Director Stefan Forbes interviews a slew of victims and beneficiaries of the Atwater attack machine and, in the process, gives us an even-handed portrait of a man who, as much as anybody, bears responsibility for the toxicity of high stakes political campaigning on both sides of the aisle.

This is a movie that cries out for more than the too-cool-for-school Coppola’s trademark hipster anomie. She may be too much a part of the celebrity-mongering world she portrays to do justice to its injustices.

Written and directed by Sidney Lumet, who pushes the material so hard it loses credibility and even entertainment value after a while. [27 Apr 1990, p.10]

Damon is an agile comic performer, and Soderbergh knows how to serve him up without losing sight of the ultimate seriousness behind it all.

The result is that the wonderment, with nothing serious at risk, seems lackluster.

Overall, Diggers is like an Ed Burns movie -- but with fishing gear.

True love beckons in the guise of a dingbat played by Julianne Moore and all is right with the world. As Jon’s father, a man whose lifeblood is yelling, Tony Danza is very funny. He makes you understand what his son is escaping from.

There's hardly an original shot in the picture, and the screenplay ignores all opportunities to explore the patterns of poverty and racism that contribute to mob behavior. [22 Apr 1988]

Just a few years ago, the generally felt aspiration of ethnic groups was to blend in with the majority culture. Today it's to flourish in modern society while actively remembering old-country values...Bend It Like Beckham could cement the trend.

Has its moments.

Any highfalutin interpretations of his new film only serve to camouflage what is, in essence, a scam about a scam.

King is above all a pleasure-giver. He wants to heighten the knockabout joys of unfettered high spirits.

The film basically upholds the verity of the news story while not condoning the sloppiness, and it’s worth seeing mostly for Cate Blanchett’s firebrand performance as Mapes, a battler consumed by righteousness.

While this may seem like an apologia for randy older men, it doesn't come off that way, and Cruz gives her best performance to date.

Kazi is a bundle of energy, and the film touches on an important and often-overlooked issue: The commercial pressure that is often brought to bear on rappers to be scurrilous and offensive. This project, which was produced by Bruce Willis and Queen Latifah, shows that there is another way.

In Gyllenhaal's all-out performance, it reminded me most of Judy Davis in "High Tide," another movie directed by a woman (Gillian Armstrong) about a misfit mother and her daughter. It has the same fierce honesty.

The story is dark and often violent, but it's told with a remarkable sense of visual energy and imagination.

Danes doesn't quite fit into the mindscape – she's too bland for a human star – but Cox comes of age quite convincingly, De Niro is a hoot, as is Ricky Gervais as a slimy tradesman. Pfeiffer has a field day.

Heart-pounding melodrama.

When Cohen and Ferrell are eyeing each other, you never saw a loopier pair.

Not a deep movie. It is a very honest one, though - there's not a cheap cinematic trick in sight - and it's a graceful one, energizing its small-town story with eloquent camera work and ingenious musical touches.

Like much reality TV, sections of American Teen seem patently staged, or coached, for the camera.

Bogosian's performance is one of the film's weaker links, however; he misses the full-bodied intensity his character demands.

The movie has nothing intelligent to say about post-cold-war tensions or anything else, but it's great fun to watch Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington square off in a submarine that looks like a cross between the Starship Enterprise and something you'd get in a cereal box.

Obviously a movie made by smart and talented people but sometimes you can outsmart yourself.

Nothing in this film approaches the boy's-eye view of war that, say, John Boorman achieved in "Hope and Glory," but it's an affecting, if somewhat flavorless, journey.

This doesn't mean Maelström is for everyone. It's a strange and quirky yarn, moving between deceptively calm scenes and episodes as tempestuous as its title.

Critics who come out against Kick-Ass are leaving themselves open to that worst of contemporary accusations: a failure to be cool. But pretending that Kick-Ass is just another good-time comic book blowout is the greater failure.