John Anderson

In Queen’s case, this means a tiger-striped stripper dress and snake-print go-go boots, which she will wear for the rest of the movie. It makes for terrific visuals, but like the sex scene to come it’s not a dignified enough use of this actress, and makes a blaxploitation film out of something that seemed to harbor loftier ambitions.

As constructed, Citizen K serves as a briskly paced primer into all things Putin, Russian and, incidentally, Khodorkovskian.

Still — and with the full knowledge of committing an atrocious pun — the whole thing left me cold, partly because there’s no actual villain and thus very little concrete drama.

Entertaining but highly conventional documentary.

Mr. Fellowes, being something of a genius at briskly established plotlines and characterizations, clearly knew that a regal visit would be an ideal way to show off the best and worst of each Downton habitué.

To lavish too much praise on Mr. Pitt’s performance would be to somehow suggest he isn’t already among the best actors on screen. He is. Between this film and the current “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” he could and should be a double Oscar nominee next year. If he’s not, it doesn’t mean his performance in Ad Astra isn’t an epic one.

Art is supposed to help us see the world in novel ways. The Sound of Silence, in its quietly exhilarating manner, may make us hear it differently, too.

Moonlight Sonata is not a children’s film, of course. What it deals in, regardless of how buoyant its characters, are the most serious issues imaginable. Not that there aren’t moments of pure mirth. “Did Beethoven ever play it?” Jonas asks of the sonata, “and is it on YouTube?” Even the formidable Ms. Connolly is given pause by that.

While there’s not exactly a lot of plot in The Goldfinch there is a lot of stuff, too much for even a 2 1/2 -hour movie.

If Mr. Fessenden had a gospel to preach it would be about the virtues of low-budget, intellectually rigorous, topical, mayhem-rich movies. Of which Depraved is a perfect example.

Mr. Nelson’s movie is a gossipy and very musical primer on Davis, who is, needless to say (though it is said and said), among the giants of jazz.

As played by Keira Knightley, Katharine is sympathetic, as is the cause of an unabashedly political movie that is, essentially, a procedural, but also a very sophisticated, ornate, complex and convincing thriller.

One can understand the draw of The Fanatic for someone like Mr. Travolta: It calls for full immersion, mentally and physically. And he pulls it off.

It’s a daring movie in its way—suicide is often inexplicable, and Phil treats it exactly that way. But Mr. Kinnear might have had more confidence in his audience, and maybe in himself.

Far From Home rather quickly segues from a soapy tale of life and love among the denizens of Midtown High School into a narrative where characters invoke George Orwell, question objective reality, claim truth as their own, and are enveloped in the kind of catastrophic inter-dimensional destruction that just seems like a way of not telling a coherent story.

While the title Marianne & Leonard sounds as if it’s out to give the female half of a famous partnership equal time, it does something quite close to the opposite.

A modest film about a modest man and benefits enormously from Mr. Wyman’s apparent obsessive-compulsive drive to collect, record and photograph.

Many things are possible in Midsommar, but the surest is that there’s nothing else like it at the movies.

What we have from director Alex Holmes — a guy who knows a great cinematic story when he hears one — is a documentary with all the nervous-making energy of a first-rate drama; a cast of sailors who are both endearing and intelligent; and a delicately wrought suspense story.

It’s not as if the people never existed, only the band, and the logical conclusion of all this speculation is exactly where the movie takes itself. I don’t want to spoil the party, but it feels like exploitation.

In Fyre, Mr. Smith tells a story of character, or lack thereof.

Director Anne Fletcher (“The Proposal,” “Step Up”) aims for the tear ducts, directing for maximum anguish, righteousness and/or schmaltz, and much of the Dumplin’ message arrives with postage due.

A two-hour documentary that feels like three, it certainly has a worthy subject, and a charismatic one; it commits a trove of valuable cultural lore to posterity. But it also commits a sin in never finding its rhythm, or a through-line on which to hang one of the great stories of American popular music.

Colette is not really a coming-of-age story, except as regards France itself. It’s a liberation story, one witty enough to be worthy of its subject.

Almost the entire movie is lifted from other sources, and then edited in a way that makes his enemies (do they know they’re his enemies?) look as foolish as possible. The punditry is trite. The snark is boring.

Museo is in part a caper film, a heist film, and while it leans on such classics as “Topkapi” and “Rififi” the robbery has its own signature and is done in a visual style that’s hypnotic.

The most serious flaw, and one that will irk a lot of Bel Canto enthusiasts, is the too-obvious lip-syncing of Ms. Moore to Ms. Fleming’s glorious singing. They simply don’t match up, and the music takes place at points in the film when viewers really don’t want to be thrown off. But thrown off they will be.

That the circuitous international influence of the western should manifest itself in South Africa is no surprise. Neither is the fact that someone as charismatic as Mr. Dabula should be the star of such a story, which is ripe with indignation, injustice, righteous violence and, ultimately, a shootout of cosmic resonance.

Making his film debut, Richie Merritt plays Rick as a sullen, evidently stupid and certainly uncharismatic schemer in possession of a modicum of animal cunning and perhaps a hint of personal insight. But there’s no life in his eyes. And little life in his acting. Which is too bad for Matthew McConaughey, who gives yet another terrific performance.

