Kenneth Turan

The Master takes some getting used to. This is a superbly crafted film that's at times intentionally opaque, as if its creator didn't want us to see all the way into its heart of darkness.

Planet of Snail is simple, direct and magical. The warm, intimate story of a singular couple, it won the top prize at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and it will win you over as well if you give it the chance.

Amiable and upbeat though it is, the documentary Hollywood to Dollywood lacks a compelling reason to see it. Unless you are a Dolly Parton zealot, which its two protagonists definitely are.

The Eye of the Storm is an ambitious stab at what might be called the Great Australian Film. The results are off-and-on impressive, but the project's ambitions turn out to be greater than its ability to achieve them.

Even though as a whole Hello I Must Be Going lets us down in the second half, the pleasure of watching Lynskey and Abbott never diminishes.

Samsara is as frustrating as it is beautiful, which is saying a lot because this is a film laced with exquisite images.

Part muckraking nonfiction film, part performance piece, it is a nervy documentary guaranteed, depending on who you are, to enlighten, disturb or offend. Which is what you might expect from a man who describes his work as "a strange mix of Borat and the Economist."

Everything about Robot & Frank is as unlikely as it is irresistible. Charming, playful and sly, it makes us believe that a serene automaton and a snappish human being can be best friends forever.

Not only is the story dreamed up by producer Ahmet Zappa even odder than the title indicates, its execution gets increasingly irritating as the film goes on.

It sounds like a throwback to an earlier, more traditional style of Israeli filmmaking but it instead provides a view of that country that's as satisfyingly eccentric and unexpected as anything we've seen.

Complex, unexpected and dazzling, alternating relentless tension with resonant emotional moments, this is an exemplary espionage thriller that has a strong sense of what it wants to accomplish and how best to get there.

The most compelling aspect of The Green Wave, however, is the extensive footage shot clandestinely by amateurs using cellphones. What they recorded shows us the reality of what went down in a way nothing else can match.

Rude, rowdy and raunchy, The Campaign gleefully skewers the current sad state of American politics. With a target that tempting, it's not surprising that this cynical and funny film hits more often than it misses.

Watching Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is like experiencing a thrilling unfinished symphony: The story is enthralling, but it's not over, and there's no telling where it's going. Which makes what we see on screen all the more involving.

This is a train wreck you think you see coming, but no matter how prepared you are the nature and extent of the damage will overwhelm you.

Like a drug that starts with a rush and ends with a headache, Total Recall is too much of a good thing.

You don't need to be a fan of Wagner, or even opera, to find this a fascinating glimpse of a dauntingly complex human endeavor.

Best of all "Daughter" marks a return to old-school French moviemaking, the kind of classically well-made endeavor that unrolls before us like a beloved tapestry. This is the kind of film they don't make anymore, only here it is.

Potent, persuasive and hypnotic, The Dark Knight Rises has us at its mercy. A disturbing experience we live through as much as a film we watch, this dazzling conclusion to director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is more than an exceptional superhero movie, it is masterful filmmaking by any standard.

Matching the strength of these actresses and their personal drama is the film's masterful sense of time and place - the way it makes us feel that this was how it was during four pivotal days in July 1789 as the wheels came off the French monarchy.

This jazzy crime melodrama is engrossing and exhilarating because of Espinosa's impressive command of a wide range of filmmaking skills.

Stone is also a director who has often felt that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and his weakness for bloody excesses of all sorts undermines much of his good work. You might not think that a motion picture called Savages could be too violent, too savage, but you would be wrong.

The result is that "Spider-Man" goes in and out of focus. This is a film that is memorable in pieces but not as a whole.

Téchiné is a restless director, a fastidious storyteller who is not interested in what less adventurous movies have to say about human relationships. He wants to dig deeper, even if the results aren't always clear.

Life, however, cannot be lived entirely on stage, and once the characters have to take off their thongs and return to their real lives, the film goes nowhere that is either interesting, involving or surprising.

Brave simply doesn't feel as much like the Pixar movies we've come to expect.

Given the subject matter, an exercise in delicacy and restraint was unlikely, but it's too bad that the film's concept is way more entertaining than what has ended up on-screen.

It is the achievement of Gerhard Richter Painting to shine a light on that hidden, private act as few other films have done.

"It is extremely difficult to be like a mountain, to create stillness in the middle of hell," is how Abramovic describes her task. The most resonant part of this surprisingly emotional film demonstrates how powerful this interaction is, how it expresses something that is no less moving for being, literally, beyond words.

Blessed with unstoppable energy, an undeniably bawdy sense of fun and Tom Cruise in backless leather pants, it takes songs you may never have loved and turns them into a musical that's easy to enjoy.

Prometheus, unlike its predecessors, does not wear its themes lightly. It pushes too hard for significance, which is dicey in and of itself for genre material and contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting.

