Thanks to director Howard's casual grace and humanism and the cast's talent and agility, The Paper is an entertaining show. But, maybe the reason it looks so real and sounds so phony is that, while it's set in the world of today, it really wants the kick of the old movies, and it never hits the right fluctuating tone between drama and farce. It may have tabloid ambitions and a tabloid look-even a tabloid soul. But it doesn't have tabloid reflexes. [18 March 1994, p.A]

There isn't a bad performance here, but besides Thornton, Luke stands out.

By imitating the gestures and outlines of a vanished cinema, Berri can only provide a cold simulation. The surface is smooth and refined; the insides aren't there. [23 Dec 1987, p.A]

Nichols has yet to make an uninteresting film; this one’s a stimulating collision of myth and realism, and keeping Comer at the core was a very smart move.

With such skilled filmmaking and committed acting on display, Narc is far more a score than a bust.

It's a clever premise but not one that lends itself to an hour and 42 minutes of high jinks. You get the joke quickly.

Immersed here in both the fair, dreamy air and chilly, deeper waters, Rampling and Sagnier make Swimming Pool a fine sunlit noir, oozing sensuality and menace.

Exquisitely designed, lovingly executed, beautifully scored and played, every hair and note in place, it's a movie full of irony, passion and bluesy riffs.

Like a Visconti epic gone mad, explosive, beautiful, unforgettable. [08 Dec 2006, p.C8]

The documentary carrying the same name as Schiele's painting works like a suspense drama and a slippery chronicle of ownership, theft and vaguely unsettling resolution.

The anecdotes weave an entrancing narrative, though the movie could have benefited from more vintage performance footage of Butterfield’s band at the height of its powers.

Michael Caine became a front rank star -- and actor -- when he played the title role in this smart, salty, subtly moving adaptation of Bill Naughton's play about a Cockney Casanova on the loose in Swinging London. [30 Jan 2000, p.41C]

A breezy diary from a pair of first-time farmers, as well as a wry rebuke to a nation devoted to eating cheaply but not necessarily well, King Corn makes its points without much finger-wagging.

I enjoyed it as much as any Allen film of the last 20 years.

It's a fascinating bundle of contradictions -- authentic in a million details, deeply romanticized in others. Cool, calm and collected, this is more love story than gangster picture.

Rebecca Hall makes Maggie’s past and present states scarifyingly real. The film is often good; never for a moment is Hall’s performance anything less.

It's compelling material, even if you don't completely buy Tsotsi's transition.

Seems small in subject and scope, but it's large in spirit and implication.

Like Charles Ferguson's excellent Iraq documentary "No End in Sight," "Countdown to Zero" has an agenda but has the cogent, reasoned rhetoric to support it.

Some of the dialogue is on the clunky side; much of it comes straight (or nearly) from Lord’s memoir; and Hammer has yet to find a fully easy-breathing way of behaving naturally on screen. Rush, by contrast, has so much fun with Giacometti’s tetchy, restless qualities, you don’t always buy the “tortured” part.Yet Rush is such a formidable technician, he creates a Giacometti of substance both real and theatrical.

Otto Preminger's adaptation of Leon Uris' best seller about the founding of the state of Israel occasionally threatens to collapse under its own weight, but a strong cast, including Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb and an Oscar-nominated Sal Mineo, helps maintain focus. [08 Nov 2008, p.C10]