It should be said right off that this provocative off-black comedy, starring the Gen-Xer’s dream cast of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, is not for everyone. And the people it is for will have to be in the mood.

A serviceable thriller, kind of an “Argo” in Argentina, replete with ornate preparations, plans gone awry and narrow escapes.

The unlikely, bittersweet, bristling comedy Support the Girls is easily one of the best films of the year, and the most sympathetic to women, despite having been made by a man. How can this be? Luckily, Andrew Bujalski’s remarkable movie — with its killer performance by Regina Hall — is not just about women. It’s about men being idiots. And no one is arguing ownership of that narrative.

Ms. Clarkson is always fascinating; only on second viewing did I notice how much Ms. Mortimer was doing while Mr. Nighy was stealing a scene. In the end, though, it’s his movie. And likely wasn’t supposed to be.

Mr. Malek gives an eccentric performance, but he won’t make anyone forget Dustin Hoffman, whose original Dega was an endearing coward, a fatalist and a masterpiece.

It has its moments, several of which are provided by Ms. Rudolph, putting a spin on the girl-friday role. She has one scene of utter hilarity that shouldn’t be spoiled, and can’t be printed anyway, but may lead to “pilafing” becoming the word of the year on Urban Dictionary.

Luckily, there are jokes, like little lifeboats, floating all around, rescuing “Like Father” from anything resembling gravity.

The robbery isn’t sophisticated enough on its own to hold one’s interest.

You can consume only so much gooey romanticism before someone gets seasick, and it’s precisely the soggy love story at the center of Adrift — a survival-at-sea adventure directed by the estimable Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur — that prevents this storm-tossed vehicle from achieving maximum upthrust.

A daring little drama with a heavyweight cast, a gracefully delivered message and a hellish problem — specifically, other people.

Though clearly besotted with Crane’s poetry, the writer-director-star never achieves full immersion in the man’s life or work; the sense is of people playing a very cerebral game of dress-up.

It’s a story that doesn’t quite follow the money. The money is a maguffin, as per Hitchcock.

There’s a weariness to West of the Jordan River, both in the storytelling and the face of Amos Gitai.

Ms. McGowan has a wonderful face, and director Jenna Mattison spends a lot of time there. But the effectiveness of The Sound really comes from its atmospherics, which are rich and disturbing and a credit not just to the director but to composer Aaron Gilhuis and the people at Urban Post Production in Toronto.

Each of the five superb actors gets a moment of dramatic glory out of Mr. MacLachlan’s screenplay, which is about guilt, roots and the selfishness of implacable conviction. Each makes the most of it.

A lot of Lucky is philosophical mischief, some of it is tediously ruminative, and some moments achieve a loveliness that belies the film’s craggy desert terrain, the earthiness of its characters and even the landscape of Mr. Stanton’s body.

American Made is one of the many children of “Goodfellas,” a true-crime story turned first-person narrative told by a charismatic ne’er-do-well surrounded by dubious characters and tantalizing subplots. None of these offspring, including American Made, have matched the chilling grandeur of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 masterpiece, with its multifaceted characters and visual fluidity.

Director David Gordon Green, working with screenwriter John Pollono’s adaptation of the book by Mr. Bauman and Bret Witter, maintains a brisk pace. There’s barely a maudlin moment, which is remarkable given the subject matter.

The split screen has a downside: It punctuates the lopsidedness of the script by Anneke Campbell and Will Lamborn, Miguel’s story being far less convincingly written than Mark’s.

An extremely good-natured, upbeat recounting of the infamous Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King “man vs. woman” match of 1973.

It is the library as an urgent idea, and the obligations that the institution’s leaders have embraced, that win Mr. Wiseman’s admiration and attention.

When the film leaves the realm of the impolite or even criminal for something far more extreme, it achieves a level of excess that makes the whole enterprise increasingly cartoonish, rather than just awful.

A kind of blues song in its own right, Sidemen: Long Road to Glory is an affectionate attempt to showcase three major figures in the development of Chicago blues, musicians who spent their entire lives eclipsed by the oversized stars they played with.

It’s hard to make a compelling movie about a character defined by indecision, Hamlet notwithstanding. Ms. Hittman, however, has done it.

The creative process is always an elusive thing for filmmakers to capture, but amid all the startling visuals and the splendid acting, Polina rises, gloriously, to the challenge.

Much of the fun of Marjorie Prime is in figuring out where it’s going, and why. It would be shameful to reveal much more of the journey save to say that the people who make it do a splendid job.

Lemon is all about this pull and push, toward and away from the characters and the movie itself. It’s also one of the more original films in recent memory.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard would have been much funnier because, on paper, Tom O’Connor’s script was probably a scream. What adds to the unevenness of the whole affair is a propensity for extreme violence that just seems incompatible with what is ostensibly a comedy.

Ms. Plaza delivers a wide-ranging, nuanced and demanding performance as a mad woman, whose attic is the cellphone.

As in the previous films, the pilgrims stay in the most picturesque places, and are served the most sumptuous meals, the preparation of which Mr. Winterbottom uses as a visual digestif when his two stars begin to cloy. Most often, though, they are supremely urbane and consistently hilarious.

Containing as much forward motion as any film in recent memory, Good Time is as heartbreaking as it is exhilarating, and that’s no small thing.

