Mike Clark

Humor, poignancy and social criticism converge for an even better movie than the recent one it brings to mind: Gosford Park. [23 Jan 2004]

One of the rare sports films that devotes extensive screen time to heartbreaking losses is full of other surprises as well. [13 Oct 1994, p.1D]

Like too many others, I resisted seeing (or at least, rushing out to) this film, fully expecting a stolid, respectable bummer; what I found, without the filmmakers ever having cheapened the material, is one of 1989's most entertaining movies. There is even, I swear, a barroom brawl that's out (and worthy) of John Ford. [3 Jan 1990, p.4D]

As son Tom Joad, Henry Fonda gave the screen performance of his career. [09 Apr 2004, p.10E]

Fearless mix of classical music and animation, the one movie to satisfy that oft-misused adjective ''unique.'' [01 Nov 1991, p.3D]

It's at once funny, exciting, tearful and tuneful. [13 Nov 1991, p.1D]

For a brutal black comedy about L.A. hitmen, Pulp Fiction bursts out of its binding with loopy delights. [14 Oct 1994]

With flawless precision, the movie flows seamlessly between a virtual newsreel approach (to chronicle senseless, arbitrary atrocities on the people) and a slightly more direct narrative technique that characterized the film's three dominant characters - each one cast to perfection. [15 Dec 1993]

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]

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

This is a great movie, but it needs a sales job because it's in Mandarin.

This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.

If Silver is superb, Irons is transcendent. As some forgotten comic once said of George Sanders: A grapefruit wouldn't dare squirt in his eye. [17 Oct 1990]

Another great 1950s John Wayne Western from Warner Bros. [25 May 2007, p.4E]

A bottom-rung Bette Midler vehicle disguised as a biopic of novelist Jacqueline Susann, the movie is a wannabe satire shackled by misplaced reverence.

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

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

If artist R. (Robert) Crumb can dispense immediately with his resume in Terry Zwigoff's superb Crumb, we can, too. [21 Apr 1995]

With songs Triplets, Dancing in the Dark and Shine on Your Shoes, it's my fave musical. [18 Mar 2005, p.6E]

Woody Allen is good for his funniest screen romp in a while, thanks to a few evenly spaced standout scenes of laugh-out-loud intensity.

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

This critical smash was graphic, yet laced with macabre humor. [30 Oct 2007, p.2D]

Director Francis Ford Coppola's revamping of his Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, with 49 added minutes, has significantly improved the troubled blockbuster. The film now seems both mellowed and — thanks in part to the most vibrant-looking prints in its 22-year history — revitalized.

Majidi tells his simple story with dazzling vision.

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]

Great cinema - and also a whopping good time. [19 September 1990, Life, p.1D]

This sleek adaptation of James Ellroy's dauntingly complex novel has the black-and-white tabloid soul of an old "Confidential" magazine.

Romantic comedies with two low-key leads can be asking for trouble, but one senses that the actors must have clicked on some fundamental level.

A little movie almost perfectly realized.

I'd give this Howard Hawks perennial four stars (like everyone else) if I didn't find the climactic jailhouse scene so labored. [5 May 1989, p.3D]

A movie this diminutive can be easily oversold, but we might see it on some year-end best lists. It eats at you, just like renewed love.

The rawest, most sustained screen portrayal of 20th century combat.

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

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]

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

Produced by HBO but too good not to play theaters, this soon-to-be minor classic is the best movie about society's untrendiest since "Ghost World" exactly two years ago.

The movie is so fun that it wouldn't need the mystery to be top-notch entertainment.

A Casablanca-influenced love story set against a French Resistance backdrop in Martinique. [07 Nov 2003]

One of the year's best movies and certainly its most delightful screen surprise.

Hip-hoppish Honey is in the harmlessly junky "let's put on a show" tradition of "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," minus electricity but with a budget for supporting-cast navel rings that 1984's break-dance sequel certainly didn't have.

The story keeps reinventing itself (some of the later plot twists are among the funniest), but a little goes a long way at 112 minutes - maybe 25 minutes more than this sporadically pointed conceit really needs.

A movie that is easily likable.

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

Even in the classiest movie summer of the decade, Mob is destined to demand respect for Pfeiffer. [19 Aug 1988]

Not since "Memento" has a movie served up such a provocative mind-bender, and the Sundance winner by first-time filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has the advantage of being true.

After watching Pfeiffer and Day-Lewis submerge molten 19th-century sparks here, it is now conceivable that Scorsese could make compelling cinema out of “Three Blind Mice.” [17 Sept 1993, Life, p.1D]

Despite the unsexy title, it's one unusually well told. [11 Aug 1993, p.1D]

Pearson's scenes with Garfield are among the most supercharged ever. [28 May 2004, p.6E]

Rafael Sabatini's 17th-century surgeon goes from slave to swashbuckler, Michael Curtiz directs to Erich Wolfgang Korngold music, and a major studio takes an unprecedented gamble on two unknowns to star: Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. [15 Apr 2005]

Though no film for the ages, it's two grown-up hours to tickle clear, sharp, minds. [27 Jan 1995, p.4D]

The best fictional movie about skiing. [27 Nov 2009, p.13D]

Give Anderson credit for at least sustaining a mood. This is the kind of all-or-nothing movie in which a filmmaker probably can't waver from his tone.