Oslo is an example of strong, confident filmmaking in which nothing is miscalculated or out of place. Anchored by a devastating performance by Anders Danielsen Lie, this portrait of existential despair is beautifully made without being self-conscious about its art.

This may sound thrilling, but it's not. Battleship plays ordinary and pedestrian because it's always been a job for hire, never anyone's passion.

This film has much more to do with what goes on inside director Tim Burton's head than with any TV show, no matter how beloved. In fact, Dark Shadows is as good an example as any of what might be called the Way of Tim, a style of making films that, like the drinking of blood, is very much an acquired taste and, unless you're a vampire, not worth the effort.

These performers are so young, so serious, so full of dreams and so hard on themselves that it is difficult not to be moved by their striving.

Whedon is the key reason why this $220-million behemoth of a movie is smartly thought out and executed with verve and precision. It may be overly long at two hours, 23 minutes, but so much is going on you might not even notice.

A well-researched and iconoclastic documentary that is both thoughtful and troubling, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is indeed a cautionary tale, but what it cautions against is the lure of easy judgments derived from prejudices and ignorance of the facts.

Headhunters is a dark adult entertainment, a wild and bloody adrenaline rush of a movie that deals in gleeful grotesqueness and over-the-top implausibilities.

A clever piece of business that is a complete pleasure to experience.

Nothing is rushed, everything is given its appropriate time and place. When we watch Hansen-Løve's films, we're not only experiencing a life unfolding before us, we're also realizing what a great privilege it is to be able to do that.

What Marley and its wonderful performance footage leave you with most of all is the joy the man took in the music that set him free and enchanted the world.

A cool documentary that makes the blood boil, it examines how people can be psychologically manipulated into confessing. Not only to crimes they may not have committed but, even worse, to crimes that may never have happened.

Artfully put together by writer-director Falardeau, Monsieur Lazhar shows us life in the round, illustrating the way humor, compassion and tragedy can all be elements of experience. Its emotional honesty is heartening, a lesson we are never too old to learn.

A look at the annual San Diego convention that is sweetly empathetic where previous Spurlock works have been brash and confrontational. Plus, it's a lot of fun.

If you feel like you've already read quite a bit about the documentary Bully, you have. But that still won't prepare you for the experience of seeing it.

Exceptionally well-made and completely fearless in its depiction of the widest range of romantic emotions, this is a film as fiercely committed to passion as its heroine, and that's saying a lot.

Making a successful Hunger Games movie out of Suzanne Collins' novel required casting the best possible performer as Katniss, and in Jennifer Lawrence director Gary Ross and company have hit the bull's-eye, so to speak.

Even if you don't fancy raw fish, "Jiro" is a captivating film.

Intensely specific in story yet wide-ranging in themes, with a tone that turns on a dime from comic absurdity to close to tragedy, this is brainy, bravura filmmaking of the highest level, a motion picture that is as difficult to pigeonhole as it is a pleasure to enjoy.

Rueful, funny and wise, The Salt of Life is a comedy not of errors but of the tiniest of missteps. A warm yet melancholy film of quiet yet inescapable charm, it has a feeling for character and personality that couldn't be more delicious.

Fascinating for what it signifies as much as what it shows, This Is Not a Film illustrates how Panahi is struggling to stay alive creatively and, paradoxically, can't help but demonstrate how much of a natural filmmaker he is.

This movie version adds a whole lot of other stuff, most of it not very good and not in keeping with the spirit of the Seuss original.

This intriguing hybrid is dramatically involving only when the shooting - with real bullets, naturally - gets underway.

An intense, shattering film, a confident and accomplished, punch-in-the-gut debut by Belgian writer-director Michael R. Roskam that starts out like a thriller and turns into a disturbing tragedy in an unlikely and unexpected key.

Like all memorable sports documentaries - Undefeated is really an examination not of how games are won and lost but how lives are lived, how young people faced with daunting challenges come to see, often in the most dramatic fashion, what is important going forward and what is not.

Set in an enchanting locale where the potential for magic is everywhere, this impeccable animated film puts its complete trust in the spirit of make-believe.

Though Safe House may be too violent and nihilistic for everyone's taste, it does have several crackerjack action sequences.

If Frederick Wiseman's involving new documentary Crazy Horse is any indication, that old rule about how you get to Carnegie Hall - "practice, practice, practice" - applies equally well to that Parisian temple of self-described "nude chic" known to its intimates simply as "Le Crazy."

Whether you're familiar with Pina Bausch's work or not, the new film Pina is a knockout.

It may not sound like it, but In Heaven, Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery is a playful, poetic and all-around charming documentary, an off-center look at an unusual institution.

A Separation is totally foreign and achingly familiar. It's a thrilling domestic drama that offers acute insights into human motivations and behavior as well as a compelling look at what goes on behind a particular curtain that almost never gets raised.

Unfortunately, "Blood and Honey" has script problems: Its core story is less compelling than its overall atmosphere.

