William Arnold

It's a consistently funny script, tastefully packaged by super-producer Brian Grazer and directed with just the right touch by Dean Parisot.

A tough, taut, mostly well-executed morality parable and thriller that explores some of the bitter ironies of this strange religious vendetta in which America unwittingly finds itself.

It's resolutely grim and rather predictable but very compelling, and it offers a commanding star vehicle for Denzel Washington.

Non-cultists should enjoy this engaging and well-acted retread -- a film that develops its own charm as it goes along.

It's an expensive star vehicle that also happens to be a teary, unabashedly sappy, romantic comedy with every element as purely calculated to appeal to a heterosexual woman's romantic fantasies as an episode of "All My Children."

Like most films in this overworked genre, it's as formulaic in its own way as a John Wayne western, and the characters and situations all have a gnawing predictability about them.

It's mostly quite enjoyable. Director Joe Johnson's many action sequences are lively and engaging, the location photography (mostly Morocco) is breathtaking, and both the horse and Sharif (in his biggest Hollywood role in years) are adorable.

Another gutsy, big-budget movie that dares to say something new and optimistic about our messed-up times. And it almost, but not quite, brings it off.

When a director has two actors as iconic and skillful as Robert Duvall and Michael Caine for his leads, all he has to do is point the camera in their direction and it's hard to go wrong.

Casts a dreamy romantic spell that lingers pleasantly in the mind for a long time after experiencing it.

DiCaprio could hardly be better. He brings this outrageous character and his demons to life with skill, sympathy and a symphony of small, telling touches.

It's an entertaining and mostly intelligent movie that is grungy enough to appeal to today's rock fans and nostalgic enough to appeal to the aging baby-boomer fans of the Fab Four. [22 Apr 1994]

There's a satisfying craftsmanship to every sequence, the direction is stylish without being show-offy, the plot mechanics are convincing, the pace is breakneck and compelling, and the film does something unique and interesting with its Hitchcockian concept.

It fulfills a lot of the criteria for a successful oater: spectacular scenery, an evocative frontier atmosphere, an ensemble of enjoyably tight-lipped performances, and plenty of stylish violence.

Eloquent and informative.

It's really Harris' movie, and he brings to it just the right blend of engaging affability, gruff strength of character and transcendent nobility of spirit to make it a genuinely enriching experience.

As clumsy as the movie is in many ways, it strings together maybe a dozen situations in which we are absolutely, excruciatingly, on the edge of our seats -- which is to say that the new Poseidon essentially does its job.

In typical Fellini fashion, there is much frantic activity - no less than three films-within-the-film, several surrealist sequences that come out of nowhere, and many scenes that deliberately make reference to, and comment upon, the director's life and past films. [17 Jun 1993]

Re-creates the era convincingly, and, as usual, Penn is mesmerizing: a consummate movie actor at the peak of his game.

There are hints of madness in all the characters, and it gets creepier and more surreal as it goes along until it finally comes to a showstopping climax that took me completely by surprise and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.

A solid piece of storytelling that doesn't pander, skips the usual POW stereotypes and allows the film to work reasonably well as an epic of war, a survival story, a prison thriller, a murder mystery and a courtroom drama.

Fascinating and mostly sympathetic.

Could there possibly be a worse time for a movie celebrating a draft-evader who embraces Islam? You wouldn't think so.

The directors have told the press that one of their goals was "to make horseracing -- a great sport that has gotten progressively less attention over the past 30 years -- cool again." The movie actually does this. It sure inspired me to make plans for Emerald Downs.

It's high melodrama all the way - a play written early in Shakespeare's career, filled with great poetry but lacking the sensitivity and complexity (and historical accuracy) of his more mature histories, and revived so often on stage over the centuries primarily because it's such a rousing, audience-pleasing theater piece. [19 Jan 1996]

A perfectly titled and thoroughly engaging -- if at times gleefully violent -- black comedy.

The style is dated, and its neorealism seems forced and ineffective, but it's still delectable, and mostly for the things Pontecorvo hated about it: its delirious '50s color, and its stars, particularly Montand at the peak of virility.

Director Neil Burger manages to make his technical deficiencies and clumsy interviews work for the credibility of his story rather than against it, and he builds an eerie, naturalistic suspense that's believable enough to raise an authentic goose bump or two.

It works as a fascinating and often very funny character study/satire of a famous author, though it loses interest the harder it tries to be profound and falls apart completely toward the end.

The film's near-fatal flaw is its dialogue, which had to be invented wholesale from the Old English text. It alternates between sounding stagy and anachronistically hip -- with more overuse of the F-word than any two Samuel L. Jackson movies. It's a big mistake.

Well-paced, well-structured nail-biter with precious little of the usual Hollywood nonsense, several virtuoso sequences, and a camera flourish that only occasionally gets silly.

A gripping, unusual and suitably harrowing -- if, in the final analysis, not particularly satisfying -- concentration camp drama.

