Mike Clark

Salvaged by its rally, Reloaded seems less tired than "X2," its current sequel rival. But since its creators have said it's only half of a movie, we won't really know until The Matrix Revolutions arrives Nov. 5 whether this chunk is fizzle or sizzle.

Thanks in part to McQueen, you can almost mention this in the same breath with director Don Siegel's best. [30 Mar 1990, p.3D]

Cult director Don Siegel bookended Dirty Harry with this esteemed toughie. [08 Mar 1996]

The movie is so silly I found myself snickering a couple of times, just before slumping down in my seat in mortified embarrassment.

Though there must be a dozen U.S. presidents who have never had a documentary made about them, the late Tupac Shakur could rate his own section in video stores, placed between "music" and "action."

One of the greatest mixes ever of gritty war drama and roll-on-the-floor hilarity. [29 Mar 2002, p.2A]

Usually, I'm as slow as the pacing of a movie in figuring out who's done it. If you can't solve this mystery with an hour to go (as I did), better call for a transfusion so a better type of blood will start flowing to your brain.

Life is a crock -- or something like it.

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.

Bugsy is a gangster film around the edges, a '40s love song down the middle, and the year's breeziest live-actor movie through and through. [13 Dec 1991, p.1D]

A smooth mix of humanism and keen filmmaking instincts.

Marvin leavened his sociopathy with a hint of little boy naivete or innocence -- Gibson is merely a frequently funny thug. {5 February 1999, Life, p. 11E]

Director Joel Schumacher, whose pastel color schemes vitalized St. Elmo's Fire, gives this a sensual, at times even erotic, sheen. And a few subplot issues - single motherhood, runaway kids, midlife dating - hint that at least someone involved with this project intended to go after bigger game. [31 Jul 1987, p.4D]

Director Frank Sinatra (on screen, he's a medic) was probably going for Kurosawa-like profundity here. Unfortunately, the other actors include Clint Walker and Tommy Sands. [05 Apr 1991, p.3D]

The Crucible shrewdly saves its most potent ammo for the end, audience-friendly showmanship to further signify a bang-up movie. [27 Nov 1996]

An intimate three-hour epic adapted less from Frank's diary than the Broadway version. [06 Feb 2004, p.6E]

A comedy without much zing but with an occasional zing-er that enables the film to pick up . . . well, if not nine yards, maybe an inch or two on the gridiron.

Yet another Alan Alda unoriginal original. [22 Jun 1990, p.2D]

Smart, satisfying and compact but so modest in scale that only true-blue fans will sense - immediately - that it's Woody Allen's best outing in many years.

As in "Arachnophobia", director Frank Marshall can't decide whether he's making a thriller or a laff-it-up lark. [09 Jun 1995, Pg.03.D]

A baseball nostalgia piece all weirded-out by flashes of supernatural horror, this early-'60s remembrance is like sitting through a double bill of Field of Dreams and The Goonies. [7 Apr 1993, p.8D]

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

This is a deceptively low-key movie with emotions visibly raw. Tomei (and Slater, too) give it the heart it sorely needs. [12 Feb 1993, p.8D]

Though Bond may never die, this time he's on life support. [19 Dec 1997, p.3D]

Viewers who like clean storytelling may not be happy. Those who savor ironic wrap-ups will be.

Rain is a 126-minute genre movie stacked for effect; when you see Douglas racing his motorcycle at the beginning, you know what the climax will be. Scott, though, may be the definitive state-of-the-art moviemaker right now - and violent Rain is the most aggressively cinematic movie in a while. [22 Sep 1989, p.1D]

For novelty value, you can do worse than seeing Sean Penn in a rare chance to don evening-wear on screen, but this isn't a sight to sustain a two-hour haul.

Almost by himself, Jackson transforms the film's final chapter into a serviceable view -- faint praise, perhaps, but a crumb to savor, given what has come before. [11 June 1999, Life, p. 6E]