William Arnold

Wilde (Fry, in a wonderful performance) comes off less as a sexual martyr than a man who foolishly lets his obsession for an unworthy young lover (Jude Law) lead him into big trouble that he might well have avoided. The only totally sympathetic character in the movie is Wilde's wife (Jennifer Ehle). [05 Jun 1998]

Best of all, the second Potter movie reunites its adult cast: Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, John Cleese, Alan Rickman, Julie Walters and others -- a veritable Who's Who of British actors that single-handedly elevates the proceedings out of the kid's movie genre into something special.

Not quite a masterpiece perhaps, but a visually stunning mountain drama, and an absorbing look at a dying culture.

All told, Knocked Up works more in spite of its low humor than because of it.

It's boldly acted, absorbing and satisfying as a history lesson and chock-full of extravagantly brutal battle sequences.

It also boosts the punch of the movie that so many of its action scenes evoke the Iraqi War news footage of the past month, and the "X-Men" premise -- people persecuted because their difference makes them seem threatening -- carries even more relevancy and weight than it did three years ago.

A spellbinding action-drama, skillfully built upon a scary corporate conspiracy, chock-full of enjoyable downbeat performances.

A riveting piece of movie storytelling, mounted with a genuinely epic flair, shot and edited in a no-nonsense, classic style.

Has a slight bite.

The film is a strange, nostalgic, suitably outrageous ode to a very real revolution in consciousness.

The movie never falls into gushy moments of inspiration and Schnabel never tries to manipulate any particular response from the audience. We're left to make of it what we will.

Avoid the hype, just go enjoy the movie

Dazzles us with computer-generated animation that has never looked quite so boldly exotic or shimmeringly beautiful.

Throughout, it's clouded -- for me at least -- by a nagging sense that it's straining too hard to build the media clash into more of an historic event than it was.

Comes together with a wry sense of humor, a total lack of gratuitous movie nonsense and a graceful dignity that allows the humanity of his characters to shine through in a very special way.

Has the sensibility of a Hollywood "woman's picture" of the '40s -- the weepie saga of a married woman trapped in an untenable situation.

An endearing comedy that could well end up being one of the year's big hits.

Zwick's narrative skills keep us hooked on the story, and the first-rate production values and imaginative use of locations (it was shot in Mozambique) give the film an enthralling scope and epic sweep.

This great Elizabethean masterpiece comes alive in a rich cinematic version that proves the past 400 years have done nothing to dim its uncanny power to mirror the human condition. [18 jan 1991]

The film below it is such an entertaining and poignantly bittersweet take-down of a good man's midlife crisis that the translation still works like a charm.

Not quite up to the exalted level of the two predecessors ("Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2"), be assured it's still the most eye-popping and thoroughly entertaining animated film to come down the pike so far this year.

It's a partisan campaign film, of course, but a subtle one.

Blanchett is, warts-and-all, letter perfect.

Many will find the subject matter disturbing, but it's clearly one of the holiday season's richest and most daring movie entries.

Forster carries the movie with an effortless grace and professionalism, creating a character of surprising nobility who is the very opposite of the Willy Loman caricature that's been the de rigueur salesman stereotype in movies of the past 50 years.

Mostly very good. It's exactly the big fix of Saturday-matinee adventure, blazing special effects, inside humor and sly self-references for which its fans have been lusting.

Ireland says he was after the kind of "elegant simplicity" of the great Hollywood romantic dramas of the '50s, and, for the most part, this is exactly what he pulls off.

She's foul-mouthed, trashy, a legal pit bull ... and she's wonderful.

Somehow the movie works like a clock. Its scenes and sensibility are all more than familiar, but it exudes a kind of nostalgic spy-movie charm and, at the same time, is so fresh and free of the usual thriller nonsense that it all seems to be happening for the first time.

It makes an unsettling case that America is fast becoming the thing it professes to hate.

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.

The movie is an unusually witty and intelligent romantic comedy and Hollywood's best Valentine's Day gift in years.

The kind of movie you're glad somebody had the guts to make, but you don't really want to endure.

The film concludes that there's still simply no way out of the forest.

Grueling but ultimately rewarding new documentary.

Simply enjoy its witty and expertly crafted scenes, its controlled performances, its eccentric but mostly admirable characters, its succession of bleak but cozily Nordic panoramas and its surprisingly optimistic view of the world.

A mostly fascinating, often frustrating, boldly uncommercial Hollywood version of a boldly uncommercial art film. It's very atypical of the previous work of both director and star, and it's as personal a film, I suspect, as Cruise will ever make.

It's a consciousness-raising personal odyssey in the tradition of such recent indie hits as "Sideways" and "About Schmidt" -- only less obviously comedic and, as always with Jarmusch, blissfully unresolved.

