Carrie Rickey

Enormously satisfying.

DuVernay has confidence in her actors that is reciprocated in kind. Richardson-Whitfield gives a remarkably empathetic performance.

The structure of Lelouch's pedal-to-the-metal story commands attention and suspense. The three principals are enormously engaging, and Gérard de Battista's succulent cinematography creates the sense of actually being there.

Searing and hypnotic docudrama.

Like its music, the film's emotions proceed from lament to screaming screed to chorus of hope.

Their chemistry goes like this: He cleans up real nice; she dirties down with gusto.

Training Day has the best performances and worst third act of any movie you're likely to see this year.

Best of all is the ride through the architect's own domestic space in Santa Monica, dubbed by locals "the house that built Gehry."

In its juxtaposition of voluptuous nudity with the horrors of war, in its evocation of idealized beauty draped like gods and goddesses of Grecian art, the film invokes classical ideas about how the life force asserts itself most aggressively in the face of death.

Shannon is flawless.

Burton gives us SuperDude; Nolan gives us Sir Subdued.

Not a movie, it's a museum catalog of gorgeously rendered portraits and landscapes. What a crashing disappointment.

Almereyda's smart, streamlined adaptation is full of such neat little ironies.

Because Trance is principally about the thrill of the ride rather than the inner lives of the riders, it lacks that outlaw humanism specific to Boyle films such as "Trainspotting," "Slumdog Millionaire," and "Millions." In other words, it's an ingeniously built automaton, sexy as hell, and devoid of a heart.

In presenting their testimony to the jury of public opinion, Morris would seem to be building a case for absolving some of them of mistreatment charges and implicitly asking for an investigation of those who were not charged.

ILYM is the comedy that Rudd lovers have been waiting for since he first charmed us silly in "Clueless." It explores both the dweeby and heartthrobby sides of this guy whose crooked smile fails to mask his social anxiety.

Where Denys Arcand's delightful 1986 comedy "The Decline of the American Empire" celebrated the good life, his profoundly funny sequel The Barbarian Invasions heartily toasts the good death.

Striking a balance between Howard's harum-scarum comedies such as Night Shift and Splash and his fuzzy family "dramedies" such as Cocoon and Parenthood, The Paper delivers the goods - and also babies and the news. [25 March 1994, p.03]

An improbably funny and transcendent account of soccer-mad Tibetan monks in exile at a Bhutan monastery.

Evocatively shot by cinematographer Lance Gewer in warm browns and reds that make Tsotsi seem all the more chilling, the film records his gradual metamorphosis from id-driven brute into empathic, if crude, care-giver.

Although the movie intends to incite viewers to social action, it is just as likely to paralyze them with fear.

Throughout, Bergsholm's poker-faced performance creates the effect that we are watching the misadventures of an actual teenager. It may be a slight comedy but Turn Me On, Dammit! is enormously entertaining.

Has the confessional intimacy of a video diary and performances to match, particularly those of Kyra Sedgwick and Parker Posey.

The performances, of a higher order than the film's cheesy script and double-cheese direction, are the reasons to see the picture. A reason not to: the means by which parent and child trade bodies.

Unlike most other teen cautionary tales, Thirteen does not accuse merely one villain for the corruption of a minor.

Carion's cri de coeur is at once a historical chronicle, an ode to the European Community, and a not-so-veiled critique of a 21st-century war.

Overall, Matchstick Men, which is based on the novel by Eric Garcia, is more memorable for Lohman's naturalistic acting and Scott's mannerist direction than it is for its O. Henry surprise.

Unlike Gondry's previous features, Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine, Science lacks the sturdy armature of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay to support its eccentricities. The flood of delight in the film's first 90 minutes slowed to a trickle and, finally, a drip.

The film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense of grief.

A keen observational seriocomedy, The Syrian Bride, like "Paradise Now," suggests that all residents of the Middle East, no matter their faith or their nationality, are more alike than not.

As efficient and zippy as its subject.

It is diverting but insubstantial.

Cinderella Man is not a movie about boxing, but about this boxer who personified the heart and hope of 1935.

