Mike Clark

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.