Armageddon is as irresistible as it's indefensible.

Quest for Fire is diverting and well made, and kids should love it. Chong is delightful as the first feminist heroine. And as bloody and brutish as the fights are, the film is resoundingly sweet-natured at heart. [15 Feb 1982, p.61]

Saturated with a passion for jazz, "Round Midnight" plays upon the heart as dextrously as Gordon's huge, eloquent hands coax music from the instrument he calls Lady Sweets. [20 Oct 1986, p.78]

A one-of- a-kind horror movie: hilarious, a little scary and strangely poignant. Campbell’s cranky, valiant, sad-sack King is a soulfully funny creation.

The first-time writer-director, Englishman Richard Kwietniowski, has adapted Gilbert Adair's novel with wit, economy and a delicate understanding that the funniest comedies are played with dead seriousness.

The women in this smart, highly entertaining comedy don't pack guns, but relations between the sexes are such that a well-placed knee in the groin can come in handy.

Miller's strength, and his weakness, has always been his tendency to see things in black and white, which is what makes "The Crucible" moving, and also suspect. I recommend Hytner's movie highly, but a part of me resists a work that makes the audience feel as noble in our moral certainty as the characters it invites us to deplore. Some part of its power seems borrowed from the thing it hates.

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.

Mann, the executive producer of "Miami Vice," can be too stylish for his own good, but the movie holds the viewer all the way to the predictably explosive end. [25 Aug 1986, p.63]

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

With Saraband, the great writer-director has stepped back into the ring for one last epic wrestle with his demons. There is, as always, no easy outcome. But no one ever fought for higher emotional and spiritual stakes.

The movie crackles with the serio-comic tension of thin-skinned New Yorkers thrown together in a crisis.

Like the march itself--which is only briefly glimpsed--Get On the Bus' is conceived as a challenge to black men to take accountability for their lives. A sermon wrapped in a road movie, at its best it can stir the soul.

While the elements in this coming-of-age saga may seem familiar, Eszterhas brings a fresh, immigrant's-eye perspective to his tale.

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

The plot is predictable, but the frights are real.

Jaws is a grisly film, often ugly as sin, which achieves precisely what it set out to accomplish - scare the hell out of you. As such, it's destined to become a classic the way all truly terrifying movies, good or bad, become classics of a kind. [23 June 1975, p.54]

Narnia, brightly lit and kid-friendly, has an appealingly old-fashioned feel to it. Adamson, codirector of "Shrek," wisely doesn't try to hip-ify the tale, leaving its curious blend of medieval pageantry, Christian fable and children's bedtime story intact.

A highly entertaining movie in a genre that is often as stiff as the Lady Gibson's boning.

A cliffhanger with no real ending. When the lights come up, think of it as the start of a six-month intermission. For better and worse, Reloaded leaves you hungry for more.

New York City has never looked so slick and shallow as it does in Hamlet, an innovative, contemporary adaptation.

Slick, gaudily suave guilty pleasure of a movie.

The rage and sadness behind this film -- the first from Afghanistan since the Taliban's fall -- is matched by its artistry.

Downey and Favreau give the movie a quirky flavor it can call its own. For that we can be grateful.

Robertson, the former rock star, is a natural screen presence who's learning how to act; Busey is a sophisticated young actor who makes everything look natural. Best of all is Jodie Foster as a teen-age runaway who joins the carnival. Now 17, she has the wise but innocent smile of a kid Mona Lisa and an irresistible acting style that combines tough realism and pure poetry. [23 May 1980, p.75]

This is not exactly standard children's fare, but kids (and their parents) should be smitten by its wit and wisdom.

Greenaway uses the screen rather like the calligraphers of the story use the body so that the film becomes a kind of visual "pillow book;" a multi-layered series of inscriptions and reflections with almost hypnotic power.

Using shadows and strikingly designed sounds, Pellington skillfully creates an atmosphere of otherworldly, invisible menace. Gere and Linney, both solid, dance around the edges of a romance.