It's a rich, emotional story, a wonderfully appealing film made with humor and intelligence, but there is also something almost magical about how it takes the stuff of innumerable previous films -- love, romance and adolescent coming of age -- and turns them into something that feels one of a kind.

Insomnia shows an equally welcome ability: a gift of creating intelligent, engrossing popular entertainment.

That rare movie that completely fulfills its admittedly modest aims.

This is an intelligent epic told without special pleading, a film able to cut deep enough to reveal a keen specificity of experience.

Not only do Grant, Scott Thomas, Callow and company handle the sprightly dialogue with aplomb, they are also adept at the doubletakes and befuddled looks that make Four Weddings both amusing and irresistible all the way through the not-to-be-missed final credits. [9 March 1994, Calendar, p.F-1]

Offers up a subversive comic sensibility, one that somehow combines Buster Keaton's deadpan stare with Frank Capra's tireless optimism and filters them both through a black-ice Finnish point of view. Welcome to Aki World.

At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.

It's a welcome throwback to the days when the world didn't have to end or tanker trucks explode to get an action audience's attention.