Jeff Baker

A movie as bold and deep as a Turner landscape, as sharp as light on water.

Mad Max: Fury Road sets new standards in old-school stunt work and car chases and does it in service of an idea-driven story with a beating heart and an action star for our troubled times in Charlize Theron.

A snapshot of what happened at a particular time and place and doesn't try to glamorize its subjects or make any larger points about what it all means. By refusing to do so, by celebrating the process over the outcome and the work over the reward, it becomes a special experience, a movie that matters.

It's an exciting experience, dazzling and entertaining and thought-provoking. I saw it at Cinema 21 last week and immediately wanted to see it again. I couldn't, so I started researching and read everything I could about it. It's truly great.

The violence is shocking, effective and soaked into the dry brown landscape.

What matters in '71 is the action, and the look on O'Connell's face when he emerges from a shed into the Belfast night.

The tone -- deadpan, wistful, silly but never stupid -- is just right and puts What We Do in the Shadows next to "This Is Spinal Tap" as a mockumentary that shows its subjects as human -- in this case, inhuman -- in their hopes and fears.

It's duck soup for cinephiles.

A highly entertaining, informative movie about how the subprime mortgage crisis led to a worldwide financial meltdown in 2007-08. The fact that such a movie is so unusual is one big reason why the meltdown occurred and why it easily could happen again.

That this is a documentary, this family lived in New York for decades in almost complete separation from its neighbors, is astonishing.

At the heart of Iris is love, between Iris and the camera, Maysles and his subject, and Iris and Carl. They nailed it, this crazy life, and they're still getting a kick out of it.

A wonderful documentary.

The End of the Tour can feel like a down-home deification at times: Like Einstein riding a bike, only it's Wallace going to the Mall of America. It's not sentimental, though, at least not until the very end, and is moving in beautiful, unexpected ways.

Mistress America is a different kind of channeling, straight through the screwball comedies of the 1980s, "After Hours" and "Something Wild," back to "Bringing Up Baby," where Katharine Hepburn sang "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to a leopard while Cary Grant looked for the last bone (the intercostal clavicle) for his Brontosaurus skeleton.

The 82-year-old director has a light, assured touch and wrote a script that gives his actors space to shine.

The Salt of the Earth presents not just a passing of time through one man's remarkable life but a change of perspective.

Dope has energy and smarts and a heart in all the right places.

The problem with Inherent Vice, and what keeps it a step below "The Master" and "There Will Be Blood" and Anderson's best movies, is that all the Pynchon threads and dead ends come apart in the middle and aren't really pulled back together.

A movie that underplays its many strengths. You don't realize how good it is until it's over.

Baumbach loses his grip a little in the third act and gives Stiller too much babbling and ranting. The denouement at a tribute dinner for Leslie is unsatisfying for all concerned but is redeemed by a coda that assures everyone that happiness is possible in this crazy world.

Strickland has the courage of his convictions and maintains a tight focus on the proceedings while allowing the occasional feather of humor to float down on the pillow.

All involved bring a warm eccentricity that lifts what in lesser hands could be a collection of cliches about the contrasts between the Old World and the New.

Two Days, One Night is timely and timeless, a social statement about current economic conditions and a parable about individual and community. Cotillard's performance is revelatory, one to be admired and studied for generations.

Heaven Knows What is a hard movie to recommend because of its unrelenting intensity and hideously depressing subject. It's a hard movie, period, but it's exceptionally well-made and beautiful in its execution.

Fetisov is a jovial, imperious guide through an era of Cold War politics, when sports were a battleground between East and West and no sport was more important to the Soviets than hockey.

I'll See You in My Dreams takes its time getting to unexpected places and makes you glad to follow along.

Just when you think all the great rock and roll stories have been told, along comes Lambert & Stamp.

What it doesn't do -- and this is what makes this "Diary" different -- is let what happens define her or ruin her.

It's a sad story, and Asif Kapadia's documentary tells it without narration or commentary. Instead there's a brilliantly edited succession of interviews and performances and news footage that glides through her charmed, doomed life.

Creed is no "Raging Bull" -- it's a little too long and throws in an unnecessary disease to gin up the emotional content of the third act -- but it's surprising proof that iconic franchises that started in the 1970s can be revived in all the right ways.

A tight little thriller that recalls the good old days of "Fatal Attraction" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," back when suspicious packages appeared on the doorstep, no affair went unpunished, and the family dog was never safe.

OK, got it. It's a spy movie spoof, "Austin Powers" with more violence and less camp, a Bond parody that zeroes in on the Roger Moore era, when the sets and gadgets got bigger and the stories got dumber.

Everyone is in top form. Pearce, the Australian who's elevated everything from "L.A. Confidential" to "Mildred Pierce," sinks his gleaming teeth into the comic aspects of Trevor and doesn't let up. Smulders, now part of the Marvel universe, is edgy and fun. Corrigan is best of all.

