The cast of Rain is first-rate, especially Wierzbicki and Peirse, whose tense relationship is as loving as it is competitive.

Overflowing with comedy and drama, The Boys of Baraka unfolds on the mean streets of Baltimore and in the wide-open spaces of Kenya.

A humorous bounty of flesh and fantasy.

The backgrounds, it must be said, are the most impressive features in the picture: Vibrant with color and often deeply evocative, they make you wish something a bit more lively was happening in front of them. [18 Nov 1994]

White throws in a dog-in-peril shot to ensure the audience's sympathies. The ploy works, perhaps too well, turning Year of the Dog less into the askew character study it wants to be than a showcase of lovable-dog shots.

A welcome anomaly - a shallow hero you root for.

One gets the feeling Kaufman was so intent on putting fury and fanaticism on-screen, he forgot about having it serve any greater purpose. Which makes Quills the film equivalent of one of de Sade's novels: artifice, without art.

Akin to being force-fed sugary confections from a bottomless bowl. At first the idea seems just grand, but after a while, all you want to do is scream, "Enough!"

Almereyda has done a splendid job of rendering Hamlet as expressive visually as it is verbally.

Batman Begins is obvious from the get-go - and almost no fun.

Standard Operating Procedure says that human nature abhors moral vacuums - but sometimes humans get sucked into them.

This comedy of stereotypes pokes fun at poker buddies and coffee klatches only to make room for variations on more recent stereotypes. Some of the boldest 'types provide the funniest bits, such as Jon Favreau's embodiment of an upscale Stanley Kowalski who treats all-male card games as clan rites.

Jew or Gentile, a good story well told is a thing to be cherished.

The movie captures exactly why those of us who do this for a living can't seem to shed ourselves of it: that crazed, dizzying, exhausting sense of being, if ever so briefly, where it's happening; and the sense that somewhere out there in the great unknown landscape that is our readership is somebody who cares what we write. The movie understands what draws people to Suns both real and imaginary.

Too much about the game and not enough about the town, the players and everything else.

It's a clear-eyed, unsentimental portrait and indelible for that very reason.

Some might find the whole thing exhilarating, but exhausting is more the word that comes to this man's mind.

A hollow excuse for an erotic mystery.

(Penn)'s is a lovely, soulful performance in a movie that manages to imbue tragedy with just the right grace note of insouciance -- a movie worthy of Woody Allen himself.

It's a summery idyll: his most entertaining picture since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) or maybe "Sweet and Lowdown" (1999).

Without ever telling viewers what to think or how to feel, it raises more questions about the corruption of crime and crime fighting than any expose or thesis.

It's a tough slog, but worth seeing once. [08 Nov 2008, p.4C]

Wilde is a worthy movie that, although helped considerably by Stephen Fry's bravura performance, never breaks out of its static, episodic structure. [05 Jun 1998]

Brad Pitt's sensitive performance helps make 'Benjamin Button' a timeless masterpiece.

This may be the quietest addict ever to hit movie screens, as well the most disturbing.

Siegel takes us to the brink of operatic melodrama, then lands us in a tragicomic spot: a psychological landscape of alternate life and make-believe death.

A wonderfully understated work offering insights to a world where no emotion is simple.

The movie doesn't complete itself, in the sense of filling in our knowledge of its people (who are more like passengers). It simply comes to a stop.