As much as I enjoyed its cheap thrills and its exquisite craft, Dressed to Kill left me wanting something more from De Palma.He has begun to borrow from himself -- one crucial twist is lifted shamelessly from "Carrie" -- and his jokey disregard for psychological plausibility (most evident in his disastrous "Obsession") is beginning to seem just lazy. It may seem unfair to ask for more depth from De Palma when his surfaces give so much pleasure, but from a director this prodigiously talented one expects miracles. Dressed to Kill takes his series of Hitchcockian homages about as far as they can go. It's exhilarating dead-end moviemaking, and one eagerly awaits his next move. [4 Aug 1980, p.61]

Townsend explodes the industry's tunnel vision in a series of skits, the best of which are explosively funny. His vision of the Black Acting School, run by white instructors ("You, too, can learn to walk black"), captures the movie's message in a raucous nutshell. He also gives us a memorable black street version of a Siskel-Ebert-type critic show called "Sneakin' in the Movies." This supercheapo flick ($ 100,000) is a hit-or-miss affair, but it comes as a tonic: no one's made this movie before. [6 Apr 1987, p.64]

The dedication of the Canadian team strains belief at times, and for good reason.

This delightful film, with its surprising depth charges of emotion, has the feel of a movie that's going to lodge itself in the public's affections for a long time to come.

It is, first and foremost, a visual delight, a Victorian picture book come to life, from its brief prologue in India through its darkly enchanted recreation of Misselthwaite Manor on the Yorkshire moors.

Like many of Winterbottom's movies, it falls a step short of its full potential. Its tact is both its strength and its weakness. The climax feels rushed: it's the rare movie these days that feels too short.

The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.

It's a deliciously outrageous premise, and director Barry Levinson and writers David Mamet and Hilary Henkin know just how to spin it, savaging Washington and Hollywood with merciless wit. It's a hoot.

It's gory stuff, but it's also a visually arresting blitzkrieg with action so bare-knuckled you'll leave the theater spitting out teeth.

A wonderfully taut cat-and-mouse thriller.

Every bit as tasteless, irreverent, silly and smart as the Comedy Central cartoon that catapulted creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone into the Hollywood catbird seat.

This moving, engrossing work shows that Sayles is as valuable a chronicler of our past as he is of our present. [14 Sep 1987, p.82]

Roxanne is a charmer. Sweet-spririted, relaxed, it's a sun-dappled romantic comedy that doesn't scream Laugh! [22 June 1987, p.73]

Penn's eye for landscapes is stunning, and his affection for outsider lifestyles is tangible. Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing. The ideal casting would have been the young Sean Penn.

This vintage movie is just another reminder that when it comes to movie romance, there's nothing more satisfying than a broken heart. [20 Jun 2002]

Manages to maintain its humor and energy until the final scene.

With honesty, charm and an uncanny sympathy for all its characters, the film takes us deep inside the awkward and exhilarating experience of first love.

Judged purely as an adventure story, it delivers enough thrills and violence to keep the action crowd engrossed. It also has enough social resonance to take us right back into those dark; schizophrenic years. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

Brilliantly strange, often funny and ultimately heartbreaking film.

There’s not a whisper of melodrama or sentimentality in the way Moretti tells his tale, guiding us through the stages of grief with calm, devastating lucidity.

At its tense, funny/melancholy best it hits notes other movies don't even attempt. It was probably folly to film this unfilmable book in the first place. But what an honorable, fascinating folly. [15 Feb 1988, p.71]

Director Sam Raimi, working from David Koepp's screenplay, wisely anchors his big action-adventure flick on Maguire's modest but beguiling persona.

Although the film is clumsy and overheated at times, it is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful films of the year. Set in turn-of-the-century London and Venice, its rich colors and opulent textures will linger long after the plot has been forgotten.

As anthropology, it's fascinating, and everything about the production is first class. But the human drama at the heart of this movie is stillborn.

