There are too few surprises and even less subtlety in the telling. We can only sit and wait for the next bomb to drop on this poor exploited girl.

It is ironic that the core audience for Chop Shop is that very crowd that has recently taken steps to redevelop the Iron Triangle into something more Manhattan-friendly.

Comes together with a wry sense of humor, a total lack of gratuitous movie nonsense and a graceful dignity that allows the humanity of his characters to shine through in a very special way.

One more good thing is that the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. At 76-minutes, it's wisely calculated to give us as much of its ghoulish whimsy as we can take in one sitting, and not a second more.

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

The film is your basic sensitive young people coming-of-age in the '60s formula piece. [29 Apr 1995]

Ken Loach's new film, "Ladybird, Ladybird," takes us deep inside the true story of a woman who is a long-term victim of brutal men, and examines her predicament with such intimacy and ambiguity that the experience becomes the very antithesis of cliche. [27 Jan 1995]

Cronenberg's most disciplined exploration yet of that shadowy realm: the world refracted through the prism of a schizophrenic mind.

This bloodless, nuanced little thriller carries small weight save for Huppert's enigmatic, thrifty performance.

Cements director's place as mob-movie master.

Though it's unflinching in its depiction of homosexual affection, the marvel of the movie is the dexterity with which it transcends the specificity of its characters and gay theme to be a universal human statement and profound political epic.

It's almost too devastating for words, yet never less than compelling and heartbreakingly affecting.

Its dazzling blend of rock magic and 3-D technology just may be ushering in a whole new kind of musical theater.

In a Fuller film, you're never quite sure where you're going. Whether Fuller was an authentic artist may be open to debate, but it's impossible to deny he was a first-rate storyteller. [15 May 1998]

In its defense, I can only say that, technically, it's an exhilarating piece of filmmaking; it offers a commanding comeback role for Carradine, and it serves as a summation, dead end and, perhaps, epitaph, for Tarantino's unique contribution to world cinema.

There's nothing harder for an actor to play than a thoroughly good character, and Staunton does it with a dowdy, sublime originality.

It is passionate and angry and rousing where you might expect it to become numbing and depressing.

The restraint of both director and actor makes this steely gangster drama reverberate long after it ends. This kind of mystery is rare in a film culture that demands answers before the credits roll.

Sometimes jaunty, often dark, and very stylized. In other words, it's a perfect fit for director Tim Burton.

In typical Fellini fashion, there is much frantic activity - no less than three films-within-the-film, several surrealist sequences that come out of nowhere, and many scenes that deliberately make reference to, and comment upon, the director's life and past films. [17 Jun 1993]

Often distastefully juvenile.

A delicious one-time treat.

The script is as sloppy as Song's unkempt cop, sprinkled with intriguing ideas and imaginative details that, like the investigation, simply get lost in blind alleys.

It is historically evocative, visually transporting and an exuberant romantic comedy that adheres to its source while spinning its own artful energy.

The best of several films about the Roosevelts, this adaptation of Dore Schary's Tony-winning Broadway play - which deals mostly with FDR's battle with polio and the difficult years that formed his presidential character - earned Greer Garson a best-actress nomination as Eleanor. [16 Nov 1995]

Venus is the second film from director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi to explore the sexual lives of folk that the movies treat as sexless -- the elderly. But where "The Mother" was a cold film of sexual greed and emotional pettiness, this robust yet delicate comic drama finds a kind of dignity in the old lothario whose vital life force struggles against a failing body.

Mesmerizing and curiously satisfying idyll that gradually, slyly maneuvers us into a whole new way of looking at the delicate relationship between man, art and Mother Nature.

The style is pure Hou: richly textured atmosphere, tiptoeing camerawork and long, languorous takes of scenes full of privileged moments of human activity.