Campion's script is very well received, but the film finally makes it on cinematics: bleakly beautiful photography, haunting score, and good acting. [12 Nov 1993]

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]

Cassavetes wrote and directed on his standard improvisational shoestring. The oft-shattering result, which runs 2 1/2 hours, is so uneasily lifelike that the academy temporarily ignored its prejudice against independent productions by rewarding Rowlands and Cassavetes with Oscar nominations. [18 Sep 1992, p.3D]

[Olivier's] greatest Shakespearean movie. [27 Feb 2004]

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

Topically relevant and emotionally overwhelming, John Ford's memory-movie concerns the devastation of a Welsh coal-mining family after mine owners impose cutbacks. [16 Jun 1992, p.6D]

The Little Mermaid, or Hans Christian Andersen Goes Hip, is the most thoroughly socko kiddie cartoon feature in decades. [15 Nov 1989, p.1D]

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

Lean, mean and mordant black comedy.

Sweet (maybe) - but also painful (for sure). So painful that it's initially easy to resist this slice-of-Middlesex-life from Brit director Mike Leigh. Yet gradually, a mom, a dad and late-teen twins prove overwhelmingly winning through sheer willpower. Theirs, and the willpower of an idiosyncratic filmmaker who loves his characters no matter what. [24 Dec. 1991, p.4D]

Though it seems even spottier today than it did in '68, Cassavetes' most acclaimed work rebounds impressively after a near-unbearable opening half-hour. [29 Mar 1996]

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]

Intelligent but not particularly involving.

A stylistically fastidious, exasperatingly affected package that will put most people in the mood for slumber.

Hollywood excelled at this kind of toughie from the mid-'40s through the mid-1950s, and you can see this film's equal every night on a cable movie channel. This summer, however, it's a jewel. [22 July 1992, p.4D]

There isn't much depth to The Fugitive, but you'll never know it (or care). In addition to a spectacular train/bus smashup and an exciting sewer chase, there's one of the funniest public confrontations since Cary Grant broke up the art auction in North by Northwest. Result: Warner Bros. has what it had last August with Unforgiven - a commercial movie with real class. [6 Aug 1993, p.1D]

Accessibly brainy screen charmer.

Though the movie may not change many minds about McNamara, it richly humanizes him, a valuable feat atop all the fascinating reflection.

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

Mothers definitely get their due here: Birth mothers, adoptive mothers and mothers-to-be - with the only men in sight (save for one young fatality and one old eccentric) being those who wear flashy makeup and sport breasts

An easy movie to pick apart, but it lives, breathes and switches moods from humor to despair better than any American release this year.

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]

Twenty years ago, you could view early works of big-splash directors and often tell where they were coming from - or going. Yet Soderbergh and his debut project are mysteries. What can possibly come next? You won't be able to drag me out of line opening night. [4 Aug 1989, Life, p.1D]

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

As good as "Unforgiven." Or, to put it another way, as good as any movie Eastwood has ever directed.

Goldoni is spectacular here as a light-skinned black woman with a white admirer and an apartment full of her brother's hooligan buddies. And, oh, what shots of the era's New York movie marquees. [22 May 1998, p.6E]

An instant classic, an Oscar-worthy showcase for Jeremy Irons, and a tightrope ballet over dicey screen material… A subtle movie - and thus a disturbing one. Like “Vertigo,” “The Night of the Hunter,” “Repulsion” and a few others, it finds beauty in morbidity - then nags you to come back for a second dose. [23 Sept 1988]

The best news the G rating has had since the ratings system was instituted in 1968.

Fury, I Am a Fugitive, Wild Boys of the Road and Emperor of the North come immediately to mind as definitive Depression movies. This little gem, which may get overlooked, deserves to be on the same list. [20 August 1993, p.5D]

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]

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

A good little movie dominated by a great central performance that's likely to endure. [30 Jan 1998, p.D2]

Not since Tuesday Weld in "Pretty Poison" has an actress so played off her fresh-faced beauty for such pointed black-comic effect.

Still mesmerizes on the strength of George C. Scott's chew-your-behind performance. [5 Nov. 1999, p.6E]

The story itself is surprisingly seamless, yet it's the individual components that linger.

More than anything, The Grifters isn't dramatically shot; black-and-white would have made a huge difference. [5 Dec 1990]

Tucker is the best Capra movie since Capra quit making them himself. [12 Aug 1988]

A weeper poised to endure as one of the dominant independent features of the year.

Joins company with "Sullivan's Travels" and "Sunset Boulevard" as the quintessential Hollywood peek-a-boos...[and] Tim Robbins' modulated performance rates rhapsodic praise. [10 Apr 1992]

Copycat, despite two tough-babe leads to kill for, flies in more directions than scattered kitty litter. [27 Oct 1995, pg.02D]

With gorgeous Australian outback photography and minimal dialogue co-defining it as "pure" cinema, Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece was once designated by Premiere magazine as its "most wanted" movie on video. [04 Apr 1997, p.3D]

Plays like a labor of love.

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

Even if a lot of adults have problems following this picture 100%, look for computer-savvy teen-agers to guarantee this sometimes original but too often derivative time-killer a shelf life.

Michelle Pfeiffer would easily steal The Fabulous Baker Boys were it not for a hefty payoff on the long overdue teaming of Jeff and Beau Bridges. Then again, the fabulous Bridges boys would steal the picture if not for Pfeiffer. Filmmaker Steve Kloves, who has all but come out of nowhere, must be living right. [13 Oct 1989, p.4D]

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.