Director Jay Roach ("Austin Powers") has a keen sense of comic timing, and the script keeps finding clever new ways to mortify our poor hero.

With an arsenal of cool f/x at their disposal, the Wachowskis have come up with a dizzyingly enjoyable junk movie that has just enough on its mind to keep the pleasure from being a guilty one.

To blends sentimentality, shoot-outs and cool humor into a bewitchingly entertaining brew.

Thanks to the superb cast and Mottola's deft touch, this modest-looking comedy proves quite memorable.

Depp is subtly winning as a man-child oblivious to his own pent-up rage. But the performance that will take your breath away is DiCaprio's. A lot of actors have taken flashy stabs at playing retarded characters and no one, old or young, has ever done it better. He's exasperatingly, heartbreakingly real. This 19-year-old, who shone earlier this year in "This Boy's Life," seems to have a bottomless talent.

As he did in “The English Patient,” Minghella artfully weds movie-movie romanticism with a dark historical vision. The man knows how to cast a spell.

Junky, freaky, sadistic, masochistic, Mad Max has a perverse intelligence revving inside its pop exterior. It's a crazy collide-o-scope, a gear-stripping vision of human destiny careening toward a cosmic junkyard. [21 July 1980, p.71]

The movie itself, like these guys, is defiantly old school -- confident, relaxed, professional.

It’s too bad that at the very end L.I.E. settles for an easy, melodramatic resolution; it flies in the face of everything that makes this perceptive, original movie so special.

Smart, informative and lively polemic.

As eye-popping as anything Pixar has done. But Cars inspires more admiration than elation. It dazzles even as it disappoints. This time around, John Lasseter and his codirector, the late Joe Ranft, seem more interested in dispensing Life Lessons than showing us a roaring good time.

Comic electricity.

Hunter never exploits the material for cheap thrills -- his camera keeps a sober, clear eyed detachment. Detail by appalling detail, he creates a vivid, stunted world where banality and horror intermingle. "I cried when that guy died in Brian's Song," one of the girls says. "You'd figure I'd at least be able to cry for someone I hung around with." Some may gag on this daring, disturbing movie; few will be able to shake it off. [01 June 1987, p.69]

It's hobbled by the too-familiar conventions of the musical biopic: with so many chapters of Charles's life to cover, Hackford's movie never finds a rhythm, a groove, to settle into. It wins its battles without winning the war.

The heart of the movie is in the Rocky-Rusty relationship, and as long as Bogdanovich sticks with Cher and Stoltz, his film is genuinely moving and largely free of cant. Far more problematic is the portrait of the biker gang who, for all their rowdiness, are about as threatening as Santa's elves. [04 Mar 1985, p.74]

Jumpy and ironic, Downey is a quicksilver delight and Kilmer is funny as the gay Perry. But Black’s inventive, self-conscious script--heavy on voice-over narration--can be too clever for its own good. The movie is baroque fun, but exhausting.

Silver gets rich Delancey detail and savory acting from a charming cast, especially Irving and Riegert, whose subtle, funny-sad performance is a small miracle of cliche-avoidance. But finally "Crossing Delancey" confuses charm with the cutes. [05 Sep 1988, p.61A]

Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy are both in peak form.

Malick's magnificent, frustrating epic mixes fact and legend to conjure up a reverie about Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), her love for Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell) and her crossing from one culture to another.

Writer-director Ray has a no-fuss style that is quietly, thoroughly gripping.

While the first half showcases an impressive new directorial talent, the last two quarters fail to score.

A finely polished, stirring court-martial drama that retells the true story of three Aussie soldiers who are put on trial for the murder of Boer prisoners of war and condemned to death by the British, who hypocritically deny that they were acting on Kitchener's orders. [15 Sep 1980, p.104]

A wicked delight. Adapted by playwright Patrick Marber from Zoe Heller's acclaimed novel, it's at once a comedy of cluelessness and class, a melodrama of two women in the grips of wildly inappropriate obsessions, and a "Fatal Attraction"-style thriller.

