William Arnold

There's no denying the skill and flair with which director Paul Greengrass has restaged this unhappy event, creating an uncanny sense of immediacy and allowing us to be a fly on the wall at a seminal '70s tragedy.

A warm-hearted and understated entertainment that's blissfully free of the heavy-handed crudity and other elements that have ravaged 21st-century Hollywood comedy.

It's a barrage of visual stimulation so excessive that it's hard to sort it all out. But it's often funny, its texture can be breathtaking and its pleasures likely will grow with repeated viewings.

If the film has a weakness, it's an ending that's so vague and open to interpretation that it's not at all clear how director Andrew Wagner ultimately wants us to feel about these self-absorbed characters and their precious literary concerns. But the performances carry the day.

A delicious one-time treat.

Sandler's frequent director, Peter Segal, also rises to the occasion, giving the proceedings some of the rough-hewn, hard-edged look of the original, and brings it to a funny, satisfying climax that -- happily -- doesn't cop out.

The new movie year's poignant love story to beat.

Always absorbing.

The script (by Richard Russo) is solid, the performances are witty and fun, and the movie is a most agreeable way to spend an hour and a half.

It is purely and fearlessly a girl-and-her-horse movie that isn't trying to be all things for all audiences.

While the film is intriguing as it's transpiring, it has very little impact. It's more intellectual than emotional, its message doesn't come through without a struggle and it was completely out of my mind five minutes after seeing it.

In his first role since turning 40, Cruise displays a likable new maturity, and an unexpected willingness to look weak and foolish.

All told, Cars is a knockout.

For all its other virtues, the supporting casting is lackluster, the script never quite kicks into place as a sports movie and Clooney the director seems to lack the touch that might have set the proceedings on fire as a zany ensemble comedy.

McCabe is simply one of the most poetic and beautiful films ever made. [18 Feb 1994]

A suspenseful, elegant entertainment.

Thornton has made so many bad movies and become so notorious as a talk-show eccentric that it's easy to forget what a good film actor he can be.

Obree's psychology is fascinating and, even though the competitive scenes mostly involve him racing against himself in a spectator-free indoor track, the movie manages to give its audience a suitable adrenaline rush here and there.

The period detail, the makeup effects, the computer-generated transformations, and Jerry Goldsmith's brassy score are all excellent. The Shadow also manages to make fun of itself without ever letting the self-parody get out of hand, or disintegrate into camp. For what is essentially a summer slugfest, The Shadow also has unusually rich character performances. [01 Jul 1994]

As much as I enjoyed the movie -- and I laughed all the way through it -- the truth is that the big screen adds nothing special to the "Simpsons" experience.

The movie undeniably comes alive and brings down the house every time it goes into one of its many outlandish, Mad Magazine-style spoofs of television commercials. [11 Apr 1990]

Control Room is even more effective in showing the dilemma of the people who make up Al-Jazeera. In a sense, these are "our" Arabs, in that they're Western-educated, conduct their business in English and seem to believe in the basic American principles.

A fairly predictable musical-comedy vehicle for the rap duo Kid 'N Play that saws off much of the hard edge of the comic style they displayed in their lower-budget first outing, House Party. [05 Jun 1992]

And the mostly stage-trained Sinise - who draws double duty here as director and co-star - distinguishes himself with an especially sympathetic performance and a lean, sensitive, almost delicate directorial debut that mark him as an industry force to be reckoned with.

Plenty of visuals but little of the rhythm, flow or characterizations that made the earlier film an instant children's classic.

As a caper movie, it's a travesty that's impossible to understand or follow, but it's quite funny and clicks along nicely as a giddy, self-deprecating showcase for its gaggle of stars.

It's impossible to praise too highly the verve, skill and authenticity with which Spielberg brings off his alien invasion.

The film's story - about a gringo loser (Warren Oates) who digs up and decapitates a body to claim a reward - seems much less gratuitously shocking today, and its dated brand of macho pessimism has a nostalgic appeal. [14 Jun 2002]

Moves along its course and overflows at its climax with that indefinable but unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker who knows just what he wants to say, is in total command of his medium and is in no mood to make any compromises.

A first-rate student film, but not much more.

It's by far the most uncompromising and unapologetic gay-themed drama ever made for a wide release by a major Hollywood studio with name stars.

The thing is far too absurd and broadly played for its own good.

