Mike Clark

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

The early going -- say, an hour -- is spent in a fatigued daze. A few powerful jabs eventually punch things up.

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

Ron Howard's The Paper starts out as a seductively overstuffed edition with breezy stories, a diverting layout, color-packed supplements and a strong editorial viewpoint. Eventually, it becomes more like the Jumble Puzzle on page 64G. [18 March 1994, p.4D]

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

With a little sex, some mystery, a little sex, an appealing title and a little sex, France's Swimming Pool has what it takes to become an art house audience magnet, especially amid the heat of summer.

It's all very slight and only sporadically amusing, and it makes Allen's "Celebrity" from last year look even more underrated than it already is.

This may be the most uncompromisingly raw police drama since "Across 110th Street," starring Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto.

Haphazard in its narrative but consistently mesmerizing until an overdose of communist rah-rah in the late going. [08 Dec 2005, p.4E]

You don't get the sense that too many enthusiasts are hanging up wanted posters for the ho-hum-ish U.S. Marshals. [6 March 1998, pg. 04.D]

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]

Yet because this adaptation of Franz Lidz's childhood memoir is odd enough and even stylish enough to attract a small following, you might want to weigh my ingrained dyspepsia before electing not to see it. [15 Sep 1995]

Though Roger & Me's editing plays somewhat fast and loose with the juxtaposition of real-life events, it qualifies as an event itself. For once, have-nots get to lambaste haves in a documentary likely to be seen. [20 Dec 1989, p.5D]

It's the first film to include both a cameo appearance by Jesus and a full-frontal nude shot of Harvey Keitel dancing in a drugged stupor. [20 Nov 1992, Life, p.4D]

The most powerful of all recent wayward-youth sagas; indeed, it's tough to recall the last such drama that packed as much emotional clout.

Their performances may not get touted on many year-end movie lists, but the Kemp brothers - Gary and Martin - are the make-or-break element of the spotty but often gripping The Krays. In this case, happily, it's make. [09 Nov 1990, p.4D]

Recapturing magic proves elusive -- or maybe the late Darren McGavin was just irreplaceable -- in an OK follow-up to 1983's beloved A Christmas Story. [11 Aug 2006, p.15D]

Thanks to fuzzy motivation, snicker-bait melodramatics and craters in logic, Calm quickly disintegrates into a might-have-been. [07 Apr 1989, p.6D]

Poor, no-respect ABBA gets tweaked repeatedly in this unexpectedly handsome widescreen import - though, in keeping with the movie's soft tone, the gooning isn't mean-spirited or even all that catty. [10 Aug 1994]

Lethal Weapon 2 is bang-bang and brain-dead in roughly equal measure. If there's an advantage this time out, it's that the film seems to play the action (and its lead character's psychoses) more for laughs. [7 Jul 1989, p.1D]

Crystal is in top form, and if laughs are all you want, this movie has them.[7 June 1991, p.2D]

A few crude verbal exchanges nearly got Clerks an NC-17 rating; some (not all) of these provide some of the funniest moments in a film that's funny about 30% of the time. [24 Oct 1994]

Though Robocop is too well-crafted to be entirely loathsome, it's at best an amoral goof. Yet like the comparably silly Lethal Weapon, it cynically pushes all the right action-audience buttons. Better duck - here comes a monster hit. [17 Jul 1987]

Writer/director Frank LaLoggia's chiller about the dark underbelly of an idyllic small town is so effectively heartfelt yet also creepy that it's surprising he couldn't parlay it into more assignments.

A premier boxing movie and a forceful Depression remembrance for the socially conscious, Cinderella Man also ices it for stargazers that Russell Crowe is the dominant screen actor working today.

This is a filmmaker who instinctively knows that a shot of Santa sitting at a bar as Ricky Nelson sings Jingle Bells will be no-frills funny.

At 120 minutes, Colors is one of the longest cop dramas in movie history, and all the clichés are packed into the second hour. It fades in the stretch - and so may too many moviegoers. [15 Apr 1988]

Fast and slick, it recalls The Buddy Holly Story - perhaps the last pop bio that was this much fun to watch. [7 May 1993, p.4D]

There's a cold intelligence at work here. Though its pleasures are plentiful enough to reward a second viewing, only Nicholson has saved Warners from a wing-clip. [23 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

Grabber sub-plots further boost a story that is basically made by its three leads.

So with its smart writing delivered by an in-synch quartet, savor Duplicity as the ideal spring gift.

Since Michael Caine's charm, energy and abilities have managed to survive so many cheesy movies, it's heartening to note that A Shock to the System is a slice or two tastier than usual. [23 Mar 1990, p.4D]

Though this is a tough movie to dislike, it plays more like a second draft than a final product.

Jewel is more like an acting zircon because she just can't project, but at least she looks the part, and her novelty value isn't unwelcome.

Modest yet pleasing musical pastiches that typified post-war Disney. [05 Jun 1998, p.6E]

I enjoyed everything about Moonstruck except for its meandering mid-section. On cassette, with vino accompaniment, it may seem perfect. In theaters, with a diet drink, it still rates as the holiday sleeper. [18 Dec 1987]

This subject demands consummate screen treatment and now has absolutely gotten it from director/producer Spike Lee. [10 Jul 1997, Pg.02.D]

The new version has the zip of a 96-yard punt return and all the ingredients to inspire the celebratory crushing of empty beer cans.

Though less than the sum of its brilliant parts, the Coens' latest will still be must viewing in 32 years. [21 Aug 1991]

Rodman is more fun to watch here than either co-star, given his array of earrings and nose rings, plus hair that changes color more frequently than the first lady changes her do.

Excesses or not, I'm rabid to see this again. [10 Mar 1989, 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.

A largely irresistible puff piece.

