Richard Schickel

Finally, though, Traffic, for all its earnestness, does not work. It leaves one feeling restless and dissatisfied.

The movie and everyone in it remain, under Ivan Reitman's determinedly casual direction, very loosely organized. They amble agreeably, but not necessarily hilariously, from one special-effects sequence to the next. These are not better, worse or even different from the original's trick work, and their lack of punctuating surprise is the film's largest problem, especially at the shamelessly repetitive climax. [26 June 1989, p.89]

The Farrellys need to remember this: Sappiness is easy, comedy is hard.

A hard-striving, convoluted movie, which never quite becomes the smoothly reciprocating engine Anderson ...would like it to be.

Grace is not as tightly wound as the best of its breed, but it is a genial way to pass the time.

There are pain and honor in this performance, and they constantly rise up to redeem a film that is less probing, less thoughtful than its director's claims and aspirations for it.

The film is full of attractive young performers. And there is a low-keyed conflict between them and a faculty that is trying to discipline their exuberance without stifling their spirits. If the film had concentrated on that instead of on hokey melodrama, it might have been far more engaging and truer to life.

What makes The Good Girl worthwhile is its performances. All the actors play their entrapment with a weirdly convicted blankness. That's especially true of Aniston.

We forgive Bridget the movie its obvious flaws because of its equally inescapable charm.

These stories, alas, are utterly predictable. Still, Samuel L. Jackson breaks through the crust of cliches as an expert called in to verify the instrument's provenance, and violinist Joshua Bell plays and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts John Corigliano's score ravishingly.

Dark, detailed and only really gets going when the gunplay starts.

There's something refreshing about its utterly unembarrassed embrace of the familiar. The director, George Tillman Jr., either doesn't notice or doesn't give a hoot about the way Scott Marshall Smith's script piles up cliches.

It is very tiresome peering through the gloom trying to catch a glimpse of something interesting, then having to avert one's eyes when it turns out to be just another brutally tormented body.

There are a reserve and a realism in Huston's work that make her very modest film more affecting than you might expect.

This film, based on a true story, transcends its handsomeness to present a subtle portrait of a woman's growing consciousness.

This material is either underdeveloped or crudely put by a director whose style is so conventional that he makes James Ivory look, by comparison, like Jean-Luc Godard.

A lot of the gags are pretty good. It's not that Star Wars is less worthy of satire than horse opera or gothic horror. It's not that Mel Brooks has lost his cunning, though he does need a freedom of speech not to be found under a PG rating. What's missing is that zany old gang of his. There is simply nobody like them on this trip. [13 July 1987, p.68]

Christie has already won prizes for the knowing weariness of her performance, and Flynn Boyle probably deserves some for her ferociously stated frustrations. But their clarity can't quite cut through the thickness of the film's air or compensate for the wooziness it induces.

There is no point in retelling this tale if you are going to be stuffy about it.

I think Gonzo, which is wonderfully rich in historical footage, needs some skeptics, some voices suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Thompson was part of the problem, not the solution, when America flirted briefly with revolution (or was it merely anarchy?), leaving consequences that continue to resonate today -- and not always to our advantage.

What saves it, aside from good performances by Burt Reynolds and a thundering herd of supporting grotesques, is, of all things, a tough, tiny nut of valid social criticism.

This wisp of a movie turns out to be more thoughtfully affecting than many a more high-flying film.

The film comes uncomfortably close to risible. But it also achieves moments of real power. It's worth a wary look before it attains midnight cult-movie status.

Gibson is a primitive all right, but so were Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, and somehow we survived their idiocies.

Even when one of the pieces stutters, stammers or just lies deathly still, we are consoled by our knowledge that it will not trifle with us for very long. And by the fact that there is an excellent likelihood that it will soon be replaced by something more engaging.

There is a lunatic energy about it. Every once in a while, Chayefsky abandons the struggle to dramatize his ideas and has somebody, usually Holden, just turn to the camera and spout off. In those moments, his concern — and sometimes his mother wit — comes blazing through and the picture takes on a life not found in safe, sane, well-calculated movies.

This is rather a thin tale, not much thickened by Burton's direction or Depp's playing. There's a distance, a detachment to this film. It lacks passion.

Dolman's comedy isn't exactly a barrel of emotional surprises, but its great cast underachieves admirably. There are worse ways to pass 94 minutes.