Stephen Hunter

Oh, please. Stop and smell the manure.

An Upper West Sidey exercise in narcissism and self-congratulation disguised as a tribute.

But for all the meta-movie excitement, the content danced somewhere between mildly interesting and moderately enjoyable.

That's the movie: It's taking us inside the burqa to the woman.

A deft, tense, pure thriller, the movie has great star turns and is brilliantly directed, but it began as an extremely well-crated screenplay by Russell Gewirtz. It's professionally entertaining.

It is kept watchable and empathetic by the energy of the superb performances and the sense of complete freshness.

A devastatingly dishonest, tough look at teenage life.

The remake adds 24 minutes and subtracts most of the suspense.

The movie is one of those brilliant and rare blends of paradoxical elements -- both the tragedy and the folly of history, the weight of inheritance, the pressure of the ideal, lots of fairly steamy sex, even a secret agent or two.

They took the most famous tale in the world and broke it.

Though it stops short of explosive comedy, the Ivan Reitman film is consistently amusing in its populist celebration of common sense and decency in the place of sophistication, power-brokering and cynicism.

The "Citizen Kane" of twisted-geek movies.

Certainly no feel-good flick of the summer. But it's always tough and honest.

In its insistence on the centrality of the war to the collective consciousness of mankind, it's of a piece with "The English Patient," rather than "Saving Private Ryan."

Tasteless and without redeeming social value, and also dank with the stench of decomposition masked by not enough formaldehyde, Nightwatch is the best kind of movie pleasure, a completely guilty one. [17 Apr 1998]

Amalric is low-key and immensely likable, but what makes his Paul a worthwhile companion on a three-hour voyage is his utter sincerity, coupled with self-aware irony. He's not a phony, a user, a Romeo or a slut. His earnestness is his best quality; he tries so hard to do the right thing, sometimes only failing by a little. [10 Oct 1997, p.N48]

The film is nowhere near the level of Pontecorvo's masterpiece, or even his subsequent flawed allegory on Vietnam, "Burn!," but is clearly the work of a natural coming into the full range of his powers.

Frequently fascinating, it never builds into anything profound.

And that's the surprise of the movie, beyond even the humor and humanity of its inside look at contemporary American Indian culture. It's really the oldest and most primal story forms, the one about the old man and the boy.

You may not enjoy The Mother (I certainly didn't), but it's a movie so heavy on truth, its spell cannot be denied.

Oshii is able to knit together action sequences with extraordinary power and conviction.... Ghost in the Shell is absolutely terrific.

The director isn't much on orgies; he's all talk. But that's good, not bad, because his talk is so brilliant. Stillman is the Balzac of the ironic class, the Dickens of people with too much inner life.

It has the aspirations of an epic of crime and punishment, a superb feel for time and milieu, and an almost subliminal feel for myth.

Andre Hennicke is particularly chilling as the yappy mad dog judge who sends them to death.

Enter the world of the sociopathic killer and enjoy.

It all adds up to something less powerful and interesting than the original.

Well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.

A portrait of a hero.