Rick Groen

The dialogue is an occasionally witty cut above the norm, partly because director Greg Berlanti goes easy on those cute baby reaction shots, but mainly because of something rather more valuable: screen chemistry.

At best, the humour in Election is perceptive, nasty, pointed, and lets no one off its barbed hook, not even the audience. In other words, it's a lovely piece of satire, made all the more relevant by the setting.

The film's quiet realism demands from us our own act of faith: We're asked to watch closely and to listen intently in the promise of a greater reward to come. Well, the promise is partly kept.

Mr. Holland's Opus is all heart. I suppose a brain cell or two might have helped to win over laggards such as me, but no matter. It sure means well and, in a note-perfect world, strikes its basic chords with a naif's true conviction. [19 Jan 1996]

The devil may wear Prada, but Meryl wears the crown.

Delightful as it often is, the picture suffers fom the same structural and thematic tidiness, even smugness, that it nominally opposes.

Remove the comma from the title and Love, Marilyn plays like the command it is.

A mature biopic as entertaining as it is timely.

An entertaining oddity, an amiably black comedy whose bared teeth double as an engaging smile: It takes a satiric bite and leaves you laughing through the pain.

It's light, it's bright and it succeeds precisely where the lesser doc fails -- by setting modest targets and hitting them square on.

Pick your cliche - searing, rivetting, haunting - Keitel delivers a performance to rival Brando's in "Last Tango In Paris."

I doubt that Jean-Michel Basquiat would have endorsed the subtitle. Indeed, The Radiant Child seems to inflate the very cliché that the rest of this film is keen to refute.

For those who like their horror served straight up with no ironic chaser, The Descent is a tasty cup of torment.

Says the actor Jeff Bridges, a long-time and articulate soldier in the campaign against hunger: “It’s a problem that our government is ashamed of acknowledging. We’re in denial.”

Reserved yet still suspenseful and hugely ambitious, Syriana sets out to prove what many have come to suspect -- that oil money is the root of all contemporary evil.

Just when the movie seems set to soar, there's a drag factor -- it keeps getting weighed down, if not sunk, by an anchor of ponderousness.

For the kids, the action is always lively and, for the rest of us, the dialogue has a witty and even caustic edge.

Despite its hastily tacked-on resolution, Mississippi Masala is still a lesson well delivered - flecked with humour and never pedantic. [28 Feb 1992]

Sometimes, when you least expect it, Hollywood is so Hollywood good, serving up a flick guaranteed to answer the clarion call of the multitudes. "I just want to be entertained," you say? Well, fork out then, because The Italian Job does the job.

Despite acting under the computer-generated encumbrances of that monkey tail and those centaur legs, Delphine Chanéac does something remarkable with Dren – she makes her a disturbingly sexy thing.

There's much to observe – for example, the thoroughly credible performances of the cast, most of them non-professionals.

What a strange and strangely compelling movie this is.

Spike Lee's voluminous "When the Levees Broke" proved a thorough indictment, a compilation of tragic and appalling facts encyclopedically catalogued. By contrast, Trouble the Water (on Oscar's short-list in the best doc category) has a more personal focus and, although just as damning, manages to strike a more hopeful chord.

Let the Right One In is a children's film, but you wouldn't want your child to see it. It's a horror film, but the gruesome splatter is the least of its scares. And it's a love story, but the prepubescent kind where sex is a distant idea and loneliness a shared reality. A wicked trick, a cinematic treat, this is some Halloween offering.

Kick-Ass is some kind of twisted fun.

What is it that sets this film apart from assembly-line animation - all the bright baubles that are momentarily diverting and instantly forgotten (Rock-A-Doodle is a recent example)? The most obvious, and important, difference is the story line itself. FernGully has the deceptive simplicity of all good fables. [18 Apr 1992]

This broad farce about a group of soap-opera stars is played at a hysterical pitch, but there are some real chuckles amid the mayhem. [31 May 1991]

Frankly, with so much to feast my dazzled eyes upon, I barely noticed that the plot was missing in action. And that's because the action itself is so pure.