With varying degrees of success, the filmmaker gets each musician to talk about the personal and musical roots that blossomed into his technique.

With the exception of one sequence, this PG-13 movie is so youth-friendly that I thought I might take my 10-year-old. But that sequence, upsetting for those of any age, makes the movie better suited for mature 12-year-olds and older.

For a movie loaded with ear-scorching profanity, oceans of booze, and illegal drugs enough to keep all of Cedar Rapids in high spirits for a month, there is something fundamentally decent about the film.

If Batman did nothing else but restore pulp-art shadow to the icon sanitized in his pop-art TV reincarnation, it would be an achievement. Tim Burton's Batman, starring a subdued Michael Keaton as you-know-who and a supercharged Jack Nicholson as the Joker, handily accomplishes that mission.

I was shaken, but not stirred, by Babel, a globalist melodrama that careens from Morocco to Mexico like a revved-up "Crash."

A one-of-a-kind experience that boasts a twice-in-a-lifetime performance from Nicolas Cage. The actor has not gone this deep into the abyss since "Vampire's Kiss" (1989).

When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in "Titanic": shattered hope.

In Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Kempner gives us a balance of artist and alter ego, introducing us to a woman we'd like to know even better.

Compulsively entertaining documentary.

If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.

Sunnier and sillier than most of Allen's recent work, makes its belly laughs heartwarming. It's a most winning movie about losers.

Hate, love, bigotry, empathy and chance are the uninvited guests at Monster's Ball.

What makes the new movie almost bearable is the byplay between Sandler and Chris Rock.

An elaborately presented feast that will taste familiar to the 'tween and teen audience for whom it is served. The four courses are love, war, faith and humor, served in no canonical order, and sometimes, simultaneously.

Amalric's performance is comically moving in the manner of silent actors, and the film is beautifully wrought with moments of enchantment. Alas, Chicken is a movie that begins with a crescendo and doesn't sustain its lyricism.

Solitary Man is a wafer-thin film with a river-deep, mountain-high performance from Douglas.

Feels both absolutely of the 1970s and absolutely fresh.

Hopelessly raunchy, helplessly romantic, and wickedly, wickedly funny.

As Greene, Don Cheadle - explosive because you've never before seen this model of actorly restraint - is a one-man fireworks show in Talk to Me, Kasi Lemmons' rollicking, resonant portrait of the real-life ex-con who improbably became a civic icon.

Whatever you call 21 Jump Street, this potty-mouthed and drug-laced reimagining of the 1980s TV show has one of the highest laughs-per-minute ratios since the "Naked Gun" films.

Though not blessed with a cinematic eye, Wells is a gifted storyteller who gets nuanced performances from most of his actors.

Given the filmmaker's privileged perspective of hindsight, to not consider the real-world repercussions of their theater, to not connect the dots between 1968 and 2008 is a squandered opportunity.

A clever feature-length cartoon just as entertaining as the hit Nickelodeon series on which it is based.

Structurally and narratively amputated, Volume 1 retains head and guts but loses its heart and gams to the second installment. Maybe Tarantino figured that Thurman's legs, as long as the Mississippi, were sufficient to carry this half of a movie.

A ridiculously entertaining romp based on the graphic novels of Bryan Lee O'Malley and directed, with mash-up mastery, by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead).

Despite its title, The Exploding Girl is an oddly tranquil experience.

A tiny jewel of a film.

Seething, searing tragedy of unmannerliness.

A triumph for Cheadle and Sandler, whose performances strew the seeds of regeneration.

"Capote" is serious, deep and unadorned in the manner of the 1967 movie adaptation of the writer's true-crime novel "In Cold Blood." And Infamous boasts the high-gloss frivolity of the 1961 film version of Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Persepolis, the superb film based on Satrapi's graphic memoirs of the same name, is a riveting odyssey in pictures and words. It's unlike any journal you've read or any animated movie you've seen.

What gives North Country urgency is that it's about how a man comes to understand that it's bad for him and for his community to deny his daughter privileges and prerogatives he'd grant his son.

