Mike Clark

The result isn't quite a Michael Moore movie without the hubris, but it's reasonably close. It's thoughtful, and you have to take it seriously and with respect.

It's never enough of a grabber to keep the mind from wandering to the romance it apparently sparked.

Often livens up stale material with disarming loopiness and zest.

Burt Lancaster's second movie also gave Hume Cronyn his most memorable screen role. [31 Jan 1996, p.5D]

The pace is fast, many of the performers are attractive, and even the end-credits montage is zippier than usual.

Half-factual, half-fanciful and all funny, this labor of love is also unexpectedly touching. [28 September 1994, Life, p.5D]

It has always been around and easy to take for granted. But its lack of pretension weathers years nicely. [09 Mar 2007, p.12D]

Sleeper is the best Schrader-directed film since the dashed promise of his Blue Collar debut in 1978. [21 Aug 1992, p.4D]

At its best, the movie is coldly clever with a few brilliant warmer moments - as when someone drops an Alka Seltzer into the tank to soothe the Brain. [14 Dec 1995]

Exhale and enjoy Keenen Ivory Wayans' culturally disreputable I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, a sendup of black street comedy that's equally crude, funny - and sentimental. [26 Jan 1989, p.2D]

A delightfully robust fable about two passions that matter (sex and food). [17 May 1993, p.4D]

This is a slow if stylish slog through familiar terrain.

Among the great cult movies of the '60s, this was director John Boorman's second feature and first of note after his debut with the Dave Clark Five's Having a Wild Weekend. [08 Jul 2005]

A largely irresistible puff piece.

It's fun to see somebody revive the amnesia genre - how long has it been? - but the conceit quickly grows irksome. Only Thompson, who manages to be appealing in both of her roles, will likely reap much from this DOA folly. [23 Aug 1991, Life, p.4D]

Sniper offers slow-motion close-ups of bullet trajectories for action, plodding for nearly two hours. Berenger may wonder if Zane has the stuff to pull his trigger, but I prayed for someone to pull the plug. [29 Jan 1993, p.4D]

The big story here is Kristin Scott Thomas' captivating performance.

Though there are scenes in Always (both intimate and spectacular) I love, the film does seem a bit asking-for-it-weightless following an Indiana Jones sequel. Yet if, as I suspect, many reviewers elect to carve up Always, the film will pick up its devotees - now or down the road. [22 Dec. 1989, p.1D]

Heaven is saved only by the power of an occasional hypnotic image.

The film is more interesting around the edges than down the middle, but even the edges aren't that sharp. [17 Feb 1989, p.6D]

Begins promisingly and entertains for a stretch because you think it's leading to something more than one of the movie year's flattest conclusions.

Has enough tasty bait to satisfy an array of moviegoers: Burton fans, Albert Finney fans, fans of tall tales well spun by experts and fans of movies that don't look like any other.

In just three months, Wincer has gone from one of the worst IMAX movies ever (The Young Black Stallion) to one of the best. This time, and in all ways, he has more horsepower.

Cult director Sam Raimi has come a long way since giving us killer tree limbs in whichever (I've repressed it) Evil Dead pic had them. With good leads and a few bucks, he's come up with a high-octane revenge piece mentionable in the same breath as its predecessors. [24 Aug. 1990]

Packed with digs at Bush-Cheney that even Democrats could find heavy-handed, the movie's lumbering approach reminds us that, OK, Emmerich did "Independence Day" -- but also 1998's "Godzilla," which began sinking back into the sea in week two.

The film is an impressive effort, yet often a trying one.

One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.

Robert Altman's oddball send up of the late Raymond Chandler got a rigidly polarized response, but I love it. [21 Jun 1991, p.3D]

There's sad news to report about The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D: Put on the cardboard glasses, and you can still see the movie.

Lethal Weapon 2 is bang-bang and brain-dead in roughly equal measure. If there's an advantage this time out, it's that the film seems to play the action (and its lead character's psychoses) more for laughs. [7 Jul 1989, p.1D]

Tolerance for this movie will likely depend on tolerance for melodramatic, over-the-top finales, especially ones with otherworldly twists.

Though Weaver is by all accounts (mine included) in the real-life “none-nicer'” class, I've always suspected she might be great as a shrew. She is. [21 Dec 1988, Life, p.1D]

As a forum for its actors and for the big-screen directorial debut of multi-Emmy winner Gregory Hoblit, the film is up to the job.

This too-belated reprise from the same filmmaking duo isn't any model, but it ought to amuse fans of the original. [23 July 1993, p.5D]

The No. 1 thing Only the Strong Survive will have to survive is being overshadowed by "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." Less focused than last fall's slam-dunk Funk remembrance, Survive is a more modest soul review.