It combines delightful humor and charm with what movies at their best have always conveyed: the honest power of pure emotion. It is a movie love story and a love note to the movies, all at the same time.

Think of The Adventures of Tintin as a song of innocence and experience, able to combine a sweet sense of childlike wonder and pureness of heart with the most worldly and sophisticated of modern technology. More than anything, it's just a whole lot of fun.

This film's cold, almost robotic conception of Salander as a twitchy, anorexic waif feels more like a stunt than a complete character, and so the best part of the reason we care enough to endure all that mayhem has gone away.

Not only is Polanski very much in his comfort zone with this material, he also has cast it impressively, staying away from any of the actors who played the parts in either its London or New York productions and finding players who match up well with Carnage's juicy dialogue.

Bird has done a stylish and involving job here, turning in an entertaining production that's got considerable visual flair, especially in its action-heavy Imax sections.

It's a domestic horror story that literally gets to us where we live, a disturbing tale told with uncompromising emotionality and great skill by filmmaker Lynne Ramsay.

In a world where everyone was looking for an angle, hoping to survive the nightmare and maybe even turn other people's misery into a tidy profit, the fact that a fragile humanity survived at all is little short of a miracle.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an enormously impressive piece of work.

Director Johanna Demetrakas has decided to simply present the man in all his demanding complexities and let him and his encounters with associates speak for themselves. Her only rubric is the one visible in her title: "Crazy Wisdom."

It is Mulligan and most especially Fassbender that give the film its power. The desperation, hostility and despair he conveys through the act of sex make Shame a film that is difficult to watch but even harder to turn away from.

What is finally most compelling about this film is the sense it gives of how passionately the citizens of Ghana believe in democracy, how much it means to them.

The director's visually thrilling Hugo has real moments of 3-D magic. Sadly, they aren't quite enough to make this adaptation of Brian Selznick's celebrated novel, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," a wholly satisfying experience.

It's fascinating to see the exceptionally charismatic Fassbender squeeze himself into the role of the aristocratic, restrained Jung, and it's just as enjoyable to see Mortensen bring an unexpected virility to his sybaritic, cigar-chomping Freud.

Dazzling panoramas, no matter how impressive, are no substitute for the involving story Happy Feet Two has had to do without.

Harrowing and unflinching, a savage nightmare so consuming and claustrophobic you will want to leave but fear to go, City of Life and Death is a cinematic experience unlike any you've had before. It's a film strong enough to change your life, if you can bear to watch it at all.

A smart, involving and strikingly adult drama about Sarkozy's rise to power.

J. Edgar is a somber, enigmatic, darkly fascinating tale, and how could it be otherwise?

As Pianomania gradually reveals, Knüpfer is able to do this so well because he is as much of a crazed perfectionist as the pianists themselves, maybe even more so.

If you are experienced enough to understand love's fragility but still romantic enough to embrace its power, Like Crazy will put you away.

A treat to experience visually (especially in lively 3-D) and verbally, Puss in Boots is a family film where the adventure and invention never flag and the tongue-in-cheek humor doesn't linger far behind.

Articulate, thoughtful and funny - hearing Vitali talk about getting used to 100 kinds of cheese in the West is a real pleasure - the Klitschkos are a treat to spend conversational time with. Just don't think of joining them in the ring.

Buster Keaton isn't dead, he's alive and well in Finland, where under a new identity he pursues his own particular brand of deadpan absurdism to wonderful effect. If the name Aki Kaurismäki doesn't mean anything to you, it should, and Le Havre may be the film to make it happen.

This confident, crisply made piece of work does an expert job of bringing us inside the inner sanctum of a top Wall Street investment bank in extremis, giving us a convincing and coolly dramatic portrait of what it must have been like when titans trembled.

Stays remarkably close to its predecessor in all the ways that count.

Benda Bilili! earns its exclamation point. It's a feel-good movie that actually makes you feel good, a story that will have you shaking your head in astonishment and moving your feet to some unstoppable rhythms.

The French have a knack for it. They've been making funny and agreeable movie farces for forever, and seeing The Women on the 6th Floor makes you hope they'll never stop.

Even though all the supporting elements of a superior film are here, the actual plot that everything is at the service of is disappointing. The texture of reality and the sheen of fine craft disguise this for a while, but not forever.

As a comedy about a young man with cancer, it needs to be serious enough to be real as well as light enough to be funny. Though it falls off the wagon at times, it maintains its balance remarkably well.

Black Power Mixtape's contemporary audio, though it tries hard to involve us, can't hold a candle to this kind of footage. But if having these current voices on board helped get the luminous glimpses of the past back on the screen, we owe them a vote of thanks.

Starring Brad Pitt in top movie star form, it's a film that's impressive and surprising.

An extraordinarily moving examination of how the AIDS epidemic both devastated and transformed San Francisco's gay community, this clear-eyed and soulful documentary brings us inside the contagion in a way that is so intimate, so personal, you feel like you're hearing about these catastrophic events for the first time.

