Richard Schickel

Even the car chase in Fletch is witty and believable and something an adult can attend without flinching. As the adolescent revels of summer wear on, that alone could make it a movie to cherish.

Patient and plodding -- but as realized by John Malkovich, in his directorial debut, utterly absorbing.

Now and then McGrath's film feels a bit rushed and breathless, but mostly you sink gratefully into its handsomely staged plenitude.

This is a sad, subtle and very good movie, designed not so much to make you think, but to make you feel the impact of large events on little lives.

Everyone in the cast has his or her solo, and all rise brilliantly to their occasions, notably Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, Mina Badie and a divinely neurotic Jane Adams.

Before Director Ron Howard and his gargle of writers (Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel and Bruce Jay Friedman) arrange a satisfactorily romantic ending for their odd couple, they also manage to satirize everything from presidential politics to daytime television. They are a jostling, busily observant, fundamentally good-natured crew, and audiences are well advised to take a plunge on Splash.

Well acted, and it achieves a strong, smart, engaging life of its own.

To make an unembarrassing movie about embarrassment is definitely an eye-opening achievement.

As long as Training Day stays tightly focused on the struggle between the two cops, the movie is first rate.

It features as ghastly a group of interstellar pirates, the Klingons, as ever entered the star log, plus a spectacularly self-destructive planet and plenty of technically adroit and sometimes witty special effects. These are classic directorial occasions, and Nimoy rises to them with fervor, in effect beaming his film up onto a higher pictorial plane than either of its predecessors.

A modestly mounted, but curiously poignant little documentary... which somehow -- quietly, devastatingly -- shows and tells you more than you may perhaps want to know about the dehumanization implicit in the mighty, blighted Iraqi adventure.

It has everything you want in an epic: sweep, scope, wild reversals of fortune and plenty of bold, basic emotions.

Murphy, abetted by director Tom Shadyac and a whole raft of writers, cannot entirely escape the curious blend of aspiration and sloppiness that marked the earlier film.

[Matlin] has an unusual talent for concentrating her emotions--and an audience's--in her signing. But there is something more here, an ironic intelligence, a fierce but not distancing wit, that the movies, with their famous ability to photograph thought, discover in very few performances. Children of a Lesser God, though given a handsome openness in Director Haines' production, cannot transcend the banalities of the play. But Matlin does. She is, one might say, a miracle worker.

For us dog saps, it is especially nice to see cuddlesomely real pooches instead of drawn ones doing smart-pet tricks.

It is a guileless tribute not only to plain values of plain people in Depression America, but also to the sweet spirit of country-and-western music before it got all duded up for the urban cowboys.

Occasionally succumbs to Mika's legato rhythms, but it is more often a sly, subtle comedy about the oh-so-gentle art of murder.

And while more than 30 writers worked on the screenplay and untold numbers labored to re-create the ambiance and effects that the animators once tossed off with a few squiggles of their pencils, The Flintstones doesn't feel overcalculated, over-produced or overthought.

A genial, expertly played political comedy proves that the spirit of Mr. Smith still lives.

A raw, unblinking film. It teaches that in dire circumstances our only obligation is to our own survival; all else -- culture, ideology, even love -- is a dispensable luxury.

Little Children does not have quite the bleak discipline of Field's more keenly judged "In the Bedroom." Yet it is a more ambitious film and a considerable achievement.

There is something brave and original about piling up most of our worst parental nightmares in one movie and then daring to make a midsummer comedy out of them. It really shouldn't work, but it does. The movie does not linger too long over any moment or mood, and it permits characters to transcend type, offering a more surprising range of response to events. [7 August 1989, p.54]

Like its title -- blunt, thruthful, uncompromising. It is hard on an audience, even harrowing. But that's exactly what Martin Scorsese was put on earth to do.

Its major sin--a certain ineluctable improbability--is pretty much offset by the moments of winsome humanity Gibson finds for his freebooter; by the rich, nicely tuned portrayals of the other actors; and by director Ron Howard's smoothly professional mastery of yet another genre that is new to him.

The picture breaks down awkwardly when it tries to express directly what it has already said better by implication. This generally occurs in earnest scenes between Elliott and his all too dense girlfriend. Dayle Haddon's inexperienced playing adds nothing even faintly convincing to the badly written love interest, and the rest of the film has to struggle to recover from the resulting dead spots. Still, North Dallas Forty retains enough of the original novel's authenticity to deliver strong, if brutish, entertainment.

What he (Scott) does superbly is establish a raw, compelling reality that transcends his movie's banal premises and predictable conclusion. That permits Moore to play, and us to feel, authentic pain, isola- tion and courage--shocking stuff to find in an action movie these days. [25 August 1997, p. 72]

The result is an admittedly minor, but authentic, holiday treat.

A very good film, beautifully shot and edited, intelligently structured and — to risk what will surely seem at first a highly inappropriate term —charming.