Tuggle keeps whomping us on the skull with good-evil symbolism, but the movie has no more depth than the usual exploitation film in which pretty girls are knocked off.

The film is comatose; you're brought into it only by the camera tricks or the special-effects horrors, or, perhaps, the nude scenes.

This Bond thriller-the sixth, and set mainly in Switzerland-introduces a new Bond, George Lazenby, who's quite a dull fellow, and the script, by Richard Maibaum, isn't much, either, but the movie is exciting, anyway.

Hal Ashby directed this intuitive yet amorphous movie, which falls apart when he resorts to melodramatic crosscutting.

I was surprised at how not-bad it is. It may fall into the category of youth-exploitation movies, but it isn't assaultive, and it's certainly likable. [1 Nov 1982, p.146]

The deep drawback of Taking Sides is that it forgets to be interested in music. [8 September 2003, p. 100]

Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high. You may want to laugh now and then, but you won't look away. [11 November 2002, p. 195]

I don't know if Beethoven and a sympathetic newspaper reporter can redeem a messy American city, but this movie makes a plausible case for so fervent a dream.

The picture is scrappily edited, and the director seems willing to do almost anything for an immediate effect. It's only in the best scenes that satire and sultriness work together.

Sisto picks up the spell that is cast by Lowery’s tale, verdant with danger, and continues to weave.

Structurally, the film is all chop and change, with Hare and Fiennes tacking back and forth across Nureyev’s early years. Some viewers will find the result too fussy by half; I liked its restlessness, and the sense of a chafed and driven spirit that refuses to be boxed in.

(Fisk) gives us flowing, expressive images that linger in the memory. What also lingers in the memory are some of the performances Fisk gets: Spacek in particular, who seems grown up, and Roberts, who is unexpectedly simple and open.

To be at once earthy and ethereal is an uncommon gift. I noticed it, in Browning, when she starred in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," as the calmly eccentric Violet Baudelaire. Already, as a teen-ager, she seemed older and wiser than the events unfolding around her, and, likewise, in Sleeping Beauty, she impugns the drooling antics of the elderly.

The script is sketchy and somewhat puzzling (after a blissful night with Mousse, Paul leaves in the morning without explanation), but we're carried along by the potently ambiguous moods, the slow shifts from distant friendship to intimacy.

The director, Gore Verbinski, would seem to be an odd man for this material, but he and Steven Conrad hold their ground, sticking to their conviction that Dave's story should play as a belated-coming-of-age movie.

The filmmakers of Respect aim at a wide audience with an altogether more obvious and calculating contrivance. They don’t grant the person, the personality, the character of Aretha the same originality, complexity, or substance that the real-life Franklin had; they leave all the specifics on Hudson’s shoulders, and her energetic, detailed, and focussed performance nearly papers over the missing heart of the movie.

The filmmakers, I think, got in over their heads and couldn't decide whether they were making an action thriller or a drama of conscience; they wound up flubbing both.

This is a plum of a part, and McDormand gorges herself. [10 March 2003, p. 94]

The movie is disjointed and, at times, unintentionally funny, but its ineptitude is so good-natured that it makes a charming alternative to the mind-numbing professionalism of American action movies. [23 Feb 1996]

It’s a sad movie--funny, yet wounded and bewildered.

It all looks fussed over. Parker simply doesn't have the gift of making evil seductive, and he edits like a flasher.

A larger, slower, duller version of the spy thrillers [Hitchcock] made in the 30s.

Diesel, of course, slots into the Fast and Furious films as neatly as a dip-stick. Not only does his name remind you of the stuff you pump into a car; when he opens his mouth, he actually sounds like a car. [3 June 2013, p.74]

This Must Be the Place is dazzling to behold, not least when our hero leaves Ireland. [29 Oct. & 5 Nov. 2012, p.128]

Probably the most consistently entertaining of the Bond packages up to the time - not as startling as parts of "Goldfinger" but much superior to "Thunderball."

A Hitchcock stinker, set in Australia in the early 19th century (though shot in England).

The work of both Babluani brothers is weirdly stilled and mature, already devoid of the need to show off--serves only to thicken the horror.

The movie’s heart is certainly in the right place--it’s a quietly outraged work--but I wish there were more excitement in it from moment to moment.