Rita Kempley

There are films as lovely, but none lovelier.

Sayles brings familiar tools to "Roan Inish": a passion for language, labor-intensive lifestyles and, of course, the moody beauty of the geography. The writer-director frequently links his characters' personal happiness with their environment. That, more than the unusual marine life of Roan Inish, is the theme of this amiable visit to northwestern Ireland.

The elephant, whose last film was Operation Dumbo Drop, steals the three-ring circus with its charming personality and an amazing 50-command repertoire.

You can hear the silence, the palpable quiet in director Randa Haines' skillful adaptation of stage's "Children of a Lesser God." The polemic drama of deaf rights translates into a heart-pounding love story -- the most passionately performed since "Officer and a Gentleman."

Lorenzo's Oil, which is further encumbered by its funereal pacing and woebegone score, is definitely a remarkable story, but as told by Miller it isn't really an uplifting one.

X marks the G-spot perhaps, for this is an orgiastic comedy of terrors and errors.

Director DeVito, who never did know when to quit, manages to be as clever as he is vicious. His first movie, "Throw Momma From the Train," seems almost lyrical in comparison to the ruthlessness of this vehicle.

Marvels of animation abound in Monsters, Inc. -- when it comes to irreverent humor and real heart, Monsters doesn't quite measure up.

Cyrano de Bergerac is played full tilt, like Don Quixote against the windmills. An enthusiastic melodrama, it spills emotions like stars across the noble screen.

Ultimately Sleeping With the Enemy wants to be about one woman's rebirth, but Roberts neither grows nor glows in this empty movie.

Howard entices us into overlooking the film's faults with some genuinely amusing scenes, particularly those featuring Japanese-American Gedde Watanabe as a beleaguered Assan executive who doesn't fit the corporate mold. [14 Mar 1986, p.27]

An unholy union of dark comedy, spectral effects and splattered gore that few filmgoers will dare embrace. [19 July 1996, p.B07]

The case is tried off-screen. Thank goodness for the maid (Sarah Flind), who runs home from her chores with tidings from the outside world -- we hear from the maid that Sir Bobby gave a helluva final argument. The jurors wept, the crowd went wild. Too bad we missed it.

An ingratiating West German "Heaven Can Wait." (Review of Original Release)

Showcases its cast's athleticism and Ping's kinetic high-wire artistry. But unlike similar Western-made fare, it doesn't take itself seriously.

Nair and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala aren't really great storytellers, but they are streetwise. Shot on a low budget, down and dirty and on location, "Salaam Bombay!" is like being there, if there is where you want to be.

Enormously entertaining and surprisingly touching.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, a maverick of China's "new wave," this disturbing tragedy is as unexpectedly lurid in its way as "Blue Velvet."

Firefox may sound bright, hot and racy, but it browns out. Eastwood has an energy crisis as director, producer and star. [18 June 1982, p.15]

Poltergeist proves closets are full of skeletons and scurrying ids. Hooper and company arouse childhood fears, teasing away adult defenses, making us hunker in our seats as the kids dive under the "Star Wars" sheets. It gives us the jeebies, third stage, without letting up, but spiritually, it's uplifting. [4 June 1982, p.13]

For All Mankind is a beatitude of praise, a homesick look at a healthy nation. That's why this history of "all systems go" and "roger that" is Oscar-nominated instead of "Roger and Me." The closest it comes to controversy is when it tackles the question of how astronauts go potty in space.

It's a literate though strained uplifter.

Breaks no new ground.

We've seen it all before, most recently in "Gardens of Stone," most romantically in "An Officer and a Gentleman," but never more elegantly than here as Kubrick sustains the athletic ballet of obstacle courses and white-glove inspections for a breathtaking 40 minutes.

The Witches is a wickedly funny final bow for Muppeteer Jim Henson.

Glory is a big movie for a big moment in America's hidden history. [12 Jan 1990, p.D1]

The real story lies beneath the surface of this superbly acted, strangely moving film.

Though its attitudes are decidedly French, this intelligent film goes a long way toward explaining America's obsession with Martha Stewart Living, fake designer labels and TV talk show makeovers.

An entertaining look under the tent flaps of the Clinton campaign, "The War Room" fairly bristles with the frenetic energy, flat-out fun and Southern-fried cunning that won the White House. It's a documentary, though not a hard-hitting one, about presidential politics as reinvented by Bill Clinton's cagey generals, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville.

Screenwriter Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird) creates three rare human beings -- not jukebox stereotypes -- in Sonny, Mac and Rosa Lee. They're shy, emotionally severe people, country people who sing their emotions in baleful ballads. They were country when country wasn't cool. Always will be, praise the Lord. [06 May 1983, p.19]

Waterworld isn't "Fishtar," but Kevin Costner's pricey, post-apocalyptic sloshbuckler isn't a seafaring classic either.

A precise and elegant piece. [8 Apr 1988, p.D1]

As a good fairy tale should, The Princess Bride teaches but never preaches. It's a lively, fun-loving, but nevertheless epic look at the nature of true love.