Fire Birds may actually be duller than Clint Eastwood's Firefox. It's doing a full-tilt boogie to 3 a.m. cable right now. [25 May 1990, p.4D]

Despite its title, Punch-Drunk Love is never heavy-handed. The jabs it employs are short, carefully placed and dead-center.

Not too many R-rated revenge pics depend on "Uptown Girls'" Dakota Fanning for the stronger scenes. Yet once the 10-year-old star exits the picture, Man on Fire starts blowing a lot of smoke.

Mean Girls has the same fancifully dead-on tone as the 1995 high-school comedy "Clueless" without the sweetness because, hey, these snits are mean.

Coach Torn adds to a palpably violent undertone by heaving wrenches at their heads and crotches, making The Three Stooges' poking and slapping look downright tame.

There's a lot here to feed crime-fiction enthusiasts.

The movie's pleasures extend even to the visuals, which are more lustrous than in any other Altman movie.

Dramatically empty Norse warrior adventure.

No, it isn't the slick and unfocused "Anywhere but Here," where mom and daughter choose Beverly Hills. Instead, it's the more modest and in most cases preferable Tumbleweeds.

More than any other example in recent memory, Chicago shows how much the element of surprise is missing from today's movies.

Canyon is similarly slick, though even more heavy-handed in hammering home its points. [26 Dec 1991]

A singular accomplishment so specifically keyed to Spacey's talents that it mandates going out on a limb to say it contains the performance that will ultimately be regarded as "the one."

This is one of those moderately engrossing movies that seems to collapse all at once during the wrap-up, yet it's well-acted all around.

Untantalizingly reverent remake. [7 December 1998, p.4D]

Boorman's troubles usually come from going over the top (atop Exorcist II, there's always Zardoz). But this is one of his few misfires that almost anyone would call tepid.

Ali is no disgrace, but it's not much of a performer, especially considering that it is one of the few hyped year-end releases that coulda been a contender.

Already too long. It makes you want to start moving globs of dirt to tunnel out of the theater as the movie ends with the famous theme to "The Great Escape."

Forman finesses the story's grimmer aspects as he did in "Cuckoo's Nest," and his ability to switch moods on a dime remains unsurpassed.

Poor Rutger Hauer - the new decade apparently isn't his. This hearty trouper's latest, Blind Fury, is nobody's swell time at the multiplex. [30 Mar 1990, p.5D]

De Niro's scowl and Murphy's sass are inherently funny, though in this case both actors are forced to call in moviegoers' long-established goodwill.

Happily, the two leads click throughout in a movie that's just good enough to engender curiosity over filmmaker Witcher's follow-up effort. [14 Mar 1997]

Linney remains a full-blooded character so memorable that she's worth watching - even in a less-than-memorable movie.

Imagine: a pseudo-intellectual baseball fantasy loaded up, like a spitter, with seductive sentiment. You can distrust the mix, but still like the movie - and I do. [21 Apr 1989, Life, p.D1]

Mothers definitely get their due here: Birth mothers, adoptive mothers and mothers-to-be - with the only men in sight (save for one young fatality and one old eccentric) being those who wear flashy makeup and sport breasts

Each actor does his own thing for his own audience demographic.

The Package could be the most forgettable movie title since Michael Caine and Richard Gere did Beyond the Limit; with luck, audiences will even forget the film itself was made. And why was it? Possibly to prove that Gene Hackman, at 58, can still survive as many lousy movies as Caine. [25 Aug 1989, p.4D]

Sometimes uproarious but overly sentimental. [14 July 2003, p.1D]

Because snowboarding is younger than skateboarding and surfing, Descent lacks the poignancy of past surfer/skateboarder portraits that have shown participants reaching middle age.

I cry for I Spy— or I would if this latest and laziest imaginable of all vintage-TV spinoffs were capable of engendering an emotional response of any kind. Comas are physical, not emotional.

I enjoyed everything about Moonstruck except for its meandering mid-section. On cassette, with vino accompaniment, it may seem perfect. In theaters, with a diet drink, it still rates as the holiday sleeper. [18 Dec 1987]

Slap Happy. [16 February 1996, p.D4]

Oscar-nominated Angela Bassett suffers and flaunts the dresses in this smashingly performed Tina Turner bio - a rock-feminist manifesto that also earned Laurence Fishburne a nomination for humanizing Ike Turner, the Svengali-husband and Menace II Tina with a wandering Ikette eye. Brian Gibson, who directed HBO's as-good The Josephine Baker Story, rarely exceeds the parameters of a competent TV movie; numbers get truncated, and there's minimal period detail over a 1958-83 time span. Yet in a movie inevitably made or broken by its leads, the nominations were justified. [25 Mar 1994, p.3D]

Despite dashes of droll dialogue from screenwriter Ted Griffin, the remake aims for cool but instead gets chilly.

