The film suffers dearly because of the two underwritten, emotionally unavailable characters at the film's center and when all is revealed at an amateur dance contest, the music — and the modicum of tension the movie has created — dies.

Luhrmann has raised the level of his game, deconstructing the Hollywood musical -- a genre all but left for dead -- and reassembling it with a potency that hasn’t been seen since “Cabaret.”

The Border has the air of a project marred by studio compromises -marred but not broken. Warts and all, it has more passion, texture and bite than anything Richardson has done in a long while. [01 Feb 1982, p.72]

It's filled with Mann's signature macho verisimilitude, but essentially it's the stuff of what, in saner fiscal times, would have been a B movie. Miami Vice delivers the thrills, atmosphere and romance it promises, but it doesn't resonate like major Mann.

She's (Zellweger) so disarming and so deeply Bridget -- gliding between mortifying slapstick and pathos -- that she's entirely won you over by the time the credits have rolled. The opening credits.

Ferrell is a hoot. So is much of this witty holiday family entertainment, which, up until the end, when the “true spirit of Christmas” must be reaffirmed, happily favors slapstick over treacle.

Cobb is a refreshingly spiky antidote to Cataclysm all the Hollywood paeans to the suffering glory of the game. Ty Cobb approached baseball as he approached life: take no prisoners and leave scorched earth behind you. His greatness and his monstrosity can't be untangled. Cobb allows us to honor his achievements, but with no false illusions. It puts the ball in our hands: if this is an American hero, we need to figure out why. [12 Dec 1994, p.72]

A lightly entertaining, though not hilarious, film parody of comic book heroes.

Frankie & Johnny is a hard movie to dislike. Marshall and McNally have a real fondness for their characters and a deep trunkful of showbiz savvy. The playwright's delicious one-liners detonate with precision timing. The supporting characters, expertly played, have the kind of instant familiarity of regulars on a favorite TV sitcom. [14 Oct 1991, p.68]

The Chosen is slowly absorbing and ultimately powerful, because it takes the time to reveal its characters in all their quirky complexity. [27 May 1982, p.100]

Visually, the Bluth effort is disappointingly drab and murky, and the story line may prove too thin to keep the little natives from restlessness. [28 Nov 1988, p.87]

Moment by moment, Sea of Love holds you in a tight grip. It's a stylish diversion, though it never gets much below its self-consciously "hot" surface. [18 Sep 1989, p.81]

I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.

Penn and McGuane have made an intelligent, entertaining Western, nicely balanced between the protagonists and the well-woven, colorful tapestry in which they're placed. [24 May 1976, p.103]

Hugo's themes may be timeless, but in this version the viewer is all too aware of the passing time. [04 May 1998, p.81]

All the ingredients for a classic doomed-by-overnight-success movie can be found in the trajectory of Jean Michel Basquiat's short, sad life.

It powerfully manipulates our emotions of outrage and revenge but tends to sacrifice human subtlety for polemics. It leaves the thin aftertaste of a TV movie. It doesn't help that McGillis give a dull, leaden performance, rendering her side of the story more perfunctory than it needed to be. Foster must carry the show alone; she seems to compact a lifetime of hard knocks into this furious, touching performance. [24 Oct 1988, p.74]

Shelton's strength is character, streetwise wit and funky, lived-in sexuality. Snipes, one of our most versatile young actors, gets to demonstrate his wonderful comic chops, and Harrelson, whose goofiness is part of his scam, partners him beautifully.

It doesn't try to knock your socks off. But if quiet integrity and grave charm count for anything, Brest has made an important debut. [14 Jan 1980, p.86]

The considerable virtues of THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN reflect the temperament of its author and star, Alan Alda. Decency, dependability, cozy sexuality: these are the qualities Alda projects as the star of TV's "M*A*S*H," and they are the underpinings of this intelligent, beautifully acted cautionary tale about the conflict between the siren call of success and the responsibilities of a private life. [27 Aug 1979, p.62]

Columbus's Harry Potter has many delights, but the magical alchemy that the book seemed to achieve so effortlessly eludes it.

In every detail - the superb soundtrack, the rich cinematography, the dinstinctively edgy editing - Rain Man reveals itself as a movie made with care, smarts, and a refreshing refusal to settle for the unexpected. [19 Dec 1988]

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

Peter Sellers's marvelously inept French Inspector Clouseau takes his fifth bow in Revenge of the Pink Panther - and you can't help loving it. Sellers and writer-director Blake Edwards clearly have no interest in tampering with their pat, profitable formula. They give us what we have come to expect from the series: a slapstick farce with raucous sight gags, wild chases and crass jokes that must be inspired by Playboy cartoons. [24 July 1978, p.59]

Shampoo achieves a fine comic distance by setting itself so specifically in the past, but it doesn't - to its credit - try to get you, in the present, off the hook. [10 Feb 1975, p.51]

The jaggedness will put many people off, which is a shame, because this is a rewarding film that asks only that you stay alert and use your senses. [15 Mar 1976, p.89]

Foxes is a funny, rueful, sexy little movie about coming of age in a junk-food culture. [10 Mar 1980, p.88]

It's the casting of Iraq vet and non-professional Jake McLaughlin as Specialist Bonner, who fought alongside Deerfield's son in Iraq, that strikes a deeper emotional chord. His scenes with Jones, fraught with a complicated mix of bitterness, concern and guilt, are the best things in the movie.