War Machine, with a screenplay and direction by David Michod (of 2010’s ferocious “Animal Kingdom”), is a comedy because, as per the old Angela Carter line, it’s tragedy happening to other people. But it’s also a highly accessible examination of why the Afghanistan war couldn’t be won the way we—in the person of Gen. McChrystal—were fighting it.

Victoria Day (a very Canadian holiday) is expertly put together, the editing and framing so sturdy and right that the twin currents of the film flow over the viewer unimpeded.

Mr. Von Einsiedel is convinced that his subjects are “true heroes.” Viewers will be convinced of the same.

[Barry's] search for an identity is the ignition and combustion of the film. The exhaust, however, comes courtesy of Philip Morris. And the odor, like that surrounding the film itself, is of provocation in service of no cogent point.

Thoroughly entertaining, startling and highly erotic film.

It shouldn’t seem shocking, but the most interesting thing about this second Cruise-fired action film based on author Lee Child’s nomadic, ex-military hero is its action.

It’s a masterpiece — an overused word, but not the wrong one.

It’s a nail-biter, a solid thriller, an immigration-themed takeoff on that old chestnut “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which humans are both predator and prey. It’s not particularly nuanced. In fact, its lack of nuance is its most distinguishing characteristic.

The characters are really minimalist masterpieces, sculpted, polished and uncompromisingly female.

An effective and even affecting pop thriller.

The film never quite succeeds, simply because the book’s core virtues do not lend themselves to cinema.

What Mr. Parker has committed to the screen is a righteously indignant, kinetic and well-acted film — Mr. Parker, as Turner, delivers a fierce, complex performance. At the same time, his film is remarkably conventional. The framing and the camera movements are all very routine, even dated; one would have said it looks like television, before television gained its current lustre.

Mr. Garman’s showcase has very little to do with anything else, but he’s a pal of Mr. Smith’s and, at the very least, his performance is a filet of wit amid a heaping helping of comedic byproduct.

A mixed bag of a thriller that exploits two primal fears—of artificial intelligence, and precocious children.

Everything in The Light Between Oceans is deeply felt and dramatically precise, in a way that seems destined to become profoundly personal for each and every viewer.

The upshot is an emotionally satisfying fusion of the mixed up and the magical.

There’s much amusement to be had in the film. Very little of it stupid.

Jakubowicz has made a muscular, messy and vulgar film based on a life that has been all those things.

The psychology of The Club is warped and gnarled, the thinking of its members less-than-jesuitical.

Few viewers anywhere will be immune to the movie’s charms, or the performances, notably that of Mr. Sigurjonsson, who makes Gummi a slightly mournful, enormously lovable and quixotically heroic figure.

A dispiritingly vitriolic, only sporadically funny satire of ’50s Hollywood, Hail, Caesar! verifies a suspicion long held here, that the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, really hate the movies.

As a work of nonfiction, it deserves its own nomenclature. "Docu-poem" is too inelegant; "masterpiece" works, although it's been used before.

As Tiberius, who seems not to have been based on any Tiberius of history, Mr. Brody brings to the film a combination of heroin-chic and Basil Rathbone. Also, an extraordinary level of sadistic cruelty. People are burned alive, crushed like insects, hurled from rooftops. They may not deserve all this. But neither do we.

Mr. LaBute is not a moralizer as much as a lamenter — his people usually bring unhappiness upon themselves. In the gently joyous Dirty Weekend, though, they are capable of finding a flight path to contentment.

The filmmaking is fluid and electric; the acting, precise; the archetypal storytelling, seamless and brutal. What happens in “La Jaula de Oro” might enrage audiences, and probably for a variety of reasons. But there’s no getting away without it leaving a mark.

Consistently daffy, consistently amusing.

As pure comedy, The D Train is far more cringe-worthy than outright hilarious. But as a study in human nature, it’s beyond provocative — and maybe even instructive.

Hot Pursuit is about two women finding sisterly common ground despite ethnic, religious, philosophical, temperamental and/or phonetic differences. It also seems an inevitable stop on Hollywood’s perpetual recycling drive, which caters to an audience perfectly content with the creaky and familiar.

The visuals are kinetic, the pacing frenetic; the violence, or at least its aftermath, doesn’t just border on the excessive, it makes major incursions. But given the criminal milieu at hand, nothing less would have seemed plausible, or equal to the heightened, sordid sensibility Mr. Johnson creates in the film’s opening moments and maintains right up to an ending that is among the more perverse in recent memory.

For those more concerned with what “The Avengers” movies do best — outsize spectacle and wry comedy — Age of Ultron has to be declared a victory.

Adult Beginners presents itself less as humor than as a study in Gen-X sociology and psychology. What happens when people raised in relative ease and who expect to live an even better life than their parents are left emotionally unequipped for reality? It might be touching. It might even be important. But it’s not exactly a lot of laughs.

“Montage” is about expression. As such, it’s a more honest tribute to Mr. Cobain than any conventional documentary could pretend to be.

The problem for Mr. Krieger is that his film has been trying to dazzle us with all manner of sleight of hand and hokum and now undertakes the construction of a conventional romance. The movie starts spinning its wheels.

A very entertaining black comedy for very mysterious reasons.

Mr. Ostlund positions his troubled characters in an environment of polished ash and Scandinavian spotlessness, under which there are dark mutterings — the constant creak of tow cables and un-oiled metal.

