Mike Clark

More than any other example in recent memory, Chicago shows how much the element of surprise is missing from today's movies.

Writer/director Julie Dash pours on sounds, music and costuming for a tone more impressionistic than dramatic - and more somnambulant than either. She might have gotten away with it for 80 minutes, but merciless Dust closes in on the two-hour mark, a structural shambles in the too-earnest American Playhouse tradition. [1 April 1992, p.6D]

Nil is harrowing and soul-sapping, a look into the heart of darkness of London's underclass.

The crucifixion is the strongest such scene of all time. [26 Aug 1988]

Set in mid-1944 France, it's a contest of wills between a Resistance railway inspector and a smooth Nazi general (Quiz Show's Paul Scofield) over purloined French art treasures. Filmed on location, often in inhumanly cold weather, the film eschewed the use of railcar models - running real trains into each other and off the track when the script frequently calls for it. [30 Sep 1994, p.3D]

Williams is only adequate, but nearly everyone else here is great, including Jerry Orbach (Ciello mentor) and Bob Balaban (hardball Justice Department creep). [25 May 2007, p.4E]

Emmerich might have had a masterpiece, but he'll have to settle for what comes close to being a must-see movie today.

This crumbled-caper comedy is the funniest movie ever from a film maker late in his eighth decade. [22 July 1988, Life, p.4D]

A robustly imaginative sleeper

Lovely “memory'' film. [2 March 1990, Life, p.4D]

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

A provocative dissection of human dynamics.

Bugsy is a gangster film around the edges, a '40s love song down the middle, and the year's breeziest live-actor movie through and through. [13 Dec 1991, p.1D]

Nothing in John McNaughton's script and direction is exploitative; there isn't a frame of wasted action in what may well remain the year's most tightly constructed movie. As such, you're with this qualified classic all the way, you believe in it all the way, and you're thus forced to take its sporadic atrocities seriously. How many movies (and how long has it been since we've seen one) have really pulled this off? [20 April 1990, p.4D]

The most un-MGM movie that the studio ever made gave Dracula director Tod Browning the chance to tell a story that horrified audiences. [13 Aug 2004, p.4E]

Stripped of all bravado, Cruise delivers a raw and probably detractor-proof performance. Spielberg does what he did right in creating a novel milieu for "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," but this time the writing is fresher and anything but unwieldy.

Happily, there's nothing to misconstrue about the film: It's fabulous.

The only things missing from making this showdown worthy of a Western is Murrow's sheriff's badge, a dusty street and maybe a spittoon for McCarthy's infamous invectives.

Borderline amazing and borderline dull at the same time.

This smashingly filmed and performed one-shot is (uh, so to speak) the year's best romantic comedy. [8 Dec 1989]

It has an elusive, haunting quality, but it's too long at 133 minutes, and there aren't many movies these days that get more involving as they progress.

Beauty is about two-thirds the serious-edged romp it would like to be, which still leaves a lot of room for tony fun.

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

Though the comedy is sometimes more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree, the movie is as visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors.

A strong first half has Jill Clayburgh oozing bile when weasel husband Michael Murphy dumps her. Writer/director Paul Mazursky's sexual-political screen landmark wobbles some when she takes up with artist Alan Bates. [13 Jan 2006, p.14D]

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.

The three-hour dramatics are occasionally stilted, but here's the real non-CGI deal. [01 Feb 2008, p.6D]

This is the definitive cinematic Cyrano; only the pickiest critics or peasants will dare or care to thumb their noses at it. [16 Nov 1990, p.4D]

On paper, this sounded like a winner. In reality? We have met the Enemy at the multiplex, and he's silly. [08 Feb 1991, p.4D]

Linney is a match for Neeson, and the only thing that might keep Lithgow from getting a supporting-Oscar nomination is the brevity of the part.

Flowers is smartly observational -- but a little screen heat would be worth a bouquet.

It's a mess with sporadic flashes of creativity. Someone should have gone back to the drawing board. [19 July 1996, p.13D]

In the movie's high point, (Jeremy) Northam conducts an antagonistic interview with the boy, who eludes well-placed lawyerly traps.

[A] socially conscious sprawler... Sayles' latest never bores during its 21/4-hour unreeling. But neither does it soar, despite finessing a complex flashback narrative set in 1957 and present-day. [21 June 1996, p.3D]

A long-on-video 1993 release now restored to its original Cantonese with different music and more audio pop.

Tim Robbins plays the working dad, and the movie misses him once he bails out early.

Forman finesses the story's grimmer aspects as he did in "Cuckoo's Nest," and his ability to switch moods on a dime remains unsurpassed.

Writer-director Andre Techine, who's been on a recent roll with Wild Reeds and Ma Saison Preferee (also with Deneuve and Auteuil), is in even better form here. [23 Dec 1996]

Williams is impressively restrained as well as funny, so fans need not fret. It only means that instead of Good Morning, Preppies, we're given a bittersweet, even eerie Goodbye, Mr. Hip. [2 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

Proves there are Holocaust stories still to be told.

Amazingly, the film grows monotonous because Heller and Schmiderer can do nothing, via archival footage or even novel camera placements, to vary the program.

James Coburn plays father in what may be the best performance of his career. [30 December 1998, Life, p.3D]

The film does what it can to dramatize the bond, but Richter has a disproportionate acting load because his co-star's emoting is below the water line. Happily, he carries it. [16 Jul 1993 Pg. 08.D]

It's easier to take Hi-Heel Sneakers by Tommy Tucker- more seriously. [20 Dec 1991]

The latest picture to give you the sense that Hollywood filmmakers simply plucked another old pop-tune title ripe for ripping off, then were shaken by the rude reality of coming up with a script to jerry-build around it.