It's a welcome change from a conventional birth-to-now biography, somewhere between the straight narratives of "Ray" and "Get On Up" and the fractured, Cate Blanchett-in-sunglasses, Richard Gere-on-horseback meta-fable "I'm Not There."

The rare movie that improves as it goes along, shedding its cliches and getting down to what matters.

What is special about The Good Dinosaur isn't the characters...but the backgrounds.

It's fun to watch The New Girlfriend the way it's fun to drink a glass of Champagne, and about as memorable.

The writer-director has done a lot of opera, onstage and on film, and he sure is fond of the dramatic gesture. His leading man, Poelvoorde, is not at first glance the type of guy who'd captivate two such stunning women, but this is France, and his desire and anguish is real.

Uses a deft mix of archival footage and interviews with historians and some very articulate Panther veterans.

The music they made is timeless, and Denny Tedesco deserves credit for giving them the credit they deserve and for working through the music rights issues that delayed a theatrical release for seven years.

It feels more like a retreat for all involved, a chance to kick back and bounce some ideas off each other and the surrounding mountains. Several of them stick and give Youth an emotional core that covers the bare spots. Caine and Keitel, old pros on the home stretch, deserve nothing less.

Director Douglas Tirola threads his way through a minefield of egos and grudges in his interviews and does some interesting stuff with animation in his presentation of some of the magazine pieces.

Writer-director Patrick Brice is interested only in his male characters; Alex and Kurt work out their issues while their wives serve as support or comic foils. The laughs stop about halfway through, and the 79-minute running time feels about right.

A highlight of Sunshine Superman is archival footage of Boenish attaching a homemade ladder to the side of the cliff, extending it 20 feet out into nothing, climbing out and sitting on a bicycle seat, and facing back toward the cliff with a movie camera.

Good Kill deserves credit for framing these important issues in a credible, visually challenging drama, but writer-director Andrew Niccol doesn't take his material anywhere interesting.

Laverty gives the scenes between Jimmy and Father Sheridan a sharp edge, and Ward and Norton do the rest. Ryan shot on 35mm and makes the whole movie glow.

It's overlong and sanitized but succeeds in presenting an important part of contemporary American culture to a mainstream audience.

It doesn't all work. The energy and the performances by Cannon, Parris and Hudson can't carry a movie that careens from camp to tragedy to farce without taking a breath. Several scenes could have been cut, particularly a long, dumb take on sex and the Civil War that ends with a horny old goat in Stars-and-Bars skivvies.

All Things Must Pass is a labor of love by actor Colin Hanks, a Sacramento native who grew up on the store.

Harris, crinkly and laser-eyed, has enough gravity to hang with Neeson. Their scenes together anchor a movie that gets away from itself at times and relies on the tired family-in-jeopardy final act.

The camera tricks, the pacing, and the superbly choreographed set pieces are all there, in the right order, primed and timed like a string of fireworks. But what's holding Blackhat together is a dopey, ham-fisted script that plays like it's plucked from the bottom of the James Bond slush pile.

When the reenactors start to talk, In Country gets more complicated and interesting.

The easy chemistry between Binoche and Stewart is reason enough to see Clouds of Sils Maria.

If Abrams didn't take many chances, he didn't make many mistakes, either. First, Do No Harm became Don't Mess With Success, and it worked. Show Me the Money is sure to follow.

Rather than explore and embrace the contradictions within Jobs ("he had the focus of a monk but none of the empathy" is the best he can do), Gibney puts the hammer down.

What makes The Martian work is Damon.

What Ruffalo brings is a gravelly voice, soulful eyes, and absolute commitment. He's a little aw-shucksish in a Midwestern way but never corny and with a strong backbone. You like him and wouldn't want to cross him. Frank Capra would love Ruffalo. So would Hitchcock.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez, whose previous movie was the filmed-in-Oregon "C.O.G.," stages the many torture scenes in a tight, claustrophobic way that works to heighten tension.

In the Heart of the Sea doesn't trust itself enough to be great.

Makes the case that Fischer's chess prowess and his mental illness were inextricable. The chess fed the paranoia which supported the chess which drove Fischer deeper into madness, and so on.

It's exhausting, impressionistic, and ultimately hollow, extraordinarily well-acted but not nearly as relevant as "The Social Network."

Me and Earl is smart and appealing, but it spends way too much effort saying "I'm not like that" when it really is.

It's a comedy with an easy message, and it's sort of sweet. Not too raunchy, not too challenging. A good date movie for sophomores.

Stick around for the credits, when the real Trumbo talks about the effect of the blacklist on his daughter. It's the real thing.

Green is onto something with this paper towns metaphor, but it's nothing Rush didn't say better in "Subdivisions."