The summer's most compelling movie about teenagers.

A rancidly hilarious slice of Americana. [01 Jun 1981, p.91]

Self-conscious to the point of suffocation.

An offbeat, engaging little movie about the mad mad world of bodybuilders. [24 Jan 1977, p.61]

Cooley High is a less artfully arranged film than American Graffiti. But it has the same cultural exactness - without the smug assumption of shared nostalgia. It is a smart, very affecting movie. [21 July 1975, p.64]

The performance is a toure de force: Baldwin manages to make Junior very funny without sacrificing the character's scary, unpredictable edge. Quirkiness, not square-jawed heroism, seems to bring out the best in Baldwin,confirming Jonathan Demme's observation that "he's not a victim of his handsomeness." [23 Apr 1990, p.66]

If history is a battlefield, JFK has to be seen as a bold attempt to seize the turf for future debate. It is also "just" a movie, and one that for three hours and eight minutes of dense, almost dizzying detail, is capable of holding the audience rapt in its grip. [23 Dec 1991, p.50]

Prick Up Your Ears is a bold piece of work -- satiric, melancholy, free of cant. It's a post-Orton movie in every sense: without his work at the theatrical barricades 20 years ago a movie like this wouldn't have been possible. [20 Apr 1987, p.89]

Slick, gaudily suave guilty pleasure of a movie.

An actor of great integrity, Scheider at last makes the powerful impression we've been waiting for; he plays Joe with wonderfully delicate and telling detail. You see all the lusts and weaknesses, but you see also an underlying sweetness, a kind of forlorn and desperate innocence that makes something deeply human out of good, bad, weakness, strength, triumph, defeat and all that jazz. [24 Dec 1979, p.78]

The comedy gets better, and more unpredictable, as it goes, and so do the performances.

Seabiscuit may be too airbrushed for its own good, but in the end nothing can stop this story from putting a lump in your throat.

Lurid, illogical and utterly off-the-wall, this funny-scary exercise in low-budget schlock is a marvelous orgy of cheap thrills, including a supernaturally sinister mortuary, a hideously wriggling severed finger, one furry flying creature, dwarfs from the Undead, and the goriest - indeed the only - blood-sucking flying steel ball in movie history. [16 April 1979, p.86]

This Superman, which infuses its action with poetry, soars as a love story filled with epic yearnings, thwarted desires and breathtaking imagery.

Presumed Innocent is a slow fuse of a movie. It never quite explodes with the resonance Pakula intends. It tries too hard to be important. But the story it tells is a good one, and once it's got its hooks in you, there's no turning away. [30 July 1990, p.56]

Using an almost seamless combination of documentary and fictional footage, Winterbottom provides a vivid picture of life during wartime -- so vivid in fact that it is often difficult to watch.

The first major film dealing with photojournalism, Under Fire expertly uses the American movies' conventions of excitement and romance to put into sharp focus tough questions of truth, ethics, politics and ultimately consciousness itself. [24 Oct 1983, p.124]

The movie is, from start to finish, a hoot... Both a savvy satire of smalltown boosterism and an affectionate salute to the performing spirit. [10 Feb 1987, p.66]

Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait is the most delightful movie the year has offered. Funny, fantastical, fast on its feet, this romantic fantasy comes closer than any film of the past decade to capturing the ingenious, madcap spirit of '30s comedies. [03 July 1978, p.90]

It's hands down the funniest of the year, both pushing the boundaries of bad taste and exploring how those boundaries keep shifting.

Like Renoir, Mazursky has warm affection for his supermaterialists and his tattered tramp. The joke and wisdom of this movie is that they need each other. Joke and wisdom don't always interlock perfectly, but the movie has more than its share of savvy comedy and sharp social perception. [03 Feb 1986, p.68]

Lehmann isn't in perfect control - the movie gets off to a flat-footed start, and the conclusion is chaotic - but when Heathers hits its stride, it reaches wild and original comic heights. [2 April 1989]

The best movie to date from England's satirical sextet. [04 Apr 1983, p.74]

Gangs is a dream project Scorsese has wanted to make for 30 years. You have to honor its mad ambition. But sadly, it feels like a dream too long deferred.

