An original, well-crafted plea that uses restraint instead of titillation to make a cautionary tale that aches with pathos and power.

Too short to tell the whole story. It is, however, a fast-paced, highly enjoyable and provocative introduction.

The film has a gorgeous, Grant Wood-ish visual style - it was photographed by Freddie Francis and designed by the late, great multi-Oscar winner Gene Callahan (to whom the film is dedicated) - and there are a smattering of effective scenes and ingratiating performances to go with it. [04 Oct 1991]

What it lacks in melodramatic punch it makes up for in unexpected shadings in the characters, predator and victim alike.

This movie seems even rougher around the edges than much of his past work. Still, it's hard to resist.

All told, Cars is a knockout.

She's foul-mouthed, trashy, a legal pit bull ... and she's wonderful.

In today's cynical cinematic climate, there's something beautiful in Miller's simple poetic justice.

Movie is so hip-swingingly infectious and leaves us with such a high that it's hard not to suspect that -- handled right -- it could well become the fall version of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

More of a leisurely paced ensemble character-study than the slam-bang traditional action gut-buster that its trailer seems to promise.

Ppaque and not hugely satisfying.

Dedicates itself to the beauty and thrill of bodies and motion and in doing so upstages Altman's cinematic conduit. The medium ultimately surpasses its messenger.

An extraordinary piece of biography.

Craig's got the stuff but the ending of this cake is soggy for its protagonist and audience.

The film is annoyingly sketchy on Thompson's early years and education, and it spends so much time on his coverage of the 1972 presidential election and his own race for sheriff of Aspen, Colo., that major aspects of his career get short shrift or go unmentioned.

It's rowdy, often tasteless and very much in the buddy-action vein of the scripts that made him famous, but in a much more comic spirit.

Ceylan has an unerring gift for camera placement, and his slow, measured scenes can be as hypnotic as they are lovely -- at times, too much so, with the characters constrained by his poetic perfection.

One terrific comedy that doesn't let up for an instant... a total hoot.

It's a richly textured, leisurely paced, visually impressionistic epic of the American past that fairly hypnotizes the viewer with its tapestry of sights, sounds and colors.

Judd Apatow brings no cleverness or wit to his one-joke situation, and he can't give it the kernel of credibility that even a low comedy needs to sustain itself for a feature length.

Though he's foggy on the specifics, Angelopoulos makes the tides of history felt through each painterly frame.

In its best moments, The Cats of Mirikitani captures both the tragedy and transcendence of his life, from the Sacramento-born, Hiroshima-raised youth who returned to the States in 1937 rather than join the Japanese Imperial Army, to the proudly self-sufficient man who struggled through New York's fierce winters until gaining recognition both as an artist and a human being.

Ripe with characters and events reflecting the psychic travails of today's young adults.

Sometimes so intimate it's embarrassing, and the messiness at falling in love at any age is disquieting.

The sharpest journalism thriller I've seen in years: an absolutely riveting drama that doesn't glorify its subject in the slightest and shrewdly says a lot of very sad things about the state of modern journalism.

Zhang is a master of detail and spectacle. There is also plenty of comedy, particularly in the scenes with linguistically challenged translators.

It's impossible to praise too highly the verve, skill and authenticity with which Spielberg brings off his alien invasion.

Uses sports as metaphor for life with rare twist.

The two women -- as well as the always marvelous Bill Nighy as Blanchett's "older" husband -- run roughshod over its third act flaws and, with their exquisitely detailed performances, make it better than it is. It's an actor's triumph.

The movie misfires: It's numbingly cold and soulless, and the zeitgeist stays far beyond its reach. But it's so visually striking you almost don't notice, its relentlessly somber mood has a certain masochistic appeal and, while hardly a career-redefining performance, Hanks is as winning as ever.

Grueling but ultimately rewarding new documentary.

This free-flowing film certainly hits the high points as it flips around its talking-head celebrity sound bites at warp speed.

It's more admirable than enjoyable, beautifully crafted and artfully unpleasant.

The story is patently implausible and unnecessarily confusing, and it works to a moral dilemma for its hero -- and a trick ending for the audience -- that resolves the action with so little satisfaction that you wish they hadn't bothered.