When it's good, there is no more riveting movie genre than a courtroom drama, and Class Action is one of the best in ages - perhaps since "The Verdict" in 1982. [15 Mar 1991]

A funny, sad, scary and ultimately tragic coming-of-age drama/black comedy that skillfully -- and uncompromisingly -- creates its own world and uniquely pessimistic vision.

An absorbing slice of the New China and a fascinating duel between two magnificently stubborn antagonists.

Kidman's Virginia Woolf is already controversial -- Yet there's something fierce, noble and deeply affecting in her work that mirrors Woolf's prose style, and her turbulent presence is the soul of the movie.

The story is so compelling and the movie is such a pleasure to the eyes and ears.

An extraordinarily absorbing neo-realistic tragedy.

It's a gripping outdoor adventure and the movies' most inspiring epic survival story in years.

By far the best thing about it is Zeta-Jones.

Like Lyne's other heavy-breathers, this one has glossy production values, a relentlessly somber mood and its share of sexual gymnastics. But it's atypical and unique in the way it builds a volcano waiting to erupt with nail-biting anticipation and sympathy for all three characters.

When movie historians talk about the greatest Hollywood comedies of all time, they invariably mention this classic, 1937 screwball romp that showcased Carole Lombard's most endearing movie performance. [19 May 1995]

The music, art direction and camerawork blend together with an integrity and scope that's wonderfully exhilarating. Every frame seems to communicate the grandeur, power and fatal pull of the sea.

A rousing, eye-filling, song-and-dance period musical spectacular that - despite a certain inability to decide whether it wants to be a kids' movie or "Les Miserables" - is a surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining throwback to the great movie musical style of the '40s and '50s. [10 Apr 1992]

This latest remake goes back to the spirit and letter of Eric Knight's 1940 novel.

Above all, I'm Not Scared pays off our emotional investment. In the end, its elements come together with the kind of genuinely thrilling, deeply satisfying climax that even the better Hollywood movies just can't seem to pull off anymore.

Seems a much more even-handed and thoughtful take on the man than anyone might have expected.

Its script is sharp, its dialogue is acerbic, its stars could hardly be better and, in its more sparkling moments, it exudes some of the flavor and charm of the later Hepburn-Tracy comedies.

Its overall effect is haunting, hypnotic and moving in a profound and unexpected way.

The movie misfires: It's numbingly cold and soulless, and the zeitgeist stays far beyond its reach. But it's so visually striking you almost don't notice, its relentlessly somber mood has a certain masochistic appeal and, while hardly a career-redefining performance, Hanks is as winning as ever.

Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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

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]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hypnotic and fun.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

It's an elegant nail-biter.

Somber and violent but undeniably stylish and unsettling thriller.

It's a sumptuous mood piece.

Ends up being empty, anti-climactic and overlong.

This is an adrenaline-pumping, devilishly well-made thriller set against the downfall of an American family.

It's a superior film in every way to its predecessor "Kiss the Girls."

The movie constantly verges on being a parody, but Moore's performance stays miraculously away from caricature.

As good as the film is in so many ways, it also altogether rings a bit false and contrived.

For the most part, it's imaginatively staged and consistently entertaining.

It makes for chuckling entertainment and it's fun to watch as it's happening. But its New York characters are not a bit believable, there's no real bite to the humor, and the film never adds up to be more than the sum of its parts.

It's by far the most faithful of the three versions, and beyond this integrity it also offers an ensemble of graceful performances and an epic evocation of 1920s China -- though, like its predecessors, it's far from a perfect crystallization of the novel.

Entertaining and eye-opening.

The script keeps to the point, the performances sparkle with originality, the direction of Jean-François Pouliot mostly has the right touch and the film ultimately generates some of the distinctively eccentric appeal of a classic Ealing Studio comedy of the 1950s.

Fernando Meirelles's MTV-grandstanding worked for "City of God," but it's just not necessary for, and gets in the way of, a script this literate and solid. In the end, The Constant Gardener works in spite of, not because of him.

Loaded down with gritty Glasgow atmosphere and authenticity, and works so well as an ensemble piece

It's an ambitious, eye-filling and thought-provoking work, but it manages to be frustratingly uneven and doesn't really represent Bertolucci at his most fluent. [27 May 1994]

Works best of all as a vehicle for Richard Gere, who has simply never looked better or held the screen more securely.

A movie you've seen many times before, but the setting is different, its characters are well drawn and it delivers its uplifting message with succinctness, sincerity and skill.

His persona clicks, the physical comedy amuses, and its comic vision is tantalizing enough to make us suspect the Old Master still may have at least one masterpiece in him trying to get out.

The stars ultimately carry the day, the film cumulatively builds both an emotional power and tender wisdom that's very affecting.

Pacino has done more Shakespeare than any other currently bankable movie star, he has a feel for the language and he lends a genuine grandeur to Shylock's big speech of self-defense.

