Shawn Levy

It romps along with infectious good humor but continually imparts a sense that underneath all the surreal frivolity lurks a scathing allegory of modern-day Balkan troubles.

Marnie is merely a marginal work by director Alfred Hitchcock, meaning, naturally, that it's superior to all but the best works of almost every other director ever. [02 Jun 2000]

It's hard to recall the last time a big-ticket summer movie delivered so fully on its promise.

This is the sort of film for which the phrase 'movie-movie' was coined -- and coined as a term of highest praise.

The Matrix slams you back in your chair, pops open your eyes and leaves your jaw hanging slack in amazement.

Heading South is strong in bursts, but the bursts are too diffuse for its best moments to last.

In many respects, it's Kurosawa's most sumptuous film, a feast of color, motion and sound: Considering that its brethren include "Kagemusha," "The Seven Samurai" and "Dersu Uzala," the achievement is extraordinary. [01 Dec 2000, p.26]

A handsome work of impressive sweep dotted with fine performances. It offers a few fine moments of wit, fear and emotional intimacy. But it rarely pulses with vital life.

A thoroughly credible and deeply entertaining biopic about a titanically famous film personality.

It's not orthodox Dahl but it's pure Burton, and, as it's been such a very long time since moviegoers have been afforded that particular treat, it's entirely welcome.

It never exactly lights you on fire, but you always believe it.

You can sense the deep investment Donzelli and Elkaïm have in what they're doing, which isn't something you get at the movies every day.

Frighteningly, grippingly real.

If it touches up against the syrupy at a very few moments, it's nevertheless consistently clear-eyed and convincing.

Gran Torino amounts to one more elegiac movement in Eastwood's astonishing late-career symphony.

It's fine ensemble work, but you nevertheless grow itchy wishing Roos had focused it a little better.

There's so much to impress and delight you that the time flies by.

A lot of what happens is gross, puerile and gratuitous, granted, but Helms and Galifianakis are truly funny in offbeat fashion, and the script allows Phillips room for some brilliant slapstick. You will not be ennobled. But you will be entertained.

Lively, cheeky, dense and, ultimately, too flip, clever and torturously twisted to be fully engrossing.

Leconte's signature on the film alone makes it worth seeing.

Some truly memorable moments, but they come early and, as the film wears its way along, become increasingly hard to call to mind.

The film's best sequences -- the troubles of the young woman -- are gems adrift in a sea of Jell-O.

A frequently transporting depiction of the early and middle life of Ray Charles, the film soars on remarkable performances, a convincing sense of time and place, and, of course, the glorious music for which Charles was rightly billed as The Genius.

Because there was anarchy and randomness in Thompson's life and work, you find it in Gonzo.

Offers a lot of laughs, a heartwarming core.

Malick is a unique director of extraordinary gifts, of that there can be no doubt. If he ever chooses to shoot a script as fine as his technique, he will surely produce a masterpiece of the medium.

It's not great moviemaking -- it isn't as accomplished or funny as the best of the Farrelly brothers' films, say -- but it's got real appeal.

McGregor is a real charmer, a young Malcolm McDowell with a Scottish lilt; Brain Tufano's photography manages to be both rich and stark at once; Hodge's script has some genuinely arch lines. [03 Mar 1995]