Of all unlikely possibilities, the team has finally made a movie that, for them, is on the tepid side.

A showcase for Vince Vaughn's rantings and Owen Wilson's standard but affable chum act.

Once you're onto its wavelength (it doesn't take long), Linklater's passing parade starts to ring true. [15 Aug. 1991, p. 5D]

A comic-fantasy nightmare of the wickedest kind. [22 Jul 1992, p.4D

John Mellencamp's screen debut showcases his acting and directing, then limits his singing to off-camera filler. [05 Mar 1992, p.6D]

Bill re-establishes that Tarantino ranks with "Boogie Nights'" Paul Thomas Anderson as one of the few Hollywood filmmakers of the past 25 years with the stuff to win a lifetime achievement award.

Richard LaGravenese's flashback script craftily tones down Waller's wind, adds a germane subplot and strengthens the novella's framing device. [02 Jun 1995, p.D1]

The movie has a couple of surprises, including a major plot turn at the end that leads to a memorable resolution somewhere between happy and wistful.

If it's not conventionally speedy, it is almost always gripping.

A Dry White Season, despite transcendent subject matter, is arousing natural moviegoer interest as Marlon Brando's first screen outing in nine years. To his and everyone else's credit, the actor's undiminished magnetism never overwhelms a no-frills drama inspired by the 1976 uprising in Soweto, South Africa. [20 Sept 1989, p.4D]

The milieu here is unforgiving, which makes fighting for basic rights important. You get a sense of why Bob Dylan -- who performs on this soundtrack -- wanted to bolt this frigid part of the map.

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

It's probably the weakest Alfred Hitchcock of the '50s. But that may be the greatest decade any director ever had, so this isn't the slam it seems. [28 Sep 2004]

Were this movie a naval battle, it would be Lord Nelson vs. Judd Nelson, so decisively do the older actors knock the younger off the screen. [26Dec1997 Pg03.D]

Tempers moments of despair with deliriously romantic passages abetted by James Horner's traditionally lush score and photography by John Toll ("Legends of the Fall's" Oscar winner).

Engrossing up to a point, the movie ends up being another mild disappointment from a filmmaker who last put it all together with Passion Fish -- seven years and four movies ago. [04 Jun 1999]

Scoundrels isn't rock-bottom. That a more sturdy vehicle couldn't be found for such stellar leads, though, is a dirty rotten shame. [14 Dec 1988, p. 4D]

Freeman (no directing natural) gets acting help, and his film earns points for being told from the black perspective, but isn't even up to the modest standards of A Dry White Season, Cry Freedom or A World Apart. [24 Sept 1993, p10D]

Director Jack Clayton's gloomy adaptation of Ray Bradbury's short story was an odd choice for Disney in its straighter-arrow days, and the film flopped even after several scenes were reshot long after principal photography was completed. Yet this odd horror-Americana mix about a supernatural traveling carnival has a cult, plus two aptly cast antagonist leads in Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce. [04 Oct 1996]

This is a very funny picture, though it's never burlesqued and is, in fact, occasionally poignant.

Based on a popular children's book by Chris Van Allsburg and directed by that "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" guy Joe Johnston, Jumanji is a calculated but very entertaining special effects extravaganza. [15Dec1995 Pg. 01.D]

Hopped-up Falling Down is a technically proficient grabber that exploits white-male angst while adeptly juggling two stories filmed in contrasting styles. Slick, maybe facile, and with a nasty streak, it is nonetheless 1993's first consistently engrossing movie. [26 Feb 1993, p.1D]

Shepherd and O'Neal have six Peter Bogdanovich films between them- but criss-cross for the first time here under Emile Ardolino's (Dirty Dancing) comatose direction. They're pleasing (as are their co-leads) but don't quite deliver the salvage job a good cast performed on Mystic Pizza. [10 March 1989, p.5D]

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

Heaven is saved only by the power of an occasional hypnotic image.

The filmmaker's new subject, the German occupation of France, has been treated with the seriousness it deserves in countless movies over the past half-century. This treatment is light and breezy for a change, though not altogether frivolous.

Blisteringly fast, Bourne also has a strong or striking supporting actor around every corner: Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen in roles that range from meaty to amazingly small.

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]

But when material is this fragile, virtually every scene is obligated to click for the result to become something special. Ultimately, this walking and talking comes perilously close to becoming a gab-fest treadmill. [26 Jul 1996, Pg.04.D]

Chayefsky's untempered windiness and direction (by Arthur Hiller) so impersonal that this D-day black comedy could just as well be an I Dream of Jeannie episode. [22 June 1990, p.3D]

A much better version and one of the most popular 3-D movies. [03 May 2005]

The result isn't quite a Michael Moore movie without the hubris, but it's reasonably close. It's thoughtful, and you have to take it seriously and with respect.

A summer crowd-pleaser worthy of its wind.

The longer the movie goes, the more its 133 minutes prove wearing. The story tries to develop a love angle between Jackman and Janssen, but it doesn't begin to take. And the finale is particularly weak.

Though Maclean's bedrock prose is perfection in print, the film may be another case (like actor Redford's "The Great Gatsby") in which text defies translation. [09 Oct 1992]

Individually, the episodes aren't much, but it's impressive that Jarmusch even pulled off the logistics. [01 May 1992, p.7D]

Disney has another first-rate animated villain in The Rescuers Down Under: an Australian poacher with the voice of George C. Scott, who looks like a cross between Scott and Jim Varney. [16 Nov 1990, p.4D]

Do yourself a favor and resist The Italian Job, a lazy and in-name-only remake of 1969's G-rated Michael Caine heist pic.

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]

The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]

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]

For a movie that earns its R-rating for drug content and violence atop language and sexuality, it leaves you with the next thing to a mellow smile.