Kidman gets kudos for giving the enterprise a touch of class, while the film gives the studio's library a rare pedigreed addition.

Thornton is excellent and now seems genetically incapable of being anything less than great in any role he takes.

The movie is what it is, a deadeningly literal look at ozone spiritualists and s-&-m purveyors (possibly one and the same) who toss some very spirited pool parties. A better title than the current marquee anonymity might be Naked Brunch. [16 Sept 1994, p.5D]

The only thing a movie this unrefined needs is a vaudevillian in baggy pants and someone hawking peanuts in the aisle.

For a brutal black comedy about L.A. hitmen, Pulp Fiction bursts out of its binding with loopy delights. [14 Oct 1994]

Michelangelo Antonioni's famed mod mystery (complete with a funny scene with The Yardbirds) examines the nature of reality-or-not as captured by photography -- throwing in sexual titillation and brilliant use of sound on the side. [20 Feb 2004, p.13D]

This one's aimed at those airheads who, like George, have been swinging on a grapevine and slamming into too many trees. [16 July 1997, p. 3D]

For all his talent, Martin Short has been consistently snakebitten in his choice of movies, a streak now extended by Disney's Jungle2 Jungle. Worse, this laugh-numbing venom has been transfused to co-star Tim Allen, until now a consistently successful big bwana in movies and bookstores and on TV. [07 Mar 1997, p.4D]

A provocative dissection of human dynamics.

Despite appealing performances and kinetic football scenes, the storytelling is mostly conventional.

It's for people who have always wanted to see Willie Nelson ("Uncle Jesse") lob Molotov cocktails on a freeway and smoke weed with Joe Don Baker, who plays Georgia's governor.

Lee captures the despair, self-delusion, occasional terror and frequent humor of a praised and popular novel, aided by the potent acting his direction virtually guarantees. [13 Sep 1995, p.01.D]

Best scenes: Campbell pondering whether to squash her dismembered head in a vice, and a later quandary when he must shotgun his own dismembered hand. Moral: Pimples aren't the worst thing that can happen to your body. [11 Sept 1987, Life, p.3D]

There's the germ of a sexy idea in True Colors, which serves up a duplicitous friendship, Capitol Hill intrigue and even attractive scenery (indoors and out). Too bad some folks have disinfected it. [15 Mar 1991, p.4D]

John Singleton's bizarre but viewable Boyz N the Hood follow-up is surprisingly gooey going. [23 Jul 1993]

Happily, there's nothing to misconstrue about the film: It's fabulous.

A super cast injects it with Teddy Roosevelt vitality. [17 Nov 1995, p.D1]

In Roy Orbison terms, enduring this movie is like working for The Man.

Nicholson has at least three magnificent moments in Hour 2. The best is a wedding toast that comes after another that will painfully remind you of every banal wedding toast you've ever heard.

Wow, dudes. Pu-trid. (1989 February 20, p.4D)

While Garcia looks around for something to do, the film is making a lot of Hoffman's comic shtick. It's funny, and sometimes very funny, but ultimately as distracting as Chevy Chase's unbilled casting as Davis' boss. [02 Oct 1992, p.1D]

After watching Pfeiffer and Day-Lewis submerge molten 19th-century sparks here, it is now conceivable that Scorsese could make compelling cinema out of “Three Blind Mice.” [17 Sept 1993, Life, p.1D]

Heathers was such a black-comic revelation that Pump Up the Volume comes as a double surprise. What were the odds, particularly this early in his career, that Christian Slater would end up starring in two of the best high school movies ever? [22 Aug 1990, p.4D]

When the most notable thing a film offers is the sight of Dennis Farina in drag, you can't expect much.

Though the power of some Holocaust documentaries is in part a product of their epic scope and epic running times, The Last Days overwhelms at just 87 minutes. [05 Feb 1999]

No masterpiece but undeniably heavy on laughs, the movie is put over by the buffed, lubricated dynamics of two leads who substantially transcend what is otherwise a borderline tepid dose of family values. [9 May 1997, p.13D]

There will always be an audience for the escapist rewards this type of movie always dangles.

This is the kind of movie that has always polarized serious film folk, while the public usually elects to stay home and prune shrubs.

This is a smart and often tense work whose ultimate merit isn't completely calculable now.

Funny... and the payoff is the most provocative Hollywood concoction in a while.

At its worst, Toy Soldiers is just an action variation on the old Rooney- Garland musicals - you know, let's-get-a-buncha-kids-together-and-put-on-a-counterinsurgency. At its best, it's surprisingly bearable for a movie so easily typed. [26 Apr 1991, p.4D]

Worth stumbling into on cable not all that far into next year.

