The picture, for all its slickness and style, is empty, empty-headed and emotionally false… [It] has no more depth than "Pretty Woman" and occupies the same moral landscape. [5 Apr 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E11]

Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose.

Linklater never finds a way to sustain a drama from these characters and their situation.

Part road trip, part music lesson, follows virtuoso musician Béla Fleck on a trip through Africa to reclaim the banjo's roots. It's an entertaining journey, and director Sascha Paladino injects humor and pathos into the musical sequences.

Bogdanovich films Noises Off in long, unbroken takes. Though for the most part he doesn't give us the whole stage but moves in to follow the action more closely, the camera moves as one's eyes might, while following the play. Bogdanovich does what he has to -- he gets out of the way of Frayn's original farce. And the result of his thankless toil is a movie that doesn't quite feel like a movie, and that's not quite as good as the play, but that's pretty good anyway. [20 March 1992, p.D5]

This isn’t just a good horror film. It’s a good film, which just happens to fall in the horror genre.

One can admire it, but it's hard to get caught up in it.

Though the film seems less like a theatrical release and more like something that might play on an obscure PBS station at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, it's reasonably interesting as a personality study.

A fast-moving Congolese crime thriller loaded with graphic sex and violence - basically an exploitation picture. But it's hard to surrender to the gritty flow because the story is stitched together from such crushingly familiar bits.

For those willing to overlook its few slips into heavy-handedness, Corpo Celeste tells a compelling story of a 12-year-old girl thrust into a strange new world.

Vengeance is unexpected and, in the best way, weird. In his first film as a writer-director, B.J. Novak takes familiar elements, but puts them together in ways that are original and unexpected. Even when the plot turns go off the deep end, it’s impossible not to appreciate Novak’s audacity.

Fortunately, the last 30 to 40 minutes of “The Housemaid” are so propulsive and unexpected that it makes up for what the middle lacks.

Wickedly funny.

The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.

This movie doesn't work unless the central relationship between Atafeh and Shireen works. It does, beautifully; whether together in a nightclub or alone in a bedroom, Boosheri and Kazemy find a delicacy and sensitivity that reinforces, not diminishes, their strength.

The film is kindly and well-intended, but it’s also sentimental and lifeless. Swan Song is a rare movie without a single good scene.

What this film desperately needed was another element in the script, something besides love and sex. Maybe something about art, something that put the lovers on the same team and back into those appealing bohemian clubs. As it stands, love jones is a smart setting in search of a story.

Forget the sometimes stilted acting. Forget the occasional scenes that are borderline cliched. Instead, focus on the message and the raw emotion.

By the end A.I. exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg.

Bloody good.

The film ends up landing in a confused middle category. It's neither a coherent, discrete work nor a zany tribute to the late actor.

If anything is better about the sequel than the original, it's Leslie Nielsen, as deadpan as ever, but looking more relaxed than before, mugging and playing up his jokes with the subtlety and timing of an accomplished comedian -- which, at this point, I suppose he is. [28 June 1991, p.F1]

Ratanaruang brings us close to Tum's personality, and his rigorous filming style carefully layers the plot while allowing us to contemplate the nature of greed and the cost of simply existing.

Although it takes something of a slog to get there, this thriller finally comes through where it counts.

Truth be told, the latest Darren Aronofsky film, which Oakland native Charlie Huston adapted from his own novel, is well made and contains terrific performances. It is a true original. But it’s also depressingly soul-killing and nihilistic, with a plot twist that fairly deep-sixes it for this critic.

The film is full of low-key but telling observations, mostly about Gianni's plight but also about modern life in general.

The film's hymn of praise quickly grows cloying, thanks partly to a relentless musical soundtrack.

Although nothing really surprising happens (the film has no real plot twists), it’s natural and unforced, like real life. One can imagine that most pregnancies unfold like these, and Swanberg has crafted a universal story observed through small details.