The love that heals and the love that kills are one and the same in the exhilarating Head-On, Fatih Akin's overgrown dead-end-kid romance for live-wire adults.

Lightning in a Bottle has breadth, both in its multitude of perspectives and its spectrum of performances.

Its heart and head are in the right place, but its feet and hands aren't busy enough.

The film feels as if it has a huge gap in it and the name of the gap is Bill Clinton. Who is this man who would be, and became, president? The film has no idea; Clinton himself is glimpsed occasionally, a completely charming fellow who can handle a press conference superbly, but who somehow is never there. As Carl Cannon wrote in The Sun's Sunday Perspective section, "It's as basic as this: Can his word be trusted?" The movie never bothers to confront such an issue or even, really, to acknowledge it; in documenting the Democrats, it clearly comes to share their uncritical view of the Hamlet-Bubba who carries their standard...Like the campaign itself, then, it's far too tightly wound up in details to examine a larger picture, which in the end may be the problem. [18 Feb 1994]

It's cathartic and exhilarating.

Try as I might, I could not love it, because as a piece of cinema, Into Great Silence would try the patience of a saint.

Del Toro stuffs the film with wit and wonderments. Yet, coming out this superhero summer, it plays like a lovingly crafted synthesis of every fantasy saga we've seen in the past decade.

Lumumba revives the tradition of Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers" and Costa-Gavras' "Z" and "State of Siege." In substance and excitement, it joins their ranks.

The title captures this film's harrowing qualities, but not its energy, its limpid beauty or its spiritual grace.

This is Forster's show, and he doesn't disappoint.

A crackerjack thriller, laced with labyrinthine mysteries, moral quandaries and unspeakable evil.

The result is a treat for Sandler fans and a revelation for those of us who've spent the last decade wondering what on earth his appeal is.

The Counterfeiters is in its own smart, trim fashion "The Bridge on the River Kwai" of concentration-camp sagas. Also based (like Kwai) on a real-life story, this movie starts small but becomes a miniature epic of overreach and moral drift.

Those willing to overlook its emotional grandstanding will find much to admire and even more to think about in this Oscar-nominated Danish drama.

The real hero here is Ghobadi, whose love and respect for the culture in which he was raised shines through every frame.

Despite its director's skill at staging trash with dash, Oldboy is too long and portentous to be an enjoyable B movie. The movie's self-seriousness short-circuits its sensationalism.

Jungle Fever is so many graceful things, so many angry things, so many truly moving things that its occasional faults are the faults of excess passion, not failure of imagination. Most importantly, it seethes with life, unlike nearly every other movie out of Hollywood these days.

It flows like fast-moving lava to a climax filled with pyrotechnics. And for once in a summer blockbuster, the fireworks are both emotional and physical. The movie leaves you sated, yet wanting more -- just what you want from a series with two entries left to go.

Reaches the highest comic heights when the show itself starts.

No American film this year can touch it. [28 Feb 1992, p.10]

The Last Mistress turns the melodramatic pieties of films like Fatal Attraction inside out. The anti-heroine acts like a vampire in reverse: Even when she drinks the anti-hero's blood, she makes him feel more alive.

The Saddest Music In the World may not be for all tastes, but maybe it should be.

Live-In Maid is a lived-in movie. Its cataclysms may be small in scale, but the movie brings us so far into these women's lives that a shattered cup creates an earthquake.

There is undeniable power in Magnolia, in which small moments of truth are given epic gravitas, not just by Anderson's adroit cinematic style (no one's camera is more restless or inquisitive), but by the wisdom and compassion of the characters he creates.

It's like Chekhov with a British accent.

A visual feast of colorful stop-motion animation, offers many bite-size delights. Ultimately, though, it isn't nearly as flavorful as Roald Dahl's deliciously perverse children's book, upon which the movie is based.

The film is the work of a visual genius who may have overextended his storytelling ability, but with fascinating results.

Without a note of music or any other extraneous narrative device, Emitai plunges the viewer deep into the lives of the Diola, to the point where the subtitles translating the Diola and French languages are almost superfluous. [02 Feb 1998]

Kung Fu Hustle is to "House of Flying Daggers" what "Blazing Saddles" is to "Unforgiven."

In the full-house ensemble of Henry Bromell's Panic, Neve Campbell is the wild card.

If you didn't know that Martin Scorsese made The Aviator, the enthralling new adventure-biography of Howard Hughes, you might think it was the calling card of a neophyte visual genius.

The scenes between Dengler and Duane, between a force of nature and a force of reason, are the real heart of the film.

Let's just say this is a perfect film for penguin lovers who also are devoted members of the Green party - and leave it at that.

Offers a welcome perspective, reminding us that extremism in the name of a values system is nothing new -- not even on these shores.

It gets under your skin and into your head, and you don't want it to leave.

The movie's triumph is that we experience the ending, in which the three girls go mostly separate ways, not as a defeat but as a transition still open to possibilities.

Truth is, one can probably tell as much about Jackson Pollock the man by looking at his paintings than by watching this movie.

Imagine "The Godfather" through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy just in from the hinterlands of rural Jersey and his dad's pepper farm, and you have an idea of the originality, and the oddity, of the film. [16 Feb 1996]

It's a soaper with a high grade of imported soap.

A star is born in 8 Mile, all right, but his name is Mekhi Phifer.

It's a fine, fierce and nearly unforgettable movie.

The Dixie Chicks may never regain their prolonged eminence on the country charts. However, the art and entertainment value of this movie (and of their latest album) is off the charts in the best way.

The Cockettes is a grand place to visit, even for those who wouldn't want to live there.

The offhand wit and casual self-revelation of Johnston's best words draw you deeper into the mysteries of his character. Feuerzeig is a music-lover to his bones.

