Rick Groen

As an actor, Kirk Douglas still has more to give; too bad he didn't have more to work with.

Joe Pytka does display an occasional nice touch with mood and atmosphere - at its infrequent best, the humor here is almost wry. But his editing is as jumpy as a mare in heat. [19 Aug 1989]

The result is good gossip, entertainingly delivered, yet with a distinctly musty odour, its expiry date long gone.

What an impeccably crafted film this is -- slightly impoverished in theme, perhaps, but so rich everywhere else that it seems rude to notice.

A movie about con artists that turns out to be a con job, and guess who's getting played for a sucker?

With the notable exception of Martin Scorsese's opus, most boxing flicks suffer form a certain amount of raw-boned sentimentality, the sort of easy melodrama that pits naive underdogs against corrupt overlords, or age against youth, or purity against prejudice. Even the recent "Million Dollar Baby" succumbed in the final act. But this one, where "Rocky" meets "The Waltons," has us reeling under its saccharine weight.

Only occasionally does Fresnadillo rise above the mundane, but, to his credit, the exceptions are worth savouring.

Gosh, what to say about House of 1000 Corpses? That it's about 999 too many, for starters. Then again, in a picture where the body count is the whole point and the only purpose, carping about the math rather misses the mark.

As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper. Of course, that's just part of disaster's simple recipe: Blow us up, then blow us off.

PARENTS defies all categories but one - it is a virtuoso display of movie-making, a multi-textured and pyschologically intense work unimaginable in any medium except film, a tale fantastic in style yet deadly serious in its intent and absolutely horrifying in its implications. [27 Jan 1989]

The verdict? Green passes with flying colours -- his is a huge and hugely impressive talent.

Somewhere, back in the mists of time, co-writers Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber must have flapped their gums in the fond hope of crafting a script; today, that whisper of hot air has swollen into a feature flick that rains down upon us a veritable torrent of inane plot.

The climax, a 20-minute dramatization of the crucial contest, lacks both suspense and poetry -- essentially, we're left to watch a clumsy recreation of a game whose outcome we already know. That's a sort of resurrection, I suppose, but miraculous it assuredly ain't.

If laughs are the currency of any comedy, then this one pays minimum wage and, worse, makes you work damn hard even for that pittance.

Never as spectacular as it promises, often funnier than it intends, Clash of the Titans is a harmless diversion - neither bad enough to annoy nor good enough to admire. [15 June 1981]

Things you will not find in State Of Grace: a script that makes a modicum of psychological sense; a performance that isn't either desperately overwrought or numbly underplayed; and anything resembling grace. [18 Sep 1990]

Like a two-bit philosopher working the wrong side of the stone, Howard has managed to turn gold into lead.

To these disappointed eyes, Little Children seems a frustrating mess.

Fatal Attraction becomes as seductive as the seduction it depicts. In the always stylish, sometimes careless hands of director Adrian Lyne, the film lures us in with an artful blend of stately pacing and caressing close-ups and brooding silences. [23 Sep 1987 p.C7]

A bland Shaun Evans is woefully miscast as the brash American.

The message the movie preaches? The ills of a consumer society, I guess - all those needful things needlessly bought. And the best way to put that preaching into practice? Shut your wallet and pass on this little treat. [27 Aug 1993]

The result, like so many stout travellers from stage to screen, is respectable. Stolidly, bloodlessly, yawningly respectable.

Didn't we just see this movie? Over in Britain, big bad governments may be outsourcing his job and rendering him redundant, but never fear -- the plucky working-class hero has definitely found a steady gig on the silver screen.

This is a film that dearly wants to be important, that wants to do for Holland what Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Française" does for France - examine the German occupation through a prism of painful honesty. Yet the lofty ambition comes dressed in cheap attire; Verhoeven can't seem to stop himself from shopping downmarket.

HAT in the name of artsy pretension do we have here? That Arizona Dream is a nightmare is beyond dispute - it's the sort of murky, symbol-laden trap that European directors often fall into when they cross the pond to take on the entire social stratum of the United States. The culprit in question is Emir Kusturica - Yugoslavian born, Czech trained, and now American buffaloed. This thing makes The Red Desert look coherent. [19 Nov 1994]

Our time is plagued with primitive directors toiling in the name of entertainment, and protected by an industry that rewards competence over excellence. They're the reason why this movie is simply average, and why all the Red Dragons look so uniformly beige.

Those Hollywood tricksters have managed to shorten the story while slowing the pace -- all of a sudden, minutes are passing like hours.

In the Scotland of Young Adam, love is getting dragged through the mud.