White Bird in a Blizzard is an alibi for Mr. Araki to flex his considerable muscle as a visual artist, using a palette that ranges from the blissful to the grotesque, and an atmospheric score by those eminences of the ambient, Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie.

There are not a lot of moments in documentary cinema that equal Citizenfour. Ms. Poitras was already at work on a film about government surveillance when Mr. Snowden presented himself, and she’s something of a lightning rod, too, one with little evident sympathy for Obama administration data mining.

Camp X-Ray isn’t anti-American, despite much of Ali’s rhetoric. It is about the evils of ignorance, wherever it rears its ugly head.

World War II is often called the “last good war,” which has also meant that it was the last global conflict out of which the studios could make an unabashedly heroic movie. Fury is not that movie. And because it is not, it provides a few psychic disturbances beyond its shocking gore, burning soldiers blowing their brains out, children hanged from trees by the SS and imminent rape.

Naturally, Mr. Murray is a joy to watch. And he has brought so much joy to so many grumpy people he deserves whatever accolades he can accrue, even for a career-assessment comedy like St. Vincent.

It also happens to feature a pair of performances that eclipse all else around them.

If the screenplay to Kill the Messenger were a news story, any capable copydesk would have kicked it back to the reporter — not for a shortage of facts, but a lack of dramatic soul.

The taste with which one is left is not savory, exactly, but it certainly lingers.

Director David Mackenzie's gripping, convincing and convincingly violent convict drama owes its authenticity largely to the experiences of ex-prison therapist Jonathan Asser, who wrote its screenplay. But the opening 10 minutes are a virtuosic example of virtually wordless filmmaking.

One of the brighter aspects of Life of Crime, which otherwise ambles along good naturedly, is the casting.

In their engaging, fast-paced and ultimately ludicrous combo of espionage and mayhem, the makers of The November Man give us a very Putin-like villain in Arkady Federov (veteran Serbian actor Lazar Ristovski).

With a mood and setting worthy of a murder story by Jack London, this audience-friendly, atmospheric work could be remade as a thriller, although that’s really what it is already.

What's so unfunny about peace, love and understanding? Plenty, it turns out. But for much of the movie, viewers will be asking themselves where the conflict is. And, by extension, the drama.

Guaranteed to fan antigovernment sentiments among its audiences, Dinosaur 13 is less about paleontology than it is about prosecutorial overreach, political gamesmanship, dinosaur swindlers and true crime — if in fact crimes were even committed, and/or committed by the people accused.

Frank is a genuine original in a summer sea of sameness, and a darkly comedic manifesto against the cultural status quo.

Anita may be a tribute doc, but it’s one with real heft.

The screenwriter/playwrights have processed the characters’ last words in ways that imbue them with as much humanity as possible.

Fredrik Bond’s direction and Matt Drake’s screenplay deliver a charisma-free trip into a world of gratuitous violence, contrivances and tedium.

The Square is journalism, but Noujaim’s agenda is greater than mere reportage.

For all its immersion in the roar, grease and danger of Formula One, the fact-based Rush — about the sport's great rivalry of the 1970s — is also more predictable than a pit stop, something well-suited to Mr. Howard. He's made perfectly palatable pictures, but never a truly great one, partly because he has such a weakness for the commercial and a consequent gift for the obvious.

"Witty and brisk" is not the name of a French breakfast cereal, but it does describe a certain brand of French film, the type that coquettishly flirts with comedy while sprinting in the direction of dry, sophisticated charm. Such is Haute Cuisine.

There's a near-sacred history in Hollywood of non-U.S.- born directors providing fresh perspectives on America. Miloš Forman. Alfred Hitchcock. Ang Lee. Ernst Lubitsch. Billy Wilder. For Prisoners, a stress-inducing trip into child abduction, the director is Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who gives us an American "hero" guaranteed to push many buttons, many times, and who might not have been allowed to be quite so awful, under a different director's lens.

A documentary as messy as the movement it tries to portray, 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film possesses energy, passion and about a dozen documentaries inside it yearning to breathe free.

Even as Cecil lives his life slightly adjacent to history, building a heroic film around him requires herculean effort.

There aren't many bright spots in Lovelace, although one is Amanda Seyfried's intoxicating smile, and another is the retinal insult delivered by a 16mm projector flaring out at the audience during the movie's opening moments, and which feels like an accusation. It's the odd film that indicts you just for watching. But Lovelace is an eccentric piece of cinema, made by unlikely people.

To call Lake Bell a magnetic, intelligent, blithely screwball leading lady in the Carole Lombard tradition might be selling her short. With In a World… , a rollicking laffer about the cutthroat voiceover biz in Los Angeles, she proves herself a comedy screenwriter to be reckoned with.

Shockingly, the kind of cringe-inducing material upon which Mr. Mazer has built a career as a writer for Sacha Baron Cohen ("Bruno," "Borat," "Da Ali G Show") doesn't work when rendered by types who could have been cast in "Notting Hill" (someone even makes a Hugh Grant joke). It's rather close to excruciating.

Mr. Damon brings both a weary optimism and convincing physicality to Max, who is no revolutionary. He just wants to live, and is willing to don an exoskeletal combat suit and fight robots to do it.

