Stanley Kauffmann

Well-knit, generally lucid documentary.

That climax stretches credibility, but the whole point of the piece is that the Joe of the opening has become someone else.

A binding strength of the film is the performance of Choi Min-Sik as Ohwon: far from any fake-Barrymore antics, he makes us feel that we are intruding on the heat and genius of a man for whom life -- existence as is possible in the world -- is insufficient.

A slight conceptual nudge and Capote would have focused on (as the closing line tells us) its true subject: an American author's success story. That theme is there, all right, but because it is not centered it is repellent, as the film pretends to be an account of the author's descent into collateral agony...With the true theme of fame-hunger fully fashioned, the film would have been a more authentic American epic.

Still, flaws and all, we have to be grateful to Nunez for persisting in his independence.

Ardant is marvelously genuine: fiery, petty, exalted.

Throughout the film a question tugs at the viewer. Kinsey's work was inarguably important, but his life is not especially interesting.

Whatever the plot, it is soothing to be in the company of Fanny Ardant, who plays Catherine and whose twenty-five-year career is dotted with small treasures.

Mathilde's story is well enough handled by Jeunet to be endurable, and the rest of the film is a reward.

The film is emotionally and visually sustained, so it is pleasant.

The surprise in Jaws 2 is that, given the givens, it came out as well as it did. For me, in terms of sheer visceral zapping, it’s better than the first time around (or under).

The tension with which the picture starts soon dissipates, the contrast between Eliska's background and her present place is lost, and the film plods into a tale of village life, spiced only occasionally with a hint of German threat.

A story that is still healthfully discomfiting to remember.

Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky succeed. Their documentary Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust is, of all things, timely. It is also courageous.

The result can be--sometimes is--tedium; but, whether or not the work succeeds as Sokurov intended, it is an adventurous director's probe of cinema possibilities.

This multiplicity--of people, stories, settings--is both the weakness and strength of the film. It is not easy to follow all the various threads, to get the pith of every scene. Still, this very abundance gives the whole picture a sense of authority.

It opens fissures through which we can glimpse oddities and strains in film directing and acting.

McGrath says that he considers his film to be lighter in tone than TC 1, which is baffling. The reverse seems the case.

The result is almost like a film we have seen before but don't mind seeing again. The dialogue is generally fresh, the relationships ring true.

If you want glossy New York, see Woody Allen’s Manhattan. If you want the New York that makes people’s faces look the way they do in the subway, see Lumet.

It has almost no story: its claim on our interest is in the texture of family life, which is what really fills the screen.

Téchiné has a reputation in France as an especially empathic director of women--Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche among them--and he has understood this Odile very well.

The latest Chabrol is a bit bland, but by now a new film of his is almost like meeting a previously unencountered family member.

There's a great deal in black America that has yet to reach the screen, and Lee is a prime candidate, in gift and gall, to help fill the gap. [July 3, 1989]

At the last, despite the modern touches in Bennett's screenplay, The History Boys fills the traditional bill. Wellington would probably not be too upset by it. Eventually it tells us that Waterloo is still in pretty good hands.

The dialogue is bright, historically styled yet lithe; the characterizations are graphic even with minor people.

And Jesus Ochoa, the veteran actor who plays Diego, makes us jealous of Mexico. How easily powerful he is, how complex without pretense.