It has so many unpredictable spins that what's missing doesn't seem to matter much. The images sing. [10 July 1989]

Redford’s patient earnestness — not always a virtue in his earlier work as a director — produces something honorable and absorbing.

Meanwhile, everyone in the theatre is thinking: Given that I paid good money to learn about the world’s most frightening cocaine king, why am I watching a movie about the world’s most stupid Canadian?

To point out that Priscilla is superficial, even more so than Coppola’s other films, is no derogation, because surfaces are her subject. She examines the skin of the observable world without presuming to seek the flesh beneath, and this latest work is an agglomeration of things—purchases, ornaments, and textures.

The Box turns into a kind of sacrilegious Christian fable; it’s haunted by God, but it delivers a vicious doctrine. At the risk of impoliteness, I would suggest that Kelly drop his reliance on religio-mystico-eschatological humbug and embrace, in realistic terms, the fantastic possibilities in ordinary acts of murder, fear, heroism, and death. If he pulls himself together, he could be the next Hitchcock.

It's a creditable though unadventurous film, handsomely staged in the M-G-M backlot style for classics.

Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Clint Eastwood have turned out something sombre and restrained -- almost, in fact, good (though it's too long).

A lightweight retelling of Page's life, a sketch, really, which doesn't probe very deeply into Page's bizarre mixture of exhibitionism and piety. But some scenes that might have been borderline exploitation, or just corny…turn out to be ineffably beautiful.

If you fancy a fresh dose of grotesquerie, and more technical phraseology than you can shake a joystick at, I recommend “Grand Theft Hamlet.”

Of the many heists and grabs that litter the movie, none is as blatant as the deft, irrepressible manner in which Ferguson, displaying a light smile and a brisk way with a knife, steals the show. Poor Tom Cruise. He can’t even steal a kiss.

The film is like an expanded, beautifully made TV "Movie of the Week."

In short, Official Competition is nicely balanced, and the poiser-in-chief is Cruz, whose portrayal of Lola goes way beyond simple wackiness.

With special effects of a startling simplicity—the filmmakers launch the action into cosmic realms.

Martin Scorsese’s début feature has just the slightest bit of story line, but the movie is a fascinating portfolio piece: a black-and-white blueprint for “Mean Streets."

Perhaps a filmmaker whose powers were less orderly, less morally driven to soothe and pacify, could have pushed Fabienne—and Deneuve—to tragic and stylistic extremes that would have rendered the film’s reconciliations as mighty as its conflicts. Instead, he offers half a film of magnificent fragments.

As for the title, well, it made me think of Thomas Carlyle's wife, who read Browning's long poem "Sordello," enjoyed it, but still couldn't work out whether Sordello was a man, a city, or a book. So it is with 2046. A place? A date? A hotel room? A bar tab? You tell me.

William Shatner's Kirk is less stoic here than in III--he's pleasantly daffy. The others in the crew also have an easy, parodistic tone. But the picture doesn't have much beyond the interplay among them and the jokey scenes in San Francisco.

Has some of the wittiest writing Sayles has ever done for the movies and some of the best acting he's ever coaxed out of his performers, and the picture is a pleasant, if unexciting, experience. [8 July 2002, p.84]

No, what’s dismaying about All Is True is that it plays so slow and loose.

The jokes get rather desperate, but there are enough wildly sophomoric ones to keep this pop stunt fairly amusing until about midway. It would have made a terrific short.

Even when the male of the species tries to do better, he does his worst; and the most merciless verdict in Klown is delivered not by the law, or by fate, but by the eyes of women.

Harmless, but it gave me a pain. Why make such a fuss over middle-aged bodies anyway? [22 & 29 December 2003, p. 166]

Filmworker amounts to yet another rite of devotion in the ongoing cult of Kubrick—a cult that worked its power not just on Vitali but on all of modern cinema.

The other Grant, the irresistible but slippery Cary, was called to account by such strenuous and willful mates as Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman. But Hugh Grant has never been matched with a woman who directly challenged his oddly recessive charm. [3 June 2002, p. 100]

The Theory of Everything makes a pass at the complexities of love, but what’s onscreen requires a bit more investigation.

The Oscar Wilde story has its compelling gimmick and its cheap thrills, and despite the failings of Albert Lewin as writer and director, he has an appetite for decadence and plushy decor.

The film’s attempt to portray the Queen as more politically enlightened than her courtiers is kindly but unconvincing, and many of the actors bark and behave as if participating in a spoof.

Ragged when it tries for philosophical importance, but it's fun to see so many stars at an early stage in their careers.