The latest entry in the cottage industry launched by 1980's Airplane! oozes diminishing returns. [5 Feb 1993, p.5D]

Don't buy a ticket for this one, even if the theater is having a fire sale on Raisinets.

Disney has another first-rate animated villain in The Rescuers Down Under: an Australian poacher with the voice of George C. Scott, who looks like a cross between Scott and Jim Varney. [16 Nov 1990, p.4D]

Except for some climactic gunplay in a zoo that looks suspiciously like a set, every plot thread is a retread - 500 layers deep. [18 May 1990, p.4D]

Despite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, a deserving flop about modern-day cattle hucksters; at times here (call the rest home), I think Newman sounds like Wally Cox. [01 Mar 1991, p.3D]

Susan Sarandon has never looked better in her 29-year screen career than she does here.

The result is two or three cuts above genre standard.

Passable but never exciting, Heist is on a level with those minor Burt Lancaster action pics the actor's name helped bankroll in the '70s.

This one looks like a sure bet for seven weeks (at least) of audience good fortune.

Terry Gilliam's “12 Monkeys” can teach The Thirteenth Floor a little something about how to have fun with time travel. And with one number less. [28 May 1999, Life, p.7E]

Imagine a movie so broadly conceived that it was written, directed and all parts were played by Charo — billed in her '70s heyday of Love Boat gigs as the "Cuchi-Cuchi Girl." That's what you get here.

Though John Travolta and Christian Slater don boxing gloves to open the dippy but zippy Broken Arrow, the real slugfest in director John Woo's elaborately mounted action pic is between content and style. Call it a draw, and call the movie's content a Speed derivative. [9 Feb 1996, p.1D]

Though a tacked-on fisticuffs finale has its charms, it rather contradicts the preceding. Mere subtleties are beyond Stallone and returning Rocky I director John G. Avildsen. [16 Nov 1990, p.4D]

Thanks to a disproportionately superior second hour, Fat Man and Little Boy improves on its historically valid, but commercially suicidal, title. It is not, however, even the screen's second best chronicle of atomic bomb development in wartime Los Alamos, N.M. [20 Oct 1989, p.4D]

Kudos go to the great Thomas Newman, whose score contributes as much as either lead to what is finally a two-character movie, though one well-performed by all. [23 Sept 1994]

May be a spectacularly awful movie, but it's also spectacularly drenched in color, décor and other visual oh-la-la.

This isn't the worst movie Warner Bros. has brought out this summer (Scooby-Doo, boo on you), but for it to work, you have to accept the irredeemable stupidity of almost every character. Time better spent: a Shaquille O'Neal film festival on video.

Fred is DOA, but he and the Diceman will kick up a storm at December's 10- worst time. [24 May 1991, p.7D]

Nothing works in this over-elaborate let's-kidnap-a-kid melodrama. [24 Aug 1990]

Irredeemably dull. [13 Aug 2004]

Cross Ingmar Bergman's Persona with Roman Polanski's oeuvre and you get a workable mix ultimately sunk by standard slasher silliness. [14 Aug 1992, p.4D]

It gets wackier as it goes, starting with Charlie Sheen cast against type as a guy who's getting no sex and turns down the chance. Bebe Neuwirth has some funny scenes as a lush.

This isn't a movie to be taken too literally, given that a camera crew keeps on rolling in situations that would make even combat photographers bolt; as a result, the movie plays like one of those self-referential stunts that sometimes wow film festival audiences (as this one did). [24 Sept 1993, p.3D]

Borderline amazing and borderline dull at the same time.

Cassavetes wrote and directed on his standard improvisational shoestring. The oft-shattering result, which runs 2 1/2 hours, is so uneasily lifelike that the academy temporarily ignored its prejudice against independent productions by rewarding Rowlands and Cassavetes with Oscar nominations. [18 Sep 1992, p.3D]

The beauty here is in the set-up, which offers Hugh Grant a role to match his star-making turn in "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

Though borderline nauseating at times, Cook is never a bummer - nor is it quite up to its cinematic prowess. It will be best remembered for its challenge to de facto censorship - also the kind of visual flair that makes even shaggy-dog preciousness seem important. [6 Apr 1990, p.4D]

Unwed John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell are living on what amounts to room-service charity in a posh London hotel, waiting for his cocoa crop investment to bankroll their spiralling bill. Neither lead plays a very bearable character, and the pathetic maid (destitute and hearing-impaired) is too obviously conceived as their counterpoint. It's good to see MacDowell loosening up (a little) after her alarmingly stilted dialogue delivery in deadly, dreadful Green Card. But that's all. Sleeping Beauty never awakens from its monotonal slumber. [12 Apr 1991, p.2D]

Has added virtually nothing to two cinema genres with their own prodigious histories: ensemble and black.

