Jonathan Rosenbaum

This delightful 1989 pop-fantasy musical about Valley girls and extraterrestrials gives the talented English director Julien Temple an opportunity to show his stuff in an all-American context. The results are less ambitious and dazzling than his Absolute Beginners, but loads of fun nevertheless: his satirical yet affectionate view of southern California glitz is full of grace and energy.

Harris’s refusal to treat her heroine strictly as role model or bad example makes her portrait a lot livelier and less predictable—as well as more confusing—than the standard genre exercises most reviewers seem to prefer. What’s exciting about this movie is a lot of loose details: frank girl talk about AIDS and birth control, glancing observations about welfare lines and the advantages of a boy with a car over one with subway tokens.

With Hurd Hatfield memorably playing the title part, the 1945 film also includes juicy performances by George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, and Donna Reed. Deeper and creepier (that is to say, better) than anything turned out by Merchant-Ivory, this is both very Hollywood and very serious in a manner calculated to confound the “Hey, it’s only a movie!” crowd.

What comes across is a fascinating fetishist delirium, where memories of remote war movies get recycled into something that's alternately creepy and beautiful.

One of the better Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn comedies—not so much for the screenplay by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, which lacks the bite and sophistication of Adam's Rib, as for the relaxed and graceful interplay of the stars.

One emerges from this film not only with a new vocabulary and a fresh way of viewing the straight world but with a bracing object lesson in understanding what society “role models” are all about.

Rossellini left this project before it was finished, and it was edited and released a few years later without his approval—but it still comes across as a remarkably suggestive fable.

The animation seeks to dazzle, but with a self-consciousness that's relatively new to the Disney studio. The results are fun and fast moving, but far from sublime.

Shot in and around the town of Bradford in long, loping takes, this sprightly comedy, adapted by Andrea Dunbar from her own play, has some of the energy that one associates with the better exploitation films that used to be produced by Roger Corman.

A melancholy character study of romantic delirium and Napoleonic ambition with a nice sense of nuance, this is much more coherent than the general run of blockbusters.

If Sayles's bite were as lethal as his bark, he might have given this a harder edge and a stronger conclusion. But the performances are uniformly fine.

One of Jean Harlow's best pictures, this 1933 feature is a merciless satire of Hollywood, with Harlow as a movie star and Lee Tracy as her publicity agent.

Thanks to Anthony Mann's splendid eye for landscape, composition, and spectacle—in particular his striking use of the edges of the 'Scope frame, a facet (among others) that is totally lost on TV and video—this is a rousing and often stirring show.

This is so ravishing to look at (the colors all seem newly minted) and pleasurable to follow (the enigmas are usually more teasing than worrying) that you're likely to excuse the metaphysical pretensions—which become prevalent only at the very end—and go with the 60s flow, just as the original audiences did.

A pretty watchable and always interesting period film, well photographed by English cinematographer Freddie Francis.

One could have plenty of quarrels with this as an adaptation of the Herman Melville novel, but it’s still one of the better John Huston films of the 50s.

The movie takes a while to hit its stride, and its conclusion is fairly slapdash, but somewhere in between are some of the funniest bits of low slapstick Brooks has ever come up with, and an overall uncloying sweetness helps to save much of the rest.

Joffe may remain as variable a filmmaker as ever, but this time, at least, he gives one something really solid to think about.

Baumbach's best trait as a filmmaker remains his handling of actors.

Visually stunning, with ravishing uses of color and beautifully modulated lap dissolves, Ju Dou may not be the most formally striking Chinese film I’ve seen...but it certainly is the most effective and dramatic in terms of commercial moviemaking, both as spectacle and as story telling.

The pacing never flags and the story—let’s face it—is well-nigh unbeatable.

At the same time that Boorman seduces us with such enchantments, he also deceives us with a crafty little googly of his own--persuading us that he is embarking on a fresh adventure while aiming straight for the heart of old-fashioned English cinema.

This 1966 film was eclipsed in many people's minds by The Wild Bunch three years later, but it's a good, solid job, and with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, how could you miss?

The main focus is on everyday household chores and sensual discoveries, all made mesmerizing by elaborately choreographed camera movements that link interiors and exteriors in the same fluid itineraries.

A very adroit and entertaining social comedy.

Reportedly (and understandably) Youssef Chahine’s most popular film among Egyptians, this gritty and relatively early (1958) black-and-white masterpiece also features his most impressive acting turn, as a crippled news vendor working at the title railroad station.

Probably the most visually sophisticated of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent pictures and certainly one of the best, this 1927 release sets up an edgy romantic triangle in a traveling carnival that involves two boxers (Carl Brisson and Ian Hunter) and a snake charmer (Lillian Hall-Davies).