Yelchin and Jones are up to the challenge of suggesting much by doing little.

In A Somewhat Gentle Man, a deadpan comedy best described as the Coen Brothers Norwegian style, Stellan Skarsgard is colorless and oddly configured, like a potato fallen from the sack.

Part biography, part idol worship, Bhutto is a bullet train through South Asia, chronicling its subject's 54 years, a period of unrest in her nation and family.

As directed by the stupendously talented and aggressively eccentric George Miller (creator of Mad Max and producer of the first Babe), Pig in the City is far busier and faster than the original, which was directed by Chris Noonan. This has some benefits. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

In the end, Ficarra and Requa take all the formula ingredients and blend them into a satisfying - and tasty - concoction. "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," meet "All's Well That Ends Well."

Peter Glenville's staging of the material is the opposite of cinematic, but the pleasure of these two extravagantly gifted actors at the top of their game - their diction! their conviction! their beauty! - is enormous.

The imagery is uniquely that of Oshii, who deserves a place in the pantheon of visual artists.

It's an action movie that's also an intellectual-action flick.

A perfectly lovely, if uninspired, movie that suffers from following on the trotters of "Babe," the one about the piglet advocate of barnyard brotherhood.

What's a fish-lover to do? For starters, know where your fish comes from. Don't consume endangered species. After watching this film, you may never want to eat fish again.

There are no belly laughs here, only rueful chortles about the confederacy of chuckleheads that calls itself the entertainment industry.

Actresses such as Maglietta are why movies were invented: You never get tired of her mercurial personality or of her infinitely compelling face.

Miracle really isn't about the game. It's about the game as metaphor for united we stand.

Where so many Holocaust documentaries remember the past and preach not to repeat it, Shanghai Ghetto remembers the past and teaches the relativity of experience.

In its first half, Honeydripper trickles. In its second, it really flows.

A stylish thriller so highly strung it zings, gives us Hopkins, an actor at the top of his game, in material that's only middling.

Yojiro Takita's movie simultaneously tickles tears of mourning as it wrings laughs about the meaning of life.

Macdonald's film brilliantly telescopes the '70s, an era when every physical action had its equal and opposite political reaction.

Documents the emotional and spiritual journey of three orphans.

Whip It (which takes its name from a play in which skaters hold hands and form a human whip to propel the last skater forward) is heaven on wheels.

Apart from its intriguing religious implications, the film is also a compelling look at the family, community and congregational pillars that support Lior.

While the film grows increasingly preposterous in its final act, the enigmatic performances of Youn and Jeon carry the day.

There are many many fine performers here, including the terrific Patricia Clarkson as the elusive Rachel. But Shutter Island is not so much a character study as it is an atmospheric thriller.

This simple story of a Guy and a Girl and their music is very appealing.

Like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," Sarah Marshall has all the ingredients of the Apatow brand. Alas, it's beginning to feel generic.

While this charmer about a canine James Bond does not pack the emotional punch of "WALL-E," it's frisky fun to see the white shepherd get a new leash on life.

For lovers of classical French cinema, and I am one, this earthy throwback is a whiff of lavender borne by the bracing winds of the mistral.

This portrait of the fabulist whose images are as haunting as those of Giorgio de Chirico is a disappointment, not to mention a squandered opportunity.

As a character assassin, Moore fails, because you can't kill anyone with contempt and sarcasm. And as an independent counsel prosecuting Bush for bamboozling America, Moore likewise misses his mark because many of the exhibits he offers as evidence are emotional rather than factual.

In Synecdoche, Kaufman the screenwriter is not well-served by Kaufman the filmmaker. As a director, his propensity for heavyosity leadens rather than leavens this affair.

Goblet of Fire, fourth in the fantasy franchise, is the most fun and the most fraught with conflict.

Delpy's manic energy shoots through this meet-the-parents comedy like electroshock, resulting in a movie that is as acutely painful as it is acutely funny.

While Last Days succeeds as a nature documentary, Van Sant fails to penetrate human nature. The result is a portrait without a face.