 Feb 2004, p.6E]

Smart, satisfying and compact but so modest in scale that only true-blue fans will sense - immediately - that it's Woody Allen's best outing in many years.

It's modest - but within its own framework, tough to beat. [14 Aug 1991, p.4D]

Sexy, snotty, vulnerable and above all contentious, she's (Winslet) the catalyst in a movie that creates more man-woman electricity than any other movie this year.

This is a rare twisted crowd-pleaser for longtime fans as well as novices -- or for those that don't know an arachnid from an insect.

Kline is one of the rare major actors not afraid to look like hell. And given his character's plight, his willingness to get physically unpleasant matches the emotion he brings to the part.

A movie that rudely flings feces at the breakfast table isn't for everyone.

A Johnny Cash biopic equally packed with music and frustrated love, Walk the Line goes from compelling to enthralling.

Consistently fun, and even sporadically powerful. [08 Dec 1989, p.3D]

Burt Lancaster's second movie also gave Hume Cronyn his most memorable screen role. [31 Jan 1996, p.5D]

Sleeper is the best Schrader-directed film since the dashed promise of his Blue Collar debut in 1978. [21 Aug 1992, p.4D]

A delightfully robust fable about two passions that matter (sex and food). [17 May 1993, p.4D]

Among the great cult movies of the '60s, this was director John Boorman's second feature and first of note after his debut with the Dave Clark Five's Having a Wild Weekend. [08 Jul 2005]

The big story here is Kristin Scott Thomas' captivating performance.

Has enough tasty bait to satisfy an array of moviegoers: Burton fans, Albert Finney fans, fans of tall tales well spun by experts and fans of movies that don't look like any other.

In just three months, Wincer has gone from one of the worst IMAX movies ever (The Young Black Stallion) to one of the best. This time, and in all ways, he has more horsepower.

One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.

Robert Altman's oddball send up of the late Raymond Chandler got a rigidly polarized response, but I love it. [21 Jun 1991, p.3D]

Despite its title, Punch-Drunk Love is never heavy-handed. The jabs it employs are short, carefully placed and dead-center.

Michelangelo Antonioni's famed mod mystery (complete with a funny scene with The Yardbirds) examines the nature of reality-or-not as captured by photography -- throwing in sexual titillation and brilliant use of sound on the side. [20 Feb 2004, p.13D]

A super cast injects it with Teddy Roosevelt vitality. [17 Nov 1995, p.D1]

Nicholson has at least three magnificent moments in Hour 2. The best is a wedding toast that comes after another that will painfully remind you of every banal wedding toast you've ever heard.

Though the power of some Holocaust documentaries is in part a product of their epic scope and epic running times, The Last Days overwhelms at just 87 minutes. [05 Feb 1999]

This is a smart and often tense work whose ultimate merit isn't completely calculable now.

Funny... and the payoff is the most provocative Hollywood concoction in a while.

True to the book's squalor but also finding honest humor where it can.

August's direction, as usual, is a tad glacial, but at its frequent best, the film soars to explosive heights. [31 Jul 1992, p.6D]

Despite little dialogue, the story and screenplay were Oscar-nominated -- and, at 50, Wilde's physique is amazing for an actor who once played Chopin. [18 Jan 2008, p.4D]

Underrated Jerry Schatzberg directed (he later did Pacino's 1973 Scarecrow), and the script is by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, so it's smart. [22 Jun 2007, p.3D]

The three principals re-screen the Fellini masterpiece at Ekberg's country villa, and it's the kind of privileged moment only the movies can supply. You can bet Scorsese couldn't resist it, and I can't either. [20 Nov 1992, p.4D]

It plays even more like a bent version of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" for the new millennium. Slinging a line of bull but displaying genuine affection for the youngsters he's bamboozling.

Shake it all up and you get Collateral, a movie with only one conceivable flaw: its disinclination to break new ground, though no one held that against "The Fugitive" more than a decade of Augusts ago.

Warren Beatty's uproariously rude Bulworth is 90% triumph.

It's so exhilarating (and already such a hit) that even the fogies who choose which documentaries are nominated for Oscars may have to acknowledge its existence. [15 Aug 1991, p.5D]

This is still a great Carney performance and inspired casting by writer/director Paul Mazursky. [16 Sep 2005]

Federico Fellini's first film (co-directed with Alberto Lattuada) would make a compatible living room double bill with FF's 1986 Ginger and Fred...Pleasing all the way through. [17 Mar 1989, p.3D]