Drive is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.

It shows promise but finally hits things so hard, both literally and metaphorically, that it's hard not to feel pummeled yourself by the time it's over.

This may not fit any conventional definition of entertainment, but it certainly keeps your eyes on the screen.

Unconventional, imaginative, nothing if not audacious, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a portrait of creativity from the inside, a serious yet playful attempt to find an artistic way to tell an emotional truth.

No concept in the critical lexicon has been more devalued and debased than "inspirational." The term has been so misused, it's just about lost all meaning. A film that makes that word real and vital has to be special. The Interrupters is such a film.

A documentary with the pace of a thriller, a story of motors and machines that is beyond compelling because of the intensely human story it tells.

Smart, fun and thoroughly enjoyable, it's a model summer diversion that entertains without insulting your intelligence.

A leaden mash-up of western and science-fiction elements that ends up noisy, grotesque and unappealing.

Captain America is first and foremost an origins story. Almost half of the film's running time elapses before Rogers gets any kind of power at all, and though its elements are awfully familiar, it's the most involving part of the film because it takes advantage of Evans' performance.

Sarah's Key is more powerful than you expect, maybe even more powerful than it should be.

What makes this film especially engrossing is that what happened between that chimp and the humans with whom he spent his life in intimate contact turns out to be only half the story that Marsh, who directed the electrifying "Man on Wire," has to tell.

Part 2 turns out to be more than the last of its kind. Almost magically, it ends up being one of the best of the series as well.

Larry Crowne is an inside-out movie, acceptable around the edges but hollow and shockingly unconvincing at its core. When that core is two of the biggest movie stars around - Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts - it's an especially dispiriting situation.

These creations have become like family to Lasseter as well as to each other, and they never fail to make us smile.

Though it's blessed with a strong subject and some memorable characters and situations, the drawback of this fitfully engaging documentary is that it can't settle on anything even close to a single theme or line of inquiry.

Rejoice provides both a melodic education and a once-in-a-lifetime concert in one soul-stirring package.

More science-fiction space opera than superhero epic, it works in fits and starts as its disparate parts go in and out of effectiveness, but the professionalism of the production make it watchable in a comic book kind of way.

This melding of two cinematic sensibilities, though effective at moments, is finally not as exciting or involving as it we'd like it to be.

Writer-director Richard Ayoade has the knack. A fresh and inventive cinematic voice, he's taken a subject that's been beaten half to death and brought it miraculously to life in his smart and funny debut feature, Submarine.

While Malick's great ability holds us for a time, it is finally not enough to compensate for a lack of dramatic involvement - those eschatological quandaries tend to overwhelm the story. The Tree of Life, its enormous advantages notwithstanding, ends up a film that demands to be admired but cannot be easily embraced.

With Midnight in Paris, Allen has lightened up, allowed himself a treat and in the process created a gift for us and him.

Though it's more than a little awestruck and feels padded even at 82 minutes, the story it tells remains completely fascinating

Daring in the ways only quiet, unhurried but finally haunting films have the courage to be. A character study of remarkable subtlety joined to a carefully worked-out plot that fearlessly explores big issues like beauty, truth and mortality, it marks the further emergence of Korean writer-director Lee Chang-dong.

Thor has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be.

For what makes this tale something more than a puzzle to be solved is a level of emotional impact that genre exercises don't often provide, emotion traceable to sensitive acting that is similarly rare.

It's a privilege and a pleasure to be present in a sacred space where the human and the mystical effortlessly intertwine, and we are in Werner Herzog's debt for that great gift.

A film of rare visual poetry that's simultaneously personal, political and philosophical, it's a genuine art film that's also unpretentious and easygoing.

If the circus is a hierarchical pyramid, August is at the very top. It's a part tailor-made for the accomplished Waltz, an Oscar winner for "Inglourious Basterds," and he eats it alive.

Epic and intimate, historical and contemporary, moving and thought-provoking, the impressive The Princess of Montpensier has something for all and sundry but especially for those who like to believe that films can be as boldly intelligent as they are entertaining.

The resolution and strength of Wright's unimpeachable performance makes the whole story seem flesh-and-blood real in a way that it would not otherwise be.

Blessed with considerable virtues, including a clever concept, crackling filmmaking and a charismatic star, it ultimately squanders all of them, undone by an unfortunate lack of subtlety and restraint.

A marvel of a documentary, a clear-eyed and affectionate film that tells a remarkable story with both visual and personal sensitivity. More impressive still, it's largely the work of one man.

It's the best kind of unforced filmmaking, able to make its points with delicacy and tact. And the best thing about it is that it is Bottaro's feature directing debut. We have a lot to look forward to.

One of the places where In a Better World is especially successful is comparing and contrasting the moral worlds of children and adults, showing how difficult but essential it is for each group to learn from the other.