The most provocative miscarried-justice movie ever. [26 Aug 1988]

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

Clint Eastwood remains a competent, rather than distinctive, film maker, but he obviously respects the material. Bird is essentially factual, and we come to understand why so many other musicians thought shooting heroin might enable them to transfer [Charlie Parker]'s genius to themselves. [26 Sept 1988, p. 4D]

A perfect fit between filmmaker (Memento's Christopher Nolan) and material (Norway's same-name psycho-chiller from 1997), this remake gets all there is to get out of a peculiar premise with promise.

A contender for the year's best film.

Despite pockmarking racial humor, this is an appealing Fred MacMurray-Barbara Stanwyck companion piece to Double Indemnity and Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow. [29 Sep 1995, p.3D]

Kid's tone is off 100% of the time. The young actors are irredeemably bland, and two of the adults (Michael Des Barres' bank president, James LeGros' Storm Trooper-like security guard) are hammy enough to make James Brown seem controlled.

Edited with whiplash intensity into 92 of the movie year's tightest minutes, Room is arguably the breeziest political documentary ever. [3 Nov 1993, p.7D]

As inspiring as the story wants to be, its real drama is mired around the edges, where we get a sense of what it is really like to be born into a brothel.

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

A two hour aquatic pursuit pic with bruising stunts, fun-to-watch performances, a dozen good chortles and imposing Panavision renderings of post-apocalyptic crud, Waterworld clearly has the makings of a cult movie.

Things will not be a big concession-stand movie because the floating heart is our introduction to a cottage industry we hope won't catch on. It is dirtier than pretty, yet Frears finds beauty in the telling.

Crystal is such a panic - and normally uptight Patinkin is so attractively relaxed as a Spanish swordsman - that Bride's charms just can't be ignored. [25 Sept 1987]

Nothing works in this over-elaborate let's-kidnap-a-kid melodrama. [24 Aug 1990]

Of all the pop-psychiatry movies from the 1940s, Spellbound survives its kitschy elements -- wallows in them, even -- to remain as fascinating as expected from a collaboration that was contentious. [04 Oct 2002]

Humphrey Bogart went out with one of the best swan songs a major star ever had in this anti-boxing screed, from a novel by On the Waterfront scripter Budd Schulberg. [12 Jul 2004]

Bernard Herrmann's great score punches up a brutal urban crime pic suddenly turned tender romance between a tough cop (Robert Ryan) and a blind woman (Ida Lupino). [21 Jul 2006, p.14D]

We accept the sincerity and altruistic motives of the aging loner he (Philip Baker Hall) portrays in this consciously spare Nevada-set sleeper. [13 March 1997, p. 8D]

This giggle does for dog shows what Rob Reiner's "This Is Spinal Tap" (in which Guest plays Nigel Tufnel) did for heavy metal.

Crisp craftsmanship has fashioned a great day at the movies from the worst day of Ralph Kramden's life. [10 Jun 1994 Pg. 01.D]

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]

Indeed, Eve's milieu is fresh and specific enough to make even Jackson subordinate to Kasi Lemmons, the writer (and sometimes actress) who dreamed up this story for her directorial debut. [07Nov1997 Pg08.D]

Boasts a classic screwball script by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. [10 May 1995, p.5D]

Without making a big deal of it, this film says a lot about assimilation and the ability to change. [05 Feb 1992, p.5D]

It's harmless, but bloodless - hardly a movie to get your juices jumping. [28 Aug 1992, p.5D]

Isn't much, it's just lively enough to placate its limited audience to make it an easy choice over "Scooby-Doo's" stale Alpo.

Easy to tumble for. [9 February 1996, p.D4]

Donen (previously Hepburn's director in Funny Face and Charade) gets everything out of a brainstorm romantic teaming that didn't - and doesn't - spring automatically to mind. [05 Nov 1993, p.3D]

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.

With his coolly objective moon's-eye view serving a story that's bizarre by even his long-established career standards, the great documentarian Errol Morris examines the perils of vanity - though others will understandably make more sinister interpretations.

It's never enough of a grabber to keep the mind from wandering to the romance it apparently sparked.

Truth is, Idaho is nothing but set pieces; tossed into a mix whose meaning is almost certainly private. [27 Sept 1991]

Despite the film's sporadic lulls, both director and star are on full beam. The first and third hours of this 20th-century epic are as dazzling as big-scale movies get.

For much of its length, the premise seems less wilted than you'd guess. This is because, for one thing, Mendes gives as good as she gets.

It's hard to recall the last movie that has left such an emotionally searing question dangling in the mind: "What if ... ?"

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]

Unpleasantness alone doesn't sink a movie. But miserable tidings intensify when there's not only a high ick factor but also floundering storytelling.

In contrast to big-screen bummers we see every week, this movie conveys genuine sorrow.

The movie falls short of achieving its apparent goal: being the "Raging Bull" of the art world.

The distanced result, screen-adapted by playwright Christopher Hampton, never quite overwhelms you. [21 Dec 1988, Life, p.1D]

Shanghai Triad concludes the sublime seven-movie collaboration of Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li with a bang worthy of the most jubilant New Year's Eve.

If Hairspray is clean and sweet, don't cry sellout. Taken as a pointed burlesque of a serious racial issue, this is what Spike Lee's School Daze should have been. It's also a PG (for "Pretty Darn Good'') simply on its own.

These swashbuckling romps are packed with the kind of slapstick and throwaway asides you may not expect before noting both were directed by Richard Lester, the man who molded the Beatles on screen. [01 May 1998]