Made piecemeal over a number of years and first released in 1983, this 90-minute comic fantasy has lost little of its radical edge—in contrast to Borden’s subsequent Working Girls, which accommodated itself to a wider audience.

In some ways it’s a loose remake of Yang’s previous feature, A Confucian Confusion, but it succeeds even more in capturing the tenor of our times.

Here the director is more self-conscious about his didactic aims, which limits him in some respects, but there's an engaging roughness about his visual approach that keeps this movie footloose and inventive.

The film brims over with various eccentrics (the barber's ufologist neighbor and a former prison mate who harasses the hero and delivers drunken tirades), and Imamura views them all with mixed amusement and curiosity; he also does striking things with dream sequences and visual and aural flashbacks.

Madonna’s aim throughout appears to be to straddle the barrier that separates the merely show-offy from the outrageous without falling squarely on either side–which may help to explain why she and her gay dancers gleefully chant that they want this to be an X-rated movie.

There are many fleeting poetic moments in The Neon Bible--moments so ecstatic that you may feel yourself rising off your seat. And if much of the rest of the movie tends to be clunky as narrative, that's a small price to pay for pieces of enlightenment you can happily carry around inside your head for months.

Perhaps this movie isn't as wise or as profound as Simon wants it to be, but it is certainly a cut above sitcom complacency, and packed with wit and charm.

There's nothing in the aesthetic and neo-Freudian delirium within hailing distance of Vertigo, and the plot's often more complicated than complex, but Herrmann's overpowering score and De Palma's endlessly circling camera movements do manage to cast a spell.

Critics turned up their noses at this tear-jerking ‘Scope blockbuster of 1957, based on Grace Metalious’s lurid best-selling novel. But people came out in droves for it, and it’s not at all hard to see why—it’s corn in the grand style, much of it delivered with sweep and conviction, and the intrigues come thick and fast.

With its American, English, and French characters representing the three cultures Polanski has known since he left Poland, it's also quite possibly his most personal film—and certainly his most self-critical.

What ties all this material together is the force and humor of Moretti’s eclectic personality.

Better-than-average sitcom stuff, enhanced by the lively performances, Doyle's own adaptation, and the able direction of Stephen Frears.

A profoundly sexist and eminently hummable 1954 CinemaScope musical—supposedly set in the great outdoors, but mainly filmed on soundstages—with some terrific athletic Michael Kidd choreography and some better-than-average direction by Stanley Donen.

George Roy Hill's very professional, very entertaining 1972 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's time-traveling novel, with the pseudoprofundities nicely tucked into place as peppy one-liners and narrative tricks.

One of many clear advantages this funny and scary 1989 fantasy-adventure has over most Disney products is its live-action visual bravado, evident in both the stylization of the witches and the profusion of mouse-point-of-view shots.

Curtis Hanson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) directed this 1994 thriller effectively from a fairly routine script by Denis O'Neill; what really makes this movie worth seeing are the stunning Oregon and Montana locations (filmed in 'Scope), as well as Streep's sexy pluck in playing the most capable and resourceful character around.

Poised somewhere between a movie-familiar (i.e., semiscurrilous) look at inner-city life as trench warfare and a farfetched Hollywood revenge fantasy, this is kept alive largely through its first-rate performances, beginning with Sean Nelson's as the boy; Giancarlo Esposito is also a standout.

Critics seemed to like this less than audiences; personally I had a ball.

As a children's movie with a fine sense of magic (without fantasy) and a great deal of feeling (without sentimentality), this beats the usual Disney junk hands down, and adults will find it an expert piece of storytelling.

MGM’s opulent version of ancient Rome circa 1951, with Peter Ustinov at his most whimsical doing honors as the mad Nero...Directed with some pizzazz by Mervyn LeRoy.

After all the free advertising Ray Bradbury had given Walt Disney over the years, the Disney studio finally returned the compliment in 1983 by letting him write his own adaptation of his fantasy novel and giving his script a polished, respectful treatment, including tasteful direction by Jack Clayton.

What I like about these camera movements, combined with the exotic, erotic ambience of Mychael Danna's score, is that they simultaneously implicate us in the characters' fantasies and place us at some distance from them. We literally view the action from shifting perspectives, but the rhythm and direction of our drifting gaze seem to place us directly inside the obsessions of the characters.

Andre de Toth’s 1954 noir is gritty, powerful, and economically told.

The often unorthodox inventiveness of Tampopo registers like the dividend of a filmmaker who has found his ideal subject.

Whatever else you might say about this weird, creepy, and funny independent item by Guy Maddin, it's certainly different.

One of the better Bob Hope vehicles.

Although the results are a bit overextended, the film is still something of a rarity nowadays: an evocative, poetic horror film without a trace of gore (and in this respect, closer to a Val Lewton film of the 40s like The Curse of the Cat People than any contemporary models).

