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.

Gross and trite as the material is, Kitano shows again that he is an ingenious, purposeful filmmaker. [27 Apr 1998]

The film is remarkable for something besides its visual immersion in gold. The director, Gabriele Salvatores, has added his name to the roster of film-makers who have drawn remarkable acting from children.

If only Cantet and Robin Campillo (who based their screenplay on stories by Dany Lafèrriere) had balanced the sexual and political elements more acutely, the result could have been searing.

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

Wade, presumably with Nichols's urging and aid, has tricked up most of the picture with plotting that scuttles the realism of the beginning, strangles any serious view of the theme, and ends up ludicrously incredible. [30 Jan 1989, p.28]

Clumsy and irritating.

Malick continues to float along the edge of the American film world as an unusually intelligent personage who occasionally delivers the fruit of his meditations. But his role as adjunct philosophe is better than the films he eventually gives us.

What is outstandingly incredible are the high-flown pronouncements, including literary judgments, given suddenly to Costner. They make him sound like a dummy for Shelton the ventriloquist. [1 Aug 1988]

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.

Kaminski, who is as good as any cinematographer working today, matches the chromatic tones of shots to their content in ways that can only be called exciting.

Admittedly, the setting does heighten interest, but this film is much more than an ideational travelogue.

The most enchanting point about cinematographer Eduardo Serra work here is that he hasn't put Vermeer's painting into the film; he has put the film into Vermeer.

Aesop endowed animals with human traits to teach us lessons. Seabiscuit almost does the reverse. By means of Ross's adroit shooting and editing, we ourselves pound bravely along the track.

The insinuating quality of 3-Iron is irresistible.

The opening minutes in a Union Army camp are as good as anything in Glory; and the buffalo hunt, as edited by Travis, is a marvel. [10 Dec 1990, p.28]

The war is not scanted: the devastation and butchery are there. But the screenplay by Frank Cottell Boyce, based on a non-fiction account by Michael Nicholson, is thin, sentimental. [29Dec1997 Pg. 28]

He has had a notable career, and I wish there had been more specifics about it in the film.

The result, except for the stock action climax, is sharp, fast, bitter. [19 September 1994, p. 38]

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.

This film holds and convinces, even evokes empathy, because of Anne Reid, an actress long experienced in British television and film. She gives May intelligence and spirit and a somewhat genteel wonder at the resurging of desire.

The flaw that separates Scorsese's film into its components is its lack of a crystallized theme.

This is a fictional film, but it is based on a novel by Stefanie Zweig that is autobiographical. The adaptation was done by the director Caroline Link, whose screenplay is serviceable and whose directing is generally sure.

Murray, more often than not, is pretty unbearable; but here, playing a man who is unbearable, Murray begins convincingly, amusingly, and gets even more amusing as he metamorphoses. [15 Mar 1993, p.24]

Sympathy for a pedophile is difficult, but surely comprehension may be possible, and Bacon evokes it.

One aspect certainly is remarkable. The dialogue is, at least to an American ear, authentic. Allen doesn't mention any aid on the script, so we are to assume that he wrote it himself.

Even though no reasonably well-informed viewer will learn much factual information from the picture, it grips; it even torments, because it lets us move and breathe and shiver and resolve with two particular young men.

It lets us glimpse once again the stubborn, if slender, persistence of the humane.