Trouble in Mind, a striking comic confection, is like nothing we've seen before: "Casablanca" meets "Blade Runner" in post-post-modern terms. [25 Apr 1986, p.27]

The usual complement of classy Brits and a host of Indian extras add the final touches to this vastly enjoyable, sprawling entertainment. Lean truly catches the sunset over the British Empire. [18 Jan 1985, p.25]

Just isn't as fresh, focused or uniformly funny as "Waiting for Guffman."

Overall Nichols, Simon and especially Broderick find fresh threads in the old fatigues.

An utterly infectious romance between an African American and an Indian African emigre, this seductively funny film measures the pull of roots against the tug of heartstrings. It is also a lesson in the pitfalls of color-consciousness.

Ruthless People is a divine comedy, thanks in large part to bombastic Bette Midler, who's no longer down and out in Beverly Hills but chained to a bedstead in Santa Monica. She's an explosive bundle of kvetch and kitsch, the spark in this madcap kidnap caper. Practiced parodists Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker of Airplane direct, but this is no parody. It's a comedy of errors that makes no mistakes. Sophisticated, silly, sexy, it has assorted storylines as solidly linked as cartoon sausages and a pace that's lickety-split. Dale Launer debuts with this terrific screenplay, which builds and builds a reckless, raunchy crescendo of laughs. [27 June 1986, p.29]

Tender, touching and downright delightful.

As intoxicating as the flower it's named for, and its characters, most of them as flawed and fascinating as the film itself, seem intoxicated by the overpowering scent.

Apollo 13 is humanized by Hanks's reassuring portrait in courage, by Harris's nicotine-stained fingers and Quinlan's lacquered French twist.

Unfortunately, the story isn't inventive and Newell's methodical approach to it verges on monotony.

A downright entertaining combo of mystery, melodrama and action adventure.

Bewitching.

Whiny, quirky and urbane.

Oh, there's no doubt about it, Clark is manipulating his audience right down to those "Jingle Bells," but only an unreformed Scrooge would hate him for it. "A Christmas Story" is a joy to the world, right down to the moment Mom slips downstairs to unplug the tree lights.

Stand and Deliver is inspirational, but never sentimental. It resists all too many temptations. It cries out for schmaltz. But this is a drama as honest as its hero, a work that comes from the heart -- the heart of a computer programmer.

WarGames is a soft-sell protest -- pro- people, anti-nuclear and anti-machine -- that entertains. It peddles neither the hysterics of Jane Fonda's "China Syndrome" nor the hopelessness of "Dr. Strangelove." It's a war cry for peace that's good to the last byte. [3 June 1983, p.23]

A poetic but perplexing tale of a mob moll's redemption.

Hairspray is definitely self-congratulatory, like the message movies it aims to spoof. But there's a sweet morality mixed with the camp clumsiness of this nostalgic goof. Waters couldn't care less about the subtleties of plot or character. He writes and directs the way a kid finger paints. As usual, he's gathered a tantalizing cast from the so-out-they're-in crowd. [26 Feb 1988, p.b1]

Like the director, the cast seems to have burrowed into the material, made all the more wrenchingly realistic by Dogme precepts.

An uncompromising, emotionally draining drama that presents the urbanization of New Zealand's Maori as a cultural disaster, one that is mirrored in the shards of a shattering marriage. This explosive first film by director Lee Tamahori focuses on the transformation of a battered wife, but its story is fueled by the machismo of the disenfranchised Maori male.

Early on, Lumet wastes too much time characterizing Newman, following him from bar to bar to bar. Though Newman plays a good drunk, his performance is far from intoxicating. When he rests his case, the jury goes to sleep. [17 Dec 1982, p.19]

The Road Warrior is ferocious and unpredictable. It's energetic. It's peculiar. It's big and it's dirty. But mostly it's cosmically irrelevant. Hey, but, one thing's for sure, we are driven.

Filled as it is with unforced errors, A League of Their Own isn't a perfect picture, but it is irresistibly ebullient with not one, but nine Babes on base.

Joyous redemptive romantic comedy.

A modestly budgeted but richly rewarding look at a Tennessee housewife's search for a better life.

Unlike "Heathers," a satiric treatment of teen suicide, Pump Up the Volume is passionately caring. It's a howl from the heart, a relentlessly involving movie that gives a kid every reason to believe that he or she can come of age. It appreciates the pimples and pitfalls of this frightening passage, the transit commonly known as adolescence.

Chock-full of celeb cameos, puns and contemporary camp, the movie is annoyingly hip. It wants to belong even more desperately than its title character, who yearns to be a god almost as much as Pinocchio wanted to be just plain human. Hercules, alas, is hardly in the same class with the emotionally compelling Pinocchio -- although on many occasions its hulking hero seems just as wooden.

Filmed in the mock-documentary style pioneered by acknowledged mentor Robert Altman, it does for baby-kissing phonies what This Is Spinal Tap did for heavy metal poseurs.

Never mind that Best Intentions, which was filmed both as a six-part TV miniseries and a three-hour movie, is occasionally uneven and sometimes confusing. It remains a rare August pleasure, a film for grown-up audiences that challenges and enriches.

A brain-cramping and eye-straining experiment in digital filmmaking.