This grim drama packs a punch.

If you like the early work of David Lynch you should definitely check this out; Maddin's films are every bit as beautiful and in certain respects a lot more sophisticated.

More enjoyable for its unending string of outrages than for its capacity to make coherent sense.

Like most of Lee’s work, this movie bites off a lot more than it can possibly chew, and it bristles with the worst kind of New York provincialism.

The only problem I was faced with was trying to understand what exactly it was that I enjoyed, and how this movie differed from the play I'd read.

The film runs for 134 minutes, but Lumet keeps things moving with his sharp eye (and ear) for New York detail and his escalating sense of liberal outrage.

A mixed success, but an exhilarating try.

Everything seems to fall into place according to earlier Egoyan films, which suggests that you're likelier to enjoy this one if you haven't seen the others.

Part of Morton's achievement is to present all four people through the viewpoints of the other three; Wagner can't do that, but the performances are so nuanced that the characters remain multilayered, and they're not the sort of people we're accustomed to finding in commercial films.

A very curious and eclectic piece of work--fresh even when it's awkward.

As Dr. Octopus, Alfred Molina makes a more baroque supervillain than Willem Dafoe did as the Green Goblin, but the other stars--seem happy to be giving us more of the same.

Robbins is attempting too much here, but the 70 percent or so that he brings off borders on delightful.

The director (Hallstrom) and cast are all excellent.

It's the romantic sparring with Catherine Zeta-Jones as another glamorous thief -- not the unsuspenseful heists -- that makes this silly thriller lightly bearable.

Wong uses his brief evocations of the future mainly as a way of poetically lamenting the past.

Despite some awkwardness, this feature by writer-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland is a fascinating look at the area's Mexican-American milieu and other local subcultures, full of feeling, insight, and touching performances.

This is the kind of tasteful tearjerker that's often overrated and smothered with prizes because it flatters our tolerance and sensitivity.

The three neighborhood kids who venture inside this toothy trap are wittily conceived (as are other characters, like a goth babysitter), but though the overall conception suggests Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle," the frenetic pacing seems as American as an apple pie in your face.

Though the filmmaker has by now ridiculed the martial-arts drama virtually out of existence, the final dance number -- actually closer to festive stomping than tapping -- somehow manages to transcend irony, conveying instead only Kitano's childlike exhilaration, with a sense of ease regained.

Has memorable characters and images. Yet the story is elusive and occasionally puzzling, and some of the ideas are amorphous and self-conscious.

An efficient genre piece with a few provocative metaphysical trimmings; the mainly English cast is effective.

Leslie Dixon's script and TV sitcom specialist Garry Marshall's direction are basically warm, funny, and lighthearted, and the relaxed amiability of the two leads—as well as Chicagoan Michael Hagerty and Roddy McDowall (who doubles as executive producer)—helps to make this good family entertainment.

Needless to say, the plot goes nowhere, but under the pornographic circumstances Figgis, Cage, and Shue all do fine jobs.

Director Sidney Hayes can be needlessly rhetorical at times, relying on a campus statue of an eagle to create a sense of menace (the UK title was Night of the Eagle), but this is still eerily effective.

Despite the aggressive silliness of this enjoyable comedy, the emotional focus on the painful social experience of high school makes the film real and immediate, and the flavorsome dialogue in Robin Schiff's script gives the leads a lot to work (as well as play) with.

This is every bit as silly and adolescent as you'd expect from Besson, and about as contemporary as "The Perils of Pauline." But I was delighted by the balletic and acrobatic stunts, some of which evoke Tarzan.

The narrative kept me glued to my seat.

Fresh, character driven, often funny, and unfashionably upbeat (as well as offbeat).

Thanks to a fairly good script, this thriller about a Soviet cop sent to Chicago to apprehend a Soviet drug dealer is a respectable enough star vehicle.

Nihilistic greed was the major factor when GM terminated the car in 2001, though Paine is also careful to note the passivity of the general public.

The musical value of this footage is so powerful that nothing can deface it, despite the best efforts of Zwerin to do so: all the worst habits of jazz documentaries in treating the music, from cutting off numbers midstream to burying them with voice-overs (which also happens on the sound track album), are routinely employed.

Kiarostami tries to explain himself and reveals contradictions and a penchant for hyperbole--along with surprising insights.

A highly enjoyable and offbeat thriller.

Inevitably it's a mixed bag, though the film's assurance in keeping it all coherent is at times exhilarating.

A fleet, enjoyable Jackie Chan romp.

Anticapitalist propaganda that persuades and uplifts is in short supply these days.

The notion that Page, like Marilyn Monroe, was too ditzy to know what she was doing is more a mythological construct than an observation.

The source material has undergone some sentimental softening, though Hope Davis, as the heroine's sister, does a swell job of making sanity seem obnoxious.

