Joe Williams

While Banderas' dark intensity overshadows the potential poignancy of the story, Almodovar is such a skilled surgeon that he extracts a juicy nugget of pleasure from a purely distasteful premise.

Despite the title, My One and Only is irritatingly repetitive.

Finally the film tips its hand and becomes a bet-the-house warning about climate change.

To ensure customer loyalty, Hollywood should promote more movies about workaday life in the provinces, but until there's a new wave of midcoast comedies, Cedar Rapids is the big kahuna.

With its exploded notions of heroism, torture-rack dramatics and kamikaze gusto, it's a fiendishly entertaining flick.

May be too sterile and stylized to elicit real tears, but it's got brains and heart to spare.

Just misses living up to its name.

When a man whose wife was killed by cultists invites us to laugh at life's absurdities, the particulars are almost incidental.

We're left with an impression of a vivacious pioneer; but warm shouldn't have to mean fuzzy.

What's most conspicuously missing from this ensemble is some input from the advertisers who subsidize Wintour's tyranny, and the readers who are seduced into buying her beautiful four-pound paperweights.

Director Dereck Joubert gleans a valuable thread that connects us to these endangered creatures.

The rare film that flows from a wellspring of ideas.

There are audiences for movies that amuse us, and arouse us, and scare us, but the career of Todd Solondz ("Storytelling") raises the question: Is there an audience for movies that make us feel icky?

The fiery finale is good enough to leave the legions smiling. But when a movie is expected to lift an entire industry, "good enough" shouldn't be good enough.

Without the kindling of character development, Planes: Fire and Rescue is no smoldering success, but if Disney’s flight plan is to share Pixar’s airspace, it’s getting warmer.

If you root for documentaries with heart, The Other Dream Team is a slam dunk.

Indeed, most of the famous faces are surprisingly adept at singing. Even when the actors are not lip-syncing (which seems to be about half the time), the dense, clever lyrics are intelligible.

Like a Fishbone show or an LA weather forecast, the dark curtain rises, and there's a promise of more sunshine.

Although the story is mournful, the movie is buoyed by a heaven-scented surrealism.

Europeans have a taste for both the mechanics of trickery and the machinations of power, and the politically astute Spanish film "Even the Rain" belongs in the same conversation with Francois Truffaut's "Day for Night" and Pedro Almodovar's "Bad Education."

This movie is so tone-deaf it would only make sense in Vincent van Gogh’s missing ear.

This showcase for Wiig is sufficiently absurd to make real-world parallels laughable.

He's not in Mark Wahlberg's league, and 21 Jump Street isn't quite as funny as "The Other Guys," but by lampooning himself here, Tatum has bought himself a grace period to grow in.

For a nation at war with its own values, Fair Game is a compelling, pertinent and scrupulously true political thriller in the honorable tradition of "All the President's Men."

The edginess here isn't merely facile. Goldthwait's movies, including the under-appreciated "Shakes the Clown," are about reclaiming dignity from the dung heap. And he's found a fitting collaborator.

While director Michael Roskam lays the groundwork for a heist thriller, The Drop is fueled by character, not plot.

There's a running joke that this epic of also-ran heroism is set in eternally modest Toronto; but its real locale is an alternate universe without parents or the unhip.

The Hunger Games is dressed as a dark satire of soulless entertainment, but like Katniss' adversaries in the PG-13 hunting scenes, it doesn't have a distinctive identity or go-for-the-throat.

Unexpectedly poignant.

While it's satisfying to see fat cats tamed by science and an enraged public, the movie misses the opportunity to sustain the pressure.

Directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra were weaned on earthy comedies like "Bad Santa," and every moment of mature insight in Crazy, Stupid, Love is answered by a scene of formulaic farce.

With its forked tongue planted loosely in cheek, this haunted-house flick is enjoyably retro in both style and substance.

Refusing to hold our hands, director Lynne Ramsay ("Morvern Callar") pushes far beyond the boundaries of topical drama into the realm of the surreal.

Although it's slow to unfold, this courtroom drama is so timelessly humane and even-handed it feels like it came from the dockets of Solomon - by way of Sidney Lumet.

You can tell by some loose threads and hurried workmanship that God’s Pocket is a knock-off, but it’s so stuffed with value, it’s an offer you can’t refuse.

Land Ho! is a tepid little movie that goes almost nowhere, and if I had to sit in that rental car for one more boob joke, I’d rather jump into a volcano.

An entertaining tour of Tinseltown served with poisoned popcorn.

Sorry, Keanu, but you stole my time and you murdered my brain cells. By the sacred oath of WHOA, there will be blood, and this time it’s personal.

Aiming for a middle path between drama and comedy, The Way Way Back is so overloaded with jokes that it could sink in the water hazard, but on the final scorecard, sure enough, it’s in the hole.

Best of all is Favreau. Instead of mass-producing another superhero epic, he has given the overfed public a dish of right-sized comfort food.

It's faint praise to say that this is the best of the "Planet of the Apes" movies, because the evolution of special effects and makeup was predictable. But the unexpected strength of the film is its heart.

Given the turbulent water of world affairs and sea changes in the media, a follow-up a year from now might be titled "Gray Lady Down" if the Times does not chart a new course.

This is a kaleidoscopic valentine to a great city from a director who knows and loves his subject.

Sometimes macabre and sometimes manipulative, but the way it speaks to the spirit is miraculous.

It’s a party where we want to stay, until we’re dragged out kicking and screaming.

If we want a bigger picture, we’ll have to wait for God to green-light “Noah: The Next Generation.”

What Barrymore brings is good-natured, girl-powered subversion, a sense of when to flaunt clichés and when to flip them over the rails.

Im Sang-soo has crafted an erotic thriller whose cool beauty speaks for itself.

