A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.

This community finds its balance with an easy effortlessness.

Terence Fisher directs with efficiency, manifesting a feel for atmosphere with an occasional lyrical touch, creating modern gothic horror at its best. [29 Oct 1998]

The film is thrown off balance by the weight of Norton's compassion for this troubled soul.

Altman always manages to pop up with another masterpiece -- and darned if he hasn't done it again.

Surprisingly sweet and infectious.

If you're sick of the gross-out gags and sex jokes of contemporary teen comedy, this defiant blast of idiosyncratic individuality just could be your tonic.

For 12-year-old boys, period.

The cast is uniformly non-French, and restrained to the point of rigor mortis. Dunst is the movie's strongest and weakest element. Her natural charm carries us through the scenery, at the same time her distinct Americanness rings false in every scene.

Buscemi gets a fine performance from Miller and plays his part with a murky mix of self-pity, opportunism and arrogance. A few scenes crackle with their intensity. The rest of it wallows in glib acrimony and cynicism.

A thrilling and scary ride.

As fast and exciting as it is, there's no gratuitous MTV razzle-dazzle in Where the Day Takes You. Virtually every choice made - from the shrewd selection of the music to the always-original camera set-ups to the subtly cumulative pacing of the sequences - is indispensable to the film's vision and gives evidence of the skilled hand of a born filmmaker. [11 Sep 1992]

A bare outline of the plot reads like a space-adventure thriller with end-of-the-world stakes and a hint of celestial spirituality, and the haunted spaceship twist in the third act is pure B-movie madness.

It's grim, humorless, uncompromisingly hard-edged, and marred by a handful of scenes that are clumsily staged and acted. And yet the film has an honesty and sincerity that is magnificently embodied in the always believable performance of star Plummer. [07 Nov 1992]

The Beautiful Country has an epic bearing, but a trite and troubled script makes it more a visual tirade than an engaging odyssey.

Has enough simmering beneath its sweaty, grimy and disconsolate surface to be more than just another rite-of-passage missive set in the '70s.

Somber and violent but undeniably stylish and unsettling thriller.

A frothy and deliriously enjoyable souffle.

An anti-war spectacle that uses the story of brothers divided by the 1950 civil war as a metaphor for the wounds of the split.

Jolie steals the film from nominal star McAvoy in the wild gunfight and dynamically absurd chase that kick Wanted into high gear. Her wicked moves and seductive smirk brand her immediately as a true believer who really, really loves her work.

An inspired melding of action thriller, satire and biographical drama through the looking glass of a funhouse mirror.

Who was Bettie Page? You won't find out in Mary Harron's chirpily cheery chronicle.

This nifty little addition to the Winnie the Pooh franchise boasts some nice touches.

It marks an impressive debut for first-time writer-director Mark Romanek, especially considering his background is in music video. His script is uncluttered and potent, and his direction manipulates a devastating climax that ties the photo/voyeuristic theme together very effectively.

A love letter to the state of Montana and a landscape that is biblical in its desolation and splendor.

Where other documentarians look for a charismatic personality to enliven their films, Berlin and Fab focus on the community as a whole.

For all its good performances and family values, it's a painful movie to endure. It consists of watching this poor guy suffer one agonizing setback after another for nearly two hours, and its modest emotional payoff comes only in the final moments.

An Americanized remake of the 1983 Japanese movie, "Antarctica," which told the true story of a pack of huskies that somehow managed to survive a brutal winter by themselves at Japan's East Antarctica station in 1957.