Winner of the top prize at the last Berlin Film Festival, the film is sporadically powerful, sensitively acted and full of music, used with imagination and flair.

There are scenes in this movie that give you well, goose bumps, that make you proud to live on the same planet with creatures so exquisitely, instinctively and spiritually lovely. [13 Sep 1996]

The flaw in the movie is that it can't give a plausible reason WHY this patriotic Catholic family man turned traitor, and the script annoyingly addresses this lack several times by saying, "The why doesn't matter." Actually, it does. We want some reason.

It's an absorbing, progressively unsettling and ultimately very inspiring biographical reflection that, in the interest of creating its subject's internal landscape, plays some chilling tricks on its audience.

Boyle gives us some truly harrowing sequences and a succession of images that stick in the mind like a bad dream.

A passionate, well-made documentary that stresses how time is running out for a peaceful solution.

Although it's often uneven and rambling, its sum conveys an unusual richness and satisfaction. While most films these days are about nothing, this film seems to be about everything that's plaguing the human spirit in a relentlessly globalizing world.

A true gem: perhaps the most thoroughly charming, and completely satisfying, independent film I've seen in the past two or three years.

It lives up to the hype. Gladiator has its creaky moments, but it delivers a particular kind of visceral historical spectacle that movie audiences haven't seen in decades.

Anyone who goes in this movie expecting a rollicking comedy is in for a shock. Its scant humor is dry as the Sahara and, like all Dickens stories, its upbeat ending is never quite convincing enough to offset the horrors of the journey toward it.

Together is a likely candidate to become that one foreign-language film that jumps out of the art houses each year to become a mainstream phenomenon.

It's an eye-filling, sumptuously detailed historical epic that grandly re-creates the bloody gladiatorial spectacles and smoke-filled, spit-flying, claustrophobically crowded arenas of its bygone era.

If not cinema magic, The Dinner Game is still a workable screwball comedy.

Hypnotic and fun.

The film has an exciting visual texture that gives body to Brown's bestseller-ese prose, and uniformly strong performances that give dimension, depth and interest to characters that the author never entirely brought to life. In this sense, I found it much more entertaining and satisfying than the novel.

Visceral, alive and very scary.

I haven't been so captivated, chilled and surprised by a movie in years.

It's cumulatively entertaining, and a fascinating and nostalgic time capsule of its era. Watch for the cameo by Brigitte Bardot.

An unpredictable, unusual, consistently engrossing drama of a kind that has almost disappeared from Hollywood.

Lee's control and storytelling flair have never seemed more assured and there are moments so powerful and thrilling we feel we're in the hands of a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers.

The film plays like a Hollywood-influenced Japanese samurai movie, though nothing as subtle as Kurosawa's best, and with white subtitles that often are hard to read against the white of the Gobi.

At age 37, she's (Bonnaire) developed into a consummate film actress and a unique star whose enigmatic persona has never had a more exhilarating showcase.

One terrific comedy that doesn't let up for an instant... a total hoot.

A sweet-spirited, extremely well-cast little comedy.

The fact is no one has a better understanding of the corruption of ego and power, or is more qualified to encapsulate it in a defining moment of Hollywood Gothic.

Has a flag-waving dumbness at its core.

In a Fuller film, you're never quite sure where you're going. Whether Fuller was an authentic artist may be open to debate, but it's impossible to deny he was a first-rate storyteller. [15 May 1998]

Elevated out of the music-documentary genre to become something of an intriguing mystery -- and one with no neat solution.

As good as it is in many ways, the film is not as emotionally gripping as it should be, and comes off as a rather predictable liberal statement.

Hugh Grant is one of the true phenomena of new millennium moviemaking. In an era in which the broadest and most scatological comedy imaginable rules, he's built a career for himself as a sophisticated light comedian very much in the style of his hero, David Niven.

The movie works like a clock. A few minor quibbles aside (the casting of Hitler, for instance), Valkyrie is a highly intelligent and deeply engrossing historical drama and, frame for frame, the year's most suspenseful nail-biter.

As a revenge thriller, the movie is serviceable, but it doesn't really deliver the delicious guilty pleasure of the better film versions.

It's a gorgeously atmospheric, perfectly cast, beautifully crafted oater of the old school, made with heaps of integrity, no gimmicks and few concessions to the box office. Its only real flaw is that it strains a bit too hard to be a "classic" western.

