Corny as it may sound though, it's all true-except, of course, for that mythical movie last-second championship bit.

The Dying Gaul stays interesting even when it asks more and more--too much, probably--of the audience's disbelief suspension.

On the page Shopgirl was a small but fine Chekhovian thing, coasting along on Martin's omniscient narration and witty prose...The movie version locates roughly half of what worked in the novella.

The horrors of apartheid deserve a better treatment than this.

Whimsy and wit are the saving graces of much British movie comedy, and Saving Grace has a decent measure of both.

It's passable.

Reminiscent of classic old Westerns.

It's hard to focus on the travails when the music is so lively and good.

The ultimate shallowness of this film is reflected in the fact that their key bonding moment occurs when they bungee-jump off a bridge together.

The good news is that Vaughn is back in needling, loosey-goosey mode in Made, which he produced with Favreau. The bad news is that by the end, not only do you find him quite resistible, but you also may wish one of the tough guys of this mob comedy would heave him out a window.

So look for (Francis) at the 2000 games in Sydney, which may provide a more heated ending to this lukewarm story.

Like many horror films, it loses steam as it gets more graphic.

The line between cool and cold is a thin one, however. Cool isn't the word for "Thirteen"; it's just smug.

Taken in isolation from the unsatisfying story, the performances are powerful--Knightley’s vivacious, wounded romantic does a great deal to carry the film on sheer personality, while Fiennes is a subtle master at projecting banked menace through his seeming detached ennui.

It's an ensemble piece with a dark, salty mood that reminded me of Robert Altman and Robert Aldrich, with a touch of Francis Ford Coppola. It's notably non-"gung ho."

The enigma not only remains, but, cloaked in Schrader`s mysticism, seems more impenetrable than ever.

A lot of Beautiful Boy is necessarily hard to take, though the script softens the roughest of Nic’s travails. Is this why the movie’s anguish feels more indicated than inhabited? Still: You can’t fault the performers much. Or Chalamet, at all.

What’s missing is not simply surprise, or the pleasurable shock of a new kind of ghost comedy. It’s the near-complete absence of verbal wit, all the more frustrating since Keaton is ready to play, and he’s hardly alone.

The Keanes' story is one of eventual triumph over adversity for Margaret, but Big Eyes struggles on the page to make much of her as a character. Adams struggles as well; she's acting in one movie, a sincere, often anguished one, while Waltz (mugging up a storm) works in an entirely different key.

A movie whose satire proves as lame as its clunky title.

For all its craft and achievement, The Gift -- which has a script that may have needed more rewriting and deepening -- is a good, minor effort; it has some real conviction, even anguish. And it has Blanchett, whose gift as an actress is sometimes transcendent.

Many will forgive all the contrivances and a muted ending that doesn't quite come off. It is, after all, a submarine picture.

A mild off-season cinematic bid for the young and the restless.

Kaufman wants to be bold in his depiction of lovemaking, but he keeps copping out, cutting away from the deed to such time-worn metaphors as booming bongo drums, pots that boil over on stove tops and African dancers gyrating wildly. Were Kaufman's frankness ever to equal the "passion and honesty" he praises in Miller's work, the film would merit at least an NC-21, if not 41. [05 Oct 1990, p.I]

Any movie with the sense, the wit and the visual instincts to introduce Kong the way this one does is fine with me.

Washington, typically, is rock-solid in front of the camera, conveying ample warmth and sympathy. Behind the camera, he's a relatively straightforward storyteller, strategic in his use of lyrical touches.

Isn't novel entertainment, but adults who accompany kids to it are not likely to feel that it is a form of abuse for either of them.

A shockingly powerful screed against racism that also manages to be so well performed and directed that it is entertaining as well. [30 October 1998, Friday, p.A]