A film with a real depth, resonance and texture, and room for an ensemble of supporting characters.

Its strangely paced narrative line, its rich texture of eccentric characters, its high-contrast black-and-white photography - and its very '60s air of innocence and possibility - make this a surprisingly enjoyable little time capsule from a vanished world. [16 Feb 1990]

There's no question where filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter's sympathy lies, but he makes his case leisurely, without hysteria and with much playful screen time devoted to the various interviewees' pet dogs.

Overcooked and simplistic in spots.

T. M. Griffin's script is imaginative and clever.

It is entertaining and eye-filling enough to appeal to a mainstream male audience. [22 May 1992]

Minghella does a good job of dashing any lingering image you might have of the Civil War as a conflict fought along neat geometric battle lines with the nobility of Appomattox.

The horror and spectacle of medieval battle has never been re-created on film before with such ghastly beauty.

The filmmaker's vision is harrowingly ugly and profoundly upsetting every step of the way.

Actually, the film may be too grubby and sordid and ghoulish for its own box-office good. It's certainly going to send more than a few of the New Zealand director's sensitive women fans running from the auditorium.

A cheerful and stylish romantic comedy that's easy on the eyes and ears, and makes few demands on the intellect.

The movie is 23 minutes longer than the Lean version, yet it somehow seems much less evocative of the novel's immense scope and texture. And its Cockney accents are such a strain to understand that as much as a third of the dialogue is indecipherable.

It has its flaws, and traditionalists are likely to think it falls well short of its inspiration, but it works on its own terms, it fills the screen with Burtonesque excitement and it strikes me as one of this tepid movie summer's better offerings.

The film is highly critical of America's counterterrorist efforts, and not at all subtle in making the point that our stupidity and Nazi-like methods have helped create -- and vastly acerbate -- our problems.

Less a portrait of this controversial man than a touchstone "to trace the history of contemporary terrorism."

White Hunter, Black Heart may not be a spectacular success, but it contains Clint Eastwood's best work as an actor and director in years, and is worth seeing. [21 Sep 1990]

With a steady eye and a warm (but never overtly sentimental) heart, it explores a territory where few movies have ventured before.

The film is such a good-natured and easygoing ride that it's ultimately very hard to resist.

Director Thomas Schlamme ("Miss Firecracker," "Crazy From the Heart") also does a better than average job of evoking the romance of his San Francisco locations; giving his mystery-comedy a Hitchcockian "feel"; and getting likable performances from Brenda Fricker as Charlie's mother, Anthony LaPaglia as his cop best-friend, and Nancy Travis as the maybe-murderess. [30 July 1993]

The best thing the movie has going for it is Kidman's performance.

The movie itself is not completely successful, but it's consistently both engrossing and entertaining, and -- once again -- Spacey's performance creates a spell that lingers long after the lights come back on.

In the end, it's not much fun to watch a brave artist getting his dream kicked out of him.

This movie seems even rougher around the edges than much of his past work. Still, it's hard to resist.

That's Entertainment! III - which comes 20 years after the original, and celebrates MGM's 70th anniversary - is largely a rehash of its predecessors. Though it's not nearly as fun or exciting, it is still worth seeing if you're an old-movie buff. [03 Jun 1994]

It's a sporadically thrilling visual epic and a gruesome reminder that war is hell.

The movie doesn't make much narrative sense and its complicated flashback structure (which assumes some knowledge of Ivens' rather obscure film career) doesn't help. But the film is so delightful to the eye that we almost don't care. Like "The Lover," sometimes the visual pleasures of a visual medium can be enough. [13 Nov 1992]

It's hardly a must-see laugh riot, but it is a good chuckle, and it does its job well.

The film is also an impressive showcase for a large ensemble cast that also includes Josh Brolin, James Franco and Kerry Washington. The standout, however, is Hurt, who gives an almost unbelievably courageous performance as the movie's least sympathetic character.

A witty new indie with a good cast and high production values that has fun with the absurdity of the frenzied bidding wars that can break out over a "spec" script by an unknown or first-time screenwriter.

The movie is so engrossing as an intellectual puzzle and such a solid thriller in every other department that it's probably actor-proof.

I found it a surprisingly elegant entertainment: fast-paced, cogently written (by noted English author Arnold Bennett), well-cast (including a bit by a young Charles Laughton) and stylishly photographed on a gallery of stunning deco sets.

The movie is a fascinating, if often confusing, mix of dramatized scenes from the novel, re-created and actual interviews with Desclos.

His film has a kind of lyrical and poetic beauty at the same time it's remarkably free of sentimentality and didacticism, and it tells its tale with the minimalist effectiveness of a first-rate short story. [3 July 1998]

In the latest of what is getting to be a booming genre of Iraq war documentaries, director Deborah Scranton gives digital video cameras to five members of the New Hampshire Army National Guard so they can intimately record their year of service in the Middle East.