True to the book's squalor but also finding honest humor where it can.

Sarah Jessica Parker contributes next to nothing as a work/sack partner who ends up imperiled by a sadist fixated on Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. The director/co-writer is Rowdy Herrington, who has now surpassed what was his most ludicrous claim to fame: Putting Brian Dennehy into a boxing ring with teen James Marshall in Gladiator. [17 Sept 1993, p.4D]

Flimsy little comedy unworthy of its portentous title.

Tucker is the best Capra movie since Capra quit making them himself. [12 Aug 1988]

Filmed for the cost of about two Snickers bars and given a bizarre voice-over narration in the second person, this seductively weird pioneer independent feature is the ultimate in grimy period atmospherics. [25 Apr 2008, p.5E]

August's direction, as usual, is a tad glacial, but at its frequent best, the film soars to explosive heights. [31 Jul 1992, p.6D]

A movie that has neither dramatic focus nor a single memorable performance, aside from one or two that are memorable for the wrong reasons?

To be charitable, the film's point of view is consistent, and there's a clever bit (very late) involving construction equipment. There isn't however, even a fourth-cousin to a laugh in this very strange public suicide. [29 July 1991, p.4D]

Despite little dialogue, the story and screenplay were Oscar-nominated -- and, at 50, Wilde's physique is amazing for an actor who once played Chopin. [18 Jan 2008, p.4D]

And as nice as it is to see dishy Jennifer Connelly roller-skate down the store's aisles, the scene is just one more instance of obvious padding to push the running time to (just) past 80 minutes. [2 Apr 1991, p.6D]

Intelligent but exasperating, its monotonous tone will wear down even viewers who started out in its corner. [27 Dec 1996]

Things move fast enough to make it a movie to enjoy and then forget.

There've been few screen moments more moving this year than Cruise's initial reaction to his brother's almost superhuman math prowess. [16 Dec 1988]

A stylistically fastidious, exasperatingly affected package that will put most people in the mood for slumber.

Underrated Jerry Schatzberg directed (he later did Pacino's 1973 Scarecrow), and the script is by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, so it's smart. [22 Jun 2007, p.3D]

Director David Fincher shovels on more gloom than even the serial killer genre can sustain in the murkily moody, but self-defeating, Seven.

Landed exactly the right actors for a script that already gets points for respecting its teenage characters.

Despite Thurman's unlikely role, she's rather appealing with De Niro, but the De Niro-Murray chemistry isn't convincing. Murray, a breeze in Groundhog Day, seems tensed up here; the film, long on the shelf and with long-shot cult potential, brings no discredit upon its makers, but no glory either. [5 Mar 1993, p.5D]

Friedkin's latest is good for a few jolts, but also too many unintentional yuks. [27 Apr 1990, p.1D]

Ultimately, this film is more interesting than rousing; missing is a John Ford-ian wealth of idiosyncratic characters. [9 Nov 1990, Life, 4D]

Of course, The Rock looks the part, though with a headband and buckskin, he'd also look like Tonto on steroids.

Fortunately, a movie that needs some levity gets a comic boost from William H. Macy as a fictional racing handicapper from the golden days of radio. As if training a horse, Macy cues us to laugh every time he's on screen.

Jeff Bridges has enough demons in The Door in the Floor to jam a crowd scene, but the actor's sheer likability remains undiminished.

The three principals re-screen the Fellini masterpiece at Ekberg's country villa, and it's the kind of privileged moment only the movies can supply. You can bet Scorsese couldn't resist it, and I can't either. [20 Nov 1992, p.4D]

Spacey's brazen casting isn't as beyond the pale as it ought to be. In fact, it's hard to imagine this strange and only occasionally successful movie without him.

By contrast, other Hornby screen adaptations are "About a Boy" and "High Fidelity"- superb comedies both and, in Fidelity's case, a treatise on male obsession with far more depth and even more laughs.

When movies have degraded to the point that Tyson is acting more than Quentin Tarantino is directing, maybe it is time for an industry shutdown, strike-induced or otherwise.

More amusing than a lot of expensive Hollywood comedies [26 February 1999, Life, p.5E]

Except for its muddier than necessary photography, there aren't any surprises, which probably won't matter to the target audience.

OK, Time Warner, a joke is a joke, but the time of tolerance has passed. Get your creatures out of our faces unless you're willing to regale us by afflicting them with Mad Pokémon Disease.

As the suddenly somber Hickey, the traveling salesman who rudely stops regaling assorted skid-row barflies with flip patter in 1912 New York, Lee Marvin is very good in a role that Jason Robards always owned. Otherwise, the actors are all on a "wow" level. [04 Apr 2003]

Only the makers of "Freddy Got Fingered" might crack a smile because it now has competition for worst movie of the year.

