Lawrence Toppman

Everything from the book is inserted with wisdom and care, and everything added to pander to kids with short attention spans or adults who need an overtly religious message is unnecessary.

A brain-free ride on a cinematic bullet train.

A good critic likes nothing better than to go in with low expectations and be proven wrong. EuroTrip makes me a good critic. I'd have sworn I'd never laugh again at somebody assaulting a mime, but this goofy comedy makes even that ancient concept fresh.

They have turned a brief, appealing, honest autobiography by Susanna Kaysen into a long, appealing, rather dishonest film.

If you ride the paranoiac tide, letting Jonathan Demme's assured direction carry you along, the sardonic humor and anxiety-inducing message work on you.

Every decade or so, someone proves animation can tell a serious adult story.

Anyone familiar with the movies of Julio Medem knows where "Sex and Lucia" is going. Or, rather, knows that it's impossible to know.

A film that dares to be smart, reasonably complicated and scary while swashing its buckles.

Though its grosses may not soar into the realm occupied by "Superbad" and "American Pie," it has more sympathy for its characters.

Forget the bug-eating, cow-spearing and one-upsmanship of TV's "Survivor." The real results of isolation and deprivation unfold in The King is Alive: madness, suicide and murder.

Watching Lovely and Amazing is like coming into a long-running, well-written television series where you've missed the first half-dozen episodes and probably won't see the next six.

A loving interpretation of C.S. Lewis's beloved parable for children, and it's almost perfect in every detail. Yet there's the one difficulty: It's almost perfect in every detail, fully realized in too few.

John Bailey's cinematography goes beyond the norm: Darkened rooms full of conspirators are as unsettling as Luthan's descent into an unlit subway tunnel. Danny Elfman, a mainstream film composer now that his alternative rock career is over, adds an apt score; he's angling for the late Bernard Herrmann's spot on Hollywood's scare scale. [27 Sept 1996, p.6E]

The script expertly captures kids' behavior.

David Goyer, who wrote the script for Man of Steel from a story he concocted with Christopher Nolan, found a new way to make us care: The title character is disturbed by everything in his adopted home.

Isn't quite smart enough to untangle one large, insoluble problem at the end.

His movies are thrilling and ridiculous in equal measure, and I often laughed with incredulous approval as he wreaked havoc.

I think the trilogy has come to its natural conclusion: However you interpret the ending, we’ve spent enough time with these two people.

Mitchell keeps the direction simple and well-behaved, usually just pointing the camera at the speaker, but you can see why this topic appealed to him.

The feel-good movie of a feel-blah movie year, with all the positive qualities and one negative trait that this description implies.

If you fell in love with the big-hearted sentimentality of Rent when you saw it onstage, the film version will remind you why. If you think Jonathan Larson's musical is ponderous agitprop, the movie won't change your view.

By the end, an end that has a little too much melodrama to it, we can only shake our heads in wonder.

The film has such an expansive, likeable spirit.

From the first gentle meeting of its hero and heroine to the last line of dialogue, The Finest Hours executes all the traditional moves beautifully.

Is it too much to ask that he take a risk next time and kill somebody off, however much we’re used to having them in the “Trek” universe?

As you get into the flow of the narrative, and the strangeness of hearing no dialogue recedes, the movie becomes a rewarding experience.

It offers a grim view of prehistoric life: Carnivores slaughter herbivores, though we're spared most direct shots of this violence.

Why is The Emperor's New Groove Disney's funniest animated movie in years? Because it's the least like a Disney animated movie.