William Arnold

Douglas brings a hilarious kind of Gordon Gekko assurance to his character, and Brooks' long-suffering, naggy persona -- which hasn't had a showcase this strong since "Lost in America" -- sparks off it like Hope with Crosby.

The movie is never engaging on anything but a superficial level, and it gradually gets decidedly tiresome.

Conceptually, the film is unique - it's a kind of nostalgia movie within a nostalgia movie. [16 Apr 1999]

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.

A redundancy, and a bore. The characters are harrowingly unsympathetic, the action sequences are by-the-numbers, and Carpenter's usual saving grace -- his sense of humor -- is nowhere in evidence.

Like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between.

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

Like Spielberg, even if the content is questionable or the performance is missing, his scenes always manage to be visually thrilling.

Unlike original director Rob Cohen, Singleton has no gift for giddy action and his movie is a crashing bore.

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.

In a way, Wild Strawberries is a cliche of a Bergman movie, but no cliche ever seemed more perceptive, more gentle, more understanding of human foibles and imperfection, or more humorous. [25 Jul 1997]

Wise, entertaining and often very funny.

His heart may be in the right place, but 25-year-old writer-director M. Night Shyamalan can't even begin to pull all these episodes together into anything that seems remotely special, or even makes any sense. [03 Apr 1998]

Philip Messina's claustrophobic sets and Cliff Martinez's elegantly creepy score add to the film's distinction and work off Clooney's performance and Soderbergh's staging to create an hypnotic spell and suggest a cosmos full of spiritual possibility.

A gracefully subtle, sweet-spirited French parable of the brotherhood of man that was nominated for a Golden Globe, won Omar Sharif a César Award for best actor and has been a surprise hit in Europe.

A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.

Ultimately successful at what it sets out to do, even if it's not as much fun along the way as the original.

It's funny, touching and crammed to the rafters with clever dialogue, splashy production numbers and stiff-upper-lip charm.

It's a low-key, subtly inspirational drama that builds its charm slowly but surely.

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

First-time director Fisher Stevens has a flair for dialogue comedy, the film operates nicely off the element of surprise, and the large cast is solid -- especially Marisa Tomei, who in an extended cameo as a merry dominatrix rarely has been more convincing.

Fans of figuring skating will enjoy much of the silliness, however, because its better moments have fun lampooning all the hoopla that surrounds the sport and there are cameos from the likes of Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan, Brian Boitano, Peggy Fleming and Sasha Cohen.

The movie is basically a piece of fluff, not always coherently directed and almost too consistently somber for a movie that wants to be a romantic comedy. Still, it comes together with considerable emotional impact, mainly on the strength of the stars. [24 May 1991, p.14]

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

But the movie doesn't quite work. In fact, despite some funny moments, "Honeymoon" has so many blown scenes and missed opportunities that it makes one suspect that Bergman may not be the best interpreter of his own material. [28 Aug 1992]