You don't need to have seen a lot of art films to love The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. All it takes is compassionate curiosity and perhaps some lingering memory of the world as a child experiences it.

So energized by the subject that it overflows with inventiveness.

Though the Disney logo is on this movie, there is -- possibly excepting little Nemo himself -- not a single cloying, sentimental Disneyesque creature in it. There is, instead, wit and flair in concept and writing, the trademark of the Pixar people who drove the project.

Clever and confident use of limited resources in an unfamiliar medium. Kenneth Branagh has made the right choice nine out of 10 times, and the tenth is easily forgiven because of the youthful ardor of that bright face and that bright talent. [10 Nov 1989]

What a graceful movie this is.

Here's a truly novel sports film: It actually has a script, decent acting, sympathetic characters. And it's fun.

This engaging documentary is an excursion into the immense "art" form of hip-hop.

The best thing the film does is to show us not only what that mind looks like, but how the creative process itself operates: messily, erratically, outside of most people's morality, but with a force and purposiveness that makes the machinations of the rest of us look irresolute by comparison.

This concoction, so bizarre to the adult mind, is actually a charming triumph where its intended under-12 audience is concerned.

This is a great film for those who share the disabused French view of grownup life, but more particularly for those who want to see one of the great actresses of her generation at the height of her powers.

Comes as a pleasure. It's a comic drama set in a Chicago hair salon where the characters are engaging and the story has a bustling richness.

Entertaining and well done. Without losing its comic rhythm for a moment, it is also a withering spoof of black victimism and the corrupting effect of racial solidarity on the American legal system.

But uneven acting isn't fatal here, since Andrew Bergman's screenplay is strong enough and Andrew Fleming's direction seamless enough to carry it forward.

This is a grimly thrilling movie that falls somewhere between clear-eyed realism and the improbabilities of an action flick.

If this rings distant Laurel-and-Hardy, or even Crosby-and-Hope bells, it's on purpose. Gooding's and Sanz's performances are almost a tribute to vaudeville-influenced two-guy comedy.

Rarely does a fine movie like this have so awkward a title, or so off-putting an opening scene. But there is method in both these madnesses, and a searchingly intelligent and moving story to be told.

Visually the film is a knockout. I'm not sure this will matter to the young adult audience, but the film is philosophically confusing.

For those who have been waiting for movies to catch up with the graphic possibilities of comic books, wait no longer: The Matrix is among us.

One of Stephen Chow's extravagant and very funny martial-arts spoof movies.

Speaking personally, I wouldn't voluntarily go to this flick. But for those with a greater gross-out threshold, it's a better film than anyone should normally expect in this genre.

The producers of Hidden in Plain Sight decided that they couldn't deal with Sept. 11 in the film without losing focus on its principal subject. The result is that the film stands as a testimonial to the world as it existed before that date, a world very different from the one we now live in.

Surprisingly entertaining.

A beguiling, slow-moving parable.

It's a good film. But its exotic allure may lead some to mistake it for a great one.

What always feels genuine, movingly so, are the faces of the school children caught up in their account of the unforgotten past.

Although filmmaker Pan Nalin is a believer in Ayurveda,there is little in the film to convince anybody else.

Isn't quite funny enough to make it as a comedy, or touching enough to make it as a romance. It's a pleasant effort that doesn't hit any of its targets.

Like many of his (young) generation, Villeneuve is front and centre with the visual and musical language. He doesn't always hit the mark, but he is already trying for a symbolic allusiveness that is entirely beyond the reach of many filmmakers.

It's an enjoyable film, carried along by the perennial strength of the story... But it won't have the staying power of the original.

For those who don't know his (Lelouch's) work, And Now Ladies and Gentlemen will be fun because his style is unique and unpredictable. But for those who have known him in better form, this one is not a must-see.

It's a movie located in an interesting place, but without quite enough self-confidence really to inhabit it.

This is a film where there isn't the slightest doubt about the dramatic outcome. But the marketing will be a cliffhanger.

A formula flick. And the formula is not 51 times more entertaining than usual. Maybe 1.5, at best.

A bit like having a detached retina. One keeps blinking and trying to get it into focus, but it never quite does. What, one wonders, is this movie doing here?

If you're in the mood for tears and triumph, with a dash of exoticism, Together may well be the film for you.

In the end, a few genuinely funny moments aside, the script is simply too predictable and unvarying to earn the viewer's loyalty.

What's singular is that it was funded by the current Thai royal family and directed by a royal prince, Chatrichalerm Yukol.

Spartan is all good. Then it isn't. Then it isn't at all good. Not at all.

But there's no sign of the writerly derring-do that is really essential to daisy-chain storytelling. 200 Cigarettes burns itself out well before midnight.

Perhaps too much energy was spent on being stylish rather than simply low-rent horrifying. The upshot is not very stylish and not very scary.

Sinbad lacks, alas, the sparkle and inventiveness of the stories that inspired it.

It uses violence as a drug, injecting it into the audience and hoping to addict it. Once the dependence is created, it is simple to feed it with formulaic films.

So it's a pretty faded experience. I suggest you get out the books, which for once can truly be said to be more spectacular than the movie.

It is, alas, très twee. A muchness of silliness. Beautifully filmed silliness, and fetchingly acted tweeness. But give me Cruella de Vil any time.

A shoot-'em-up for cynical times. Its only asset is Seagal himself, and frankly, he's is getting a bit past it.

There's an alchemy that can transform personal experience into a great film, but it was nowhere nearby when Tamara Jenkins wrote and directed this lacklustre first feature.

A clear case of huevos con hubris.

None of this quite gets off the ground, and I found myself wanting to bid farewell to Yvan and Charlotte quite a while before the final credits rolled. Not every wannabe Woody Allen is Woody Allen.

Properly handled, any one of these characters could be made, just barely, believable. But here they simply go off, like rockets, exploding out of nowhere and racing across the screen, one after the other.

There's not a scrap of imagination in the script.

It's possible to insult even a teenager's intelligence.

Here is a truly unfunny comedy from Universal Studios, which seems determined to prove that Hollywood can be opportunistic and clueless at the same time.

Think of it as trope grope. Things are so relatively democratic nowadays that filmmakers have to rummage through the past for a truly shmaltzy story. And they don't come any shmaltzier than this.

It's a comic-book idea that might have been fun. But it's beyond the reach of first-time feature director Kevin Donovan, who squanders his main asset, Jackie Chan, and fumbles the vital action sequences.

This is a miserable sequel to the modestly well-reviewed Final Destination.

Patch Adams is a flawed visionary, but surely he deserves better than this crass and manipulative movie.

This is a film whose sunny and insipid storytelling style is at odds with its material.

It's a turning-the-tables story a five-year-old could appreciate -- except for the confusing crowd scenes and haphazard camera work. Technically speaking, Waters' skills haven't improved much over the years.