Although this stylish and ominously paced vehicle starts with a full itinerary, it never makes a vital connection.

This quasi-horror film has the great director's usual craftsmanship and a stellar cast, but ultimately it's an infuriating trick that makes its most provocative ideas disappear.

This well-executed sequel is sneaky. While it distracts us with Chinese backdrops and buffoonish humor, it sucker punches us with a message about belonging.

Ultimately a movie that could have been a little jewel is unpolished.

A one-joke movie, but it’s a joke whose recurring rimshots grow as loud as our laughter.

On a moral-justice level, we’d like to see this worm squirm a little more over his treatment of ex-colleagues before we let him off the hook to say that everyone else was cheating too.

It would be a disservice to describe "Perfect Blue" as a well-made cartoon. It is simply one of the richest and most suspenseful films of the year. [03 Aug 2001, p.E2]

Rooted in empty materialism, but it never evokes the heady rush of a guilty pleasure or the precipitous payback of a thriller.

Closed Circuit is not a tense thriller about the new era of surveillance — it's a tepid thriller about the old notion that no leader can be trusted.

If you want to see a great movie about a political campaign, starring the smartest heartthrob of his era, rent "The Candidate." If you want see a very good one, buy a ticket for The Ides of March.

Too modest to become a worldwide phenomenon, but sensitive teens and their older kin who pine for the '90s may want to take it for a spin on the dance floor.

Draining most of the blood, sweat and tears from a true story, this music-minded movie capably covers a song we’ve heard a hundred times before.

A minor revelation.

This stylish film reminds us that great images endure after bodies and buildings crumble.

If you don’t crave the taste of motor oil on your popcorn, Furious 7 can’t end fast enough.

Richly photographed and featuring an attractive cast, Farewell, My Queen is a layer cake of royal pleasures, rote protocols and revolutionary politics. For skeptics who thought this story had grown stale, let them eat their words.

Damsels in Distress is shockingly tone-deaf. Stillman is still capable of a few amusing quips, but his storytelling is sophomoric.

Nowhere Boy is too astutely written and directed to go to predictably melodramatic extremes.

Eccentric enough to get mistaken for an uplifting fantasy, but it's Plaza who belongs in the penthouse.

Barney's Version has episodes instead of plot, outbursts instead of wit and alibis instead of growth.

With this unfunny fourth installment, the "Ice Age" franchise has skidded so far into kiddie land that adults who tread there risk extinction.

A distinctly European exercise in observational nuance and tonal restraint in which Coppola stretches static images to the breaking point.

July is a provocative and honorably independent filmmaker, but given the meager rewards of investing our time, The Future wasn't worth the wait.

Director Philipp Stolzl worked in the same dangerous conditions as the original climbers, and we can feel the chill and peril in our bones. It's a shame, then, that the screenwriter, unlike the camera crew and the characters, was afflicted with such timidity.

Cinderella is so scrubbed of personality, it’s not even worth calling a mess.

The funniest movie of the year.

A passable popcorn movie, but fans of the first film who expect lightning to strike twice are liable to get burned.

Streep is astonishing, conveying Child's gusto, her quavering voice, even her height.

Age of Ultron has self-aware laughs, grandiose themes and the best effects that money can buy. But at this point, it will take true vision to plot the umpteen sequels without getting trapped in a time loop.

The best kind of comic-book movie. It's stylish and spectacular, yet it's rooted in history and human emotions. It's smart yet it's funny. It's wise yet it kicks ass when it has to. Just like the U.S. of A.

A good nature film - and a great technical achievement.

A charming throwback filled with authentic characters.

Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller told me that Gould's music is as divisive today as it was 50 years ago, when the pianist publicly clashed with conductor Leonard Bernstein over the tempo of a performance.

As long as Hollywood keeps hitting us over the head with empty spectacles like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, regular Joes will be too numb to fight back.

The several allusions to Thomas Mann’s forbidden-love novel “Death in Venice” are apt, but Yossi is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel.

As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams.

A colorful indictment of corporate infestation, but it's missing a prescription.

At its heart, this is a compassionate character study. Robbie’s tenderness toward his son and his remorse for a street fight are the raw ingredients of a ripening consciousness.

Fast Five represents Yankee ingenuity of the brutally stupid kind.

By the time the meta-movie and cute-dog subplots collide in the desert, this high-concept vehicle has run out of gas. Movies about the filmmaking process may never get old, but self-referential hit men smell like yesterday's fish story.

Watson is a revelation here as a brand-obsessed bad girl.

By turning a whistle-blower into a tragicomic figure, Soderbergh sustains our interest in a complicated financial scheme and rewards it with a kickback of ghastly laughs.

The only edge in the movie is represented by Russell Brand, who actually lived the lifestyle, but he's muzzled by a bad Liverpool accent and a gay subplot that's as insincere as the swaggering anthems by fatuous hacks like Foreigner, Starship and Journey.

Gordon-Levitt is a victim of his own success here. He plays such a convincing cad that we don’t believe or invest in his redemption.

Although there are gentle detour discussions about advertising in classrooms and school buses, Spurlock's ironic approach can't convince us that ads are toxic. Indeed, when he visits sprawling Sao Paolo, Brazil, where all outdoor advertising has been banned, it seems as sterile as Stalingrad.

The beauty of October Country, beside its artful images, is how it compresses the windblown fortunes of working-class America into the fallen leaves of one forlorn family.

The most grievous sins here are sins of omission.

It's got a grown-up artfulness, but Winter in Wartime could become a lot of boys' favorite movie.

Maybe I enjoyed the similarly themed Kick-Ass because it took me back to that innocent time. Or maybe it's because this is the most brazenly funny bloodbath unleashed on the public since "Pulp Fiction."

We were promised desolation, but “The Hobbit” just keeps dragon on.