You know what you're in for, and you get what you want (especially those die-hards who read ALL of the end credits), but you'll also get the feeling that you've seen it all before. [18 Mar 1994, p.D3]

Does “Anna” deliver on its billing? Well, it does for a while. For its first half, the movie’s blend of earnest teen crooning and dismembered blood-geyser heads is pretty entertaining.

It’s a good story, well told, though you have to forgive Hood for indulging in a little journalistic cliché.

There are lots of ideas rattling around in it — about artificial intelligence, about racism, about American aggression on the world stage, about the future of humanity. And rattle and clang they do. And also clunk. The various elements are not well integrated.

For all its contagious energy and surface authenticity, this early-Beatles docudrama comes off as the kind of biographical movie in which a group of unknowns appear to be all too aware that they're on the verge of international superstardom. [22 Apr 1994, p.D3]

The flowers in Flowers are touchstones, reminders of a person, but more significantly of the conflicted feelings shared by the three main women in the picture.

The picture is essentially a brief for Wise’s case. And as such, it’s as dry and uncinematic as a dusty legal document.

This movie, while perhaps not quite as charming as the 2000 original “Chicken Run” (lightning rarely strikes twice, even on chicken farms), is a hoot.

It’s pretty, it’s melodramatic-verging-on-silly, and if you like this sort of thing it’s great fun.

Nobody in this movie would be out of place in a glamorous old-Hollywood drama, which is kind of what On Swift Horses is trying to be — and, most of the time, coming pretty close.

Ultimately, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is made enjoyable by its human and feline actors, despite the sadness of the material, and it left me wanting to know more about its subject, which I suppose is the point.

Ultimately Denial works, thanks to its strong cast — particularly Spall, who gives Irving a slightly mad gleefulness, and Weisz, whose smart, tough Deborah chafes against the quiet acquiescence expected of her.

Hall’s performance is remarkable, full of shadings and intimations of significant emotional depths.

Downton Abbey: A New Era is a chaste, mannered soap opera that feels like a relic of another time in more ways than one, but perhaps, that’s the entire appeal.

The light approach almost derails the movie; without being cheap or misleading, Mistress is a feel-good movie that could've had a sharper sting. It's less satirical and probably more realistic than The Player, but it's also more predictably diagrammed. [28 Aug 1992, p.26]

The picture is a no warts-and-all look at Francis’ papacy, but rather emphasizes his humanity and humility. Those personal qualities and his words are sources of hope In this politically fraught and fevered age.

While it’s still an enjoyable novelty to spend time during an action movie wondering where I could buy the hero’s boots, it’s no substitute for a good story.

Bad Influence is easy on the eye and snazzily scored by Trevor Jones. But it never really rises above genre. [09 Mar 1990, p.24]

There's so much blood, sweat and craziness that you stop laughing with first-time screenwriter Harry Bean's script and begin laughing at it. Long before it reaches the fever pitch of a hysterical finale, you may also find yourself looking at your watch. [12 Jan 1990, p.21]

Shyamalan’s latest cinematic confrontation with mortality and meaning, Knock at the Cabin, is among his best work.

Condon doesn’t shy away from the violence and tragedy at the heart of this story, but he lets us see the tender, hard-forged connection between Molina and Valentín, and also lets us disappear into a world of tinselly Hollywood beauty, just as they do.

I.F. Stone, an underground journalist who died in1989, left a rich legacy that is celebrated in a timely new documentary, All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone.

Eating is American independent film at its best. It's one of those eccentric home-grown efforts - Roger and Me, and Sherman's March are others that come to mind - that spring straight from the American vernacular. [29 Mar 1991, p.3]

The pleasure of Bergman's style comes from the extremes that his characters must endure to arrive at that predictable point, and the new tricks that Bergman can teach to an old-dog story line. The airborne climax of "Honeymoon in Vegas" - involving those Flying Elvises (Utah Chapter!) that you've probably heard about by now - turns the ending of countless other movies into something new under the setting desert sun. [28 Aug 1992, p.3]

Filmed in Oregon and Montana by a first-rate crew, The River Wild puts you in the hot seat of its white-water climax, and through a combination of deft camera work, snappy editing and genuine derring-do, the stellar cast is right there with you. Even when you know it's filmmaking trickery, you'll wish you'd brought a wet suit. [30 Sep 1994, p.H3]

Unsane has an uncanny way of reflecting the world through Sawyer’s eyes, sometimes amplified by the medication she’s forced to take. It’s not a pretty place.

Sommers is so busy spinning his camera, crowding the soundtrack with animal noises and piling on the cheesy visual effects that he can't stop for a reflective moment or a character-revealing touch.

If you were to subtract the strikingly mature and subtly nuanced performances of Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Single White Female would be almost indistinguishable from the majority of half-baked, pseudo-psychological thrillers that Fatal Attraction brought into vogue. [14 Aug 1992, p.3]