Peter Stack

This wacky buddy road film... has a brilliant glow of intelligence behind the stupidness. It's easily the funniest movie of the year.

Using documentary-style Super 16 film and staged cutaway interviews with friends and family, James and his photographer and co-producer, Peter Gilbert, fashioned a movie with an affecting, candid look.

It's the kind of movie you may approach with a show-me attitude, only to be won over to its hip sense of fun and a gentle humanity that lets you walk away with a glow. [1 Oct 1993, p.C1]

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]

Beautiful in both its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film abounds in easygoing humor.

Exceptional, powerful new documentary.

It's a stunning, delightful image adventure like nothing done before on the big screen.

Not every moment of the film is as potent as the book (which is noted for passages of passion and impassioned eloquence), but Cry, the Beloved Country overcomes its own limitations to become a glorious tribute to the workings of a faith that does not blind but opens up the human spirit.

A wildly funny sex farce that smartly combines big-time silliness with sophisticated wit.

An earthy, sexy mystery.

One of the year's most fascinating flicks.... Brilliant performances by Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith and a newcomer named Ray Liotta give sparkle, and shadows, to Something Wild. [7 Nov 1986]

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

Kiss of Death was directed by Barbet Schroeder ("Single White Female") in the fashion of a creepily smirking cat toying with a particularly appealing mouse.

It takes a while for this powerful, funny movie to grab you, but once you get hooked, it feels like you're swimming in a wonderful stream of humanity, bathed in intimacy, romance and, not a little bit, delicious fun. Fried Green Tomatoes is as likely as any film around to carry your heart away and leave you with a wonderful glow. [27 Dec 1991, p.D1]

What is astonishing about this movie is how all the elements are so deftly mixed - the technology of real sets and people interwoven with the cartoon world, and yet Zemeckis hardly sacrifices a beat in laying out a curlicuing '40s-style thriller. [22 June 1988]

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

Delightfully comic - and the funniest moments are rich in meaning - A Man of No Importance is laced with memorable scenes.

The all-time great talking-pig movie, a lovely, intelligent gem of G-rated entertainment that is also rib-tickling funny.

One of the great movies -- a triumph of storytelling and character development, and a whole new ballgame for computer animation. Pixar Animation Studios has raised the genre to an astonishing new level.

Riveting.

Burns has created an endearing gathering of people we all know, and every one of them is so much fun that leaving the theater at the end elicits a touch of regret.

An inspiring translation of biblical grandeur, turning the story of one of history's greatest heroes into an entertaining, visually dazzling cartoon.

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.

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.

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.

Stone's feisty, intensely personal style of film making is well-known. With Born on the Fourth of July we are treated to a poignant, spirited and captivating - for the broken heartedness of it all - performance by Tom Cruise. [25 Dec 1989, p.E1]

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]

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]

A beautiful work that could easily have turned into a four-hour-long affair but, at just a tad over two, is enticingly rich and shines with humanity. [8 Sept 1993, p.D1]

El Cid goes for the big scenes as well as any Hollywood epic, but sometimes the smaller, more intimate ones work better, partly because the architecture is stunning. [17 Sep 1993, p.C3]

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]

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]

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

A gorgeous piece of work. It pulls every heartstring a good romance should, yet bursts with G-rated fun, wonderfully human characters and several solid and hummable songs.

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]

It's impossible not to be moved and shocked by The Last Days, the haunting documentary about five Hungarian Jews who survived Hitler's "final solution" to exterminate the Jewish people.

Riveting.

This one's so much fun, it's worth taking the whole family.

One of the most hauntingly beautiful mysteries ever created on film.

An extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the comedy game.

So wonderfully odd, even spiritual, that audiences won't be able to do anything but smile.

The payoff is a consistently rich piece with impressive visual vitality.

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.

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.

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]

Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it's a movie whose impact lingers.

The balance between action and mysticism in The Empire Strikes Back provides fascinating energy. It's as if the kids are given one set of delights, the bravado of battles and elaborate warships zooming through exotic space, and adults are given another, a layered explanation of what it all means in the grand scheme of things. [Special Edition]

A vital, sexy and touching movie that goes to the heart of what human caring is all about.

One of the great portraits of artists fighting, even with murderous rage, to reach the sublime.

They ought to forgo the formalities and simply give Nick Nolte his Oscar right now for what is one of the great performances on screen, in this season or any other, in Prince of Tides, a sensitive, emotionally explosive jewel directed by Barbra Streisand, who also co-stars. The powerful, haunting drama opens today. [25 Dec 1991, p.E1]

I laughed so hard, my eyes watered. I laughed so loud, I lost track of whether anyone else was laughing. I laughed so much, I ached afterwards. [29 July 1988, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

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

Has an odd mix of quickly grabbed handheld shots and scenes of striking beauty.

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

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

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

The pieces of the drama are put forth like the shapes of the five fingers of a hand, and finally they find a kind of awkward unity that was predictable from the start. And yet, the gesture of it all is utterly captivating, the way a dream would be if it ever really came true. [27 Feb 1987, Daily Datebook, p.74]

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]

French director Claude Berri's exquisite, methodical Lucie Aubrac is a romantic thriller so tightly drawn it almost leaves one breathless.

