It's still primarily a showcase and offbeat star vehicle for Moore. It's a bravura role and she brings it off with a chilling malevolence and a strange, disjointed vulnerability that almost, but not quite, makes her sympathetic.

The film walks a fine line between contempt for Polanski's crimes and sympathy for his trials and his screwed-up psyche, and it manages both while showing us why he fled the U.S. rather than face the corrupted judicial circus.

With adventurous forays into questionable neighborhoods and stimulating tours through street markets, "Crossing the Bridge" is about the city as much as its music.

It's a well-made little inspirational drama featuring both a familiar older star (James Garner) and a new one (Abigail Breslin).

It's often surprisingly clever, dripping with respect for its model, and done with considerable wit and style.

An entertaining slice-of-life documentary that gets ever more fascinating as it moves along.

A comedy of miscommunication that blends the humanism of Jean Renoir, the magic of Jean Cocteau and the absurdism of Eugene Ionesco.

John C. Reilly, with his homely face and mop of curly hair, has been the movies' second banana of choice since his debut in 1989's "Casualties o War." In the comedy, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," he finally gets a starring role and he rises to the challenge.

Low-key but smart entertainment. Its modesty is one of its biggest virtues. [30 Apr 1993]

The script is full of brassy lines.

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

Murders aside, Mac and Pat are the most fun-loving Shakespearean couple to hit the screen, and Morrissette's answer to Lady Macbeth's damned spot is brilliant.

The humor is sweet-spirited, the dialogue (all improvised by the cast) is acerbic and witty, the celebration of unbridled tackiness is often hilarious.

A documentary that is half confessional memoir.

Stiller is enjoyably long-suffering, and De Niro convinces us that Attila the Hun would make a preferable father-in-law.

It's a surprisingly happy film, almost completely devoid of bitterness or cynicism.

Don't expect scary from this trilogy of short horror films from a trio of Asia's most interesting directors, which are not so much extreme as twisted.

Whether or not all its subtleties come through or not, the movie is enjoyable solely on the level of its performances. There is not a weak link in the chain. [28 Aug 1992]

Donovan makes us totally believe the character and his predicament, co-star Mary-Louise Parker is especially witty and winning as the film's screenwriter.

Grant's timing is flawless, his delivery is perfection, and he once again demonstrates himself to be the movies' unrivaled master of sophisticated verbal comedy.

With very few natural gifts, Bingenheimer managed to spend his life doing something he loved among people he worshipped. At the end of the game, very few people can make such a claim.

Driving Lessons was written by director Jeremy Brock as a vehicle for Grint and Walters, who appeared together in the Harry Potter movies. They make a terrific screen couple. Walters is alternately zany and poignant, with Grint the perfect foil, a bemused, confused innocent who only wants to do good.

It's no earthshaker, but the indie film is refreshingly different from the current movie norm, it's won more than 15 awards on the festival circuit, and war-movie aficionados will find it well worth the journey.

Truth or Dare (the title comes from a game she plays in the final scenes) is actually most revealing when it is not trying to be. It gives us a good sense of the pressured life of a big concert tour, as well as how demanding and unbalancing it must be to have a star of Madonna's magnitude in the family. [17 May 1991]

Director Cherie Nowlan creates vivid personalities for the entire family and exposes the raw nerves of the biting humor.

There's an unconvincing warm, fuzzy happy ending, in which recognition is treated as cure and understanding heals all. But, until then, Phoebe in Wonderland is an involving and empathetic drama of mothers and daughters.

The best thing about The Power of One is that it works as a history lesson. Avildsen and his writer, Robert Mark Kamen, have managed to simplify and sort out the players and their points of view in a way no other film about South Africa has done. It makes painfully clear just how deep the problems run, and how their solution will invariably require an almost evolutionary change in everyone. [27 March 1992]

The triumphs still are affecting, the setting is compelling and some of the human moments amid the political circus and culture wars are downright moving.