Peter Stack

Touch of Evil is a savvy starter because Welles' astonishing cinematic invention and his persuasive presence as star are prime noir at tractions. The look, a deftly arranged climate of odd shadows and angles, neon lighting and flawlessly choreographed action scenes, keeps interest piqued through a contrived plot and mannered acting.

Maybe the best shoot-'em-up ever made, the one that turned meanness into a haunting pictorial poetry and summed up the corruption of guilt, old age and death in the American fantasy of the Old West.

A gem of fast action, sophisticated wit and inspired comedy.

Walt Disney Pictures' Beauty and the Beast is an enchanting feast of extraordinary animated film making that magically revives the classic Disney style with genial humor, memorable music, fluid grace in its drawings, and compelling romance. [15 Nov 1991, p.C1]

By any measure, the horrifying yet powerfully uplifting Schindler's List from director Steven Spielberg is a milestone in the art of filmmaking. [15 Dec 1993]

A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.

Among the great American crime movies, 1973's Badlands stands alone. [13 Feb. 1998]

Brother's Keeper is a thoroughly engaging examination of the whole curious affair by two New York City-based film makers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who document with a distinctive underlying humor and a feeling for contrasts between urban and rural America. Sometimes that contrast is touching, sometimes painfully hilarious, and often a little gloomy as the film delves into the lives of the surviving brothers to reveal a community with genuinely humane values, but one ripe for exploitation by the big city media. [16 Oct 1992, p.C4]

This wonderful romp of a movie looks magical on the big screen: colors are a picnic for the eyes, details loom so clearly you can practically touch them and there's a sense of the larger-than-life with a film that's already larger than life.

Robert Redford's exceptionally handsome and provocative Quiz Show manages a trick that few films even dare try -- to take a hard look at personal and public moral issues and still provide dazzling entertainment.

Riveting.

Best “performances,'' however, are given by the movie's almost agonizingly beautiful historical settings -- luxurious households, rich architecture, furnishings, ornaments, draperies, fineries and such are often more captivating than the hushed tones of the lovers. [17 Sept 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]

The crack in the pretty picture of America goes a lot deeper than we thought, thanks to Ray's brooding vision.

If it all sounds rather heady for a Disney movie, well, it is. And it is one of the curious delights of The Lion King that a moralistic patriarchal drama can be played out in a Darwinian setting and still emerge shining in a dream coat of Hollywood entertainment values. [24 June 1994, p.C1]

It will be the most talked-about comedy of summer.

A crime gem that is darkly funny even when it's chilling -- and certain to become a classic.

The most entertaining movie of the year. Funny and action-packed, it's also got that rare thing, heart.

Life Is Sweet, a comedy with wonderfully touching moments by off-beat British director Mike Leigh, is an absolute gem of eccentric humor about family life. Fresh and quirky, the film dishes up astonishing vitality in its look at what is ostensibly a plain, lower middle-class family in Middlesex. [22 Nov. 1991, p.C5]

My Neighbor Totoro is drawn in an expansive, naturalistic way that makes an atmosphere of trees, rice fields and hills unraveling in the distance a hypnotic shadow character. In some scenes this nature is so delicious it becomes a poetical presence. [08 May 1993, p.C3]

An extraordinary entertainment that personalizes the world of insects and other invertebrates and leaves audiences with an itching conviction of the poetry of nature.

Though much of Like Water For Chocolate simmers with humor and the stumbling plight of human life, the movie takes its soul from deeper strains -- unfulfilled longing, the tyranny of social customs in a macho-dominated world, and the final outrage that love and death are inseparable, often indistinguishable companions. [26 Mar 1993, p.C1]

It is far too sophisticated and operatic to be dismissed as simply a cheap-thrills, blast-'em blowout. [19 Aug 1994, p.C14]

A little abhorrent yet strangely appealing. I found it arty and pretentious, but still couldn't turn my eyes away from its almost hypnotic coolness and fascinating psychological horrors. [23 Sept 1988]

There may not be a better- acted film this year.

Beautiful, romantic and frantically funny. In its brief, often frenetic 85-minute running time it manages to be a riot of entertainment, embracing the best of old-fashioned merriment as well as savvy, up-to-the-minute contemporary humor, thanks in large part to an extraordinary performance by Robin Williams. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]

Intelligent and crackling with crisp, provocative visual energy, Copycat, the new thriller starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, is so creepy and dangerous-feeling that it's like a knife edge pressed against the jugular.

The darker this visionary film gets -- and it gets very dark -- the less comic and the more chilling it becomes. At the same time, it grows more brilliant as a view of modern society poisoned by a battering incivility or cruel exploitation that, in Leigh's view, is played out most profoundly in gender conflict. When ''Naked'' isn't beaning your brain, it's twisting a screwdriver between the wires of your nerves. [28 Jan. 1994, p.C1]

Heart and tenderness are rare in cartoon movies. But in an age of frenetic children's fare, the new animated adventure The Iron Giant dares to show a lot of both, and it comes up a winner.