William Arnold

It marks an impressive debut for first-time writer-director Mark Romanek, especially considering his background is in music video. His script is uncluttered and potent, and his direction manipulates a devastating climax that ties the photo/voyeuristic theme together very effectively.

Goes down like a cool glass of lemonade on a hot day.

An extraordinarily taunt and suspenseful psychological thriller.

As a goofy little fantasy, however, this film has loads of charm.

Bale is totally convincing, if not especially endearing.

Flat-out one of the more exciting and original gut-busters that Hollywood has produced in many a month. It's virtually all action, but the action is never mindless and it is full of marvelous surprises every step of the way.

At 160 minutes, it's a bit long and uneventful for anyone who is not at least a moderate fan of the musicals.

Far-fetched but deliciously exciting aerial nail-biter.

It captures the excitement of a breaking star, it generates a raw and unsettling emotional power and it honors the aesthetic of hip-hop in way that's never quite been done on film before.

The surprise is that it's one of the most exciting and enjoyable disaster epics to come out of Hollywood in some time.

The movie works best as spectacle: as a piece of old-style, non-CGI, on-location epic filmmaking.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's enjoyable but not hugely special Kindergarten Cop - has a whole roomful of the little tykes making genital jokes and constantly having to go to the bathroom. [21 Dec 1990, p.7]

Based on a best-selling book by Fortune magazine writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, the film approaches Enron through the Horatio Alger saga of its founder, Kenneth Lay, the son of a dirt-poor Missouri Baptist minister.

Elegant and enjoyably disorienting.

The casting clicks; the visuals have leaped right out of Dave Gibbons' original panels; the action is brutal, stylish and well-staged, and -- with most of the major characters, themes and symbolism are retained in an abbreviated form -- the 2 1/2-hour film makes an enjoyably esoteric Cliff's Notes version of the book.

Secretary is one of the best of a growing strain of daring films -- "Bliss," "The Lifestyle," "Satin Rouge" -- that argue that any sexual relationship that doesn't hurt anyone and works for its participants is a relationship that is worthy of our respect.

Works mostly off Quaid's performance.

The film is a melancholy but poetic meditation on the fragility of the gift of life.

Fascinating.

The French are very much the villains of the saga and, naturally, have always hated the movie (it was banned in Paris until 1971); and it remains controversial in other quarters as well because it seems to embrace, even celebrate, terrorism as a political tool.

A highly original, often hilarious, what-if farce about Watergate.

Washington brings it off with an unforced and well-earned emotional wallop, and whose strong hand, keen eye, sweet spirit and good taste are reflected in almost every scene.

It's a brilliant little microcosm of the '60s experience that, in a most gentle way, shows us how the counterculture probably was doomed from its inception.

The artist's life and times were turbulent and tragic, but the effect of the movie is the opposite: it's somehow a very calming, almost Zenlike experience, and it left me with a peaceful glow that I managed to carry around for the rest of the day.

Indeed, it has to be one of the most eerie, morbidly absorbing and psychologically compelling movies ever made about a writer in the agonizing process of creating an important piece of literature.

This is the most impressive directing debut by a "name" British actor in a long, long time.

An immensely enjoyable cross-cultural parable full of appealing characters and well-crafted performances. [14 Feb 1992]

Despite a few places where the air of déjà vu is a bit too thick, it's a class act, with a textured script, one of the series' more stunning title sequences.