William Arnold

Not only does it recapture -- and enhance -- the subtle emotional core that has made the film so beloved for the past three-quarters of a century, it delivers the most eye-boggling, hair-raising movie thrill ride since 1993's "Jurassic Park."

A funny, rousing crowd-pleaser.

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]

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.

Best of all, the film showcases Leconte's full range of directorial gifts: his sense of pace and suspense; his ability to make a scene come magically alive with a small touch of wry humor; his ingratiating belief that, as bad as people are in the aggregate, they are capable of an amazing nobility of spirit as individuals. [06 Dec 1996]

It's bleak, credulity straining and often stomach-turning, but it definitely works as a heart-tugging character study, and Rourke's performance as the has-been title character is golden.

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.

Has a flag-waving dumbness at its core.

Flat-out one of the best Bonds ever.

Sayles has also gathered uniformly strong performances from his ensemble cast of mostly Irish actors; he creates a rural Irish milieu with a remarkable authenticity (remarkable since he is not Irish); and he keeps the mood nicely balanced on a fine line between whimsical children's fable and realistic domestic drama. [17 Feb 1995]

It's still primarily a showcase and offbeat star vehicle for Moore. It's a bravura role and she brings it off with a chilling malevolence and a strange, disjointed vulnerability that almost, but not quite, makes her sympathetic.

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]

It's an interesting and eye-opening journey.

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

Not only is it an enormously entertaining study of a curiously American institution, it also manages to be a nail-biting competition film, an engrossing group character study and a wonderfully graceful comedy of manners.

A happy surprise: a timely antidote to the comic-book mindlessness of "Spider-Man" and repetitive space fantasy of "Star Wars," and an encouraging bid from the top of the A-list to once again reach very high and spit in the face of the gutless formula filmmaking that rules Hollywood.

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 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 paragon of subtlety. Yet this message is exactly what we carry out of the theater, and it lingers on with a powerful resonance.

An extraordinarily absorbing neo-realistic tragedy.

In the best tradition of Annaud's work, Two Brothers works as an engrossing outdoor adventure and quasi-documentary.

It's a buoyant, often thrilling piece of animation that more or less does for the Central African rain forest what "The Lion King" did for the East African savanna.

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."

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.

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

It's in English, but the actors speak it with tortuous accents that are a constant struggle to understand and make them seem like foreigners in their own land. Spanish with English subtitles would have served this story much, much better.

There's an enjoyably literate style here and some humorous moments.

A marvelous piece of cinematic storytelling, acted to perfection by Sihung Lung (the father in "The Wedding Banquet"), fueled by an ingratiating sense of humor and so infused with the sheer joy of Chinese cooking that it will probably make you rush right out for a Chinese meal. [05 Aug 1994]