Like "Anais," the only surprises Breillat has in store for us are bad ones. In the willfully perverse final act, she delivers a sadistic blow to the audience -- with a sledgehammer.

What's not to love?

It's an experience that blows your mind, clears it and educates it.

Let's get it out, loud and clear: Jerry Maguire is not a sports movie. It's a stealth chick movie, wrapped in a swaddling of jock stuff so that it gets through guy radar without setting off the missile defenses.

The martial arts wizard shows a nice feel for the Butch and Sundance thing.

Scratch will make even the uninitiated believe in the joy and propulsive power of hip-hop.

It lacks even Tarantino-esque vitality. It moves more like a busted concertina.

It's infuriating in more ways than one. Yet it's also somehow touching in its melange of melodrama and modernism.

With Joan Allen bringing a crisp intelligence to the sharp, unsentimental narration, it's both awful and fascinating to follow Hitler's warped growth from frustrated painter to self-appointed arbiter of Germanic art.

Italian for Beginners, on its own small scale, is a one-of-a-kind movie: a baggy-pants spiritual comedy.

The beauty, vibrancy and complexity of Indian culture is on addictive display in Monsoon Wedding. If only there were more to the film.

Some of the most affecting moments in the film show Bukowski walking the streets of his Los Angeles, a barren suburban hell, as he reads his poems and the words appear on and then fade from the screen.

The coincidences pile up in Career Girls, but by then Leigh has involved us so fully in the emotional lives of his characters that the contrivances are easily dismissed.

What proves the validity of Kandahar is that, by the end, all these scenes are human ruins of the same nightmare world.

A bittersweet joy. Its humor and romance are refreshing because the writer-director, Greg Mottola, realizes that maturity is a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward process.

It twists in on itself mercilessly, rarely pausing to let the viewers catch up, but that's OK. A movie like this depends on staying at least a step ahead of its audience, and this one surely does.

Does it make it as a movie? Only in fits and starts.

In America is the most unexpected and personal triumph yet from Jim Sheridan.

The rousing new Western 3:10 to Yuma has the sweep of an epic and the economy of a stopwatch.

Offers a welcome riff on a well-worn horror standard.

The movie comes together like a nihilistic jigsaw puzzle - with a few pieces removed for that special, indefinable dash of pseudo-density.

The result is an exciting, infuriating, combative experience.

The ovation that Hudson wins from the movie's audience is one of those miraculous moments when a performer's artistry breaks through the screen and makes you feel part of a live audience. I haven't experienced anything like it since Barbra Streisand sang "My Man" at the end of her astonishing debut in Funny Girl.

There's great action moviemaking here: You learn what it means to "carve" a pool, as you learn what it means to "close off" the boxing ring in Ali.

Though it stops short of explosive comedy, the Ivan Reitman film is consistently amusing in its populist celebration of common sense and decency in the place of sophistication, power-brokering and cynicism.

There are no surprise twists, no characters who rise above themselves, no cheap happy endings. There are just people struggling with emotions and situations they think are beyond their control.

Unfolds amid the mechanized carnage of World War I. Yet everything in it is personal. That's why it's a masterpiece.

Unlike other movies about unpleasant characters, "In the Company of Men," for example, Chuck & Buck doesn't have that sharp observational edge.

Shine a Light has two maestros, Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, and once they begin to mesh, around the third or fourth song, they put on a display of showmanship that erases the line between art and entertainment.

For a documentary about a music festival, Soul Power doesn't include nearly enough music.

The whole movie aspires to set an Annie Hall vibe, especially when Tom keeps trying to re-create, first with her and then with someone else.

Disturbing, maddening, often confusing, but also charming, engaging and challenging in all the best ways.

Campbell Scott creates a new movie anti-hero -- the weak silent type -- and goes all the way with it in The Secret Lives of Dentists.

Frequently fascinating, it never builds into anything profound.

The union of thought and feeling becomes flesh and blood thanks to four brilliant performers in Iris.

It's a documentary about acknowledging genius, about just desserts, about artistic muses that refuse to give up. It's about great camaraderie and great music.

Dense, ironic and thoroughly engrossing caper melodrama.

Oshii is able to knit together action sequences with extraordinary power and conviction.... Ghost in the Shell is absolutely terrific.

Misplaced hero-worship and glibness get in the way of its amazing true story.

Isn't nearly the landmark comedy it thinks it is, but its quirkiness should appeal to the highbrow funny bone in all of us.

The movie is best when everything is up in the air.

It's an authentic, harrowing tale of heroism.

The only thing missing from this rich production is an emotional charge, which Highsmith could create on the page but which Minghella doesn't quite capture on screen.

Washington is wisely cast as Marco; few actors command more instant respect, and the movie uses that to make his character both believable and sympathetic.

Plunges into an imaginative landscape as large as all creation - and never slackens its barreling pace or shrinks its panoramic scope.

Filled with delightful sequences.

A snarling satire of Hollywood single-mindedness and its lack of any moral underpinning.

Man on the Train may be a modest film, but it offers privileged glimpses of transcendence.

The genius of Garfield's performance is that he fills him with equal amounts of terror and wonder.

Holofcenere genuinely wants to make pictures that plug into an audience's need for intimate contemporary comedies. But she doesn't do enough to quench that thirst.

The potential for action never lets up; you never know what's coming around the next corner.

At its best, the movie combines the musical and psychological meanings of a fugue. Sons and daughters and mother take up themes of dislocation and identity loss, and deepen them at every turn.

Once you get past the movie's needlessly fragmented framing device and its protracted introduction to a xenophobic rural Minnesota town, the core story gains some traction in your mind.

Nolte brings this movie a piece of his heart, and grants us peace.