Whether you regard her as a symptom or a cure for a culture still locked in its eternal battle between the puritanical and the prurient, [Madonna's] out there at the barricades. In Truth or Dare, she's at her button-pushing best.

Perversely, it is a reverence for langauge - the most exciting aspect of Chandler's novels - that does the movie in. With a face like an old catcher's mitt, a beat-up bulk anesthetized by booze, Mitchum as Marlowe doesn't have to tell us a thing about himself. But tell us he does - in gumshoe-ese that echoes Chandler's language without its hallucinatory sparkle. [18 Aug 1975, p.73]

Gillespie’s movie walks a delicate line through a minefield of potential bad taste. Directed with patient, low-key sensitivity, it never goes for a cheap laugh at its protagonist’s expense.

I might buy Babel if it had any real interest in its characters, but it's too busy moving them around its mechanistic chessboard to explore any nuances or depths.

Hilarious, affectionate spoof.

Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber.

[De Palma] is a superb visual artist, but more important, his visual patterns express the moral dislocations of a troubled society. In Body Double, De Palma has never been more perversely brilliant in his tracking of the pervasive lust -- for sex, for money, for power -- that floats through our culture like some poisoned aerosol of desire. [29 Oct 1984, p.134]

Some of this is mildly amusing, but most of it is thumpingly obvious. [01 Oct 1979, p.77]

As a history lesson (Depression 101), Cinderella Man feels a bit secondhand. As a true-grit tale of redemption, however, it lands one solid body punch after another.

Eating Raoul is only one of the many outrageous things that Paul and Mary Bland do in this outrageous black comedy that's almost certain to be the up-from-underground movie of the year. [11 Oct 1982, p.103]

Creepily beautiful, acted with relish, Barton Fink is a savagely original work. It lodges in your head like a hatchet. [26 Aug 1991]

There are inspired moments in this edgy, unstable comedy.

What makes The In-Laws so engaging is not simply the escalating madness of Andrew Bergman's story (such whimsy could easily grow tiresome), but the deadpan counterpoint supplied by the two stars, who navigate their way through mounting disasters with an air of hilariously unjustified rationality. Bergman's script was tailor-made for Falk and Arkin, and they make the most of it. [02 Jul 1979, p.68]

If the film has a problem, it's that the Farrelly brothers, co-writers and directors, seem content to bunt for long stretches between home runs.

Gremlins 2 has its horror-movie side, but the grisly is definitely subordinate to the gags. Only a snob could resist such a generous level of lunacy.

If some nagging sense of anachronism, a bit too much Freudian Vienna in his postmodern New York, prevents Eyes Wide Shut from being at the top of his list, Kubrick's 13th and last film is his most humane.

Director Neil Jordan includes some graphic and grisly maninto-wolf transformations (done better in An American Werewolf in London), but his ambitious fantasy never really works up a good fright. [06 May 1985, p.73]

A vital entertainment that struts confidently between comedy and drama.

Arthur is not the best comedy of the season, which is a pity because it has the best comic team--Dudley Moore as a childish, perpetually soused millionaire named Arthur Bach and John Gielgud as his snobbish, reprimanding and adoring valet, Hobson. [27 July 1981, p.75]

The Coens abhor sentimentality, but behind the comic-book grotesqueries there's a disarming sweetness. Like "Blood Simple," this wild-card comedy knows where it's headed every inch of the way. It's a hoot and a half. [16 March 1987, p.73]

Slacker is a very funny, oddly touching, weirdly appealing look at the young (and not so young) people who live (sort of) in the nooks and crannies of this college town. [22 July 1991, p.57]

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

Thanks to Ejiofor's wonderful performance--his easy, commanding body language wordlessly convinces you of his character's nobility--and Mamet's knowing take on the arcane world of Brazilian jiujitsu, Redbelt never loses its muscular hold on your attention.

Brilliant, but shallow.

Central America has become a kind of hell on earth, and "Salvador" scorches us with this infernal truth. [17 March 1986, p.81]

What Eastwood and Streep have done is to bring a semblance of emotional reality to the story.

Brims with youthful exhuberance, it just needs to cut to the quick a little quicker.

The storytelling is cheesy, but action fans won't want to miss the debut of the Next Big Thing in martial arts.