A joyous, hilarious send-up of rock star pretensions and an enchanting celebration of "girl power" in pop culture.

Bucking the lava tide of computer special effects gushing out of Hollywood this season, the makers of Breakdown use old-fashioned ingenuity -- plus a compelling star, a fast- paced mystery and a deadpan villain -- to come up with a sizzler.

Robert Redford's sensitive, unhurried movie of A River Runs Through It is so faithful to the book that it becomes that rare thing - a beautiful celebration of the power of literature. [09 Oct 1992]

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]

An unforgettable, poetic romance from Italy whose disarming humor, blushing encounters and bittersweet flavors are certain to set off a groundswell of smiles, tears and regret.

The River Wild may be the season's most exhilarating family entertainment. [30 Sep 1994, p.C1]

One of the most haunting and vital movies of the year.

A genuine winner in the old-fashioned family entertainment genre.

A poetry of love, longing and affirmation bleeds through the music of Cuba, and some of the best sounds the island ever created are captured with embracing humanity.

Sigourney Weaver is so daring and amazing, her veracity is at times painful to behold.

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

Disney's 33rd animated feature, and its first with characters based on real people, is a stunning movie with clever twists, vivid characterizations, insightful songs and a surprising harvest of revisionist history that manages to ring smartly as pure entertainment.

An inspired mix of spirited family entertainment and harrowing drama.

The greatest sexual suspense drama ever made has come to be regarded by many Hitchcock admirers as his most accomplished film. It is certainly his most forlorn, and easily his most mesmerizing. [Restored]

Director Oliver Stone has fashioned in JFK a riveting, dramatic and disturbing look at one of the great whodunits of history. [20 Dec 1991]

A gorgeously rendered and gritty film version of the classic adventure story by Jack London. It is a must-see for anyone with an interest in outdoor adventures, particularly as invented by Jack London. [18 Jan 1991, p.E3]

Mr. Holland's Opus is a glowing tribute to the unsung heroics of those rare, gifted teachers who make a difference in life. Richard Dreyfuss, in a performance that both touches and inspires, plays music teacher Glenn Holland.

If there is no other reason to see An American in Paris than its fabled 18-minute ballet scene -- well then, that, during the last reel, is worth the price of admission. Choreographed by Kelly -- no doubt with a smile -- it is a stunning series of homages to French painters Toulouse-Lautrec, Dufy, Utrillo, Renoir and the like. It is a masterpiece of filmic creations -- nothing quite like it before or since. [11 Dec 1992, p.C11]

The movie is so cleverly entrenched in its sardonic style that Russell's toughest act must have been keeping a straight face. Escape From L.A. is surprisingly effective in picturing a former nirvana clenched in the twisted rubble of its own excess.

Denzel Washington is riveting.

This is an intimate, lyrical yet incendiary film, and it will please fans of both Young and Jarmusch, a filmmaker drawn to the intersection of American popular culture and a profound sense of loneliness.

Though this film's considerable warmth derives from dalmatian puppies and other animals who take charge of their fates, Close steals the show.

The richness of characters make this movie shine. It's just that, somehow, a certain sense of fire is missing.

SubUrbia is depressing comedy -- the more so because director Richard Linklater's satirical picture of youthful alienation rings painfully true.

This British film also mocks the rave culture it celebrates, and it's charming in a way that is hip but surprisingly down to earth.

Muppet Treasure Island is an elaborate, juicy eyeful. The film is an impressive maze of visual scale and perspective that lets humans and puppets interact as a single species. The overall effect is a wonderful sense of the fantastical. But simplicity might have helped where the movie often stagnates with gimmicks.

Slick, glossy, overblown, implausible. [15 July 1988, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

Heart and Souls stands up beautifully as a heart- tugging testament to the importance of taking care of the sometimes complicated business of being a decent, loving person before some fateful bus crash robs you of the chance. [13 Aug 1993, p.C1]

Wonderful characters keep the movie from gagging on sweetness.

Achieves a rare interweaving of the darkly poetical and raspy, cockeyed comedy.

Turning the comic game slightly on its ear and injecting it into a romantic Western setting, Maverick, inspired by the old TV show, plays its ace for all it's worth. Ace, in this case, is fun. [20 May 1994, p.C1]

A spirited adventure with generous romantic and comic charms.

The new film Parenthood is a challenging, funny, affecting and mostly rewarding effort - like parenthood itself. It makes good use of a large ensemble cast led by Steve Martin as a man striving to be a good dad. [2 Aug 1989, p.E1]

Director Ted Demme (with a terse script by Mike Armstrong) keeps it darkly funny while exposing raw nerves in a buildup to unexpected tragedy.

Zellweger has the most interesting new face in film, and she knows how to use silences to say what the heart wants to get across.

A perfect vehicle for Robin Williams. He again plays the compassionate, manic clown that has been his main character throughout his movie career. And audiences love his wild end runs.

He Got Game seems to cheer for integrity, honesty and hard work while playing up its own cheap thrills.

Rush is amazing throughout this absorbing, provocative film.