Like the film itself, Porter’s handful of devoted, charismatic attorneys do a righteous job of reminding people that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, and that the criminal justice system seems otherwise disposed.

Witty, wacky, multicharacter comedy My Best Day features a rural milieu that’s authentically American.

Some parts of the film are drily academic, but much of it is quite beautiful and artfully put together by the director.

Despite its dubious inhabitants, the film consistently entertains by throwing the kinds of curves one should see coming but doesn’t.

Helmers Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin... don’t quite get to the issues behind the trio’s infamous performance at the historic Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow last year, but the young women’s vulnerability and defiance make for stirring viewing.

Soko is terrific, but it is Mr. Lindon who delivers the performance of the film, his internalized consternation amounting to an eloquent dispatch from the war between the sexes.

Frances Ha also marks the rare instance in which an actress has the perfect role at the perfect time. Ms. Gerwig's work here is fragile, delicate, subject to bruising; something that could wither under too much attention. Perhaps Ms. Gerwig is the greatest actress alive. And maybe Frances Ha is just the ghost orchid of independent cinema.

Noisy, frenetic, grandiose and essentially a soap opera, director J.J. Abrams's second contribution to the franchise has everything, including romance: Never before have Capt. James T. Kirk and his Vulcan antagonist, Mr. Spock, seemed so very much in love.

A mood piece, a character study and an exercise in poetic gesture possessed of a sort of evanescent, secular spirituality.

While much of The World Before Her speaks to global womanhood, other aspects are more specific to India, but that’s what gives the film much of its life and spark.

One of the assets of Stranger Things is its air of mystery, and the actors give the indelible impression that they have much locked away inside.

A nutty Norwegian mashup of drollery, myth and jolts to the nervous system, Thale does a deft dance between grossout comedy and horror fantasy. Still, it’s too wordy by half, saying what it should be showing

What keeps Ain’t in It for My Health from being a really satisfying portrait isn’t a lack of access, but a lack of intimacy.

[The Kings of Summer] is much more interested in the laughs that can be mined from character rather than plot. Galletta’s script, Vogt-Roberts’ direction and the distinctive play of the actors, notably Offerman and Mullally, lets the viewer know who everyone is right away, and the gag lines flow.

The film grows increasingly mirthful as the characters come into focus, and the casting is the key: Ms. Garner, who also helped produce the film, has a gift for catty roles, and Ms. Wilde is so funny she should play hookers all the time.

Likely to create considerable nervous tension among viewers who think they've seen this all before. They haven't.

The scope of the subject is such that when Mr. Jarecki's voiceover cuts into the narrative, imposing a personal angle on the national story, it reduces the sense of significance its creator aimed for. But that's a fairly backhanded endorsement of a very potent movie.

Less magical is the blind adherence to formula evident in most of Taken 2. As they might say in the advertising department, it's an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride. But it could have been much more.

Sleepwalk With Me makes the subject palatable, funny and maybe even touching.

It's a purely sensory journey until the pictures start making editorial comments, in slaughterhouses and garbage dumps.

Years after its initial release, Ornette: Made in America, part of Milestone's continuing "Project Shirley," still feels fresh - its moves always surprising, yet always somehow perfect.

Lawless is one of those films that, through seeming serendipity, has a cast that defines its moment. There have been others - "The Breakfast Club," "The Godfather" and "Silverado," to name one irrelevant and two relevant examples. But Lawless really lucked out.

The situation is fascinating, and given an illuminating investigation here.

Does it all have to be so tedious? To the movie's credit, many of the inside jokes are pretty funny, and Mr. Lundgren is close to hilarious as a dissipated Swede named Gunner.

The film benefits enormously from having the luminous Rebecca Hall as its lead. It also gains an ominous gravity from the haunted, wounded and wobbly England in which it's set.

Conventional it is not. Engrossing it is.

Writer-director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, who in his feature debut has lashed together a sturdy vehicle for unadorned morality and pragmatic justice.

It is Mr. Kinnear's slippery charm that keeps Thin Ice from sinking into the frosty Wisconsin slush toward which it seems to be heading from the start.

One of the reasons documentaries often take so long to make is the filmmakers' need to keep their subject from giving a performance. They want something genuine, something that materializes only when the camera disappears. Nothing Mr. Courtney is says is inaccurate or, God knows, dishonest. But it isn't quite true either.

What makes this nominee for the best-foreign-film Oscar singular among Holocaust movies is the way it characterizes the banality of life underground.

The island locale rings with reggae music regardless of its proximity to Jamaica, and any action sequence is rendered in painfully deliberate slo-mo.

With Mr. Harrelson, Mr. Moverman has created an antihero of epic proportions and indiscretions.

Safe House is a sturdy enough thriller, but one that consistently defaults to the less interesting of its two lead characters.

Ms. Israel's movie proves, once again, that the best nonfiction cinema possesses the same attributes as good fiction: Strong characters, conflict, story arc, visual style.

The director's apparent blindness to the epic banality of her subjects suggests that the whole project is one royally misguided mess.

The landscape is dire, the architecture is haunted, children disappear by the dozens and antique toys inexplicably spark to life. That Mr. Radcliffe doesn't is part of the problem.

As an experiment in Academy Award psychology, Albert Nobbs is fascinating. As drama? It is, forgive us, a drag.

