It's a winner with flaws.

Watching Taste of Cherry and following its path of fear and redemption, living through this strange day with these foreign but utterly recognizable and deeply sympathetic characters, we believe in them. We feel with them. We care what happens to them. And, knowing them, we know a bit more, as well, about ourselves. [29 May 1998, p.D]

Overall, Wide Awake is a sound concept that fell considerably short of its goals. [27 Mar 1998, p.B]

Fireworks is a great new film that takes the traditions and makes them burn and explode, in violence and beauty, flame and flower. It's a film that lights up the night, opens your eyes. [20 Mar 1998, p.C]

Funny Games is an intellectual's suspense film, which ultimately tries to critique and demystify violence. But, since our responses are never all cerebral, that's not entirely possible.

It put a smile on my face that never left for 117 minutes.

Proyas' movie lacks a truly rich or compelling story -- although the city secret is certainly a rich and compelling idea. All too often, Dark City seems a great production design in search of a movie, an ultimate modern film noir pastiche, in which the images are so strong they overpower the drama. [27 Feb 1998]

In compositions lustrously lit and creamily colorful as an elegant piece of soft-core porno, the moviemakers guide us through Veronica’s life, from virginity to bawdy fame to sainthood. Reality never intrudes — even though the script obviously wants to set us straight about gender, femininity and political power in 16th Century Venice.

Phantoms may have sold like hotcakes as a book. But this movie version is a grotesque fiasco, a confoundingly senseless story told with unexciting visuals, cliched dialogue and ear-bashing sounds... Watching it is a truly hellish experience. [23 Jan 1998]

The "Fallen" moviemaking team obviously want to make a thinking person's horror movie. Intermittently, they succeed. But this movie suffers the fate of many recent nightmare thrillers. [16 Jan 1998, p.A]

It's not Maddin's best work -- it may even be the least of his four features to date -- but there's something mesmerizing about it all the same, a quality of perverse wit and unbuttoned imagination you see too rarely.

Whether Kundun is a perfect movie or not, it's an important and beautiful one. Scorsese's movie takes us into a world we've rarely seen with this kind of sympathy or detail: a magical-looking society built on Buddhism and centuries of art and tradition.

Another problem is that this "Magoo" can't seem to figure out if it's for kids or adults. The plot's too simple for adults, with hardly an inside joke or double entendre thrown in for good measure, yet it may be too confusing for younger kids. [25 Dec 1997, p.D2]

A brash romantic comedy that has a serious purpose at its core.

A film that sweeps us away into a world of spectacle, beauty and excitement, a realm of fantasy unimaginable without the movies.

The biggest factor working against Mouse Hunt may be its chilliness. Like some of the Coen brothers' work, it's so stylized that it often keeps you at an arm's length instead of sucking you into its whirlwind.

Bond, like rock 'n' roll -- or Tomorrow -- may never die. Even so, watching the movie explode and crash its way toward its climax, I could only keep thinking: Come back, Richard Maibaum.

Presents a few too many hugs and arguments over what's best for Will. But ultimately, the movie, like its protagonist, boasts an integrity and intelligence that are tough not to admire. [25 December 1997, Tempo, p.1]

Masterpiece is the right word for The Sweet Hereafter. It is extraordinary: a poem of familial pain, a song of broken embraces. [25 December 1997, Tempo, p.1]

Sick provides no easy answers but stands as a strangely powerful testament of a man who laughed in the face of terminal illness and fought for his life using the tools of self-destruction, including the occasional hammer and nail.

The point of all this nihilism and grotesqueness? You got me. Perhaps Korine thinks he's getting at some harsh truth in showing troubled youngsters running amok without positive adult role models, but that's malarkey. There's a difference between unblinkingly observing reality and wallowing in degeneracy. [6 March 1998]

Director Guy Ferland, who has made one previous feature, handles this material smoothly and well, aided by the juke-box bright colors caught by cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos. And Eszterhas, who has never shown much flair for comedy - except for the mother lode of unintentional laughs in "Showgirls" - puts humor into this story of surprising warmth and bite. [24 Oct 1997]

A hard-core movie with a soft, light-hearted center and an edge like a knife.

Fans of Young's rocking excursions with Crazy Horse -- as opposed to his more polished pop, folk and country-tinged work -- should have a gas at Year of the Horse. [17 Oct 1997, p.F]

Writer-director Kouf often comes up with seemingly sure-fire ideas and then fails to develop them. "Gang Related" takes some chances. But, while trying to shift the moral center and avoid cliches, it keeps floundering and stumbling back into them. Like the accumulating corpses on Divinci and Rodriguez's beat, it seems a victim of greed, confusion, mistaken identity and a mixed-up system that turns good guys bad. [8 Oct 1997, p.1]

As an adventure movie, it makes good on its promise and its title. It carries us to the edge. [26 Sep 1997, p.A]

A movie bull's-eye: noir with an attitude, a thriller packing punches. It gives up its evil secrets with a smile.

Nenette and Boni, despite their plight, show us something small but vital about Marseilles, families, brothers, sisters, babies, pizza -- and even about the sensuous delights of kneading dough.