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.