Mr. Carnahan has till now been pigeonholed, and rightly, by comedy shoot-'em-ups like "Smokin' Aces" and "The A-Team." But here he is with The Grey - certainly an adventure film but one with a spiritual ingredient that is both surprising and fiercely resonant.

The ending, for instance, is so ridiculously tidy it squeaks. But en route to its kitchen-sink climax, "Man" manages to both amuse and provoke, to cleave to convention and promote ideas.

Despite all the nervous tension, the central drama is flawed - Jonathan isn't trying to find a killer. He is the killer. Something is lacking in the dramatic equation.

The truth is, Mr. Farina would be considered Oscar material if "Joe May" were a bigger film. As it is, he'll have to settle for being great.

Doesn't the reigning genius of the German language deserve his own "Shakespeare in Love"? Sure. But as Goethe scampers about Leipzig, comically failing his doctoral exam, spilling his books and looking bemused, young Johann might as well be auditioning for his own Disney Channel program.

The type of film with which Mr. Ratner has claimed to be infatuated is itself like a caper - it requires precise execution. Tower Heist is more like that 10-story Snoopy, as he drunkenly bobs along Central Park West.

Any self-respecting period piece, historical drama or even caper movie - and The Debt is all three - balances issues of global significance with interpersonal drama. The problem here is that the personal eclipses the global. The stakes are too low.

What may feel like Mr. Sfar's indulgences are sometimes just that, but one could hardly make an honest movie about Gainsbourg that wasn't as recklessly ambitious as this.

A delicious thriller that gets under the skin à la "All About Eve," albeit with a twist: The craft here is still theater, but of the workplace rather than the stage.

The pulp-fictional hero is inhabited by the charismatic Andy Lau who, together with Chinese stars Bingbing Li, Ms. Lau and Tony Leung Ka-fai, makes Detective Dee the most purely entertaining film of our vanishing summer.

Goofily funny, and silly, and in many ways follows the currents of contemporary comedy into the gulf stream of inanity. And yet Ned turns out to be a strangely moving figure, a comic foil worthy of affection, perhaps even respect.

The film is almost distractingly beautiful to look at, something that accentuates the tension between the film's conflicting quantities, i.e., the glories of the physical world, and the corrupted humanity it hosts.

Mr. Nixey is doing an Alfred Hitchcock homage within a movie lacking anything as subversive, or skilled, as Hitchcock.

This is a movie about longing, desire, desperation and the abandonment of principle - quite a collection of themes, all universal.

Despite a certain emotional chill, what holds this Mechanic together is - no surprise - the core Carlino story.

Cinema-as-shoplifting is okay, as long as you still get the feeling it's for a greater good. But that's something The Tourist is sorely missing.

You have to be a bit of an arrested adolescent to think "Larry" is funny.

Not as bad as it sounds nor as good as it might have been.

It's doubtful Milarepa will be opening in Beijing any time soon; all the more reason it deserves a look.

This is a movie for younger children -- they won't notice that the children deliver their lines with all the conviction of an airline flight boarding announcement.

Martin is marvelous; through sheer charisma, he takes over certain scenes as if no one else is there.

The problem with Thinner, which went unscreened for critics, is that it's medium-level King. It lacks the gravity of "Shawshank" and the crazed obsession of "Misery." It's more like "Needful Things," another good film of a lightweight story, with a few more servings of gore and gross-out humor to hold us over until the next big thing.

It's weird, wacky territory you enter in The Price of Milk, and we don't just mean New Zealand.

Infectious and inspiring, despite one's best efforts to resist its charms.

The two leads are unappealing, the story is dragged on for days and the rather random magical element renders any human factor irrelevant..

As good as Rourke is, and as willingly as he throws himself on the figurative hand grenade, his performance constantly begs the question of whether the story would be worth telling without him. Marisa Tomei, as Cassidy the pole dancer, delivers a courageous performance, one nearly as ego-battering as Rourke's.

It's the younger women's movie, and they acquit themselves admirably, even if most of the creative energy in the film seems to have gone into the costumes and set design. It's too bad, but in a year when female bonding is all over the screen, and uniformly dreadful to watch, Now and Then merely continues the trend. [20 Oct 1995, p.F14]

If Aeon Flux is what Charlize Theron does to pay the bills while otherwise being engaged in "Monster" and "North Country," it's probably a reasonable price to pay. For her. For us? No, no, no.

Proyas is trying simultaneously to create a pure thriller and sci-fi nightmare along with his tongue-in-cheek critique of artifice. And this doesn't work out quite so well.

Steven Soderbergh takes Gray (who appeared in his little-appreciated gem "King of the Hill") places he's never been on-screen. Motion, color and brazen stylizing enhance what is at times a genuinely hysterical work on rationalized terror.[9 May 1997, p.F12]

The big difference between Mr. Romero's film and Mr. Eisner's--which is so intelligent you fear the fanboys will scatter--is that Mr. Eisner never gives us the military's point of view. All we know is what David and Judy and Russell know, which for a long time isn't much. And The Crazies is all the scarier for it.

Directed by Ernest Dickerson, the film looks fine, as one might expect, but isn't particularly funny and often makes no sense.

The emotional aspects of the story are treated with such a heavy hand, the supernatural aspects are so vague and uninvolving, and the group dynamic is so unconvincing that one can't quite imagine why anybody bothered.

