A Single Man's sleek surface may go against Isherwood's crisp, understated prose, yet the story's beating, wounded heart and its spiky intelligence still come through, personified in Firth's moving, eloquently internalized performance.

Lange gets deep into these numbers, the sound and spirit of Patsy seeming to stream through her face, body and hands with the musical equivalent of that hunger for living. Hominy Harmonies: Lange's energy, sensuality and intelligence pump iron into Getchell's script, which doesn't have the bite and color of his "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." [7 Oct 1985, p.88]

Cute, anthropomorphic animals, old-fashioned American rural locales and alternating doses of sentimentality and scares firmly place The Fox and the Hound in the classic Disney mold. [13 July 1981, p.81]

Luke has real movie-star power. He's enormously sympathetic, but this moving, well-crafted movie, written by Shawn Slovo, mercifully doesn't turn him into a plaster saint.

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.

It has a surprising charm.

(There's) a half dozen other deftly sketched show-biz desperadoes who make this slight but tangy sleeper such an unpretentious delight.

Ultimately, one's reservations are overwhelmed by the story's urgency; it's impossible not to be shattered.

The cruelly funny Margot at the Wedding shares many of the virtues of "Squid"--it's psychologically astute, sociologically dead on, refreshingly unformulaic--but it's a considerably tougher, less ingratiating movie. People who insist on likable, "sympathetic" protagonists may find it a bitter pill to swallow.

Flirts throughout with cliches, and some of the more melodramatic plot devices creak at the joints. Still, the potency of this pop romantic can't be denied. [24 Aug 1987]

(Katja von Garnier's) talent makes this original film exciting and moving, a raucous ride.

This is first-rate, visceral filmmaking, no question: taut, watchful, free of false histrionics, as observant of the fear in the young terrorists' eyes as the hysteria in the passenger cabin, and smart enough to know this material doesn't need to be sensationalized or sentimentalized.

Here's a surprise: of the four actors in Closer, Clive Owen is the least famous, but he delivers the most memorable performance.

The Lover's rarefied sensibility takes getting used to; once its spell is cast, you won't want to blink.

The screenplay (by Bill Bryden, Steven Phillip Smith, Stacy and James Keach) is basically an assemblage of bits and pieces that doesn't build toward any real emotional payoff. Yet The Long Riders is still the best Western in many years -- it has the laconic elegance of a ritual. [02 Jun 1980, p.87]

Red Dragon is certainly an improvement on “Hannibal.” It has something the Ridley Scott movie didn’t -- a good story -- and it will no doubt keep the franchise rolling in dough.

Day-Lewis, who imbues Jack with a ravaged, Keith Richards charisma, is once again extraordinary.

In one of his most impudently engaging movies, Lee's heroine has a lot of sex—on the telephone.

Dick Tracy is a class act: simple, stylish, sophisticated, sweet.

The Freshman has a preposterous plot even the writer's mother couldn't believe, and it strains and creaks down the runway, but when this baby gets off the ground, we're talking seriously funny.

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]

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]

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.

Powerful images hook you immediately.

Despite pitfalls of bathos and silliness, Knightriders has a startling sweetness, warmth and humor. [13 April 1981, p.82]

A touching thriller, a movie that's particularly hard to resist if there are things you never said to your own dad because you didn't have the chance, the inclination or the right ham radio.

His smart, raunchy movie offers no answers (how could it?), but it poses its questions with painfully hilarious honesty.

A fine, well-groomed entertainment, but the road it takes has already been well paved.