Sheila Benson

Demme finds haunting overtones in the somewhat old-hat situations of E. Max Frye's first screenplay. Something Wild also has three first-class performances: by Daniels, who seems to have resources that his earlier roles never touched; by electrifying newcomer Ray Liotta, and by Griffith as the maddening, mysterious Lulu. [6 Nov 1986]

Narrow Margin is nothing if not a hard-edge train thriller and to swathe it in so much atmospheric murk that audiences are going to suspect the premature arrival of cataracts seems counterproductive, at the very least.

Jean de Florette is like good peasant bread: honest, chewy, unsurprising and heavily satisfying.

Although it, too, is gorgeous to look at, this skeletal thriller is as direct and spare as its Mennonites. [08 Feb 1985]

Jessica Lange plays the scrappy '60s singer with sweet ferocity.

These and wickedly funny backstage snapshots of moviemaking are the good times of Postcards, but even they can't hide its emotional starvation. [12 Sep 1990, p.1]

In a superb cast of mostly unknowns -- with the exception of Matthew Modine and Dorain Harewood -- D'Onofrio, who put on 60 pounds for this pivotal role, and Ermey are exceptional. [26 June 1987]

Hopkins' insinuating performance puts him right up there with the screen's great bogymen. [13 February 1991, Calendar, p.F-1}

But you know students. Some rotten Emperor’s New Clothier among them would be bound to point out that “Revolution” is utterly and fatally devoid of a story on which to hang its breathtaking pictures. And they’d have a point.

The shiveringly memorable Smooth Talk may be the first film to get adolescence in America right, down to the last, delicate seismographic tremor. What it knows about the age will scare adults to death, because these film makers remember , as clearly as Joyce Carol Oates did when she wrote the short story from which “Smooth Talk” was made.

Smart and funny, touching and unabashedly sensual... the sweet sleeper of a hot season. [21 Aug 1987]

Terence Davies' mesmerizing memory film, Distant Voices, Still Lives, becomes its own kind of poetry: taut, referential, inward, brilliant. Although it is set among the unremarkable flats of Liverpool, the place is stamped by Davies' profoundly original vision and sounds; its framing is painterly and deliberate. And just as you think you have its moves all doped out, a scene of such shocking beauty flashes before you that it takes your breath away.

Stunningly, ponderously bad.

But of all the film's choices, the best was Weaver. She's its white-hot core, given fine, irascible dialogue to come blazing out of that patrician mouth, and the chance to look, for a moment, like a space-dusted Sleeping Beauty in her hyper-sleep casket.

For a story about sexual awakening and discovery, Desert Hearts is a taut, fatally careful movie with no looseness--and no abandon--to it and no feeling for detail that would let these characters really live.

A spare, smart, seductive piece of real movie making with (almost) every loophole covered, a superlative cast and enough tension to keep us all hyperventilating for hours.

Dense, satisfying, feverishly inventive and a technical marvel… But--animation aside--the treasure of the piece is Hoskins' pungent, visceral comic performance. [22 June 1988]

The crushing assault that Road House delivers to fun at the movies is enough to send you crawling out of the theater on hands and knees, bloody and bowed. [19 May 1989, p.C1]

No Way Out's greatest prize is Costner, a leading man at last: fiercely good, intelligent, appreciatively sensual in a performance balanced perfectly between action and introspection. It's a movie that lends itself to more than one sitting, and when you go back, armed with full understanding, Costner's work seems even better than the first time, richer, more complex and many layered.

John Irvin has a nice eye for irony and for the larger- (and funnier-) than-life trappings of the genre. He doesn't have enormous opportunities to exercise this bent, since Raw Deal is constructed like a serial bomb: It goes off roughly every 12 1/2 minutes, littering the landscape with corpses. But you can detect an adult hand at work here, which could never be said for Cobra's arrogant and inept childishness.

In a season not noted for adult diversions, Mona Lisa could hardly be more welcome: a glorious, heart-shaped box of bittersweet chocolates for the grown-ups in the house.

I feel just rotten about this, but I'm afraid I've outgrown James.

Watching the strength of [Nair]'s vision and her craft, balanced by the empathy shown in all her work so far--her earlier documentaries as well--there is every reason to believe that “Salaam Bombay!” marks the opening of an extraordinary career.

Stand By Me is the summer's great gift, a compassionate, perfectly performed look at the real heart of youth. It stands, sweet and strong, ribald, outrageous and funny, like its heroes themselves--a bit gamy around the edges, perhaps, but pure and fine clear through. It's one of those treasures absolutely not to be missed.

Unfortunately, style needs a little substance to keep it from careening around looking empty, and the story of Blue Steel is lofty, implausible twaddle that sinks whatever ideas Bigelow hoped to investigate.

For all its good intentions, for the thrillingly staged moments in the film's first quarter-for all the sweeping movement of thousands of people streaming through the streets of Shanghai-and for all its not-inconsiderable craft, the film's grave problem is a lack of central heating: We don't have a single character to warm up to.

From its first romantic encounter, as two pairs of eyes lock across a crowded room, to its last tremulous one, "Crossing Delancey" is unqualified pleasure, bound on every side by love. [31 Aug 1988]

The January Man is nothing to seek out if you want airtight logic. What it offers is charm, blather, the dazzlement of writing and performance that wear thin well before the final, credulity-straining quarter.