Stephen Hunter

Friendship matters to those of us who still claim membership in the human race, and Goldbacher's merciless autopsy on it is both illuminating and dispiriting.

It's nothing less than a spiritual journey set in New Jersey.

A picture that is surely one of the oddest ever made.

It could hardly be called rip-roaring. I should report that it drives about a quarter of the audience out of the theater before it is half over. That's because it's slower than molasses in Siberia.

A provocative experience that lights you up even as it brutalizes you. And I don't even like Brad Pitt very much.

What The Page Turner lacks in scale and ambition, it makes up for in precision. It's a small French delicacy, tart, acerbic and cynical, that focuses on three or four characters and yet manages to bring them and their dilemmas to vivid life.

The movie is small but sensational. I don't know what writer-director Frank E. Flowers might lose by trying to take his career international, but he has real talent.

Meant to be a sleek, dark, disturbing David Cronenberg-style thriller, Olivier Assayas's film is just an annoying concoction.

It never smirks or condescends as does, say, a Michael Moore; it never seems smug and superior, only committed and compassionate.

The movie has more cleverness than violence, and its breakdown of cliches is vivid and witty. Baesel is an extraordinary presence, holding the film together with his mesmerizing performance, charm and openness, and Goethals measures up to him.

Tried hard to honor the spirit of the franchise, not exploit it, and take it to a new level and a surprising destination.

Sumptuous, warm, continually amazing, it's a completely enjoyable couple of hours at the flickers.

Like a bouquet of poisoned flowers -- beautiful, delicate and lethal. A trio of horror films from three "extreme" Asian directors, it shows how much evil fun talented bad boys can have on a very small scale.

Generally quite amusing, with a brilliant cast.

It never answers the key question: Why should we care?

The movie never transcended its elaborate production work to achieve an independent reality.

Once the movie settles down to story, it turns out to play like an extended Twilight Zone episode that merely reiterates the theme of the first few minutes: that man is fundamentally a beast and he must struggle endlessly against his own worst instincts and that each victory over those instincts is merely provisional.

This is the rare American film really about something, and almost all the performances are riveting.

Although almost nothing about The Eye is surprising, the movie is nevertheless engrossing, as it mutates from horror movie to ghost story to psychological drama to disaster flick (a late, stunning twist). It casts a spell strong enough that viewers won't want to look away.

What line is thinner than the one between confession and narcissism? Upon that line, exactly, does Elegy dwell, before tumbling off on the bad side.

If you don't fall in love with it, you've probably never fallen in love with a movie, and never will.

Suffers from all the excesses of the genre: gunfights that go on and on and on, a plot that is almost incomprehensible.

Like the bad fight that ends the bad marriage: ugly, messy, loud, sometimes incoherent, but ultimately necessary. You're glad when either of them -- the marriage or the movie -- is over.

But the movie has a great deal of zest and charm, and Yakusho gets so exactly that crest of melancholy that is a man’s early 40s, until he decides to go for another kind of life, that the movie is infinitely touching.

The rhythms excite expectations that go unanswered.

The film's ardent sentimentality, as magnified by the schlurpy music, is straight Chaplin, but not as good. The Film's subtext of sight-gag and clown-dance is also straight Chaplin, also not as good. [16 Jan 1990, p.3C]

Farrell appears to be a rarity in undercover culture, a vice cop who goes on the lowdown as an Irish beatnik. Oh, that's a good disguise for South Beach. As for Foxx, he's still channeling Ray Charles through squinty eyes and a kind of shaky head. They have zero chemistry.

Mamet loves two things: scams and dialogue. This movie is rich with both.