With a twisty, mind-bending plot that frequently changes direction and occasionally overreaches, Source Code wouldn't work at all without a cast with the determination and ability to really sell its story.

Helping to keep this ship from keeling over is the great professionalism and light touch of Deneuve and Depardieu. Costars numerous times, they go together as comfortably as an old pair of gloves. Potiche very much counts on this, and it has not miscalculated.

Front and center in all of this, though he clearly would rather not be, is Cunningham himself, a man of enormous good cheer who gets riled only when he fears his creative prerogatives are being infringed on.

Tells a tale that is stranger than fiction several times over. Viewers of this remarkable documentary will be astonished at not only what this art looks like and why it's forbidden, but also where it is and how it got there.

Pure pleasure to experience. Written and directed by Tom McCarthy with an impeccable feel for off-center human comedy at its funniest and most heartfelt, its low-key qualities are so relaxed and unforced every moment feels like a gift.

With Fassbender's charisma igniting his costar as well as himself, these sparring interchanges, both captivating and entertaining, are where this Jane Eyre finally catches fire.

More than anything, this is an intelligent audience picture, a solid and engrossing piece of old-school filmmaking, both humane and character driven, in which the various protagonists learn something - not too much and not too easily - about the nature of their lives.

Beautiful and melodic as well as pointedly political.

What is clear is that this is a director with a great sense of the magical and the mystical residing in the everyday.

What results, against some odds, is an intriguing entertainment. Adjustment Bureau's central concept is certainly ingenious, but the details are a little wonky and don't stand up to too much scrutiny.

A thrilling adventure of the spirit. Austere yet provocative, this is not only a film about faith, it also has faith that the power generated by complex moral decisions can be as unstoppable as any runaway locomotive.

Mightily impressive to look at. What it's like to listen to is somewhat different.

A nifty international thriller of the "what if?" variety.

This gently amusing, genuinely sweet animated film makes you smile from start to finish?

For with songs like "You Can Close Your Eyes," "You've Got a Friend" and numerous others on the soundtrack, this is finally a film hard not to enjoy.

My Dog Tulip is as disconcerting and unusual a piece of animation as the 1956 memoir that inspired it, and that is saying a lot.

May not be the most tedious superhero movie ever - the competition is admittedly tough - but it is certainly in the running.

It may sound commonplace, but in the hands of master filmmaker Mike Leigh, the everyday becomes extraordinary.

There is something magical about The Illusionist's world, and that's as it should be.

Slight but often seductive and so deliberately not in a hurry it periodically threatens to dissolve right in front of our eyes, Somewhere is more successful in creating ambience and visual imagery than it is in telling its story of a movie star bonding with his 11-year-old daughter.

When Iris DeMent's impeccable version of the hymn is heard on the soundtrack as the final credits roll, it's the perfect touch to end a film whose aim is always true.

If, as someone says in one of Brooks' trademark excellent lines, we all feel we're "one small adjustment away from making our lives work," this film is one small adjustment away as well.

A tragedy devastating to experience can feel generic when transferred to the screen, and that, despite everyone's best intentions and an outstanding performance by Nicole Kidman, is what happens with Rabbit Hole.

A runaway train drama that never slows down, it fashions familiarity into a virtue and shows why old-school professionalism never goes out of style.

Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, White Material is an altogether stunning work.

Clearly, the directors have to be Merritt advocates to hang in there that long, but the film that resulted has elements that keep it from being simply a fan's notes.

The gift of The King's Speech is that it allows us to look on as a pair of masterful actors re-create a monumental test of wills.

It takes a bit of doing, but when Tangled's core sweetness asserts itself and the film dares to wear its heart on its sleeve in a climactic scene featuring 46,000 paper lanterns, it's been worth the wait.

Manages to be both pertinent and dramatically persuasive. Made like it means something (and it does) by first-time writer-director Tanya Hamilton, it demonstrates that social relevance and emotional connection can be compelling fellow travelers.

The rousing The Fighter tries a number of risky maneuvers and manages to make them pay off in the end. The movie initially feels like more of a near thing than the filmmakers anticipated, but as in boxing it's only the final decision that counts.

There is a moment in The Tourist when Johnny Depp turns to Angelina Jolie and asks "Why is all this happening?" It's a question moviegoers will be asking themselves as well.

To be fair to Deathly Hallows, the filmmakers have tried hard to fill the proceedings with battles and chases and debilitating curses. Genuine filmmaking excitement, however, is harder to provide.

As Bhutto, the thorough and involving documentary on her life conveys, Benazir was a formidable personality all by herself.

Not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tutu Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not.

A warm and enthusiastic documentary.

Made with the on-camera cooperation of Spitzer (though not his wife), it is a sad, disturbing and in some ways tragic tale that in its lurid combination of sex and politics, banal hypocrisy and bare-knuckles power, seems very much an American story of our times.

Rachel McAdams gives the kind of performance we go to the movies for. The rest of the film isn't always up to her level, but it does provide genial entertainment until it runs out of steam.

