Long for an animated feature and too demanding for very young children, but it's also filled with delights.

Shooting with a respectful remove that captures an intimacy by sheer doggedness, Finkiel creates a rich atmosphere by simply looking, listening and peering past the surfaces.

Though it seems long and its pace occasionally lags, it certainly struck me as a well-mounted, gloriously eye-filling and often exhilarating entertainment that brings back some of the delicious excitement of the great movie musicals.

Forget "Raising Helen" and "The Notebook," this is the movie summer's most touching young romance.

Istanbul-born director Ferzan Ozpetek has outdone himself with this wise and ruminative mystery about memory, unfulfillment and yearning.

John Cameron Mitchell credits Plato as the inspiration for his rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Now Mitchell has turned his play into a raucous, touching celebration of a film.

Like all great film noir, however, the real delight of this film is in its mood and atmosphere.

Most political films involving children are vicious or sentimental. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, set in 1970 when Brazil was under the military dictatorship of General Emilio Medici, is neither.

And the movie stands as a fitting memorial to River Phoenix, whose performance lingered in my mind for days after seeing it. [12 Nov 1993]

It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.

This is still a director's movie and the real success belongs to Redford, whose overall confidence and command as a director have never been this impressive. He gets a little extra out of every scene and every performance, and he brings the film's diverse themes and story strands together with the special touch of the master filmmaker he has clearly become. [16 Sept 1994]

A charmer of a film and a delightful piece of storytelling.

Broad and funny, its sensibility is very campy and it's out to be loved by everyone.

There's no denying the skill and flair with which director Paul Greengrass has restaged this unhappy event, creating an uncanny sense of immediacy and allowing us to be a fly on the wall at a seminal '70s tragedy.

Beautifully observed tale of high-school kids in the projects outside Paris.

This delightful piece of whimsy uses its simple premise effectively to gain and keep our attention and to remind us simply that, while this world appears ordinary, it is still unbounded by reality.

The movie's biopic aspect is multiplied by the sheer number of players who made Chess the first family of Chicago blues, R&B and rock 'n' roll...That all of them were later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame attests to their enormous influence on popular music and culture.

It is purely and fearlessly a girl-and-her-horse movie that isn't trying to be all things for all audiences.

In his first role since turning 40, Cruise displays a likable new maturity, and an unexpected willingness to look weak and foolish.

Surprise of surprises, it's a blast.

Control Room is even more effective in showing the dilemma of the people who make up Al-Jazeera. In a sense, these are "our" Arabs, in that they're Western-educated, conduct their business in English and seem to believe in the basic American principles.

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

A delight, a vigorous, vibrant romantic comedy that mines emotional desperation and frustration for all its comic potential, but never at the expense of its temperamental heroine.

There's nothing messy or unkempt about the beautifully, quietly heartbreaking story of unconditional love and emotional sacrifice.

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 makes for one of the best and most haunting of the recent Asian horror films.

Although it's often uneven and rambling, its sum conveys an unusual richness and satisfaction. While most films these days are about nothing, this film seems to be about everything that's plaguing the human spirit in a relentlessly globalizing world.

What Quinceañera does offer is charm, sensitivity and intelligence.