Mike Clark

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]