Vertical Ray slows our rhythms and heightens our senses: it's a shimmering, tactile experience.

This German movie, with its lush cinematography and lovely score, has the sturdiness of an old-fashioned Hollywood epic. What isn’t Hollywood is Link’s refusal to tell the audience how to feel at every moment.

Too facile to resonate deeply. Shouldn't a movie celebrating Nash give you some idea what his mathematical work is about? Fishier still is the suggestion that the cure for paranoid schizophrenia is love.

It succeeds in bringing O'Barr's comic-book vision to life, but there's little else going on behind the graphic razzle-dazzle and the moody, ominous soundtrack.

The Stepfather has its thin, B-movie stretches, but it's a smart B movie, with a sly satirical edge. And when the bottom falls out of Jerry's dream, watch out: the movie gets downright hair-raising. [27 Feb 1987, p.79]

Splendiferous.

Full of bravura moments and high-wire performances.

More sweet than savage, this amiable farce creates laughs with old-pro efficiency.

The nutty thing is, by the end of this jolly, oddly compelling and genuinely suspenseful documentary, the ridiculousness of such notions seems open to genuine debate.

This Man in Black is, frankly, a bit of a wuss. As a love story, Walk the Line can seduce. As a biopic, it treads awfully familiar Overcoming Adversity turf.

Though the tale is told with crisp sangfroid and a wonderful twist, there's hardly a scene I haven't seen somewhere else.

It's the characterization of Mulan, both in voice and visuals, that makes the film a keeper.

A wonderfully quirky cast under Francis Ford Coppola's direction makes this one of the more enjoyable John Grisham movies.

Unlike many dramas of middle-class family wreckage, which tilt toward soapoperatic revelations, The Ice Storm is told from an ironic, almost meditative distance that gives the movie its paradoxical power.

Of the three, Real Genius comes tantalizingly close to being a real, and interesting, movie. If only Coolidge weren't hemmed in by the formulaic plot. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]

The storytelling seems occasionally disjointed, but more important, for all the special-effects wizardry, that touch of film magic never surfaces.

A surpassingly sweet, funny and picturesque movie.

This true story, deftly embellished by writer Jeremy Brock and directed at a bracing English trot by John Madden, is a splendid showcase for its three superb leads. [28 July, 1997, p. 69]

A perversely appealing apotheosis of cuteness. Almost inadvertently, the film becomes an ultimate comment on American innocence that can only refresh itself by regression. The unseen patron saint of Parker's stylish movie is not Little Caesar but Humbert Humbert. [27 Sept 1976, p.89]

Anyone who feels immune to the charisma of Elvis Presley should immediately see This Is Elvis. If you are not transfixed by his sexual aura, his liquid musical ease, his promiscuous stylistic range and his mysterious mixture of shyness and vulgarity, chances are you've been living at odds with the second half of the twentieth century. [04 May 1981, p.44]

Smith startles us with raw emotional honesty.

For sheer off-the-wall audacity, Tim Burton's demented Beetlejuice certainly demands respect, even if it's more enjoyable in concept that in execution. [4 Apr 1988, p.72]

The best movie of the last 20 years about young people in love is 1989’s.

Frothing from two mouths, they parody film noir, megaviolent thrillers, sports allegories, ravaged-war-veteran movies, existentialist Westerns, even Busby Berkeley musicals.

The first test of a horror movie comes not the morning after but in the midst of the onslaught. By these standards, Monkey Shines is a white-knuckle triumph. Romero's film has its lurid, nonsensical lapses, but it touches some deep nerves. It's as unsettling as anything he's done. [08 Aug 1988, p.66]

Tropic Thunder is the funniest movie of the summer--so funny, in fact, that you start laughing before the film itself has begun.

Everyone will be tickled pink by this sleek Mike Nichols remake.