Ant-Man wastes the regular-guy appeal of its star, Paul Rudd, on a bland, by-the-numbers story that starts small and keeps on shrinking, a metaphor for the movie itself. Its modest ambitions are admirable and unrealized.

It's an odd concept, turning a zombie movie into a downbeat actor's showcase, but first-time director Henry Hobson gets great work from a subdued Schwarzenegger and an even better performance from Abigail Breslin in the title role.

A genre movie like this one depends on pacing, and Focus hits at least three dead spots in the final act. Writer-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra get so much right -- the sleek look, the plot set-ups, those montages in New Orleans, the supporting cast -- that it's painful when they can't maintain Focus and land it, before and after the big reveal.

Freeheld isn't bad -- with that kind of source material and topline acting talent it almost couldn't be -- but it could have been much more than it is.

Wahlberg's The Gambler is California Lite.

Not bad, no need to wake Roger Moore from his mid-morning nap and bring him out of retirement, but not special.

With such actors at work and with locations including a first-time use of the Houses of Parliament, Suffragette should look and be a richer experience than it is.

A kinda funny, kinda charming movie about finding out what really matters.

The subject is fascinating, the talent is undeniable, but the humanity that made Lili Elbe so memorable gets lost along the way.

No Escape is xenophobic claptrap of the highest order.

It's very meta and only mildly interesting. The actors are attractive, the countryside moreso. The plot is silly and threadbare; when tragedy does strike, it has about as much impact as a summer shower.

There's too much head-butting between human battering rams Diesel and Jason Statham, too many noisy explosions and generic special effects, and not enough car races and chases.

Also effective is the romance between Gere and Lillete Dubey, an Indian actor who play's Patel's mother.

Oddest of all is how Truth whips through this, making noble statements about journalism while brushing off the failures to get it right. Mapes was busy and stressed. (Slow down!) The document authenticators had doubts. (Listen to them.) The source said he was lying before but is telling the truth now. (Don't trust him.)

What happened in Chile really was a triumph of the human spirit, as cliched as it is to write that sentence. The miners deserved a better movie, but that's not how it works.

It's like watching a high-school football star trying to squeeze into his old uniform after a decade: funny at times, but kind of embarrassing.

True Story, made with obvious seriousness by talented professionals, never establishes itself.

Nothing really connects, not the bullying brothers, not the frustrated parents, not the sight gags familiar to anyone who's seen the giveaway trailer. The whole production has a cheap, tacky look that the talented leads, Helms and Applegate, can't save despite considerable charm and effort.

A featherweight comedy in which he fetches coffee for twentysomethings and calls them "ace" and "boss" without a hint of irony. It's painful to watch for anyone who remembers the thunder De Niro used to have at his fingertips.

The movie is slow, dreary, clumsily staged, and lacks a compelling lead.

Maybe it's too early to say MacFarlane can't make a movie. He's still young, he's compulsively creative. He'll keep getting more chances. He could figure it out, but I don't think I want to watch him try.

That "The Hunger Games" movies lost momentum is hardly a surprise: even "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings" slipped after the second installment. The end feels like a relief for all concerned, and it does feel like the end.

This overwatered trifle is doomed to wilt and fade quickly from memory.

Legend offers two Hardys for the price of one but delivers less than a satisfying whole despite the efforts of its star(s).

What's really offensive, to Hawaiians and mainlanders alike, is that after more than 50 years Hollywood can't make a better Hawaii movie than Elvis did. At least he could sing.

This time the talk was cheap, not witty or sharp. Tarantino the writer let his gift of gab get away from him and didn't give his script a close enough edit. Tarantino the director didn't do enough with the static setting; the flashbacks don't help and the big timeshift that's meant to explain everything that's happened feels incomplete.

Ultimately, it is nothing more than a souped-up, intermittently interesting take on some familiar material. [24 Oct 1997, p.22]

The movie isn't a complete disaster -- it's got a strong performance at its core from Dakota Johnson, and it looks sleek and modern, like a Beyonce video or a Calvin Klein commercial -- but it's an unpleasant experience with a sleazy stench that sticks in a way that E.L. James' novel doesn't.

Crowe is a commanding lead actor who could have made it into something special if he'd stayed out of his own way. Maybe he should have stayed home. You should.

It turns out bigger is not better. Bigger is louder, you bet your pounding eardrums it is, but it's not smarter. More teeth aren't sharper. They're dull, and so is Jurassic World.

Magic Mike XXL might be a good time on a summer evening, a one-night stand best forgotten before the sun rises, but it is not a good movie. It's boring, repetitive and lunk-headed.

Looks great, sounds great -- what's the problem? Everything else.

Bier's direction seems tentative, unsure whether to go all-in on the pulpier aspects of the story or play it straight. She gets mixed results from her leads: Cooper is game but not fierce or conflicted enough; Lawrence doesn't get deep enough to pull anyone along on her spiral into madness.