Shawn Levy

It's so full-blooded, smart, sexy, tense and absorbing, so cleverly written and shot and cut, so filled with superb acting and music, so perfect in its closing moment, that it surely ranks with the most impressive debuts in world cinema.

While the script of Frida struggles at times to be something more than an ordinary and-then-this-happened biography, there's a buoyancy to the direction and acting that make the film special.

Washington can't save a picture that spends so much time worrying about a heart that it loses its head.

There's no doubt that Tarsem's a visionary director. Now he needs to envision a worthwhile script for himself.

It's dull and crude and silly and without a lick of quality.

Scott's cast is like a grand orchestra with various performers filling the roles of instruments: Thewlis a wise, ironic oboe; Neeson a stout cello; Norton a slightly battered flute. As it happens, the piece they're playing is a piano concerto and the keyboard -- that is, Bloom -- isn't big enough to match.

Isn't sexy, funny, smart or fun.

If Look Both Ways has a familiar form, this sort of emphasis on humanity, with which the film refreshingly pulses, is rare.

Reggio, who is sufficiently eager for a large audience that he has allowed his film to be distributed by Miramax, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Co., surely one of the villains in his piece, is neither so honest nor so bold (as Moore's "Bowling for Columbine").

About as good a movie as you could have hoped for. Really good. Hole-in-one good.

And that ultimately may be the problem with the Polanski version: by bringing Oliver forward, you push the drama backward.

A carnival of stupid coincidences, paper-thin characterizations, and inept staging, lighting and montage.

It's splendid period filmmaking, grown-up and luxurious and gossipy without ever feeling fussy.

Even though it largely succeeds in putting a civil face on some unpalatable material, it lacks the heat and suppleness of the best Shakespeare on film.

The resulting film is a labor of love with all the strengths and weaknesses you might expect from such a designation.

It's not life-changing stuff, but it's brisk and clever and funny and avoids some of the predictable pitfalls that hobble so many films of its ilk.

If you've never seen any anime, set your sights on fun and leave your hard nose for drama and fine dialogue at home.

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

It's a stylish and sweet film with moments of affecting brilliance that counterbalance its flaws.

An intermittently gorgeous and evocative film that's so taken with its trangressively bloody and erotic content, it neglects such fussy niceties as coherent plotting and the creation of characters of middling intelligence, plausible psychology or sympathetic nature.

May not carry great emotional or intellectual weight, but, in a slim and fetching way, it's peachy.

An exquisitely crafted film filled with little shocks and deep echoes of humanity. It'll stick with you.

In I'm Reed Fish, Jay Baruchel is cast as a leading man with two attractive girlfriends, and, sorry, I'm frankly more prepared to accept Stephen Hawking as an action hero.

A dark, violent film, it has undeniable visual power and sporadic moments of wit. There's quite a bit of fun, but it's not the cheery entertainment you might be hoping for from your favorite porker. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

It's an experimental film about a sensational event, placing tragedy in the context of the dulling normality of human life and resisting easy interpretation, just as did the inexplicable death of Kurt Cobain.

It’s absolutely charming to be reminded of -- or, in most cases, introduced to -- Berg and her particular genius.

An utterly convincing portrait of the sort of person willing to strap ordnance to himself and decimate scores of strangers in pursuit of his religious and political ideals.

Tends to beat some plain unfunny material to death.