It's occasionally quite witty, it's able to tell us a great deal about its characters and their back stories in an economic fashion and its plot swings are surprising and compelling.

Writer/director Raoul Peck never gives us enough intimate moments to let us feel we know the man on a personal level, and he doesn't have the narrative skill to economize the necessary exposition or steer a clear storyline.

Unfortunately, there's no great performance here. Pitt (who looks like Leonardo Di Caprio) delivers nothing close to Brando's tour de force, and all three stars may have been chosen less for their acting ability than their willingness to disrobe for the camera.

The Ring, is going to be this year's version of the "Blair Witch" and "Sixth Sense" phenomenon.

Working for the first time in live action, under the constraints of a classic novel, he (Andrew Adamson) proves himself to be a capable visual storyteller but no Peter Jackson.

Its heart is in the right place, and it doesn't flinch an iota from its duty of rubbing our faces in the horror of the Third World over the past two decades.

The Paper definitely works. By the time Hackett calls out that inevitable "Stop the presses!" Howard has caught all the romance of the great old newspaper movies - the camaraderie of the newsroom, the adrenaline rush that goes with the pursuit of a big story, the teary pride in the power of the press. [25 March 1994]

In its defense, I can only say that, technically, it's an exhilarating piece of filmmaking; it offers a commanding comeback role for Carradine, and it serves as a summation, dead end and, perhaps, epitaph, for Tarantino's unique contribution to world cinema.

Within the limitations of the script, both stars shine. Moore displays a wonderful flair for self-deprecating farce, and Brosnan is cumulatively endearing as her unflappable nemesis.

Touching, transcendent love story.

More of a leisurely paced ensemble character-study than the slam-bang traditional action gut-buster that its trailer seems to promise.

Apparently no one bothered to tell Stone the movie was a joke. She plays it without a hint of the tongue-in-cheek required, and totally against her strong star persona, so that she serves mostly as the unnecessary straight woman to all the giddy male comedy. [10 Feb 1995, p.3]

It really does communicate an optimistic sense that race is irrelevant and we can all live happily ever after together.

It's not "The Wizard of Oz," and its cotton-candy fantasy of a story line is definitely aimed at very young children. But it's well made, and adults likely will find themselves yielding to its gentle, whimsical charm.

A familiar but rewarding little parable.

For most of the way, it's indeed quite a ride: a cumulatively exhilarating, visually mouth-dropping, somberly stylish odyssey crammed full of virtuoso animation sequences.

It's hard to figure exactly what the point of this movie is -- except maybe to expose the myth of samurai machismo.

Together, the two of them (Pitt, Roberts) are cute as a bug.

This is an actress (Streep) who can pull off anything -- including a shamelessly kitschy musical.

A big change of pace for the bad-boy Spanish director. Like his other work, it's kinky and proudly gay, but this time it's not a comedy. It's a serious neo-film-noir, and a pretty darn good one at that.

The film powerfully demonstrates the diversity, the adaptability, the resilience of the insect world. The rest of the animal kingdom (including man) may be on the brink of extinction, but these little guys are thriving. [22 Nov 1996]

The film goes for a grainy, fast-cut, documentary look that is both a blessing and a curse.

Kidman brings her character to life with a fey, moth-to-the-flame enthrallment that's both touching and fascinating.

Whatever you think of her performance, Foster has certainly made all the right choices as a producer, and come up with a movie of taste, integrity and considerable emotional impact. [23 Dec 1994]

The casting is so strong and the overall filmmaking flair of the movie is so captivating that it basically works.

Though it's ostensibly a thriller, Trade constantly works against the conventions of its genre in a rather audacious way -- finding, for instance, surprising moments of humanity in even the most monstrous of its villains.

Gradually, it becomes clear that Campion is taking an experimental, almost documentary approach to movie biography - avoiding clear villains, grandly dramatic moments, and the kind of phony movie dialogue so characteristic of the traditional Hollywood biopic. It's a bold and risky method, and sometimes it induces boredom. But somehow it works, giving us a extraordinary sense of one woman's life and the forces that made her, and a subtle, powerful feminist statement. [21 Jun 1991]

Clever, often hilarious, inside-Hollywood farce that makes the most of... a delightfully absurd premise.

The film's grueling training sequences have a perverse fascination, and, though he's nothing special here, Kutcher is probably the most appealing he has been in a big-screen role.

As amateurish and fumbling as it is in every department, the sum total of the movie is pretty darn scary.

Very slick, very compelling and not nearly as predictable as it sounds.

The performances are immaculate, especially Dafoe and the always-magnificent Mirren, who rarely gets a vehicle this worthy of her talent.

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.