The source of all this information was a real-life KGB agent, Vladimir Vetrov, code named Farewell, and with the usual adjustments for drama his story gets a respectable retelling in this nervy French production.

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire is like a diamond -- clear, bright, but oh so hard.

So refreshing and funny and, in its way, sophisticated.

A movie that commits sins of excess, except regarding Thornton. There's not nearly enough of him.

It's an awfully confusing journey, unless you're of pro-Digi-ous intelligence. Or a digimaniac. Or just 6.

It's a trip into a primordial world and primeval sensibilities, and if you're looking to shake off the mall-movie blahs, there are few better places to look.

The assumption among many when the movie was postponed was that Paramount Classics felt New Yorkers weren't emotionally equipped for something bright or frothy or vivacious. They needn't have been concerned.

Hyams the director ("Sudden Death," "Timecop," "The Star Chamber") operates at too much of a fevered pitch for things not to eventually get out of hand -- accelerating violence and horror eventually hit maximum velocity and warp into nonsense, no matter how erudite the script.

Redline isn't exactly a car wreck, mainly because it's far less exciting, and you can, in fact, look away. Perhaps at your shoes.

The movie thus moves from truly creepy to truly inane, which is, unfortunately, all too common in films of this ilk.

Subtle it is not. Well-intentioned it certainly is. No one but the youngest in the family will care very much about it, though. And they may well be filled with wonderment trying to figure out what this big Babe person is all about.

Go see it. But you'll feel cheap in the morning.

Stay Alive spends a lot of time inside the video game system, and what will terrify the audience very early on is the realization that there's better acting in the video game than on the big screen.

The go-for-broke plot twists are daring, but because there's no sense of background to the characters, one gets the sense it's all being made up as Baigelman goes along.

Director Les Mayfield ("Miracle on 34th Street") has his moments, of course, but what ultimately was needed in the case of Flubber was a movie with more bounce and less talk.

The most profound thing the remarkably dread-filled drama Day Night Day Night tells us is what it doesn't tell us.

While Amma's teachings of love, inner peace and Karma, or action, resonate in the film -- obviously, Amma is a woman called to God -- her background remains pretty much a mystery. Less National Geographic and more personal history would have added a dimension to "Darshan."

Does for industrialists, politicians, pro-football owners and lawyers what Christopher Guest's "Best in Show' did for dog owners -- but without the skewer.

So mild, so benign, its humiliation-to-vindication are so predictable and its old-folks jokes so feeble.

Follows a leadenly predictable path that will be more than familiar to anyone who's seen a recent sports movie, or any Sandler movie.

Likké should be applauded for tackling a subject that's bristling with sociopolitical thorns and that raises some provocative questions, particularly about what we find attractive in other people and why.

If nothing else, Gummo does challenge perceptions and presumptions: Is the perspective of youth in this country really so devoid of significance, and their existence so septic? These are good questions, although "Gummo" provides neither answer nor solution, nor even thematic cohesion.

A trashy little movie about drinking, football and drinking, is also one of those films that pretends to moralize about the very behavior it milks for every giggle it can get.

A sad farewell to the promising Project Greenlight concept, this Feast leaves viewers with nothing satisfying to tuck into.

An eager, earnest, broadly constructed pageant of ideas and characters whose greatest asset may be the service it pays to literature. [01 May 1998, p.F1]

In addition to its terrifically bratty performance by the epically bratty Posey, House of Yes contains some of the smarter (and smarter-assed) writing of the year.

The cast is really fine, but the script requires a lot of hard swallowing. The story moves along briskly and colorfully but gets further and further from the intimate atmosphere that initially makes it so appealing. [25 Apr 1997]

"Wolverine" is full of angst, and yet has had virtually all the soul wrung out of it in an effort to create a live-action cartoon. But cartoons are rarely so unwieldy, or force a director -- in this case, the largely unsung Gavin Hood -- to juggle so much impossible plotline.

Of all the Josef von Sternberg-Marlene Dietrich films, this Oriental thriller may be the most sinfully pleasurable and amusing. [15 Sep 1991, p.6]

Something about Eklavya: The Royal Guard suggests a lost film by David Lean. With some muted echoes of "Hamlet." And a whiff of "Rigoletto."

Pathetically unfunny most of the time.

Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini show the same appreciation for eccentrics and humanity they brought to "American Splendor" and Mr. Dano's Louis is a delicately wrought wonder.

The common problem of Solondz's characters is an inability to see the world in shades of grey, which is fitting in a film where color-garish, boring or just plain ugly-is so important, and the actors are working off palettes of such extreme emotions. A few of them-notably Ms. Rampling, Mr. Hinds and Ms. Sheedy-are as good here as they've ever been.

The plot's a lot lighter than Vera, our engaging pachyderm, and Larger Than Life is basically a buddy/road movie--complete with animal comedy and interspecies bonding. For all the traveling, the movie doesn't go many places we haven't seen before. But Murray is careful not to step on Vera's toes. And she shows him the same courtesy. [01 Nov 1996, p.F14]

Felix (Duvall) simply wants to host his own goodbye, maybe have a band, and the reasons why are the reasons Get Low is essential viewing. That, and the acting.

A greatest-hits collection of plot devices and emotional cues from such films as "Gorillas in the Mist" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," making it something of a trained chimp, one that apes a lot of good movies while making itself look ridiculous.