It seems to be doing everything right but still doesn't manage to leave you with a completely satisfied feeling.

By the time this lightly entertaining look at life's emotional crises ends, even the characters you didn't think were sympathetic will have won you over.

This is quiet but potent filmmaking that believes nothing is more important than the story it has to tell.

Yet for all its ballyhooed candor about sexual matters, it's a surprisingly baffling and opaque film, too artistic to be standard pornography and too zealously focused on being graphic to the exclusion of all else to succeed as drama.

Unfortunately, although Gilliam has always had a taste for the outre, he has allowed it to get out of hand here and swallow the picture whole. There's an excessiveness, an unwelcome too-muchness to "Grimm's" creepy moments.

For fans of this kind of roots music, it was an event you would have given anything to attend. Down From the Mountain lets you do that and gives you terrific seats in the bargain.

Regarding Henry is a breath of stale air, an unconvincing rehabilitation of 1960s values for a 1990s audience that is bound and determined to take the easy way out whenever possible. Which is really too bad, because there are signs along the way that this could have been a less manipulative, more genuine exploration of what really matters in life instead of the slick Hollywood shuffle it turned out to be.

This is finally a film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense.

May be the most hopeless, despairing comic-book movie in memory. It creates a world where being a superhero is at best a double-edged sword and no triumph is likely to be anything but short-lived.

Its cleverness and its good heart enable it to overcome a slow start, which is how all good fairy tales end.

Aside from the singing and dancing, it is the color and pageantry of India as filtered through the work of cinematographer Santosh Sivan that captivates us.

A consummate entertainment rich with the romantic atmosphere of Paris in the 1950s. Coming at a turning point in French cinematic history, it drew upon several major talents - director Louis Malle, star Jeanne Moreau, cinematographer Henri Decaë, musician Miles Davis - and achieved near-legendary results with all of them.

It's an interesting take, and it always holds our interest, but it's finally too ham-fisted to be a completely winning one.

A wonder several times over.

Think of Control Room as a through-the-looking-glass movie. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, viewers of this remarkable documentary will be disconcerted by a glimpse of a world where everything is reversed.

Listless, disjointed and disconnected, this meandering two-hour, 32-minute exercise in futility will fascinate no one who doesn't have a blood relation among the cast or crew.

Willem Dafoe's performance in Shadow of the Vampire is so irresistible it not only breaks that cycle but turns an otherwise just adequate film into something everyone will want to take a look at.

We may have seen it all before, but when it's done up like this, experiencing it all over again is a pleasure. [16 June 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]

Though Hugo's fatalistic story has been given the inevitable happy ending, Hunchback is in many ways the most satisfyingly dark and adult of the Disney versions. [21 June 1996, p.F1]

With a traditional structure combined with daring flash forwards and a modern soundtrack, Ceddo is powerful and uncompromising.

A fascinating hybrid. A Hollywood fantasy at its most fantastic, the film is equal parts true innocence and shameless calculation. Deciding whether the glass is half empty or half full depends on which part you are willing to embrace.

An apocalyptic documentary that is as beautiful as it is damning.

Intelligent, poignant film.

Its nervy decision to cut as wide a swath as possible through one of the most exciting and meaningful periods of our history have created something that's impossible not to both applaud and enjoy.

Sleek and satisfying....Almost a drawing room thriller, unhurried and genteel but enlivened with suspense and surprising bursts of sly, even biting, humor.

Mean Creek's greatest asset is its sense of truth. It doesn't pander to or indulge its characters like the teen films we're used to. It looks at them straight ahead and with respect. It's something you wish Hollywood, and even parents, did more often.

The last thing you see in Ajami should be the first thing on your mind about this compelling new film from Israel. That would be the closing credits, written in both Hebrew and Arabic, separate but equal, side by side, mirroring the creative process behind this potent work and the story it has to tell.

Intense, immersive and in control, Winter's Bone has an art house soul inside a B picture body, and that proves to be a potent combination indeed.

A rehash of plot conventions from a slew of mismatched movies. A Perfect World will remind you of any number of previous films, but almost everything it attempts to do was done better the last time around.

Does benefit from Gibson's charisma...Whether it is quite good enough is another question.

The film never quite shakes its self-consciousness about just how special it is and that is a hindrance.

Working in the spirit of his predecessors but with the kind of uncanny special effects they could barely dream of, Spielberg has come up with an impressive production that is disturbing in the way only provocative science fiction can be.

A warmhearted horror show that puts cliched movie people into a realistic situation, the signals it sends out are nothing but mixed.

As a director, Moore is like an energetic puppy who's all over you all at once. You admire his energy, and it's awfully hard to get angry at such high spirits, but you can't help but wish he'd calm down just a bit.

