Steven Rea

Irma Vep is over before you know it, which is both a tribute to the talents of Assayas - he draws you in completely, his film never lags - and a bummer. You want to follow these people around a little longer, see what happens to their movie (although we do get to see something that happens, and it's weird and dazzling) and what becomes of them all. This a film about thievery - the character of Irma Vep is a jewel thief, the director is stealing from the past - and in its own very cool, very brash way, Irma Vep steals its audience's heart. [13 June 1997, p.10]

This is a story about legacy, the sins of the father, the restlessness in our souls. It's powerful, it's bold, it hits you hard.

The final third of Audiard's drama falls into crime-drama mode. It is tense and violent. But even if it feels true, given Dheepan's history with the Tamil Tigers, it also feels a little beside the point.

A small but moving film that gets the details right (life in a sleepy burg, sidewalk chats between old high school pals) and gets at the heart of human longing for family, for love.

Shines with weird, whimsical invention.

Plays with cultural stereotypes, and upends them as well. The picture starts as one thing and turns, dramatically, movingly, into something else.

Smart and novelistic and spiked with more than a bit of The Catcher in the Rye, Steers' movie is a prickly coming-of-age tale in which everybody -- but especially Culkin -- shines.

1971 is a testament to a generation's idealism, heroism, foolhardiness, fearlessness.

Remains rooted in the real world, which makes its story all the more satisfying -- and chilling.

It's a haunting, scary, funny, sad portrayal from Rourke.

This cunning and provocative Romanian film requires patience, but its rewards are many: It's hard to imagine how a scene in which a police captain barks an order to bring him a dictionary can be loaded with suspense, but, really, it is.

In an extraordinarily inward and moving performance, Gere sheds every vestige of his silver-screen persona.

Stranger Than Fiction is slicker than Kaufman's work - and Forster's direction is certainly more studio-ish than Kaufman collaborators Spike Jonze's or Michel Gondry's. But it's a clever idea, and you feel a little smarter watching the thing unfurl.

Think "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," but then think fun.

Reverberates with the power and passion of Greek tragedy.

Ridiculously funny, ridiculously charming.

A devastatingly funny portrait of a wildly dysfunctional clan, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums is a movie about how people never really mature in ways that matter.

Baker's life, like his music, was as sad as it was beautiful. And Weber's movie - obsessed with Baker's image as much as with his songs - hits all the right notes.

The movie is a winner. One of the commuter ferry men declares, as he starts plucking people out of the water, "No one dies today." And no one does. If that isn't hopeful, I don't know what is.

Ghosts haunt Heart of a Dog - but so, too, does love.

The haunting mastery of Leviathan comes not from these broad indictments of a social order, but from the specifics of the performances, the actors wearing their hurt and rage, their defiance and dread, like well-worn clothing.

The Painted Veil is rich with history and heartbreak. It's stirring stuff.

Dazzling and delirious, The Fall is a celebration of cinema, of old-fashioned storytelling and globe-hopping spectacle.

Lord knows how Holofcener got the performance she did out of Goodwin, but the child actor's Annie, rude and unmanageable, is an extraordinarily rich and complicated figure.

A super-taut and superbly acted three-character piece.

Hunger is daunting and powerful work.

Chronicle is full of smart writing that isn't too smart.

Extraordinarily sensual and extraordinarily bleak, Claire Denis' Nenette and Boni depicts a world of diffident youth, of estranged families and displaced souls. [02 May 1997, p.15]