Carrie Rickey

So electric are the performances in The Crucible, so breathtaking is director Nicholas Hytner's darting camera, that it was fully halfway into Arthur Miller's screen adaptation of his legendary drama before I noticed something missing. Namely, a subtext. [20 Dec 1996, p.03]

One wishes that Chambers had more gracefully integrated the stories of the individual players into this celebration of Rush.

Like many Apatow films, Bridesmaids has a rambling, disjointed quality, crammed with sequences that elicit laughs without advancing plot.

A disarming, funny and animated Al Gore, once a robot among presidential candidates, proves himself a rock star among environmental activists.

There's a word for women like Giselle: Supercalifragilistic. Ditto her film, Enchanted.

She may not be the most cinematic of film artists, but Heckerling will make you smile.

A boisterous and improbably entertaining action comedy.

Shrek 2 is a dream, a sequel as exhilarating and riotously funny as 2001's top-grossing original.

If the heart of the film is Hartford, who late in his struggle with cancer conveys the luminous colors of a man at his twilight, its soul is Welch.

During its two hours-plus running time, Field's movie veers from dark comedy to melodrama, not always gracefully. But tonal inconsistencies don't blunt the keenness of its satire, so sharp that I walked out with emotional razor burn.

It's a joyride until you think about the film's biggest contradiction. How come this movie celebrating the superiority of human feelings over machine precision is most alive when thrilling in the mechanical perfection of the Terminator and T-1000? Inside Terminator 2 beats a human heart. But its soul is that of a killer machine.

DuVernay, a low-key director sparing in her use of emotion and music, has made an existential drama that is European in its feel.

Robert Evans has been variously described as the Hugh Hefner of Hollywood, a Tinseltown Gatsby, the Lancelot of the backlot.

This small story that tells the much bigger story of the New Economy's bubble and burst is less a documentary than it is breaking news.

I'm not sure that the endearing charms of the assorted fogeys and whelps add up to a movie. But I always enjoy how Altman weaves the warp of professional life with the weft of the personal.

A pleasant taste of Roman life.

House is one of the most exciting genre discoveries in years. [17 Jun 2010, p.14]

Sobering and wildly entertaining.

It is a challenging film, if not always a narratively cohesive one.

Hugely entertaining catalog of MPAA follies.

Shelly left her daughter - and her audience - a wonderful gift, this movie about the transforming effects of motherhood. Waitress shows how, in giving birth, a woman gives birth to herself - as artist and mother.