With his corrosive brand of take-no-prisoners humor that scalds on contact, Cohen is the most intentionally provocative comedian since Lenny Bruce and early Richard Pryor, with a difference. For unlike those predecessors, there is a mean-spiritedness, an every-man-for-himself coldness about his humor. The one kind of laughter you won't find in Borat is that which acknowledges shared humanity. Instead, there is that pitiless staple of reality TV, watching others humiliate themselves for our viewing pleasure.

A film that is more listless than funny and could surely use some of the energy that animated both Art Buchwald and Paramount Pictures in the lawsuit surrounding authorship of [Eddie Murphy]'s 1988 "Coming to America." [01 Jul 1992]

The reality it confronts is so gripping, we cannot turn away. This may not be the most sophisticated retelling of what happened while Berlin burned, but what a story it is.

This is the best class of poetic realism, the kind you can believe in without a trace of hesitation.

While the story plays better on the page than the screen and some of the film's elements work better than others, a proficient Ron Howard version of things is certainly competent if only occasionally thrilling.

While the film glistens a bit now and again, a closer look reveals you've been diverted not by a diamond but by a genuine synthetic zircon.

Overmatched by the strange and compelling true story that is its subject, this unfortunate film ends up both more disingenuous than it wants to admit and more awkward than it can easily acknowledge.

A concept, no matter how promising, is not a movie, and this picture has the bad luck to illustrate the difference.

A major American motion picture, an overpowering piece of work that involves some of the most basic human emotions: love, hate, fear, revenge, despair. Directed by Clint Eastwood with absolute confidence and remarkable control.

A film truly geared to the 6-year-old level. If not younger.

Its privileged glimpse deep into unfamiliar spiritual territory has the strength of revelation.

Isn't good and isn't bad, it just isn't. A lethargic would-be entertainment as well as a dispiriting vanity project, it is such a misfire that it makes it hard to remember what was special about its predecessor.

A movie we might like to buy into if left to our own devices, but that idea is anathema to Turteltaub, intent on pushing us so hard that we end up pushing back.

Sayles' films are always of interest, and even though the partly cloudy Sunshine State is not the writer-director at his best, even his letdowns often have more to offer than other people's successes.

What results is a film with some bright spots but whose effect is finally as muddled and wearying as the event itself sometimes is.

A provocatively structured and thrillingly executed film noir, an intricate, inventive use of cinema's possibilities that pushes what can be done on screen in an unusual direction.

A comic actor of genius who raises silliness to an art form, the wonderfully expressive Atkinson makes excellent use of those devastating looks in the spy spoof Johnny English, where he turns up as a James Bond type more likely to kill adversaries by accident than on purpose.

Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of "No Country for Old Men," to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.

Airbender, whether intentionally or not, is pegged almost exclusively to a small-fry state of mind.

The kindest thing that can be said about Sandler's sense of humor is that it's unapologetically juvenile.

In the end, star charisma and Liman's style win us over and we relax into a sophisticated summertime diversion that is noticeably intended for adults.

Corpse Bride has more warmth and appeal than its title would indicate, but it is finally more grotesque than good-humored. And, even at 75 minutes, it feels longer than its content can comfortably support.

Harron has said she was determined to be nonjudgmental about Page, to do justice to the woman's "mystery and ambiguity." In practice, however, that attitude plays as coldness, and Page, for all her remarkable zest, comes off as a not terribly interesting person we're given no incentive to become involved with.

Once positions hardened, tragedy was all but inevitable, and Bloody Sunday" does the spirit of that awful day full and unforgettable justice.

Beautifully put together, sensitively acted by Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue, directed by Mike Figgis with assurance and style and making exceptional use of its musical score, this doomed romance is finally not as satisfying as all of that would have you believe.

If they had to make things up, couldn't they have made up something smarter?

Directed in bold, energetic strokes by Taylor Hackford, "Devil" is fine disreputable fun at first, a stylish and watchable hoot. But then its tone changes, the plot goes gimmicky and bombastic speeches about the nature of good and evil clutter the airwaves and confuse the issue.

An engrossing, muckraking documentary about the retail giant that's been called "the world's largest, richest and probably meanest corporation." But if you're expecting an angry diatribe, you're going to be disappointed.

Like many modern children's films, Stuart Little 2 can't decide between teaching good values ("You're only as big as you feel") and tossing out fake-hip jokes. Though it doesn't happen as often as it should, this is a better film when it allows itself simply to be sweet.

By refusing to be cheap or insincere, "Fly Away Home" allows us to enjoy our emotions without feeling we've been criminally manipulated. [13 Sep 1996, p.F1]

Like an aging athlete who knows how to husband strength and camouflage weaknesses, it makes the most of what it does well and hopes you won't notice its limitations.

So though it takes important steps in that direction, the film pulls back from what seems to be its own logical conclusion.

At the end of the day, Bolt is a sweet Disney family film.

Made with daring and passion, it attempts the impossible and comes remarkably close to pulling it off. So close, in fact, that the skill and audacity used, the shock and awe of this highly entertaining attempt, are more significant than the imperfect results.

