The beauties of Shower lie in its human observation, in its funny interplay, candor, lusty acting and hearty simplicity - and also in its warm imagery and the fascinating symbolic use it makes of water.

A wonderful, heart-breaking movie.

A harsh, spellbinding tale.

An often-wondrous comedy, just as rich and surprising as "L.A. Confidential" but considerably less dark.

What really makes Alias Betty stand out, even from good recent French ensemble films like "Eight Women" and "Venus Beauty Institute," is that ingenious, Rendell-derived story. To kidnap an old phrase, it's a corker.

An adventure movie of extraordinary simplicity and power.

With his usual consummate visual skills and his flair for the nauseatingly audacious, David Cronenberg’s written (spottily) and directed (stunningly) a movie that often makes you feel as if you'd lost contact with reality: a twisted, nightmarish tale of futuristic reality games and a couple on the run. [23 April 1999, Friday, p.D]

Panahi's simplicity accentuates the movie's power: its sense of life caught unobserved.

Ends up working like a charm.

While Last Kiss may strike some as a calculated crowd-pleaser, it's cleverly calculated, perceptive and often quite funny -- and a bit darker than it may first appear.

It's a lovely, terrifying sight.

A seductive revisiting of an old classic - one that helps us see these lovers and their world with renewed passion.

This is an old-fashioned movie done with wit, grace, smarts and style. [19 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

Grosse Pointe Blank is covering the same kind of territory as that elephantine, if exciting, 1994 family man-killer thriller, "True Lies." But this time, the joke stings. [11 April 1997, Friday, p.A]

For any of you who've ever daydreamed of playing hoops with Jordan, Michael Jordan to the Max is almost certainly the closest you'll ever get.

Thornton and his excellent company summon up for us the long rides, dangerous companions, rites of passage, the mad love and, most of all, the special relationship between the man/boys that rode over the border and the horses that carried them there.

It's the best new battle film since "Black Hawk Down," a movie it surpasses in sheer feeling and bravura style, if not in nightmarish panic and suspense.

Honest, poignant and very funny, full of memorable, moving moments.

Be forewarned: The movie lasts three hours and 16 minutes, and nearly all of it deals with subjects that polite society (and even rude society) tends to ignore or evade.

Not too many actors last year bettered or equaled Beatty and Schreiber here, separately or (better yet) together. It's a pleasure and a privilege to watch them work.

Harris and Harden have real on-screen sympatico, in their nasty battles and good times alike.

It's an exciting but brainy, cross-cultural thriller about modern London and life in a contemporary urban pressure cooker, and it depends more on plot, character and atmosphere than it does on chases and gunfire.

It's an unabashed pacifist movie that really works, emotionally and dramatically.

It's one of the most ferociously convincing physical re-creations of warfare ever put on screen.

It's a simple story with complex reverberations and undercurrents, as secrets keep being revealed.

It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood.

There's a zest and brilliance in Neil Jordan's racy heist thriller The Good Thief that makes it almost intoxicating to watch.

So troubling and unflinchingly honest that watching it becomes a test of empathy and compassion.