There are insightful scenes, fragmented scenes and sudden outbreaks of violence. It's a little like mixing the white and the dark loads, but somehow it all comes out in the wash and love prevails. [28 Mar 1986, p.25]

The Sure Thing is fresh, funny, sure-fire stuff. And much of the credit for that goes to an energetic comic actor named John Cusack, who was only 17 when he made the film.

Though dark and harrowing, explicit and unsparing, the movie proves a riveting biography of these burnt-out icons and their iconoclastic half-decade. Symbolism aside, Sid & Nancy is an indelible drama of undying love and meaningless decline.

It's a movie that walks on air.

A hilarious new addition to the wonderfully warped Generation X-Files.

With its energetic cast and insistent street score, it still manages to be poignant without becoming bathetic, and violent without being exploitative.

A case of art imitating the electorate, it's a comedy that rides in on Clinton's coattails, bringing with it a landslide of laughs.

Overlong and repetitious, the film doesn't live up to the high expectations set by its charming opening scene, but the musical numbers, which often feature the original wigs and trashy Ikettes gear, are handily directed by Brian Gibson of the HBO movie The Josephine Baker Story. The mitigating factor is that Bassett overcomes the limitations of the role to become more than a punching bag.

This spooky film's ostensible subject—an environmental illness known as multiple chemical sensitivity—is merely a starting place for this mesmerizing horror movie, feminist tract and medical mystery.

You have the right to remain silent. But if you do, call 911 -- your funny bone is busted. [2 Dec 1988]

Sadly, The Secret of NIMH is beautiful but unbalanced: The animators gambled when they should have gamboled. [09 July 1982, p.13]

Though Mother has already collected two prizes for its screenplay, it's really rather thin. If it weren't so slow and repetitious, there'd only be enough whining and grousing for a Seinfeld episode. [10 Jan 1997, p.D01]

Mann, who's best known for such urban crime dramas as "Vice" and "Manhunter," is equally at home whether the chase concerns a cigarette boat or a birch-bark canoe. He brings the same flair pairing action and style to The Last of the Mohicans, an attempt to resurrect and redefine the American hero.

This is not a movie that wraps up its story in a tidy bow, but it's a lot more fun than most of the ones that do.

It's not that Wayans lacks wit, it's that he's stomped it to death. A sweet-natured performance -- and the fact that he and Tom Cruise probably have the same orthodontist -- doesn't quite make up for the muddle. Don't be a sucka.

Pu Yi's personal tragedy has become Bertolucci's three-hour epic of obsolescence, opulently visualized. It's docudrama that dazzles, but basically Pu Yi was a bore.

The most powerful study of the Vietnam era since "Apocalypse Now"...Roland Joffe's direction is gripping, unflagging, if sometimes ragged. But the flaws strengthen the film, give it a more realistic edge, which truly reflects the time and captures the joy of forgiveness and friendship refound. [18 Jan 1985, p.25]

A dexterously balanced killer thriller by the idiosyncratic Frears, whose every scene becomes a matter of life and death.

With 10 writers gnawing on it, there is little originality left in the story.

Tin Men is a tale of transitions and a test of mettle, as sweet as a slow dance, as classy and cumbersome as a Coupe de Ville.

Cryer, a talented comedic actor, struggles mightily but can't wring laughs from the lowbrow humor. The screenplay, written by Jeff Rothberg and Joe Menosky, is statically directed by Bob Giraldi, a maker of Michael Jackson videos and Pepsi-Cola ads, in his faint feature debut.

There's so much to see and imagine, so many twists left to ponder in such a complicated and multi-layered tale. The temptation -- and some of the fun -- is to analyze Down By Law to death, to chew on it. Hyper-intellectualizing aside, it's pure pleasure for comedy connoisseurs.

The picture seems muted, the flower's petals a little brown at the edges.

A weak handshake of a movie, it is slightly repellent -- hardly gripping, much less knuckle-whitening. This "Psycho" for fatsos is as self-aware as it is styleless.

Meryl Streep teams with director Fred Schepisi for "A Cry in the Dark," a compelling account of the media witch hunt and subsequent trial of Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian mother accused of murdering her 9-week-old daughter Azaria.

It has more complex stunts, more technical perfection, and more than a touch of genius. It's fun at both ends. But it's also mean-spirited and corrupt at its core.

All canapes and haute bourgeoisie, it is a smart comedy of conversation, like "My Dinner With Andre" but with eight place settings.

Handsome and well-acted, the film's ultimate success depends on the heat between Ryder and Day-Lewis, and it simply isn't there. The attraction is fatal alright, but it certainly doesn't seem mutual.

A densely plotted, visually dynamic post-apocalyptic thriller.

Obstreperous, male-bashing pain in the patoot.

It's not the monotonous, neurotic's ego trip you'd imagine, but a karate-chop crawl against a rising tide of complacency.

Astute and entertaining documentary.

A deliciously mordant French spine-tingler.

Along with witty, appropriately rough-hewn repartee and genuine poignancy, writer Simon Beaufoy manages to sustain suspense to the last gyration.

A spoofy paean to cheerfolk that has more bounce per flounce than most tales about teen queens.