The film's appeal is in the details. This is one of [Merchant-Ivory's] best films.

The movie gets credit for not making the high life seem colorful or funny. It is not. It is boring, because when the drugs are there they simply clear the pain and allow the mind to focus on getting more drugs.

For a grimmer and more realistic look at this world, no modern movie has surpassed Karel Reisz's "The Gambler'' (1974), starring James Caan in a screenplay by self-described degenerate gambler James Toback.

Either you stand back and resist it, or you plunge in. There was something about its innocence and spunk that got to me, and I caved in.

Sutherland's performance is the film's treasure. Watching the way he gently tries to direct his headstrong young star, we are seeing a version of Phil Jackson's Zen and the art of coaching.

Wesley Snipes understands the material from the inside out and makes an effective Blade because he knows that the key ingredient in any interesting superhero is not omnipotence, but vulnerability.

LaBute's "Your Friends and Neighbors'' is to "In the Company of Men'' as Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction'' was to "Reservoir Dogs.'' In both cases, the second film reveals the full scope of the talent, and the director, given greater resources, paints what he earlier sketched.

The portrait of everyday Japan in The Eel is intriguing; the quiet area where the story is set is filled with people who take a lively interest in one another's business, while all the time seeming to keep their distance. [11 Sep 1998, p.32]

The film, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, is pitched pretty firmly at that level of ambition: Broadly drawn characters, quick one-liners, squabbling family members, lots of sex.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back tries its best to turn a paperback romance into a relationship worth making a movie about, but fails.

The director, Joseph Ruben ("The Stepfather," "Sleeping With the Enemy"), uses a kind of flat, logical storytelling that leads us inexorably toward his conclusions.

It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.

He can take a licking and keep on slicing. In the latest Halloween movie, he absorbs a blow from an ax, several knife slashes, a rock pounded on the skull, a fall down a steep hillside and being crushed against a tree by a truck. Whatever he's got, mankind needs it.

Starts promisingly as an attack on modern commercialized sports, and then turns into just one more wheezy assembly-line story about slacker dudes vs. rich old guys.

Here, as the little cinder girl, she is able to at last put aside her bedraggled losers and flower as a fresh young beauty, and she brings poignancy and fire to the role.

The claustrophobic, isolated Victorian household is a stage on which every nuance, however small, is noticed.

Quaid is instantly likable, with that goofy smile. Richardson, who almost always plays tougher roles and harder women, this time is astonishing, she's so warm and attractive.

A triumph of style over story, and of acting over characters.

This film embodies ideas. After the immediate experience begins to fade, the implications remain and grow.

The same material, filmed in America, might seem thin and contrived; the adventures are arbitrary, the cuteness of the men grows wearing, and when Nino has an accident with a chainsaw, we can see contrivance shading off into desperation.

The film is a display of traditional movie craftsmanship, especially at the level of the screenplay, which respects the characters and story and doesn't simply use them for dialogue breaks between action sequences.

After months and months of comedies that did not make me laugh, here at last is one that did.

The seductive thing about Aronofsky's film is that it is halfway plausible in terms of modern physics and math.

Lethal Weapon 4 has all the technical skill of the first three movies in the series, but lacks the secret weapon, which was conviction.

An assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained.

Plays like a collision between a lot of half-baked visual ideas and a deep and urgent need. That makes it interesting…and the film contains an astonishing performance by Christina Ricci, who seems to have been assigned a portion of the screen where she can do whatever she wants.

Takes advantage of the road movie genre, which requires only a goal and then permits great freedom in the events along the way.

Too many adults have a tendency to confuse bad taste with evil influences; it's hard for them to see that the activities in "Doctor Dolittle,'' while rude and vulgar, are not violent or anti-social. The movie will not harm anyone.