A throwaway comedy that really delivers.

This gets very suspenseful (as well as fairly gruesome) in spots, and if it never adds up to anything profound, it's still a welcome change to have a lesbian couple as the chief identification figures.

One of the few Romero films written by someone else (Rudolph J. Ricci), it has a good eye for the kind of unglamorous middle-class life seldom seen in American movies.

Though it lacks the sensational pizzazz of "Blackboard Jungle", the politics here are arguably somewhat better, and the supporting cast -- George Dzundza, Courtney P. Vance, Robin Bartlett, Beatrice Winde -- isn't bad either.

It's soon apparent that a closer model for this charming romantic comedy is "Bell, Book and Candle." The direction by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball) is so fluffy it's easy to drift along and ignore the logical lapses.

The portraiture is so carefully done that I regret in some ways the tricky plot--which is also carefully done, but seems at times to belong to a different movie.

Properly speaking, this isn't a movie with characters but with figures, each of them as overblown as a plastic inner tube.

It's beautifully cast and filmed (cinematography by the matchless Robby Muller) and often quite moving, despite the fact that most of the characters are never developed much beyond mythic or parodic prototypes.

Directed by Darrell Roodt from a screenplay by Ron Harwood, this has a strong sense of dignity about its characters, and Jones and Harris are both effective. Whether it deserves to replace the Korda version is another matter.

Much of this is hilarious as long as one can stay sufficiently removed from the realities of Siamese twins.

Some of the results ring false, but the memorable theme song and some equally memorable character acting (by Thomas Mitchell and Lon Chaney Jr. more than Lloyd Bridges and Katy Jurado) help things along.

To Towne's credit, he's a thoughtful and conscientious romantic. He skillfully makes the two main characters a hot, volatile couple, deftly staging their courtship as if it were an erotic grudge match.

Neither the characters nor the events are exactly the same as those of the novel, but some of the same spirit comes across.

But the material is still powerful, and the offbeat story of the patients remains both engrossing and moving even after all this abridgment.

This is like a Ferris wheel--the ride's enjoyable but you've gone nowhere once it's over.

This isn't a visionary western like "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (2005), but in its own quiet way it delivers the goods.

Klapisch self-consciously throws fistfuls of quirky film style at us, as if he were Francois Truffaut, but his characters are still interesting and his party sequences are especially good.

The story's resolution isn't very satisfying, but I considered most of this movie time well spent.

An accomplished, effective, grisly, and exceptionally sick slasher film that I can't with any conscience recommend, because the purposes to which it places its considerable ingenuity are ultimately rather foul.

It's entertaining and stylish, though maybe not quite as serious as it wants to be.

Too preoccupied with personality and emotion to qualify as porn, but still very much concerned with the kind of interaction that goes on in such a place, this is a touching if relatively specialized chamber piece.

A fascinating and entertaining piece of work.

Writer-director Marcos Bernstein is more interested in how a melodramatic imagination can distort reality, a concept he explores with charm and tact.

Payne's entertaining but familiar comedy lacks the insolence of his "Election" and the freshness of his work with Kathy Bates in "About Schmidt."

What makes the strongest impact is the superb documentary photography and the "found" audio segments--telemarketing ads left as voice messages.

Watchable enough on its own terms.

Despite the familiar story arc and MTV visuals, Bendinger puts this across with a certain amount of pizzazz, and the competitive gymnastics are often spectacular.

Powerfully illustrates what globalization has been doing to underdeveloped countries around the world.

Heckerling still has some of the sensitivity she showed in handling actors in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and she has a deft way of illustrating her heroine's fantasies about possible mates without any fuss.

This adaptation of Christina Crawford's memoir about her driven, abusive mother is arguably too good to qualify as camp, even if it begins (and fitfully proceeds) like a horror film. Director Frank Perry, who collaborated with three others (including producer Frank Yablans) on the script, gives it all a certain crazed conviction.

Overall this is an intelligent and thoughtful reading of the play, marred only by the implausibility of Portia.

This is in some ways my favorite Hartley picture - because it takes the most risks and gives the mind the most to do.

The character and plot contrivances are dumber than ever, but this is basically vaudeville, not narrative, and the thrills keep coming.

Without being any sort of miracle, this is an engaging and lively exploitation fantasy-thriller about computer hackers, anarchistic in spirit, that succeeds at just about everything "The Net" failed to--especially in representing computer operations with some visual flair.

The comedy is extremely broad (with Curtis eliciting almost as many laughs as Schwarzenegger), the action sequences are as well crafted as one can expect from Cameron, and the meaning is as root basic as anyone would wish.

I couldn't always keep up with what was happening, but I was never bored, and the questions raised reflect the mysteries of everyday life.

