Gary Thompson

Based on a novel by Ian McEwan, The Children Act wanders into the tricky space created when what is moral and what is legal diverge, and law is made to suffice.

Stunning. [25 Nov 1994, p.87]

Brisk and informative.

Only the Brave has a respectful and heartfelt regard for its characters, and something more — an unusual sense of their spiritual lives, abetted by the movie’s impressive visual presentation.

The Endless works on its own modest spooky-kooky terms, and also as a rumination on life’s ruts and patterns, best considered over a couple of beers.

City Hall also gives us a political drama with engaging moral and ethical dimensions. The movie is a welcome change from the fluff of "The American President" and the self-indulgent freak show that was "Nixon." [16 Feb 1996, p.44]

This is an intriguingly weird, gender inversion of the Cinderella fantasy at the root of Pretty Woman.

It all adds up to a handsome, engrossing slice-of-life movie with the feel of a Western, inventive and unique. The Rider desegregates a genre that typically presents cowboys and Indians as separate and opposing forces – archetypes unified here in one remarkable individual.

The movie is mostly gore free and tame by the standards of modern horror movies, and some of the familiar visual touches borrow greedily from the James Wan school. But it’s smartly written and well-acted.

Game Night is not the greatest comedy in the world, but it has a great grasp of the ingredient that makes comedy work, identified centuries ago as brevity.

Ronan is good (as usual) as the spirited and rather haughty Mary, making the most of what, to be fair, is the plum role.

While the movie is often dazzling, it’s also frequently dull.

The movie works best when it falls back on plain old acting. Merritt Wever is sweet presence as the hobby shop worker and gentle soul who understands Mark’s obsessions, and appreciates his art. Her scenes with Carell are the movie’s least technological, and its best.

It’s a story with too many influences, no cohesion, no apparent narrative purpose.

Wonderstruck, for all of it’s child-in-danger plotting, has a warmth that points (along with the title) to a safe and sentimental conclusion.... When it arrives, though, it lands with a curious lack of emotional impact — perhaps inevitable, given the nature of a story that seeks to connect characters who are rarely and sometimes never on screen together.

Last Flag Flying lacks the casual, lived-in realism you usually find in a Linklater film. You don’t buy the men as long-separated pals, and so you don’t really buy the premise — the connection that caused Doc to seek out these men is not visible on screen.

Despite the movie’s emphasis on physical action, it’s this chemistry that keeps the movie going.

It’s here that Sheridan’s genre instincts get the best of him, and Wind River gives way to lurid exploitation.

It’s a funny concept, helped by Marshall-Green’s blended look of pleasure and consternation at being the vessel for an invincibility that he enjoys but cannot control.

While Keaton is many things, he is not Jim Carrey. Which, from Keaton's standpoint, is probably a relief. [17 July 1996, p.25]

High Life has the trippy profundity of 2001, the human treachery of Aliens, and it also includes an Orgasmatron.

Result[s] in pleasant but forgettable results.

Krasinski makes suspension of disbelief easy, and the movie mostly works — I can’t remember the last time I was in a movie theater so quiet.

Solo eventually finds its feet, and the movie gets better as it goes, but we feel throughout the tension between conflicting visions of Howard and original directors Lord and Miller.

Cathleen’s arc, initially front and center, starts to feel outweighed by the all-in performance of Oscar-winner Leo.

Characters overflow on the screen, crowding out emotional investment, and there is a severely misplaced emphasis on the power of special effects — many characters appear to be entirely digitized, and none has much screen impact.

The movie really soars when the dragons do the same — as in previous installments, the best shots are of dragons maneuvering through the clouds.

Tearful audiences will know they are in safe hands with Shyamalan, and that no matter what happens, at the bottom of each box of tissues is a happy ending with moving narration. [27 Mar 1998, p.F7]