While Twohy has some fabulous technology at his disposal and uses it to great effect, the answer to that second question is obvious: He keeps us on the edge of our seats not by dazzling us with lights and sound (even if the sound is spectacular) but by tantalizing his audience with basic, well-wrought suspense.

The best advice to give anyone who wants to see Species II--other than "don't go!"--is "don't eat!"

Anderson, who makes as impressive a directing debut as has been seen in some time, creates a perfectly modulated mystery that doesn't even feel like one. It's a character play, and Hall, Reilly and Paltrow are so convincingly damaged they take on the properties of fine china.

The voyeuristic indulgences of a middle-aged filmmaker playing out his most deep-seated and unresolved sexual fantasies and anxieties.

Kon's best work yet.

Odd, funny film.

While the movie's star -- and ruler, and ship's captain, and grand poobah -- is Haneke himself, his actors are sublime.

Whalin is awful, Birch is saddled with lines that would make a silent film star blanch and Irons devours huge chunks of scenery with the ferocity of one of those dog-fighting dragons.

Crashingly unimaginative. But its real offense is making such poor use of Nielsen.

Although it comes under the increasingly crowded category of Why Did They Bother, McHale's Navy does offer an example of a movie that tries to be all things to all people. As long as they're 13 and male.

Reitman's attempt to show he can re-create the success of his biggest comedy ever. What he proves instead is that, given time and money, a comedy director can devolve into a lower life form.

It's not that the movie is never funny. It's just that you don't feel very good when it is.

There's not enough sustained musical momentum to simulate the energy of an actual rave; the characters are likable but unremarkable.

Gracefully bittersweet and balanced. [16 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

[Shore] seems convinced that the antics of his retarded persona amount to some manner of postmodernist anti-comedy and this makes the resultant boredom seem all the more pathetic.

Brain Candy is not for kids. But adults, especially those cursed with a twisted, jaded or perverse sense of humor, will find plenty in it to laugh about. [12 Apr 1996, p.F12]

By convoluting the various planes of experience, by overlapping and obscuring ostensible realities and ostensible dreams, Mr. Nolan deprives us the opportunity of investing emotionally in any of it.

It's a movie on the wrong side side of the so-bad-it's-good line.

That this is the first film for director Joe Mantello, who was nominated for a Tony for directing the stage version, may be compounding the problem. But frankly, if someone wanted to do a parody of a gay film like this, it's hard to imagine the sloganeering being much different.

What she finds is good for her and good for us -- a journey of realization for anyone who's ever felt lost in the crowd.

The special effects are effective and aggressive, although one might occasionally confuse a divine vortex with a flushed toilet.

The difficulty is that Brassed Off operates at an emotional pitch that starts at a crescendo and never relents--rendering almost everything equally inconsequential.

A goofball movie, in the way "Malkovich" was, but it tries too hard.

It only serves to remind one of better movies, at a time when one needs no reminders.

A virulent but thoroughly entertaining trilogy of tales about the besieged lower classes of Edinburgh, ripe with vulgarity, self-loathing, violence and economic disorder.

What we want from Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is a giddy mix of gruesome horror and campy humor. What we get is less massacre than mess. [29 Aug 1997, p.F16]

Pellington bestows on the film a distracting, if occasionally effective, amount of video technique, and Wakefield’s story is rich and often truthful.

Spears acquits herself as well as anyone might, in a movie as contrived and lazy as this one.

Although Born Romantic is sweetly intentioned and staunchly on the side of love, it meanders long to enough to alienate whatever affection it otherwise earns.

Has been described as a "midnight-style musical." And perhaps it should be seen that way, with a crowd of kindred knuckleheads and some moshing in the aisles.

To resort to strictly ethnocentric references, Fanaa is equal parts MGM extravaganza, Shakespeare lite and James Bond. In their heart of hearts, isn't that what movie audiences really want?

But as Isaac, Rifkin is simply transcendent, giving what is the most accomplished performance of the year. He does not, however, have a completely successful movie around him.

The trick is getting from a conclusion made five minutes into a movie to an ending 90 minutes away. It can be a scary prospect. In The Sweetest Thing it is mostly a hoot.

Ricki Lake, who occupies one of the lower links on the TV trash-talk food chain, is promoted to ugly duckling in Mrs. Winterbourne, a film that waddles through the movie-memory super-mart shoplifting everything but charm.

Take a ridiculous premise, marry it to a situation that is bound to resolve itself in the most obvious way, and keep the whole thing rolling with juvenile gags. What do you have? Television. Or “If Lucy Fell,” whose writer-director, Eric Schaeffer, certainly knows television. Or knew it.

The only thing left unsliced is the ham in BloodRayne, yet another video game adaptation by German genre specialist Uwe Boll and a movie with more fading - or faded - talent than an Italian basketball team.

What makes this film more than mere visual vigilantism is John Schlesinger, of whom it can be safely asked, what happened? He shows flashes of the old brilliance here -- the talent that made "Midnight Cowboy" so moving and "Marathon Man" such a nail-biter -- in telling this modern horror tale of the court system gone awry. It's unfortunate that after the messy construction of his last film, "The Innocent," he hasn't directed his gifted self toward something with a bit more intelligence. [12 Jan 1996, p.F6]