It plays even more like a bent version of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" for the new millennium. Slinging a line of bull but displaying genuine affection for the youngsters he's bamboozling.

No comedy this vile should be brazenly foolish enough to give itself this title. [25 November 1998, p. 3D]

Shake it all up and you get Collateral, a movie with only one conceivable flaw: its disinclination to break new ground, though no one held that against "The Fugitive" more than a decade of Augusts ago.

This is the kind of people-driven story that the movies used to give us - before special effects took over.

With one of the year's busiest scripts, Little launches 76 zippy minutes.

This remake is shorter than its predecessors, a welcome earthly reward.

On both technical and conceptual levels, Bamboozled is a movie that will leave Spike Lee fans bewildered.

Catch offers mild fun but never as much as its animated '60s-retro opening credits portend. They're the cutest of the year.

Stripped of all bravado, Cruise delivers a raw and probably detractor-proof performance. Spielberg does what he did right in creating a novel milieu for "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," but this time the writing is fresher and anything but unwieldy.

This is the kind of well-made movie you wish well but you don't particularly wish to see again.

Actor John Corbett, so clean-cut in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Raising Helen," goes surprisingly scruffy here as someone who apparently studied music under Grizzly Adams.

This is director Stanley Donen's spotty but superior original -- made before Dudley Moore's superstardom but after his and co-star/co-writer Peter Cook's Beyond the Fringe stage glory. [06 Apr 2007, p.8E]

Warren Beatty's uproariously rude Bulworth is 90% triumph.

Myopic Whitey, continually passed over for a lifetime achievement athletic award, bears a passing resemblance to Columbia's all-time No. 1 animated star, the nearsighted Mr. Magoo. It's nice to think that if he ever went to this movie, he wouldn't be able to see it.

Excesses or not, I'm rabid to see this again. [10 Mar 1989, p.1D]

It's so exhilarating (and already such a hit) that even the fogies who choose which documentaries are nominated for Oscars may have to acknowledge its existence. [15 Aug 1991, p.5D]

Appallingly mean-spirited.

The movie grows progressively more routine in quarter-hour increments, eventually collapsing under the weight of its own insignificance.

Director Richard Rush, who later made the classic The Stunt Man, overindulges the arty bike footage. But this is certainly an artifact of an age, photographed by Leslie (later Laszlo) Kovacs, who became one of Hollywood's best cinematographers. [02 Jan 2004, p.4E]

Roll Bounce rates a friendly nod. If it doesn't exactly kick out the jams, it does move them around a little bit.

This is still a great Carney performance and inspired casting by writer/director Paul Mazursky. [16 Sep 2005]

Stone is competent, if not commanding; as neighbor lovers, she and Baldwin have less chemistry than the Taster's Choice coffee couple. [21 May 1993, p.1D]

Grabber sub-plots further boost a story that is basically made by its three leads.

A great movie just got greater, thanks to this thorough restoration. [Director's Cut; 27 June 1997, p.D3]

Plays like a labor of love.

Teamed again after Midnight Cowboy, writer Waldo Salt and director John Schlesinger make a costly flop of Nathanael West's great novella about underbelly '30s Hollywood. Karen Black is just OK as craven screen wannabe Fay Greener, but, along with M*A*S*H, this is Donald Sutherland's greatest lead (as a dweeb named Homer Simpson). [08 Jun 2004]

Full of love, Spaceballs is full of laughs; after 13 years of screen disappointments, Brooks has almost delivered another Young Frankenstein. May the box office be with it. [24 Jun 1987, p.1D]

This has to be the raunchiest full-length animated feature since Fritz the Cat, which got an X rating in 1971.

The time might be right for the Scary movies to quit on top, even though, alas, there are no term limits for sequels.

This being Irving, the story straddles the sweet and the creepy.

Clumsy urban thriller.

Federico Fellini's first film (co-directed with Alberto Lattuada) would make a compatible living room double bill with FF's 1986 Ginger and Fred...Pleasing all the way through. [17 Mar 1989, p.3D]

To see someone even attempt bittersweet treatment of this subject is surprising, but to largely pull it off is a major feat.

Of all the pop-psychiatry movies from the 1940s, Spellbound survives its kitschy elements -- wallows in them, even -- to remain as fascinating as expected from a collaboration that was contentious. [04 Oct 2002]

Costner, allegedly smitten with his client, had more chemistry with the Warren Commission in JFK. [25 Nov 1992, p.1D]

Earth to Earth's young director, Mark Piznarksi : It's tough turning straw into gold, isn't it?

