Mike Clark

Occasionally very funny, the picture tends to coast on its cosmetics. A first-rate script might have made it a twisted masterpiece.

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

Every movie year has one, and now it's Britain's Mike Leigh who's conjured up the professional reviewer's worst nightmare: the picture so original, well-acted and witty that it must be given its ample due - despite being heavy on components guaranteed to bum out all but the most frequent moviegoers. [23 Dec. 1993, p.5D]

Who, though, would assume rambunctious humor would be served up as well? Dickens meets the Beverly Hillbillies, and the movie is handsome, too. [10 May 1996, p.4D]

In a possible breakthrough role, Law would seem to be the big winner.

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

Thompson has had the good sense and sensitivity to get Austen right, while letting Winslet steal the show.

The result is almost enough to make an audience levitate.

Robert Altman's first movie after M*A*S*H introduced Shelley Duvall and was among the director's personal favorites. All kinds of icons are satirically skewered, from Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz to Steve McQueen's sweater-clad Bullitt character. [04 Jan 2008, p.11D]

Some of the movie's best scenes -- knockouts, in fact -- involve musical interludes.

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]

Lumet (who also wrote the script) seems to feed on lousy cop-precinct furniture, political showboating and confrontations between street-savvy adversaries played by synergic actors. [16May1997 Pg.01.D]

Eddie Albert's Oscar-nominated slow burn as the loathing father in The Heartbreak Kid is the funniest portrayal of Midwestern WASP-ism in movie history. [08 Feb 2002]

Too lingeringly creepy to ignore. [23 Oct 1992]

Unfaithful doesn't push the melodrama the way "Attraction" did, but it lingers in the mind as much.

A movie that is easily likable.

The plan in A Simple Plan grows exponentially complex once the first dollar is purloined, an act that makes this unpretentious parable one of the season's better 'what's-going-to-happen-next?' movies.

Hard Candy, a highly original psychological thriller/revenge fantasy, can be bitterly hard to take and uncomfortably intense, but it's well worth consuming.

It's also as good as "Out of Africa."

Inside Deep Throat, an NC-17 documentary that deftly chronicles the fallout -- with about 15 seconds of hard-core footage -- has some surprise credits.

It's the actor/director's best movie - and the best Western by anybody in over 20 years. [7 Aug 1992]

A Hitchcockian chase...A crowd-pleasing airport-pursuit pic. [27 Dec 1995, p.D1]

Some will think this film silly; my guess is that Kaufman has himself an upscale cult movie, a la Women in Love or his own Unbearable Lightness. [05 Oct 1990, p.4D]

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]

It's a tough entry into the tough black-comic genre; don't be surprised if it becomes a classic. [31 March 1989]

And novel insights notwithstanding, this is a plain old good movie, too.

No movie this year has covered a larger canvas than director Chen Kaige's 2 1/2-hour spectacle. [29 Oct 1993, p.4D]

Drivers congest highways, while many of their cars inevitably end up as twisted scrap. The final Monsieur Hulot comedy from France's Jacques Tati couldn't possibly be more topical. [18 Jul 2008, p.13D]