So the monstrous twentieth century recedes into libraries; and so a small cog in the mechanism of that monstrosity bequeaths us her memory of it in a quiet, measured way.

Extraordinary--vivid, stripped, intense.

The picture tries hard for addictive mystery, but it is full of scenes that promise insight and don't deliver.

Jacques Richard has fashioned an adoring tribute to this wonderfully maniacal man.

After years of preparation in the hands of a man celebrated for his penetration and style, the picture adds almost nothing to our knowledge of its subject and adds it in a manner almost devoid of visual distinction. [27 July 1987]

Burns with sincerity and serious intent.

A binding strength of the film is the performance of Choi Min-Sik as Ohwon: far from any fake-Barrymore antics, he makes us feel that we are intruding on the heat and genius of a man for whom life -- existence as is possible in the world -- is insufficient.

The picture depends completely on those two performances (Whalberg, Forster), and the two actors come through.

But it is precisely with these contrapuntal strands of huge, timeless nature, of the complexity of every human mind, that Malick bloats his film into banality. [Jan. 25, 1999]

Bier directs with a sense of motion, pleasant without pushing. Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Jacob, is an actor who absolutely belongs on the screen, a gentler sort of Jack Palance.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that an allegory is "an extended or continued metaphor." And to think that this definition was coined when a French film called Innocence was still very far in the future! But how aptly this film proves the point.

It's agreeable to see a picture that holds us without perspiring to do so. We are treated not as an audience but as café chums to whom a story is being told

Two for the Road is a good try; it's often pretty and sometimes funny; one wishes it well, one wishes it were better.

Midnight Run is two films. One is a succession of bright, razor-edge, nutty dialogues between two men. The other is the plot that keeps them together, which is stale and full of boring violent-comic action. [29 Aug 1988]

Son Frère is a real achievement, delicate, perceptive, somewhat muted but nonetheless strong.

The story is multiplex and unclear.

And as film, Apollo 13 is dull… Partly it's because there are no characters, no room for any substantive character development… Apollo 13 is staffed with human puppets. [31 July 1995]

This same film, shot for shot, line for line, could have been much more solid and engrossing, much farther up the Parnassian slope, with a better actor as Hughes.

It is his best and most courageous work to date. [13 Nov 1989, p. 22]

Hanson's rendition is so engulfing that, for this middle-class white man at any rate, the moment after the film finished was like a return to familiar country.

This is realistic American film acting at its veristic/imaginative best.

The picture is so suavely made that we don't feel disappointed until it is over: what chiefly holds us is the quality of the acting.

Ford would probably have grumbled about some things in this picture--some moments of confusion about who is who--but he might have been pleased to see that his influence, so marked in many countries' films, had reached China and Tibet.

Still, flaws and all, we have to be grateful to Nunez for persisting in his independence.

[Reiner] pulls everything together adroitly to make Harry Met Sally a real refreshment. It's what they call a summer picture, which means that, if it's good as this one is-it will seem summery even in winter. [21 Aug 1989, p.26]

As Blank, Cusack is both proud and remorseful. And the amazing thing is that as usual, you believe him. [Oct 10, 1997]

Formally, Boyz is just one more old-time bad-neighborhood picture. Instead of, say, Manhattan's Lower East Side in Prohibition days, it's an LA lower-middle-class black neighborhood afflicted with drugs. And Singleton's control of his picture's flow is much less firm than was the other directors'. [2 Sept 1991]

This multiplicity--of people, stories, settings--is both the weakness and strength of the film. It is not easy to follow all the various threads, to get the pith of every scene. Still, this very abundance gives the whole picture a sense of authority.