Of all the American independent movies this year, Ruby In Paradise is one of the strongest because, for all its meandering style, it seems to know exactly what such a life as Ruby's is about. [25 Nov 1993, p.4]

Best of all, though, the film is a reminder of how deliriously odd Les Demoiselles was, with its MGM-style dance routines, kitschy pastels, and Gene Kelly as honoured guest hoofer. [21 May 1993, p.4]

This is a new twist on Home Alone, but not a very convincing one. [01 Apr 1993, p.4]

It’s a strange film in many ways, affectless and directionless, coolly refusing the usual dramatic beats and climactic moments, and as unreflective as MOR rock.

I love all those close-ups of fires blazing when the mood gets frosty. I love the lavish operas they attend, using the glasses to spy on each other. I love Elmer Bernstein's score, its ghostly waltzes and the way it seems to inspire the birds to soar upwards in the final heartbreaking scene in Paris, Wharton's adopted home.

The film is almost totally schematic and this weakens it. What strengthens it is the sheer emotional power of its making.

The stunts are wildly impressive, especially the motorbike riders who sail through the air in a ball of flame, and the gunplay is unique, although I have never found the term “balletic” quite right for something so brutal and quick. It is all so bizarre that you have to enjoy it.

I’ve never been sure exactly how profound this movie is, and it sometimes teeters on the edge of complacency, but it has a trance-inducing strangeness and Swinton is insouciantly magnetic at all times.

Made in America, from 1993, is essentially an extended episode of a lame, cheesy US sitcom from the late 80s/early 90s – more My Two Dads or Perfect Strangers than Frasier or Seinfeld. It's awesome.

There’s an undimmed freshness, warmth and freewheeling energy in this 1992 indie gem, and its director Leslie Harris – whose career since has chiefly involved writing and teaching – deserves a far bigger presence in US film history.

Certainly a film which preserved a decent even-handedness on the matter might have been considerably more intriguing. [17 Jun 1993, p.4]

The result would be hilarious if it weren't for its grisly and often deliberately pointed subject matter. There seems little to do but to laugh or retch. The fact that you may well do both at the same time is probably the film's intention. It has a serious point to make about the media's complicity in violence. But, in making it, it may well defeat its own ends with too many absurdist touches. [14 Jan 1993, p.8]

Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are joined by Caine as a hilarious Scrooge in this irresistibly sweet musical adaptation of Dickens’ festive tale.

This Dracula isn’t from Coppola’s great 70s/80s period, but it has a melodramatic and operatic energy and draws on the look and feel of Hollywood’s pre-Code salaciousness and the silent movie madness of Nosferatu – though the expressionist shadows are blood-red, not black.

The New World is a disaster, moans Queen Isabella. Yes, that's about right.

A young Russell Crowe is spellbinding in this ugly but unforgettable film that remains hard-hitting and shockingly violent more than two decades on.

Few contemporary writers for the stage, TV and cinema have come close to David Mamet for the quality, quantity and variety of their work. Among its peaks, and characteristic of his highly individual ear for American demotic at its most creatively and colourfully obscene, is Glengarry Glen Ross.

Allen's best film for some time. As an examination of middle-aged, middle-class Manhattan mores, in fact, it is well nigh unbeatable. [22 Oct 1992, p.6]

Fire Walk With Me is not just an artistic triumph in its own right, it’s the key to the entire Twin Peaks universe...Lynch’s unsung masterwork.

It’s a great piece of Hollywood confectionery, and you might well find yourself choking up a little at the end.

The cast is skillfully alert and Schrader's vision is unencumbered either by sentiment or cynicism.

The plot is hardly the point here - the animation is delightful, colourful and detailed and the flying sequences in seaplanes as old-fashioned as this style of animation are exhilarating.

The scenes of artistic, scientific and communal triumph were significant. The isolated, solipsistic anger of each character, lost in their own identity loop, seemed like a perfect analogy for the conflicts in eastern Europe in the mid-1990s.

The man himself would have tried to hoodwink you into thinking he was a decent guy. Bugsy the movie follows suit.

The greatest ever making-of documentary.

The elusiveness of the film is precisely the point: it is as beautiful and mysterious as a poem and its formal elegance and conviction are unarguable. What makes it a must-see, however, is the generous, unselfconscious passion of Jacob's performance as a young woman - two young women - in love.

What actually happens is generally predictable, degenerating into violence as the brothers test each other to the full. But the way the story is expressed is more original, since Penn lingers long enough on his scenes of rural heartland life to get more out of them than would be vouchsafed by your average American family saga. [28 Nov 1991]

Point Break is a freaky mix of Dog Day Afternoon and Big Wednesday; bank robbing meets surfing.