Does a solid job of dealing with the problem but with enough originality that it's not an exact duplication of the Gore film.

A winning combination. By some bizarre quirk of star chemistry, their persona complement each other, the action scenes have comic flair and the movie is mindless fun.

Never quite builds the compulsive emotional power it needs to be an unforgettable personal drama.

It's getting hard not to think of De Niro as anything but a dead-pan comedian.

All told, it's a reasonably effective movie, but it might have been a lot more effective had it the guts to portray a Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden-like character as its villain instead of this rather unbelievable, but more politically correct, gaggle of cardboard neo-Nazis.

The film is annoyingly sketchy on Thompson's early years and education, and it spends so much time on his coverage of the 1972 presidential election and his own race for sheriff of Aspen, Colo., that major aspects of his career get short shrift or go unmentioned.

A richly textured thriller.

Really two movies working against each other. One is a feel-good movie -- But the more intriguing movie is a tragedy that studies the subtle but long-lasting impact of the teacher's single moral lapse.

The good news about Alan Rudolph's new film, Mortal Thoughts, is that it is dramatically engrossing, brilliantly acted by its big-star cast and filled with the touches of a virtuoso director at the top of his form. The bad news is that it leads us to one of the worst shaggy-dog endings of any mystery story I can remember. It's so totally unsatisfying, in fact, that it almost spoils all the good scenes that have come before it. [19 Apr 1991]

It's Shakespearean in its political machinations and closer to "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" than to "Dracula" or "The Howling."

There is no denying the power of The Handmaid's Tale. It's a scary exaggeration of a world that many people claim they want to build. It should be required viewing for anyone who advocates a fundamentalist point of view of any kind. [09 Mar 1990]

Once you get the joke and grasp the aesthetic they're after, it's fun, and it almost works on the steam of its clever plot mechanics.

Quite a bit of fun. In fact, in its own good-natured, silly way, it works better than most of the year's other adventure-gutbusters.

This remake is considerably different and, for once, the changes have not hurt the film.

Salvadori's homage is a bittersweet, funny, sporadically charming and consistently entertaining love story between two "kept" people.

While it's flawed and often tedious, Kaufman's script is, on the whole, boldly imaginative and enjoyably challenging.

It definitely gives us our money's worth in the sheer volume of its imaginative fantasy creatures and it's that rare superhero-movie sequel that's better than the original.

Its power and bite come from the contrast Seinfeld makes with Orny Adams, a younger comedian on the verge of success who is everything Seinfeld is not: hungry, vain, petty, mean-spirited, desperate for recognition.

Love it or hate it, X-III packs more action and razzle-dazzle visuals into its 104-minute running time than "Mission: Impossible III," "Poseidon" and "The Da Vinci Code" combined.

An absorbing but somber drama.

As well made, entertaining and seductive a showcase for Hanks as it is, the movie doesn't have a magical impact and doesn't stay with you. And while you're watching it, there's always some slight annoyance, inconsistency or motivational-lapse to slap your face in almost every scene.

It's a nicely crafted little ensemble piece, but -- like so many films that have become the rage in France in recent years -- it's surprisingly light and forgettable.

A fascinating ride through morally ambiguous territory to a place you've never been before.

It's far from his (Allen) career best, but it's funny and he comes off well.

A nifty little neo-film noir that's a lot more intriguing and watchable than half the films that make it to the multiplexes.

As a grueling "trip" movie and cautionary tale of the nuclear age, K-19 fits the bill. The harsh depiction of everyday life in the Soviet navy and numerous scenes of seamen exposing themselves to lethal doses of radiation are profoundly disturbing.

There are certain rare movies that speak to us solely through the power and initiative of their visuals. This is one of them, and if you're receptive to this kind of movie, and know Vermeer's work, it's an unusually satisfying, even enriching experience.

An Americanized remake of the 1983 Japanese movie, "Antarctica," which told the true story of a pack of huskies that somehow managed to survive a brutal winter by themselves at Japan's East Antarctica station in 1957.

Has one knockout sequence: the deaf maestro conducting his Ninth Symphony as Anna coaches from the wings. It goes on for what seems a whole reel, but it's so sublime it seems too short and, by itself, could stand as one of the greatest classic music videos ever.

A rather likable and very sweet-spirited story.

Far from his best work ("Le Placard," "Le Jaguar"), but even off-form Veber has its moments of inspiration and the movie is definitely worth seeing.

If you're not a die-hard "Bean" fan, this is probably no place for you. But it's mercifully short (87 minutes), the French scenery is pleasant, a handful of the routines are hilarious and -- with its G rating -- you can definitely bring the kids.

The cast is engaging, the overall visual effects are tremendous and I found myself fairly swept away for most of the fast-moving, three-hour running time.

Enormously cute, but it doesn't allow us to ever completely suspend our disbelief.

The movie works -- at least marginally.