Tyson's performance and Korty's tact are more than enough to compensate for the flaws.

Anyone who has tamped down that youthful yen for excitement should stay away. But the craving for grownup glamour, however foolish, demands equal satisfaction, and Spectre, in providing it, acquires a throb of mystery that cannot be explained by mere plot.

Such is the hazard of the cartoon: as a form, it thrives on elongation and excess, yet, within its vortices and crannies, who knows what moldy prejudice can breed? [1 December 2003, p. 118]

A rudimentary but thoroughly enjoyable step musical.

There's always something bubbling inside Arthur--the booze just adds to his natural fizz. This was the only film directed by Steve Gordon (who also wrote the script); he was a long way from being able to do with images what he could do with words, but there are some inspired bits and his work has a friendly spirit.

Despite these shortfalls, there’s much to relish here. To play a guy like Hank, who must resign himself to being second or fourth fiddle, is a tricky task, but Hawke pulls it off in the quiet style that he has made his own.

In the end, Assayas, shooting the film with relaxed, flowing camera movements, gives his love not to beautiful objects but to the disorderly life out of which art is made.

The Lobster is more than a satire on the dating game. It digs deeper, needling at the status of our most tender emotions.

It's emotionally more alive than anything Allen has done since "Sweet and Lowdown," in 1999. I was absorbed in it, and I liked parts of it. And I wish to God it were better.

With no narrator to shepherd us along, the movie feels noisy and restless. The period is revived by a wealth of songs on the soundtrack, and by the sleek and succulent Panther look.

Sturges is more at home in slapstick irony (as in The Lady Eve, earlier in '41) than in the mixed tones of this comedy-melodrama, but it's a memorable film nevertheless.

You should, nonetheless, make a date to watch Mangold’s film, and, if you have to duck out after an hour because you’ve left something in the oven, no matter.

Do not be misled by the comic charm of this film. It’s a ghost story, brooded over by the rustling wraiths of bookstores dead and gone.

The father's resignation to that fate is, on balance, the most compelling aspect of the film, and I will not readily forget the sight of him staring out over the town and mourning the long history of his homeland. "We built an industrial colony on top of sheep pens," he says, "and thought we were making a revolution." Maybe Attenberg is topical, after all.

What Kreutzer aims to impress upon us is the effect of smothering and constraint—not only upon her heroine but also upon the female sex, at every social stratum, under Habsburg rule.

In its hectic, scattershot way, Padre Pio feels very much of the desperate present day.

Vincente Minnelli makes use of the wide screen with graceful, fluid movement, and he helps Martin anchor his usual breeziness with just the right amount of anxiety.

A funky, buoyant farce. The picture doesn't have the dirt or meanness or malice to make you explode with laughter, but it's consistently enjoyable.

Artistically, what Babylon adds to the classic Hollywood that it celebrates is sex and nudity, drugs and violence, a more diverse cast, and a batch of kitchen-sink chaos that replaces the whys and wherefores of coherent thought with the exhortation to buy a ticket, cast one’s eyes up to the screen, and worship in the dark.

In short, Peter Berg has done it again. You come out shaken with excitement, but with a touch of shame, too, at being so easily thrilled.

The movie is not a bore, exactly, but it’s certainly a stunt and a disappointment, for at first the situation is provocative. [16 & 23 June 2003, p. 200]

Is it a great movie? I don't think so. But it's a triumphant piece of filmmaking -- journalism presented with the brio of drama. [24 Sept 1990]

Yet, even if the movie is a fake as a fight picture, it's still a decent commercial entertainment.

Sachs presents his characters’ intellect and emotion, their artistic energy, as inseparable from physicality: he avoids the cliché of talking heads and realizes the idea of talking bodies.

The surprisingly witty script was worked on by a squadron of writers, including Robert Towne.

Here’s the paradox: the closer The Aeronauts gets to peak silliness, the more beautiful it becomes.

Nightcrawler has patches of clunkiness, to be sure, and Lou’s face-off at a police station, near the end, feels graceless and unnecessary. Yet the movie is quite something, and, despite its title, it doesn’t really crawl.

The movie is compact, coolly heartwarming, and gratifyingly uncute. Be warned, though, it also leaves you starving.