It's a chillingly cautionary tale. Less an anti-war than a pro-order film, it tells us that the veneer of civilization is paper thin.

Martin, who hasn't really clicked in a movie in years, hits the target this time with an Inspector Clouseau who is even more relentlessly annoying (and strangely endearing) than Sellers managed to be in his last several outings.

Bullock has abandoned all her usual cutesy mannerisms, and Reeves is as low-key and convincing as he's been in a role. Whatever else the film is, it's a competent and enjoyable star vehicle.

Undeniably riveting.

This new version has absolutely none of the distinctive tongue-in-cheek black humor that was the keynote of its model and the trademark of its original director, Paul Bartel.

The commentary alternates between witty insight and opinionated bunk, but it's always fun -- and a must-see for movie buffs.

An extraordinary piece of biography.

Though he tries hard for bravado, hero Edward Burns is terminally wooden.

Melancholy, haunting and riveting true-crime saga.

It's well-plotted, acted with a charismatic flair and right on the zeitgeist.

Offers nothing new. It's actually one of Polanski's more conventional films and, ultimately, it's hard to recommend it with a clear conscience.

The first two-thirds of the movie are a kind of stumbling relationship drama, but the last third segues into a spooky feast of torture, mutilation and murder.

Like all Jackie Chan films, this one works best as a rousing action film. From beginning to end, Rumble is filled with imaginative and breathtaking stunts (all done by Chan sans stuntman) and a succession of epic fight scenes that are hypnotic, exhilarating, masterfully choreographed and great fun. [23 Feb 1996, p.3]

Great fun, but it's just a tad this side of being overproduced.

This "Moreau" is also a pretty creepy affair - at least through its first two acts. Director John Frankenheimer, who is responsible for some of the most chilling thrillers in American film history ("The Manchurian Candidate," "Seconds") certainly knows a thing or two about building a menacing, suspenseful situation. [23 Aug 1996]

An extraordinarily exciting, absorbing and satisfying movie. Not quite "Seabiscuit," but comfortably close.

It's so fluid and cinematic that it's hard to even envision how the piece worked on stage.

It's not so much a sequel or even a remake for a new generation of moviegoers as it's a retranslation for the old one: an irresistible statement that "Yo, life ain't over till it's over."

A highly original and progressively riveting personal adventure.

The mayhem is presented sparingly enough to be suspenseful, some of the sequences are genuinely terrifying and, compared with Hollywood's last zombie movie, the Robert Rodriguez half of "Grindhouse," it's a masterpiece.

One more good thing is that the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. At 76-minutes, it's wisely calculated to give us as much of its ghoulish whimsy as we can take in one sitting, and not a second more.

It's a beautifully crafted, almost perfectly sustained little drama that skillfully makes a subtle, bittersweet point.

Though an uneven, often confused, mixed bag -- the movie gradually comes together to be a fairly hilarious inside-Hollywood farce.

Yet, as good as it is in so many ways, there's no getting around the fact that this briefest Harry and first directed by an unknown filmmaker (David Yates) is the least substantial of the bunch.

The journey comes together to be one of the very best of the "in search of" documentaries: open-minded, informative, immaculately crafted, full of moving and highly privileged moments of discovery.

Shines with the kind of honesty that's very scarce in today's ultra-manipulative cinema.

For all of its genre awkwardness, "I Am Cuba" has to be considered as one of the most striking visual epics of the 1960s - in the same imaginative league as "Spartacus," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Dr. Zhivago." [23 Jun 1995]

Has a certain morbid fascination, but it has no real bite, and finally seems so contrived and pointless it borders on being out-and-out exploitation.

The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.

In Arcand's skilled hands, this sassy assembly comes together to be a comedy, a satire and a character study that's somehow not a bit condescending.

Awakenings, directed by Penny Marshall, is a curiously engaging, genuinely haunting movie that rises above some dubious handicapped jokes and strange casting decisions to be truly special. [11 Jan 1991, p.5]

Works best of all as an epic. It wonderfully creates a world of fractured deco elegance and endless human duplicity in which everyone is on the run -- exactly the kind of incisive, seemingly effortless historical spectacle that the French have learned to do so much better than Hollywood.

Flies so gallantly in the face of what's supposed to work at the movies these days that you just have to love it.