This deconstructive, minimalist comedy, like his 1990 "A Little Stiff" and 1994 "I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore," re-creates events with the vain self-deprecation of one of his role models, Woody Allen.

It's certainly a provocation, with a few funny moments, and for my money it's less phony and offensive than "Finding Forrester."

Francis Coppola's ambitious 1992 version brings back the novel's multiple narrators, leading to a somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line that remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy.

Tarantino puts together a fairly intricate and relatively uninvolving money-smuggling plot, but his cast is so good that you probably won’t feel cheated unless you’re hoping for something as show-offy as "Reservoir Dogs" or "Pulp Fiction."

The fictional story here, set between 1984 and 1991, focuses on the investigation of a popular and patriotic playwright (Sebastian Koch); that the captain assigned to his case (touchingly played by Ulrich Mühe) is mainly sympathetic and working surreptitiously on the playwright's behalf only makes this more disturbing.

This isn't as snappily directed or as caustically conceived as the subsequent Risky Business, which has a similar theme, but it's arguably just as sexy and almost as funny.

O'Neill showed in his 1989 "Water and Power" a poetic feeling for human evanescence in relation to southern California locales; here he proves equally astute at showing how our sense of history becomes tainted by and entangled with Hollywood myths.

The movie remystifies as much as demystifies presidential politics, but an overall mood of sweetness may help one to forgive the archaic and childish aspects of the would-be analysis, which splits everyone between angels and devils.

Polanski honors the craft of classical storytelling and never flinches from the book's melodramatic extremes in portraying the horrors of poverty.

Before the movie collapses into the utopian nonsense that seems obligatory to this subgenre, a surprising amount of sensitivity and satirical insight emerges from Eleanor Bergstein's script and Emile Ardolino's direction.

Foley has a fine sense of shading in depicting a slightly dysfunctional family. The problem with this subgenre is the way it has to demonize and dehumanize its villains in order to produce the desired effect, which brutalizes the spectator along with the story and characters. If you can accept this limitation, this is a very efficient piece of machinery.

Some of the precise meanings of this Bill Forsyth comedy eluded me, but the vibes couldn't have been nicer.

The story (what there is of it) doesn't make much sense, but this is a very scary horror thriller that should keep you either on the edge of your seat or halfway under it.

Not always successful, but packed with energy and a lively Oscar-winning performance by Burstyn.

The best (which also means the sexiest) Campion feature since "The Piano," featuring Meg Ryan's best performance to date and an impressive one by Mark Ruffalo.

Flaky, funny, and sexy.

Fairly predictable, but the two leads' impressively nuanced performances make it less so, and Berri makes skillful use of both actors.

The cast is certainly impressive, and probably reason enough for seeing this.

May have more heart than head, but it's also just as interesting for what it leaves out of its romantic story as for what it retains.

This loses focus and begins to get a little soggy and moralistic toward the end, but on the whole it's a sensitive and well-observed comedy that's especially adept at handling the characters' rage.

Nicely written as well as filmed.

Simultaneously quite watchable and passionless.

This is basically Hollywood nonsense with all the usual dishonesty, but it goes down easily.

The surprising thing about George Lucas's first feature (1971), a dystopian SF parable now digitally enhanced and expanded by five minutes, is how arty it seems compared to his later movies.

Confounds expectations -- about slasher stories and about film narrative in general, in part by being closer to a collection of interconnected short stories than to a novel.

Kolirin has a fine sense of where to place the camera and when to cut between shots for maximum comic effect, and his two lead actors--Sasson Gabai as the band's conductor and Ronit Elkabetz (Or) as one of the locals--are terrific.

The engineering of the special effects is fairly impressive, and the sight of so many objects and creatures being buffeted about carries a certain apocalyptic splendor.

Affecting and offbeat.

Contact is so burdened with social, political, and religious issues that they infect and ultimately overwhelm much of the philosophical content.

Lots can be said for The Aviator as entertainment, though not much for it as edification.

Both actors are so good that one might easily overlook the Pollyannaish subplot.

Conceptual to a fault, writer-director Todd Haynes (Poison, Safe) realizes one of his oldest and most cherished projects -- a celebration of the glam-rock era and the bisexuality it turned into an opulent circus -- with wit, glitter, and energy, but with such a scant sense of character or period that it leaves one feeling relatively empty as soon as it's over.

The French title is Comme une image ("like an image"), but Tennessee Williams's phrase "the catastrophe of success" seems more appropriate.

Director Robert Benton allows the cast... to shine, but I was left wondering why such a very literary construction as this needed to be made into a movie.

Apart from the script, it's the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons, and behind their interactions can be felt the depths of lived experience.

Howard Hawks’s only attempt at a wide-screen blockbuster (1955), much disparaged afterward by Hawks and many others, is actually fairly awesome if you can get beyond the clunky dialogue (some of it written by William Faulkner, as well as Harry Kurnitz) and the campy evilness of the Joan Collins character.

