A hauntingly beautiful tone poem.

Mingling reality and fantasy, Forster has given us a luminous, touching meditation on life and art.

With Rachel Portman's music tugging too hard for tears, the movie sometimes comes dangerously close to being the soap opera McPherson worked so hard to disguise.

The scary fun of the movie is embodied in a brilliantly filmed and edited chase sequence in which Smith tries to escape the ubiquitous cyber-eyes that see every inch of his flight.

Poison's rich layers of juxtaposed images can't be easily digested in one viewing. The acting is uneven, the lighting sometimes dim, the tone at times deliberately awkward. But this suggestive, discordant movie takes you places you haven't been.

Not every movie -- even one based on an unproduced Kurosawa screenplay -- has to be about Life itself. Oh well, enjoy it for the thrills, and don't worry about trying to keep a straight face. [30 Dec 1985, p.62]

Director Castle has studied his Spielberg well. While the movie may be composed of borrowed parts, it remains bouncy and good-natured throughout. Guest has charm and a deft comic touch, and Stewart is lovely as his girl. [30 July 1984, p.80]

With characteristic Hollywood hypocrisy, the movie sells male chauvinism as it knocks it and ridicules winning while it uses who's-gonna-win as its central energy. [14 Jul 1975, p.77]

Almost certainly Joplin's friends, associates and many of her old fans will accuse The Rose of distortion, sentimentality, vulgarization andother crimes. They will not be entirely wrong, and yet Mark Rydell's film has a certain coarse, splashy integrity. And it has a remarkable, going-all-the-way performance by Bette Midler in her first movie. [12 Nov 1979, p.107]

Bizarre, edgy and haunting tale.

Mazursky's satiric edge has always been leavened with heart. But now that his edge is gone he's wearing his heart on his sleeve and his dramaturgy has gone flabby. [16 Apr 1984, p.93]

The film delivers the warm fuzzies without apology, and you find yourself giving in.

Ryder, Hawke, Stiller and Garofalo turn these paradigms into wonderfully tasty characters. Written with verve and played with grace, Reality Bites is too smart to pass itself off as a definitive statement, but it gets the details delightfully right.

It pushes the audience's buttons with Pavlovian finesse, manufacturing industrial-strength adrenaline. First-time director Frank Marshall has long been Steven Spielberg's producer, and he's learned the master's lessons well.

A return to form after the flat "Life Aquatic," Darjeeling has a lightweight, coloring-book charm that deepens and darkens after these odd, privileged ducks are thrown off the train.

As Good as It Gets works: by the end you'll no doubt be won over by its cranky hero. But for those of us who cherish the quirkily unformulaic Brooks of old, it's a tainted victory.

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

The most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It's a mess, but one worth fighting about.

True Stories is David Byrne's funny, worried, loving celebration of a disoriented America. [27 Oct 1986, p.103]

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.

Violence belongs in Dracula - the problem is simply that Badham is not good at it. Virtually every big action scene is confusingly staged and clumsily edited. It is particularly sad to report that Olivier is terribly misused. [23 Jul 1979, p.70]

This is the most personal, deeply felt film from the gifted director of "Under the Sand" and "Swimming Pool." Ozon leaches his melodrama of all sentimentality, and moves us all the more.

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

World Trade Center celebrates the ties that bind us, the bonds that keep us going, the goodness that stands as a rebuke to the horror of that day. Perhaps, in the future, the times will call for more challenging, or polemical, or subversive visions. Right now, it feels like the 9/11 movie we need.

Hughes may deserve more plaudits as a social worker than a filmmaker, but you have to admit his hokey situation plays. The reason is the five terrific young actors, who bring more conviction to these parts than they perhaps deserve.

With a little more trust in its characters, Innerspace could have been a truly memorable comedy. Short comes into his own as a screen funnyman, and Quaid works salty miracles within his physically confined role. But when it's over it's a relief, like climbing off a roller coaster. The best comedies leave you wanting more; Innerspace leaves you wanting less. [13 July 1987, p.60]

Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern and Nicolas Cage are three attractive, gifted young actors whose combined talent, if properly used, could set a movie ablaze. Nothing of the sort happens in Racing With the Moon, a movie that wants badly to be taken as tender and understated when in fact it's merely dull and trite. [02 Apr 1984, p.85]

A smooth mixture of satire and sentiment that owes an obvious debt to "The Apartment," not to mention "Jerry Maguire."