Richard Schickel

We have this movie--full of acceptant, sidelong glances at human quirkiness--to delight us.

The film is more than a murder mystery and more than a study in character conflict. At its best, it is an intense and complex portrait of an urban landscape on which the movies' gaze has not often fallen.

Diverting without being fully absorbing, this is a film best appreciated as an exercise in--shall we say it?--Primal Gere. [15 Apr 1996, p.100]

I'll stipulate that in Austen's time spinsterhood was a fate to be strenuously avoided. And being a woman writer was by no means an easy path either. Yet, she embraced it, and the immortal results more than justify a hard choice this film never really explores.

The result is a film consistent narratively, confident stylistically and abounce with the quaint quality that animated both the hero and his times, something we used to call pep.

[Darabont] makes you feel the maddening pace of prison time without letting his picture succumb to it.

It's a pretty, high-strung story, handsomely done in traditional animation (mostly by hand) that you can take the kids to without wincing.

Love Excalibur or hate it, but give Boorman credit for the loopy grandeur of his imagery and imaginings, for the sweet smell of excess, for his heroic gamble that a movie can dare to trip over its pretensions— and still fly.

A watchable film, but it -- and its star -- might have done so much more.

It would be nice, for instance, to meet some white man, other than Dunbar [Costner], who is not a brutish lout. And it would not harm the film if there were one or two bad-natured Sioux visible in it. [12 Nov 1990, p.102]

The smartest, funniest, most cleverly structured comedy of the year.

A true movie rarity: a brutally honest romance. If you loved "Sleepless in Seattle," you'll just hate it.

Thin, gulpy, awkward, it stands before us, artlessly begging sympathy but betraying its creator's worst weakness. [9 Mar 1987, p.86]

I have rarely, if ever, seen a documentary reconstruction of a historical event that is so rich in firsthand (and well-preserved) photographic material.

Sublime and sorrowful movie.

This very patient film reaches out and unshakably grips us.

Enigma is not for everyone, but the thoughtful (and the historically minded) will find it an absorbing and extremely well-textured experience.

If there is a hero in the new film, it is Donald Sutherland, who gives an energetic, intelligent, emotionally rangy performance as the public health officer working on the case. There is nothing wrong, either, with Brooke Adams as his colleague and lover. But, sadly, they can not compensate for all the other mistakes in a film that lingers too long and too soberly over material that, as the original showed, must be quickly, even superficially handled, if it is to be accepted at all.

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.

Two cheers, at least, for permitting the past to appear not as a stern lesson but as a delicious irrelevance. [10 Mar 1986]

One of this summer's more pungent pleasures: a well-made sex farce of classical proportions. If there is a horse to fall off or an airplane forced to land at the wrong airport, you may be sure Teddy will be aboard.

It feels as if it has been recovered from a time capsule, and what larger meaning it may have is anyone's guess. But it is way cool -- and funny -- in ways that more expensive comedies trying harder rarely are.

Like the first of the Addams chronicles, this is an essentially lazy movie, too often settling for easy gags and special effects that don't come to any really funny point.

Nolan's effort is not dishonorable, but what it needs, and doesn't have, is a Joker in the deck--some antic human antimatter to give it the giddy lift of perversity that a bunch of impersonal explosions, no matter how well managed, can't supply.

Rain Man's restraint is, finally, rather like Raymond's gabble. It discourages connections, keeping you out instead of drawing you in. [19 Dec 1998]

One of the most execrable movies ever made. [6 March 1995, p.100]

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

There's a great story here, but Tucci's literate, civilized, wistful movie lacks savage impulse and refuses to show how mutual exploitation led to minor tragedy.