Its heart is in the right place and it resists the temptation to junk up the story, but Depp does nothing with his character and the movie has little of the unique wit or panache that would make it appealing to an older-than-10 audience.

What Quinceañera does offer is charm, sensitivity and intelligence.

Densely layered, demanding and beautiful, Ruiz has found the perfect venue for his passions and created the most cinematically breathtaking film of the new millennium.

It's vintage Moore: on one level the courageous act of a gutsy journalist, and, on another, a callously unfair and self-serving spectacle that makes Moore seem like a big bully, and puts his audience into the position of a vigilante mob.

All or Nothing has some appealing performances, several scenes of absolutely shattering domestic drama and an uncanny aura of gut-wrenching, documentarylike authenticity.

There are certain rare movies that speak to us solely through the power and initiative of their visuals. This is one of them, and if you're receptive to this kind of movie, and know Vermeer's work, it's an unusually satisfying, even enriching experience.

It is preachy, didactic and heavy-handed as only an Oliver Stone movie can be. And yet ... and yet... despite all this, the film has an undeniable cumulative power. [20 Dec 1991]

Non-cultists should enjoy this engaging and well-acted retread -- a film that develops its own charm as it goes along.

It's the warmth and resolve and humility of the young men that keeps us going. It may be more ennobling than introspective, but these three earn their nobility.

Something doesn't quite gel in the end.

First-time feature film director Max Farberbock has given a terrific visual style, resonance, sense of hope and power to the material.

It's not the most viscerally exhilarating racing saga or squishy animal movie ever made, but it's a terrific period piece. It's also a well-acted, engrossing and satisfying character drama that stands out like a diamond in this summer of sequels and comic-book violence.

Original, imaginative and stylish.

The film is magnificently mounted, it moves like a speeding bullet and it's so respectful of Superman traditions that even the pickiest of die-hard fans should love it. After a lapse of two decades, it revitalizes the franchise and makes it seem fresh and alive.

Captures both the spirituality and humanity of monastic life.

A moving and touching documentary.

Well-cast and sporadically gripping.

Haskell comes off as a jerk -- but Mark somehow looks even worse: not just insincere but weak, vain and vindictive.

For all its f/x pageantry, it is rather tired, as if it's the third sequel of a franchise, not the initial episode.

Its motif is self-pity, Steers displays no particular way with a scene, and, as Igby, Culkin exudes none of the charm or charisma that might keep a more general audience even vaguely interested in his bratty character.

It wears thin, but also provides some insight into how comics interact and view their craft. At the very least, it confirms all suspicions that they have way more fun than you.

There's not a vaguely sympathetic character in sight; Kureishi ultimately seems prudishly disapproving of his heroine's last gasp of sexual adventure; and what another writer might have found liberating and healing, he finds distasteful and destructive.

Salvadori's homage is a bittersweet, funny, sporadically charming and consistently entertaining love story between two "kept" people.

It's a little sloppy and full of convenient coincidences, but at its best roils with edgy character tensions.

The actor holds the stage with his warm humor and emotionally charged anecdotes.

All of Scorsese's movies deliver a mixed message, but this one is downright schizophrenic.

Works mostly off Quaid's performance.

Has difficulty reaching a resolution. In the final half-hour, the film becomes almost hysterically out of sync with its prior quiet reserve.

Elevated out of the music-documentary genre to become something of an intriguing mystery -- and one with no neat solution.

Much of the film is oddly ambiguous, as if Tran used it to explore conflicts of tradition and modernity and never came up with any answers.

Never quite escapes the Euro-centric blinders of its characters, but its engagement with their evolving sense of identity and story of empowerment and acceptance is nonetheless rousing.

It's an absorbing, progressively unsettling and ultimately very inspiring biographical reflection that, in the interest of creating its subject's internal landscape, plays some chilling tricks on its audience.

It's a tough movie with a fearless performance by Bacon and brave filmgoers will be rewarded with a bracing experience.

You can't help but root for Akeelah as she reclaims the pride in her talents and her achievements. That's an idea worth spelling out to a young audience.

