Is it, the debate asks, a truly substantial work or just a stylish cop-out? Well, for once, I'm voting with the French.

Bizarre, indeed.

For all his daring, the brazen creator maintains control - there's aesthetic order in the disorder, and calculated reason in the madness. Seldom has it felt so good to seem so lost.

The Shrek franchise is alive and well -- Model 2 is zippier, sleeker, with ever-improving graphics, vast commercial potential and the same sly ability to reach out and hook the whole family.

Raimi doesn't make the mistake of over-thinking the flimsy psychology of the genre. All this conflicted-hero stuff isn't meant to be profound; instead, it's there for the same reason as everything else -- to give the action (the interior action in this case) a healthy shot of pop energy.

This is a sequel just as intriguing as the original.

No filmmaker, in any cinematic culture, has a better eye or ear for the working class than director Mike Leigh.

So delightful it should come with a parental advisory: "Jaded adults, beware. Viewing this may pierce your shell of cynicism and spark a renewed belief in the magic of movie-making."

Despite a few wrong turns early on, the movie gathers graceful momentum and heads straight to the warm heart of the book - that fond spot located just on the safe side of sentimentality, a feel- good place that doesn't leave any feel-stupid fallout.

The direction may not be flashy, but it is controlled and confident; the frames unfold with a no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts realism that, in this era of laser-blazing Batplanes, seems downright welcome.

Undoubtedly, [the lead actors] both benefit hugely from the sharpness of Leonard's stock-in-trade dialogue: Put smart words in any actor's yap, and their performance will rise accordingly.

Sonnenfeld moves things along with alacrity and panache, serving up the exotic visuals quietly, blending in the sprightly humour efficiently, and keeping the mix at a rolling boil.

In lesser hands, all this might border on misanthropy. But Jaoui's direction, plus the note-perfect cast, manage two redeeming feats:

A powerful, brutal, funny, tragic, vibrant, very human movie.

The result is a movie that seems not quite real and yet never false but somehow partakes of both -- rather like the prospect of death.

You may well hate Crash, but if intensity is what you seek in a darkened theatre, you'll hate missing it even more.

From its quiet opening sequence to its silent final shot, everything about A History of Violence is deceptive, and deceptively simple.

Beyond the eerily evocative impersonation, Hoffman's brilliance lies in not only playing the shrewd puppet master but also revealing that he too comes with strings attached, the most dominant being his consuming need for acclaim.

If the kids give the movie its momentum, its fascination comes from a more static source -- the father.

Like the stationary figures it portrays, Kicking And Screaming is alive at the edges; it comes with a vibrant border of trenchant asides, tossed-off remarks that blend the solace of protective irony with the sterner stuff of hard truth.

Haneke is best known for "The Piano Teacher." His latest, Caché (or Hidden) is a quieter but equally provocative attack. It's less in your face, more in your head and under your skin.

A meditation on death that has you humming to the melody and laughing at the joke -- it's an elegiac picture that refuses to eulogize.

Succeeding where most docudramas fail, it turns a slice of recent history into a revealingly intelligent entertainment, without being didactic at one extreme or sentimental at the other.

It's silly, it's serious, it's outrageous, it's mundane, it's blowsy, it's lovely. Yet this fickle film has a constant heart - warm and very likeable.

As down-to-earth as a ghost story gets.

A movie that combines the Cold War intrigue of John Le Carré with the wired buzz of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" -- one of those rare two-hour-plus pictures that runs long but plays bracingly, excitingly short.

The reality measures up to the rep.

This Hollywood movie about a gay man afflicted with AIDS is evocative, understated and ultimately deeply affecting. Hard-earned tears of truth. [22 Dec 1993, p.C1]