One of those movies in which pacing, dialogue and the right actors enliven a familiar story.

Both the material and the way it's delivered by the movie's comic quartet are so funny.

Thompson has had the good sense and sensitivity to get Austen right, while letting Winslet steal the show.

Some of the movie's best scenes -- knockouts, in fact -- involve musical interludes.

A weeper poised to endure as one of the dominant independent features of the year.

Nicholson has at least three magnificent moments in Hour 2. The best is a wedding toast that comes after another that will painfully remind you of every banal wedding toast you've ever heard.

This giggle does for dog shows what Rob Reiner's "This Is Spinal Tap" (in which Guest plays Nigel Tufnel) did for heavy metal.

Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.

Bout No. 2 is among the best closed-quarters screen fights ever, as good as (and longer than) Frank Sinatra vs. Henry Silva in The Manchurian Candidate. And Hannah does more for an eyepatch than anyone since the late Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan.

Has the unanticipated craft and artfully ambiguous appeal of last year's "Croupier," a movie whose art-house word-of-mouth success could be duplicated here.

Blisteringly fast, Bourne also has a strong or striking supporting actor around every corner: Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen in roles that range from meaty to amazingly small.

The most imperfect of the year's best movies, Magnolia's flaws are easily forgiven because they are the result of go-for-broke ambition.

Though the comedy is sometimes more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree, the movie is as visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors.

The filmmaker keeps upping the ante with surprises until the plot-twist beaut that concludes the picture - a shocker that, upon reflection, is probably the one ending that wouldn't have fallen a little flat.

A rousing state-of-the-art cartoon capped by an aerial-combat climax that, to its credit, isn't anti-climactic. [2 July 1996, p.D1]

And novel insights notwithstanding, this is a plain old good movie, too.

But let's not mislead about acting gold: Without Nicholson and Keaton, the movie would be fair. With them, it's one of the few good romantic comedies this year. What we gotta give is thanks.

Damon convincingly matches Williams recrimination for recrimination in this portrayal of mutual tough love, even with the latter giving what may be the best performance of his career.

Spielberg's must-see is so wondrous at depicting things that go crunch in the night that its human characterizations and pokey exposition seem astonishingly halfhearted… On a "people" level, Park isn't “Jaws,” but on a jolt level - oh, yes, it is. [11 June 1993, Life, p.1D]

Too lingeringly creepy to ignore. [23 Oct 1992]

The relaxed and confident Crusade is the first Jones outing to benefit from actual characterizations. [24 May 1989, Life, p.1D]

Unfaithful doesn't push the melodrama the way "Attraction" did, but it lingers in the mind as much.

Funny... and the payoff is the most provocative Hollywood concoction in a while.

A movie that is easily likable.

One of the best football movies ever, Nights in the end celebrates the game.

This is a very bloody fantasy (reds do eke their way into the black-and-blues), but it's hard to think of another film with as many severed heads whose overall tone is so sweet.

The "Age of Innocence" oozes anthropological dazzle, but Dazed and Confused may some day rate its own Smithsonian showings for clinically re-creating the High School Experience 1976. [20 Sept 1993]

Romantic comedies with two low-key leads can be asking for trouble, but one senses that the actors must have clicked on some fundamental level.