Pro orchestrator that he is, Altman at least gives the illusion of a three-ring circus, but he's working third-rate material without a net. [23 Dec 1994, p.10D]

Individually, the episodes aren't much, but it's impressive that Jarmusch even pulled off the logistics. [01 May 1992, p.7D]

It's only a mild Disney package, despite a dose of Donald Duck dyspepsia. [18 July 1997, p.3D]

As close as anything could be to a light Mamet comedy.

I'd give this Howard Hawks perennial four stars (like everyone else) if I didn't find the climactic jailhouse scene so labored. [5 May 1989, p.3D]

Though he's highly irresponsible, this Alfie is not quite a calculating heel, which makes the material go down easier while blunting the point.

If She-Devil is (at best) ragged, it's also a must for Streep fans. [8 Dec 1989, p.1D]

There's no substitute for bad taste. And this one has it double-barreled, both in the timing of its release and as a movie, one said to be loosely based on fact.

After a tense, terrific, stomach-turning opening that may have moviegoing acrophobes recalling Vertigo, the film soon becomes the latest screen variation on cat-and-Mighty Mouse. [28May1993 Pg.04.D]

It's a hoary Chinatown knock-off wrapped in a seductively novel black-culture veneer, with a dash of Laura added for bad measure. [29 Sept 1995, p.01.D]

The movie runs just 80 minutes, but it's enough time for doldrums to set in when nifty special effects and funny verbal exchanges are out grabbing a smoke. [19 Feb 1993, Life, p.5D]

This is a filmmaker who instinctively knows that a shot of Santa sitting at a bar as Ricky Nelson sings Jingle Bells will be no-frills funny.

This very brave bio is an imposing disappointment, just like Cobb. [02 Dec 1994, p.2D]

Evil's one strong presence is lead Milla Jovovich -- and not because the script gives her supercop/soldier anything interesting to say.

If there can be a best-selling novel with a cult following, Margaret Atwood's feminist-futuristic The Handmaid's Tale qualifies. I'm not sure if the screen version has the stuff to become a cult movie - but if so, credit timeliness, visual style and a few performances. Most of all, timeliness. [07 Mar 1990, p.4D]

Mostly, this movie is what Burton does best, though some of composer Danny Elfman's ballads make even 75 minutes seem padded. Yet the zingier numbers (the opener especially) are terrific - befitting a movie with a literally wormy villain Oogie Boogie, a ghostly pet, Zero, and a mayor who's literally two-faced. So forget Monster Mash, this is a monster bas. [13 Oct 1993, p.1D]

Another great 1950s John Wayne Western from Warner Bros. [25 May 2007, p.4E]

Kris Kristofferson, as a scaled-down old gray mentor to Blade, still looks like the visual equivalent of your five worst college hangovers.

The movie is shrewd by giving the bulk of its piggish dialogue to Alexander, an actor incapable of projecting genuine cruelty on screen.

There's so little action or suspense that this Cell isn't too likely to multiply itself into a sequel.

The early going -- say, an hour -- is spent in a fatigued daze. A few powerful jabs eventually punch things up.

The sentiments here are thoroughly semper fi, but the result occasionally works at cross-purposes.

Only slightly more slick and slightly less edgy than past John Grisham adaptations.

Stilted film squanders an intriguing premise.

James Coburn plays father in what may be the best performance of his career. [30 December 1998, Life, p.3D]

The most powerful of all recent wayward-youth sagas; indeed, it's tough to recall the last such drama that packed as much emotional clout.

We accept the sincerity and altruistic motives of the aging loner he (Philip Baker Hall) portrays in this consciously spare Nevada-set sleeper. [13 March 1997, p. 8D]

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]

For all its inconsistencies, this is Smith's most provocative outing yet and certainly the toughest to forget.

The final third is slower until a somewhat contrived finale that's still the funniest thing in the movie.

Though the plot ends up taking some potentially compelling twists, its telling always feels manipulative.

This is a movie in which you rarely know where you are or who's doing what to the next person.

The rap sequences are shot and edited with the excitement of a crisply broadcast sporting event, which in a way they are.

Director Roman Polanski co-stars with and directs wife Sharon Tate in their only collaboration. That's one reason this box office bomb, which came out less than two years before Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's crew, has picked up a following. [08 Oct 2004, p.4E]

Well acted by an ensemble that leans toward equality for all, Mile carries its long running time extremely well.

If Martin Scorsese's staggeringly ambitious one-of-a-kind finally has too many flaws to be great, it has as much greatness in it as any movie this year.

Ivan Passer directs with the kind of objective integrity that's rare today, but the script doesn't jell. [14 July 1989, p.3D]

There are some notable oddballs in the filmmaking debut of performance artist Miranda July, whose lead performance in this Sundance winner for "originality" is the most appealing thing about it.

