Allison Benedikt

The movie here is Treadwell's footage--some of it beautiful, much of it difficult to watch.

An uplifting, funny and engaging star-studded affair.

If this all sounds very heavy, well, it is, but it's also very, very funny. Cronenberg may want to say something important about violence, but he's also head over heels for it, ending each gunfight and neck-breaking with a close-up on the victim, blood either pooling behind his head or brains spilling from his face. Big laughs.

Steering clear of phony melodrama and indie pretense, Baumbach captures a crisis in one family's life that, though it shakes the foundation, leaves all four Berkmans drifting toward highs and lows unknown, each of them only dimly aware that, no matter what the movies tell us, we never really come of age.

Mostly it's an incredible tale of ritual and perseverance.

Brewer achieves near perfection in this tense, intimate meeting between two lifelong hustlers.

I won't pretend there aren't moments of sweetness here--there are, aplenty. But the promise of true emotion goes bust with bad acting, cheap writing and false sentiment.

Classic Bay, except it's missing the crass director's fine-tuned rhythm, his feel for adrenaline, his breakneck edits and sense of humor.

With humor, honesty and awe, Feuerzeig's portrait may love Daniel Johnston, but it won't give his parents much hope.

The look and feel here is classic Hardwicke: gritty and dark, so as to fool you into thinking this film is serious business.

Not funny because it's not true.

It's a familiar dance, but something only July could invent, a vignette much like her characters: beautiful, flawed, organic--fine alone but better with the others.

It's hard to breathe in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs, a relentlessly taut Hong Kong cop thriller that, unlike many of its cinematic peers, doesn't burn off tension in choreographed action sequences.

Politics hovers over every moment of Another Road Home, Elon's layered, loving and deeply personal documentary about her quest to find the Palestinian caregiver who raised her.

A compelling piece of press criticism as it probes the media as terror's conduit of choice, spreading message and validating violence in the 1970s and today.

It's when Spielberg stops trying to think so hard that Munich works best. Though some of the assassination scenes feel a little too choreographed, more "West Side Story" than "Bourne Identity."

More often then not, the relationships and performances are strong and moving, with an effect both breezy-fun and profound.

The film never gets going. It's too slow and plodding for kids--even too obvious.

Roos does an admirable job balancing the tragedy and comedy, but he bogs down every character with so much baggage that it's impossible to render them honestly without the captions.

Don't let the fast-and-loose vibe fool you: Right up to its operatic finale, this is one tight one last job.

Yes, Steve Carell can carry a movie. Yes, Judd Apatow can direct a movie. Yes, we'll all relate to a middle-aged virgin. And yes, when an aesthetician yells to her assistant "we're gonna need more wax," you best run.

Sam Dunn's unabashed wet kiss to his favorite genre of music, heavy metal, a.k.a. devil's music.

But though you'll laugh your head off, the whole film kind of morphs into a blur, with one poop/sex/abuse joke after another. It's exhausting, really. And save for the very best tellings, you do start to wonder: What's so funny?

Challenging to follow, at best.

Match Point is fantastic to look at, sharply dramatic and Allen is--who knew?--a master of suspense.

Tucker has done a bang-up job, distancing and hypnotizing us with his frenzied, fragmented, sexy images. But war isn't a video game.

Munchausen is indeed a beautiful, burgeoning, madly voluptuous movie from minute to minute and image to image; it's in the aggregate that the film fails to find the weight and the rhythm it needs to truly enthrall. [10 Mar 1989, p.A]

Walken is an odd choice for a D.C. power player, wasting his creepiness on this straight, respectable role.