Romero's fourth entry, turns out to be his most conventional as an action thriller--though it's every bit as gory as the others and more clearly class-conscious.

Reasonably lifelike and nicely acted (Keener is especially good), but otherwise nothing special, this is an OK light comedy.

This may be the most Brechtian thing Lumet has ever done -- a movie that repeatedly challenges us to think and then to reconsider.

The script by Nicholas St. John (who would become a Ferrara regular) not only anticipates American Psycho but offers a fascinating look at New York's bohemian art scene circa 1979.

This is fun if you're looking mainly for light entertainment.

I enjoyed quite a bit of it, in large part because of the energy and charisma of Jennifer Lopez in the title role.

This semianimated adventure is enjoyable and imaginative despite its formulaic qualities.

Inspired by a true story, this slight but charming and nicely balanced comedy tells the tale of a group of middle-aged women in a Yorkshire village who decide to pose nude for the dozen photographs in a fund-raising calendar.

While largely effective, Greenwald's documentary is not a complete success.

Maybe because director Scott Marshall is Garry's son, he allows his affable father to steal the movie from everyone else, and his performance proves to be a small gift worth having.

Moore's best film to date is this comic and grimly entertaining reflection on America's gun craziness and why we kill one another.

This isn't always adept as storytelling, and Block's coming to terms with his own denseness occasionally tries one's patience, but he manages to make the overall process of his reeducation fascinating and compelling.

Unfortunately, after the well-honed psychological melodrama of its first half, this wanders off into the metaphysical territory of Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" (a much better film).

Brooks' film is especially welcome now because it frankly admits that most Americans are ignorant about Muslims and have a lot to learn, in contrast with the few other Hollywood movies dealing with Muslims -- "Syriana," "Munich" -- which seem to suggest that non-Muslim viewers can emerge knowing the score.

Bullock, Rowlands, Whitman, and others in the cast -- most notably Harry Connick Jr. -- acquit themselves as admirably as the pedestrian script allows.

Writer-director Walter Hill, known earlier in his career for his American versions of French thrillers by Jean-Pierre Melville (indebted in turn to Hollywood noir), specializes in tweaking much-used material.

[It] may not be your cup of tea, but you have to admire the style, sincerity, and overall sense of craft even if you don't fancy the comic-book gore.

The charm, humor, and healthy eroticism of Australian writer-director John Duigan (The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting) are back in force in this pleasantly recounted tale, set in the 30s, about a newlywed Anglican clergyman and his wife, freshly played by Hugh Grant and Tara Fitzgerald, who stop off at the remote home of a controversial (i.e., erotic) painter (Sam Neill).

This is familiar but atmospheric, with good performances by Peter Falk, Blythe Danner, Joey Bilow, Michael Santoro, Merle Kennedy, and former football pro Don Meredith.

A potent feminist protest--all the more so because some of the laws depicted are still in force today.

As a truthful account of the life of Tina Turner or as a faithful adaptation of her as-told-to autobiography, I, Tina, this 1993 film can't be taken too seriously. But as a powerhouse showcase for the acting talents of Angela Bassett (who plays Turner) and Laurence Fishburne (who plays her abusive husband, Ike) and as a potent portrayal of wife beating and the emotions that surround it (in this case, Ike's professional envy and Tina's stoic acceptance of abuse), it's quite a show.

This movie really belongs to Baye and Lopez, both so skillful that they almost make you forget that what you're watching is close to a stunt--one oddly evocative of Graham Greene in its doomed romanticism but at times also minimalist to a fault.

Writer-director Richard Brooks had a flair for sensationalism, and his adaptation of Evan Hunter's novel is loads of fun as a consequence, but don't expect much analysis or insight.

Much more deserving of plaudits is the secondary cast--Hope Davis as Schmidt's resentful daughter, Dermot Mulroney as the waterbed salesman she's engaged to, and, above all, Kathy Bates in a hilarious turn as the latter's New Age mother.

This funny, nervy, and pointedly unrated geriatric sex comedy is both enhanced and occasionally limited by being targeted at baby boomers.

Far from avoiding the tackier implications of this concept, the film revels in them like a puppy in clover; Martin's delivery of the line, "Into the mud, slime queen!" is alone nearly worth the price of admission.

Playwright Adam Rapp, making his feature debut as writer-director, details the family dysfunction to the point of hyperbole, but over the long haul he rewards one's observation and intelligence and a more interesting story emerges.

Frankenheimer handles it tersely and professionally, and coaxes an exceptionally good performance out of Harry Dean Stanton as an American general.

The period ambience (call it funk) is irresistible, but the main points of interest here are sociological rather than musical.