Director Iain Softley employs intriguing camera angles to heighten some of the suspense. It's too bad the movie goes over the top and falls apart in the last third.

Few filmmakers of the past 20 years have mesmerized as much in their use of crisp, color-drenched photography.

Doesn't sound like a very prepossessing title, but prepare to be taken aback by "what's in a name." [6 July 1994, Life, p.1D]

Here's an ''opened-up'' film of a fragile, sentimental play that doesn't overemphasize every dramatic point, and doesn't tromp on every minefield in the material. [13 Dec 1989, p.1D]

Top-flight cast.

Express is 80 tight minutes of railroad intrigue, an Oscar winner for cinematography (there's none better) and the film with the enduring line: "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." [22 Oct 1993, p.3D]

Sometimes laughably incoherent.

Fearless mix of classical music and animation, the one movie to satisfy that oft-misused adjective ''unique.'' [01 Nov 1991, p.3D]

A daring movie in today's current climate - one likely to be remembered at year's end. [18 Oct 1989]

This handsome movie works thanks to its lack of pretension and an atmosphere somewhat akin to the gentle wackiness of director Bill Forsyth's better works.

Humor, poignancy and social criticism converge for an even better movie than the recent one it brings to mind: Gosford Park. [23 Jan 2004]

Time has marched on for the second ''best-picture'' Oscar winner, but this is still a seamy story about two Midwestern sisters (Bessie Love and Anita Page) singing, hoofing and (in Page's case) teasing their way to success. [24 Feb 1989, p.3D]

If it's not conventionally speedy, it is almost always gripping.

Mortal Thoughts is a mystery that any halfway-OK hack might turn into a halfway-OK movie by bagging all pretense to art and simply telling a story. But that isn't the style of Alan Rudolph, whose last space shot was Love at Large; the result is a quirky boo-boo I suspect is already halfway out of theaters. [19 Apr 1991, p.2D]

An unusually knowing movie from filmmakers of any age, both in its coldly clinical viewpoint and assured filmmaking style that even puts fresh spin on a routine police interrogation. [26 May 1993, Life, p.8D]

The finale, which utilizes vintage home movies to show us the real people we've just seen portrayed, packs a wallop. [19 February 1999, Life, p.13E]

Plays a little like a pacifistic variation on Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon."

The story doesn't exactly startle with surprises and has a tendency to hammer and rehammer its points.

However flawed, this film proves two things: Davis is still peaking as a lead, and Hanks is in a league with funny male leads of any movie era. [1 July 1992, p.1D]

It's reduced to glorified refereeing of family squabbles discomfortingly magnified by his frequent use of close-ups.

The film's real heart is splitsville Pollack and Davis - he for the comedy his foolhardy fling provides and she for creating a complex character too direct to maintain marital harmony she may well need. It would be heartening if Davis, not scandal, were to be the film's ultimate legacy. Look for her to figure in the year-end supporting actress awards. [18 Sept 1992, p.1D]

As stuffed with beguiling performances - some of them unexpectedly good - as its script is overstuffed. And though even the beguiled may feel manipulated the next morning (or when hitting the exits), the players put it over by a nose. Happy holidays.

Seeing this movie won't get you into MIT, but it's passable fun.

Black Hawk turns nightmare into great cinema.

Clint Eastwood remains a competent, rather than distinctive, film maker, but he obviously respects the material. Bird is essentially factual, and we come to understand why so many other musicians thought shooting heroin might enable them to transfer [Charlie Parker]'s genius to themselves. [26 Sept 1988, p. 4D]

As good as "Unforgiven." Or, to put it another way, as good as any movie Eastwood has ever directed.

Couldn't be murkier or less emotionally involving if it were "The Matrix 8," a natural observation because Keanu Reeves stars in both.

Because De Niro's performance is aptly ''Scorsese-aggressive'' while Crystal effectively underplays, one can easily sit through this bottom-line disappointment with a smile painted on, waiting for belly laughs that rarely come. [5 Mar 1999]

Filmmakers of Bernardo Bertolucci's magnitude don't often take on sexual coming-of-age movies, but judging from the pleasures of Stealing Beauty, maybe more of them should. [14 Jun 1996 Pg.04.D]

A plot-twist whodunit that even Forrest Gump might crack, it's also a Hall of Fame howler from long-inactive Richard Rush, whose direction of 1967's Hell's Angels on Wheels now seems comparably placid. [19 Aug 1994, p.10D]

The gritty, Oscar-nominated "Traffic" is a limo ride compared with the bloodletting in this year's foreign-film nominee from Mexico.

Things will not be a big concession-stand movie because the floating heart is our introduction to a cottage industry we hope won't catch on. It is dirtier than pretty, yet Frears finds beauty in the telling.