To play for an audience of one that is only a few feet away is different in concentration and shade from playing in the theater, and Madden, though the script lags a bit, has nonetheless helped his actors to render what were once theater scenes as film sequences.

What fascinates is, first, that these comics treat the joke the way jazz musicians might treat a theme that each of them plays differently; and, second, that the passage of this joke from one comic to another is like the bonding of a profession.

Embedded here in a culture of formalities, with some of the arcs and gestures of that culture, it almost becomes an opera of its own.

Precisely the point of films in this genre is to provide pleasant predictability. We collaborate, in a way: we chuckle silently as, so to speak, we make the film ourselves.

Demme's pacing is tight throughout, marred only by some low-angle close-ups of the cannibal that are right out of old Vincent Price thrillers. [Feb 18, 1991]

What Radford has retained of the original, he treats warmly and intelligently, and with a few welcome surprises in the acting. But he has produced a different work, moderately successful in itself, out of materials provided by Shakespeare.

It is echt Maugham, in its somehow flattering cynicism, its character crinkles, its perceptions that sting even though they don't go very deep.

Andy Garcia, who first became noticeable in The Untouchables, has seductive strength, homicidal cool. One reason to look forward to Part IV is that he'll fill the center better than Pacino does. [21 Jan 1991, p.26]

This picture is an odd misadventure: a gigantic enterprise that, despite some quite exceptional filming, is thwarted by its two leading actors.

Here is a film that carries within itself not only the parody but the very material it exploits and subverts. [05 Sept 1994 Pg. 34]

Sophie Scholl is not as devastatingly moving as "The White Rose," but it, too, evokes awe in lesser beings.

Tsai's film is not free of longueurs, but like much modern work in almost every field, these stretches are deliberate assaults on conventional expectation.

The Big Sleep, though, is witty and sinister, and in an odd way is a realistic portrayal of big-city life with Arabian Nights overtones.

As the picture winds on, the feeling grows that Saleem, who clearly knows these people, wants to show that their mode of life in this stark setting has, in a gentle way, a touch of the ridiculous.

Not many of us, I think, would want to see many films made this way, possibly not one more, but this one is an intriguing glance at the director-as-god, deigning to treat human frailty with imperial sway, assuming that his art justifies this slender material.

The picture has enough good feeling and chuckle to take it out of the parochial.

In the leading role Michael Pitt is neither good nor less than good. He simply mopes along druggedly for the film's ninety-seven minutes. Van Sant's inculcation of this non-performance is clearly part of his dogged negativism, his intent to purge his film.

But the contrast between setting and story isn't all that bars North Country from fulfillment. The major trouble is Theron. She plays Josey as well as is needed, but she is simply too beautiful.

Jaoui directs with flow and affection, and she plays Sylvia sensitively. Bacri has the right middle-aged assortment of humors.

When a spectacular film rests on at least a minimal armature of character and cogent action, as Troy does, we can just sink back and enjoy. What we enjoy is the sovereignty over time and place and the force of gravity that film has given to the world.

Russell wants us to feel the itch of familiarity: it's part of his tonal plan. And he survives this structural hazard because he casts all the roles so well and gives his actors dialogue as fresh as the familiar situations would permit. [01 Aug 1994 Pg. 28]

The most important aspect of the stories about all five characters is the way they are told. Attal and his editor Jennifer Augé have found an attractive playful style: they never let the stories rest, almost juggling them, and keep them gamboling before us.

The real success of Duncan Tucker, who wrote and directed this debut feature, is that, through credible dialogue and sensitive performances, the basic idea overcomes its cleverness and is affecting.

The screenplay of Saraband feels concocted, not absorbed from life in sense and soul like so much of Bergman's work.

To see the flight captain and co-pilot checking the plane before takeoff, to watch the varied passengers settling into their seats, is more agonizing than watching passengers board the ship in all those "Titanic" films. With United 93 we see these people unknowingly stepping into a history that is still in terrible process. But as a work in (let's call it) the Akhmatova mode, it does not and could not succeed.

Softley worries a bit, quite unnecessarily, about keeping our interest; so he lays in a number of overhead shots and considerable zooming at the start of sequences. But his work with his cast is sure, except for the miscast Elliott, and he generates the right internal heat between the lovers.

Like many other Iranian films, Blackboards counters the generally broadcast ideas about this part of the world. It is a testament of quiet endurance, of common concern, of reconciled survival.

The chief pleasure in the picture (set in Los Angeles) is in watching Hopkins spin off another of his nutty self-possessed intellectual criminals--this time it's Hannibal Lecter lite.