This is possibly the funniest lesbian romp since "Go Fish."

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's script may in spots be as much of a skim job as their one for "Ed Wood," but it's almost as sweet and as likable, and if the movie can't ever practice what it and its hillbilly hero preach--the only "beaver" shot in the movie involves a corpse--its heart is certainly in the right place.

Ridiculously ambitious, though often likable and touching in its sincerity.

If your taste runs in this direction, you're bound to be amused.

It's as entertaining and informative as anything Mann's ever done, and as good an example of grass humor as you're likely to find anywhere.

An E.T. spin-off, but it's a very likable and imaginative one.

Evelyn Glennie has worked with everyone from Bjork to Brazilian samba groups and also gives solo concerts, and the best segments simply show her at work in her mid-30s, explaining what she does.

As an interweave of crosscut miniplots, this isn't nearly as interesting or as pleasurable as Jeremy Podeswa's recent "The Five Senses."

A pretty impressive horror film.

The old-fashioned theme of disaster as an existential test of character still works.

Prior to its hyperbolic final act, this is one of Robert Altman's most skillful and least bombastic features in some time.

Gordon is so visually and stylistically inventive and the actors are so skillful that you aren't likely to lose interest.

An absorbing and compelling account of a historical episode that should be better known.

Director Cedric Kahn, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, and Gilles Marchand collaborated on the well-honed script, derived from a Georges Simenon novel. The film works well with quiet tensions, but becomes less convincing and interesting once it moves beyond them.

This runs 192 minutes and has very few jokes, but there are many references to Citizen Kane to put us in the right frame of mind.

Despite the usual amounts of gore, this is a surprisingly tender, ambiguous, and sexy film in which Romero's penchant for social satire is for once restricted to local and modest proportions.

The plot turns on the complicated lives of the daughters, who are played by Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart, and Charlotte Gainsbourg; they, Fabian, and Rich are the main reasons for seeing this picture.

I expected to emerge depressed by how long these stories have gone untold, but the speakers' courage and humanity are a shot in the arm.

Goldbacher's story is not always convincing as history, but it's absorbing as a sort of gothic romance and sensually quite potent, and Driver carries it all with grace and authority.

Undeniably provocative and reasonably entertaining, The Truman Show is one of those high-concept movies whose concept is both clever and dumb.

More entertaining than "The Spanish Prisoner" -- it also turns out to be more conventional and predictable.

Insofar as they're implicitly the spoils of war, this movie seems to be meditating on the whys and hows of the spoiling process -- raising more questions than can possibly be answered, and in this sense, at least, far from dogmatic.

Loads of fun even if it's ultimately strangled by its excesses.

Powerful, haunting, but ultimately disappointing. Few American movies address abject failure as forcefully as this one, and Sean Penn delivers an intense performance as Bicke.

Funnier than "Pecker" but a far cry from the best of Waters's Divine movies.

Claude Chabrol's capacity to make shopworn material seem almost new is especially evident in this 2007 drama, which he cowrote with his stepdaughter, Cecile Maistre.

Ken Marino, who plays the silliest of the diggers, wrote the script, and when it isn't straining after elegiac moments, it's fresh and unpredictable.

This kind of filmmaking is riddled with so-called errors, but these mistakes are indistinguishable from the uncommon rewards.

It's striking not for its originality but for its energy in juggling familiar elements.

Attractive black-and-white 'Scope compositions, strong Paris locations, and effective handling of the actors makes this captivating throughout.

As frequently happens in both Loach films and history, the betrayal of ideals, socialist and otherwise, leaves a harsh aftertaste, which made me feel sadder but not much wiser.

Gross-out horror comedy is my least favorite genre, but this movie's so skillful I have to take my hat off to it.

The plot points verge on the familiar and obvious, but Adams's work with the actors (especially Judd and among the others Jeffrey Donovan, Diane Ladd, Tim Blake Nelson, and Scott Wilson) is so resourceful and focused that she makes them shine.

A potent, moving, liberal-minded docudrama.

The film is only superficially superficial, and it grows in meaning and resonance as it progresses.

Most of the film is set in an abandoned house, where enjoyably murky intrigues abound, and the last ten minutes feature a chase sequence with miniatures that is almost as much fun.

John Woo directed this giddy, mindless jaunt with polish but only a modicum of personal investment from a script by Graham Yost.

Lori Petty does a nice job in the title role of this enjoyable 1995 feature based on the postapocalyptic SF comic book and set in the year 2033; it's basically aimed at teenagers, though it's a lot more feminist than what usually passes for adult fare.

The film gradually devolves into action-adventure, then the equivalent of a war movie. But the filmmaking is pungent throughout, and the first half hour is so jaw-dropping in its fleshed-out extrapolation that Cuaron earns the right to coast a bit.

