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.