Cuadron, at the helm, wanted to pitch his film in a terrain accessible to modern sensibility yet different from what that sensibility is generally fed. And he might have succeeded, except for his casting. [2 March 1998, p. 26]

The most pleasant aspect of the picture is its relish of the moment in which it is set. Deville doesn't omit mention of the anti-Semitism in postwar France; still, this little tailoring shop is a good place to have reached after the preceding years.

No one is expected to believe Pretty Woman . We're just supposed to enjoy it... Pretty Woman wants only to engage us for two hours, and it does. [16 Apr 1990, p.26]

The result is a picture that, moving through political and social chaos, is stubbornly amusing.

Tsai's film is not free of longueurs, but like much modern work in almost every field, these stretches are deliberate assaults on conventional expectation.

The tension with which the picture starts soon dissipates, the contrast between Eliska's background and her present place is lost, and the film plods into a tale of village life, spiced only occasionally with a hint of German threat.

Substantively there is no content. Everything we see or hear engages us only as part of a directorial tour de force. That force is exceptional, but since there is not much more to the picture, it leaves us hungry.

As the picture winds on, the feeling grows that Saleem, who clearly knows these people, wants to show that their mode of life in this stark setting has, in a gentle way, a touch of the ridiculous.

It opens fissures through which we can glimpse oddities and strains in film directing and acting.

The performance that comes closest to capturing the Waugh elixir is Fenella Woolgar's as madcapping Miss Runcible, who ultimately commandeers a racing car.

LaBute's dialogue reminds us that, along with that of such others as Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch and Whit Stillman, the sheer writing, these days, of some American films is remarkably fine. LaBute has cast his film to match, with people who can handle his dialogue neatly. [31 August 1998, p. 28]

Ardant is marvelously genuine: fiery, petty, exalted.

At least we know this Allen persona, whatever his current name; the other characters, starting from scratch, don't get much past scratch. Although the picture spreads its attention fairly evenly among them, most of them end up as supporting cast because they are only life-size puppets. [Feb 10, 1986]

The result can be--sometimes is--tedium; but, whether or not the work succeeds as Sokurov intended, it is an adventurous director's probe of cinema possibilities.

Andy Garcia, who first became noticeable in The Untouchables, has seductive strength, homicidal cool. One reason to look forward to Part IV is that he'll fill the center better than Pacino does. [21 Jan 1991, p.26]

Téchiné has a reputation in France as an especially empathic director of women--Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche among them--and he has understood this Odile very well.

Once we learn the story's terrain, we have a pretty good idea of the paths it will follow. Still, because the picture is tidily directed and acted--in one case, better than that--it has the comforts of well-made old things.

Precisely the point of films in this genre is to provide pleasant predictability. We collaborate, in a way: we chuckle silently as, so to speak, we make the film ourselves.

It's relatively easy to convey the claustral in interior scenes, but [designer] Furst and the director Tim Burton do it even when the setting is a great flight of steps before the municipal building or the huge square where Batman and the joker confront each other. [31 July 1989, p.24]

That climax stretches credibility, but the whole point of the piece is that the Joe of the opening has become someone else.

Wade, presumably with Nichols's urging and aid, has tricked up most of the picture with plotting that scuttles the realism of the beginning, strangles any serious view of the theme, and ends up ludicrously incredible. [30 Jan 1989, p.28]

The result is glib, often funny, sometimes bumpy, and ultimately depressing.

Caouette has opened up a case history vividly, but he has left us without any conclusions, not even with much enlightening empathy. Something more than truth--dare one say "mere truth"?--is needed.

Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky succeed. Their documentary Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust is, of all things, timely. It is also courageous.

It is echt Maugham, in its somehow flattering cynicism, its character crinkles, its perceptions that sting even though they don't go very deep.

But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming. [14 Nov 1994]

There's a great deal in black America that has yet to reach the screen, and Lee is a prime candidate, in gift and gall, to help fill the gap. [July 3, 1989]

Demme's pacing is tight throughout, marred only by some low-angle close-ups of the cannibal that are right out of old Vincent Price thrillers. [Feb 18, 1991]