Richard Corliss

A vampire story needs vampires, sure, but it also needs a human victim to lead the audience into the vortex and help them escape it. Otherwise, the fear factor evaporates, and you get this mishmash: an interview in a void, a vampire movie with underbite.

Take this Shower and feel refreshed; it's a cool dip on a hot day.

The movie is less ho-ho-ho than uh-oh, or oh-no. Emitting a stale odor from the first reel, Fred never engaged the audience of kids and adults that I saw it with.

Pacino seems to recall, from his early Michael Corleone days, the power of whispered menace.

The invention is impressive, but there is little indication of the Henson-Oz trademark: a sense of giddy fun.

The true, rare glamour of the piece is its revival of two precious movie tropes: the flourishing of words for their majesty and fun, and--in the love play between Fiennes and his enchantress--the kindling of a playfully adult eroticism.

Sleepy Hollow may be late for Halloween, but this trick is a real treat.

In Rapace, it has an actress who brings a memorable literary character to indelible movie life, as Vivien Leigh did for Scarlett O'Hara.

This is high, and high-wire, melodrama. It's less soap opera than grand opera, where matters of love and death are played at a perfect fever pitch. And grand this Golden Flower is.

It is as cool and distant as the planet the Strangers come from. But, Lord, is Dark City a wonder to see. [2 March 1998]

The result is that rare Hollywood achievement, an adventure of the intelligent spirit. From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride. [3 July 1995]

This isn't "2001," by a long shot, but for 2000, it'll do nicely.

There's something missing, beyond the iconoclastic theology, in this perfectly OK, blandly underwhelming superproduction. The movie lacks an elevating passion, a cohesive vision, a soul. It's as if The Golden Compass has misplaced its artistic compass. Somebody stole its daemon.

It points out what's missing in his (Oshii) approach: fluidity of character line, the subtlety of expression that brought humanity to a Warner Bros. cartoon duck or rabbit.

Here is a picture that has wit, a hairpin-turn narrative, high pizazz and ensemble star quality. Ready, set, Go.

Armed or not, Reeves is the weapon that can go off at any time. That's why Street Kings, though it isn't a great movie, is a pretty damn cool Keanu Reeves movie, one that on the Reevesian action scale measures somewhere between "Whoa" and "Wow."

The new picture provides a master coursed in cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment.

The poise and passion in Eve's Bayou leave one grateful, exhausted and nourished. For the restless spirit, here is true soul food.

Sassy but never cynical, Mikey is first seen, through some cunningly simple special effects, as a kind of hot-rodding sperm cruising up the Fallopian tube to the tune of the Beach Boys' I Get Around. [20 Nov 1989, p.98]

Elegant, thoughtful film.

It's got power and depth, and two kings whose greatness is diluted by hubris, and a thrilling dragon fight, and the demon Grendel as a tortured outcast, and a naked monster who looks a lot like Angelina Jolie.

Donen got it gloriously right the first time. Why do it again? And why do it like this?

Stone's camera closes in on Bogosian's face as if it were the cratered moonscape of the American mind, and the actor / starts shouting into his megaphone mike. Finally, these two have become like Barry's listeners, shrill and unconvincing, weaving their own conspiracy theories in the bleat of the night. This is bag-lady cinema.

Smartly crafted, impeccably acted, The Lives of Others packs a subtle punch, from its creepy first images to its poignant finale.

Coppola brings the old spook story alive -- well, undead -- as a luscious, infernal romance.

All glitz, no glory. [7 September 1998]

A near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes.

The result is Soderberghs liveliest experiment since the strenuously weird "Schizopolis" six years ago -- except that this one works.