This is a film that goes its own way to the end as it asks the audience, "What you just saw, were they happy times or not?" The question is a good one, and the answer, like this film, is sure to stay with you.

The problem with High Crimes, acceptable though it is, is that it's not close to anyone's best work.

Both a beautiful film and a disturbing one, and the connection between those two characteristics makes it the most disquieting of documentaries.

Filled with tension, deception and bravura acting, Breach is a crackling tale of real-life espionage that doubles as a compelling psychological drama.

That rare comedy that is as completely entertaining now in its re-release...as it was back then.

What saved "Schindler's List" from this self-conscious nobility was the ambiguity of Oskar Schindler's personality and Spielberg's willingness to treat incendiary material coolly. The lesson he seemed to have learned there, that the strongest stories call for the greatest restraint, is one he has at least partially forgotten here.

Its heart is so much in the right place it is difficult to get really peeved at it.

As epic as its two-hours-and-25-minute running time indicates, Black Book is as subversive as it is traditional, both enamored of conventional notions of heroism and frankly contemptuous of them.

Though Unstrung Heroes' thematic elements are uniformly strong, it is the film's treatment of Danny and Arthur that is especially impressive. [15 Sep 1995]

Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, Wall-E gains strength from embracing contradictions that would destroy other films.

This small gem of a movie always feels true and real as it gently reveals the quiet moments that define our lives.

Against considerable odds and despite a shaky start, Proof proves itself in every area.

Tasteful, subtle and sophisticated are a few of the words that aren't going to be applied to Eddie Murphy's version of The Nutty Professor. But funny, funny is something else again.

Any movie whose computer-generated effects are more believable than its actors is asking for trouble. A frustrating combination of the magical and the mundane, Dragonheart has less difficulty creating a creditable dragon than a recognizable human being. [31 May 1996, p.F1]

It's not often that you see talented, well-meaning people joined together like cultists in the snare of a group delusion, but that's what makes this film fascinating, the proverbial accident you can't take your eyes off.

There is something about Stephen Frears' complex, heartbreaking, beautifully made Liam that seems to speak eloquently, painfully to the dilemmas we are facing today, to the terrible price dark times can extort from us all.

A glum and unpleasant experience, caught between what it wants to do and how it has chosen to do it.

For director Lou Ye, who also co-wrote the script and was a student in Beijing during that crucial year, Summer Palace is the story of his particular lost generation, a story he felt so deeply about he risked his career to tell it. Search out this vivid film in a theater. Don't let the sacrifices he made be in vain.

Even after you've seen Forbidden Lie$, the dizzying, drop-dead fascinating documentary on Norma Khouri, you won't be absolutely sure if she's on the level or a con artist ranked as "one of the best ever." That's how good she is.

A film that is genuinely mind-expanding, an exhilarating intellectual gantlet that tells a remarkable human story.

Goofy and gee-whiz when it isn't being post-apocalyptic glum, it is such an earnest hodgepodge that only by imagining "Mad Max" directed by Frank Capra can you get even an inkling of what it's like.

Amuses and unnerves in equal measure. A comedy of discomfort that walks a wonderful line between reality-based emotional honesty and engaging humor, it demonstrates the good things that happen when quirky independent style combines with top-of-the-line acting skill.

Fluffy and mild to the point of somnolence, it can't even get the full benefit of its strongest asset, Glenn Close's performance as the grasping virago Cruella DeVil.

The film is well intentioned and mildly diverting, but in attempting to modernize its story it has lost many of the things that make the original so memorable and not gained much in return.

Unfortunately, absent a more objective context, Trudell's gnomic utterances do little to support those sentiments. By preaching so relentlessly to the choir, this film misses an opportunity to show what got them to sing in the first place.

Stolen is about a puzzle that's resisted solution for more than 15 years, but that doesn't stop it from being a fascinating, adventurous documentary with a lively and eccentric cast of characters.

In the end, the great thing about “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould” is that rather than creating a desire to meet this formidable individual, it makes you feel as if in some way you actually had.

The bane of documentaries on creative people is that they're often little more than a fan's note, of interest only to those who already know and love the work in question. The Universe of Keith Haring starts out that way but the force of the late artist's energy and personality is strong enough to win over the skeptics.

For what Crude does best is take us behind the scenes and show in often candid detail how campaigns are waged, tactics decided on and strategies prioritized.

This film becomes the kind of love note to movies we want and need.

A powerhouse. Highly dramatic and intensely emotional, blessed with strong themes and an unstoppable narrative drive, it is adult, intelligent entertainment of a kind we rarely see these days.

A genially twisted riff on the familiar alien invaders story, a lively summer entertainment that marries a deadpan sense of humor to the strangest creatures around.

Cinderella Man's key emotional moments feel as if they've been predigested for an audience that can't be trusted to feel things for itself but needs to be firmly albeit lovingly pointed in the appropriate direction.