The concept is clever and Johnson's brisk editing, dynamic camerawork and snazzy transitions has fun with it all. It makes for an inspired time-warped teenage film noir.

It's an immensely successful movie - and far and away the most emotionally charged, psychologically uneasy and diabolically suspenseful thriller Polanski's made since his heyday. [27 Jan 1995, p. 26]

Ghost Town reworks "Ghost" as a romantic comedy with a miserable hero who sees dead people and is really annoyed by them.

Has a certain morbid fascination, but it has no real bite, and finally seems so contrived and pointless it borders on being out-and-out exploitation.

Hilarious, near-flawless.

Nettelbeck has created a movie recipe that ladles great dollops of dessertlike joy and equally dark tragedy around her strong-willed heroine. It wouldn't work without actors capable of finding vulnerability, humanity and kindness in sometimes inaccessible characters.

The movie is entertaining, reasonably true to the facts of its subject's life and full of music.

An unpredictable, unusual, consistently engrossing drama of a kind that has almost disappeared from Hollywood.

The movie is basically a piece of fluff, not always coherently directed and almost too consistently somber for a movie that wants to be a romantic comedy. Still, it comes together with considerable emotional impact, mainly on the strength of the stars. [24 May 1991, p.14]

Autobiographical or not, the frankness and family hysteria of this rolling therapy session gets awkwardly intimate and at times tough to endure, as much for its raw candor as for its confessional contrivance. Too bad the revelations of past mistakes are more interesting than the story played out screen.

Filmmaker Pray, who is building an impressive body of documentaries on American subcultures, including the Seattle grunge scene in "Hype," graffiti artists in "Infamy" and truckers in "Big Rig," does an admirable job of allowing his subjects to represent themselves.

It's a tough, tight, no-nonsense action melodrama filled with irresistibly hard-boiled dialogue and a large cast of engagingly hard-boiled characters. All and all, it's one of the better of the many recent Hollywood remakes of classic film noir. [21 Apr 1995]

Once the story moves up north to Indianapolis, things become pat and predictable. But for its first 80 minutes, Great World of Sound hits all the right notes.

Yet, as good as it is in so many ways, there's no getting around the fact that this briefest Harry and first directed by an unknown filmmaker (David Yates) is the least substantial of the bunch.

It's a volatile subject and Abu-Assad's thoughtful thriller stokes the debate.

James Earl Jones and Richard Harris both gave heartbreaking, virtuoso performances as fathers who find a special bond in this subtle, flawlessly acted, immensely powerful new film version of Alan Paton's classic novel of South Africa. [29 Dec 1995, p. 3]

The social commentary isn't subtle, but Romero delivers the goods so effectively that many won't even notice.

Predictable but entertaining kid movie.

In Wonderland, Winterbottom has found a script worthy of his passion.

Lurches toward an offbeat honesty but it also very nearly crashes in its quirkiness.

One lousy little movie -- utterly devoid of any real originality or charm.

It's an appealing mix of an old Hollywood movie world of Upper East Side sophisticates with the character-driven spontaneity of a modern American indie, all very slight and light but deftly done.

It's a much more interesting and engrossing film than its somewhat nefarious reputation may indicate -- though, granted, elements of it are very hard to take, and it finally leaves you feeling pretty down and out.

Elegant and enjoyably disorienting.

Fails to be anything special. It makes passable preteen entertainment but comes off as clunky and heavy-handed in most of the places it should be graceful and enchanting.

Just a silly mess of a movie in which no one is trying very hard to do anything but goof off. [6 March 1998]

A sly, smart and very funny caricature of corporate politics and image culture.

At its best, The Good Girl is a refreshingly adult take on adultery, where the dark humor and offbeat fringe characters don't get in the way of the consequences or the quiet declarations of devotion slipped between the words.

The movie is a delicious, consistently hilarious screwball farce that gives Clooney his best comedy role to date and should finally, forever, lift the Coens into the wide-release movie mainstream.

At age 37, she's (Bonnaire) developed into a consummate film actress and a unique star whose enigmatic persona has never had a more exhilarating showcase.