Juliette Binoche won an Oscar for her role in Anthony Minghella's adaptation of "The English Patient", but in many ways I prefer her soulful performance here: portraying a Bosnian Muslim working as a tailor in London, she's reason enough to see Minghella's overcontrived though absorbing 2006 feature based on his original script.

The subject's nice - a clan of Irish con artists operating in the rural south - but the movie breaks down into separate pieces, some fresher than others, without much cumulative force.

Russ Meyer's most deliriously mannerist and frenetically edited feature (1978); it's helped along by an extremely arch script written by Meyer and, pseudonymously, Roger Ebert.

Robert Wise's 1963 black-and-white 'Scope translation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House was pretty effective when it came out, aided by Wise's skill as an editor.

A first-rate Hollywood entertainment--at least if one can accept the schizophrenia of combining a cop/buddy action thriller with an angry satire about the shamelessness of the media.

The performances are strong without calling attention to themselves--which is more than I can say for the occasionally hackneyed use of rock on the sound track.

The best thing Mann brings to his picture is a strong sense of time and place.

These characters are touching and sympathetic to the extent that they're lonely, and that's what most of them are most of the time.

Even if you can't accept all the movie's left curves, you might still be amused.

Tom Courtenay is quite good in the title role, and Julie Christie makes a memorable early appearance .

Like "Mystery Train" and "Night on Earth," this feature by Jim Jarmusch is a short story collection, but it's funnier and more formally adventurous than either--also ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.

They often seem more bent on titillating or harrowing us than on helping us understand the characters.

Among the many offhand virtues of Julie Delpy's first feature as solo writer-director is the fact that she's as attentive to French foibles as American ones.

Chen Kaige clearly intended this Chinese fantasy-action spectacle to top Zhang Yimou's "Hero," and I must admit that I prefer it to the earlier movie: the digital effects are sometimes excessive, yet Chen's story of a loyal slave, his master, and a wealthy, seemingly doomed princess is more affecting, especially in the closing stretch.

A rare example of a successful documentary in the mode of Frederick Wiseman made outside the United States.

An impressive piece of filmmaking, with lively and suggestive depictions of pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba (shot in Mexico).

Despite the thick Scottish accents, filmmaker Andrea Arnold kept me intrigued, but beyond a certain point the movie's ambiguity fades into indifference.

This nicely made 1994 comedy-drama could be described as an Australian "Easy Rider," with Sydney drag queens instead of bikers and no apocalyptic ending.

Honest curiosity and observation are what make this work, and in this respect Christina Ricci (as Wuornos's lover, Selby Wall) is almost as good as Theron.

Provocative but also infuriating, this alarmist documentary argues that the levying of a federal income tax in 1913 was unconstitutional and set America on the road to fascism.

The film tackles more than it can master, but it's never less than fascinating, and all three leads are exceptional.

This shocking, violent, and unsentimental (albeit sensationalized) drama about a second-generation drug dealer (Turner) and the callous world he lives in, produced by "To Sleep With Anger's" Darin Scott, is terrifically acted.

Conceived like a sports movie, this delivers passion, nuance, and historical insight along with unnecessary hokum.

The deft arabesques of cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak juice up the suspense, and if you're not too put off by the sheer ridiculousness of the story you won't be bored.

As long as Miller simply crosscuts between the machinations of the three mothers, the sociological and psychological parallels are intriguing, but when they're forced to share the same story line, the contrivances and coincidences begin to seem fussily elaborate.

One of the few white vocalists to play the Apollo, O'Day does fabulous things with her hands as well as her voice when she sings. Her talent and will to survive (in the late 60s she kicked a 16-year heroin addiction) are reasons enough to see this film.

For all its implicit misogyny, the original 1966 film version of Bill Naughton’s play remains durable because of Michael Caine’s career-defining performance as the cockney ladies’ man, not to mention the memorable title tune (sung by Cher) and driving jazz score (written and performed by Sonny Rollins).

Brian De Palma's 1992 thriller borders on incoherence and irrelevance as plot, but as a chance for De Palma to perform stylistic pirouettes around a void, it's full of sleek and pleasurable moments.

Structurally and dramatically this is all over the place, but stylistically it's gripping, and thematically it suggests an oblique response to the end of Hong Kong's colonial rule.

By the end the story is more satisfying than you might expect.

Solid, agreeable entertainment, this basically consists of plentiful gags and lighthearted satire spiked with Dante's compulsive taste for movie references, humorously scripted by Charlie Haas but without the darker thematic undertones and the more tableaulike construction of the original.

Vulgar, spirited, and neglected director George Sidney meets his match with this 1964 Elvis Presley vehicle: Presley, Ann-Margret, and Las Vegas itself are all ready-made for his talents, which mainly have to do with verve and trashy kicks.