Lawrence Toppman

Writers Rasmus Heisterberg and Nicolaj Arcel are known in America for the original version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." This film is the exact opposite: stately instead of propulsive, emotionally warm instead of chilly, lit by candles and sun instead of flashlights and neon.

The two male leads, bulwarks of the Danish film industry for more than a decade, play off each other like the veterans they are.

Bizarrely entertaining and brilliantly designed.

You can say nothing of Castle-Hughes except that she's already a movie star: The camera loves her and we do, too.

Plays out like a sprinter competing in his first distance race: It bursts forth with tremendous energy, sustains itself for quite a while, loses steam near the end but finishes ahead of most of the pack.

The best action movie of the month contains chase scenes, fights, a love story, exotic locations - well, one exotic locale, snow-blasted Antarctica - and a battle for survival against long odds amid brutal conditions.

Supplies the three key elements of the best political thrillers: suspense, credibility and the feeling that you're really sitting in the Oval Office.

Some writer-directors would have squeezed pathos from this story until the corn turned to pone, especially in a post-Christmas release. Writer-director Robert Benton (Places in the Heart) keeps a gentler grip on the proceedings and makes 10 times the impact. [13 Jan 1995, p.1F]

Whatever you think of gay people (or politicians), you may find the movie compelling viewing.

Every time it starts to feel like something we have known, we realize how unlike us these Iranian characters are.

But as cynical as I may have been going in, I came out a believer.

British director Stephen Walker approached this project with wide-eyed good humor.

Why on earth didn't Warner Bros. release this movie in time for Oscar consideration? Sure, it's bleak, depressing, sometimes painful to watch. But it would have been one of the best pictures of the year, and Nicholson (who hasn't done work of this caliber since "The Crossing Guard") might have been on the podium again.

When I first heard about Wordplay, I assumed I wouldn't have an ort of interest.

Zero Dark Thirty, like the mission that inspired it, commands respect, admiration, even awe in places for the logistical nightmares that had to be overcome to get it done. But it's a hard movie to love.

[I] enjoyed McQuarrie’s ingenuity in construction, smiled occasionally at the jokes and admired Ferguson’s performance as the most interesting femme fatale in the series.

Raymond Wong, who has become Chow's favorite composer, iced this cake with music that sounds like Beethoven, Henry Mancini's jazz and all the James Bond themes run together in a blender.

Crowe gave Kate Hudson one pointer while making Almost Famous: Her character simply had to light up every room as soon as she walked into it.

The most violent scene is dreamlike, and more direct killings are often seen at an angle or from a distance. The camera placement is thoughtful and effective, never titillating.

If Hollywood’s going to extend the most famous movie myth of the past 40 years, The Force Awakens seems a worthwhile way to do so.

Gibney also made the Oscar-nominated "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," and he gets remarkable access to people you wouldn't expect to talk to him (including U.S. interrogators charged with crimes at Bagram).

The result is one of the twistiest thrillers in recent memory.

Can there be higher praise for a motion picture designed to capture a beloved book with fidelity, thoroughness and affection? Only this: They made it better.

The superb Trintignant and the Oscar-nominated Riva – who would win, in a just world – embody once-vigorous people in inevitable decline. Yet as another critic has said, the film is sad without being depressing.

Did we need another Spider-Man this quickly? Debatable. But if you wanted a new interpretation – especially one where story and action stay in the right balance – this is it.

Impassioned concert sequences with Ben Harper, Chaka Khan, Gerald Levert and especially Joan Osborne prove the Brothers' balanced approach still works on Motown chestnuts.

The results require immense patience but also reward it immensely.

A richly satisfying adaptation of Louis Sachar's novel.

Perelman and Otto make auspicious, nearly flawless debuts.

If “Whiplash” was Damien Chazelle’s bullet train through dark regions of the New York jazz world, La La Land is his leisurely bus tour through sunlit fantasies of life in Los Angeles.

The coolest film in town offers industrial espionage, power struggles, thwarted romance, betrayal and suspense - and best of all, it's true.

If this new film doesn't quite go to 11, it's a healthy 8½.

Most movies about people passing themselves off as the opposite sex can't sustain the illusion, but "Nobbs" does.

A feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics.

(Cusack) has never been more effective onscreen.

His height didn't stop independent writer-director Thomas McCarthy from casting his friend in The Station Agent, scoring a triumph for both.

Another of Charlotte native Ross McElwee's musings about his family, history (this time the tobacco industry) and life. It may be his best.

A wicked comedy with just the mildest amount of pathos to season the blend.

Penn, one of Hollywood's most famous iconoclasts, must have felt instinctive sympathy with someone who told the whole world in general to leave him alone.

You'll be disappointed if you expect famed leftist Oliver Stone to apply a coup de grace to this man.

The movie is the usual kind of film biography of a respected figure from the distant past - honorable, oversimplified, handsome.

South African director Neill Blomkamp set and shot the film around his native Johannesburg, so parallels to apartheid leap to mind. Yet the script he wrote with Terri Tatchell applies to any culture that bluntly excludes another.

A potent environmental message wrapped up in an irresistibly cute romance between robots.

Examines Muslim family's religious warfare.

The film's an irresistible time capsule of that Camelot summer, blending girrrrrl power, social consciousness and faux-'60s pop with the fizz of a soda jerk whipping up a root beer float.

Veteran documentary-maker Louise Osmond directs with flair. She gives us just enough of the history of Blackwood to show what Dream Alliance means to the place, and she gets us inside the horse’s head.

I have never seen elementary schoolers more passionate about education than the ones I met at a school in rural Kenya, not far from the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

A love story more involved than I can easily explain.

Chi-Raq is indeed interesting, challenging, provocative and consistently entertaining in its outrageous depiction of life in modern Chicago. And nobody in mainstream filmmaking today except Spike Lee could or would have done it.

Has more twists than the Pacific Coast Highway and more layers than a stack of silver-dollar pancakes. If you can wrap your mind around one unlikely condition, the picture provides unalloyed pleasure for connoisseurs of cinematic con artists.

The film was reputedly inspired by Japanese teens who trolled chat rooms to find predators, made assignments, then ganged up to beat offending adults.

The songs are pure joy, for them and for us.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven, who makes her feature debut as writer-director after a couple of short films, tells the story exclusively from the girls’ point of view – both emotionally, as they have all our sympathy, and physically, as almost nothing happens that one of them could not be seeing.

Reflective, touching, intimate portrait of a samurai facing action in his waning years.

Brilliantly interweaves stories that take place decades apart, and features stellar work by three of the best English-speaking actresses: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep.

A taut, consistently surprising political thriller with a sting in its tail.

The filmmakers beautifully balance goofy moments with Gothic darkness.

If we admire anything about him, it’s entrepreneurship; there’s something uniquely American about a guy outrunning his own death by turning suffering into profit. And as a judge asks, why shouldn’t a dying man be allowed to try any remedy for his disease?

Had Amy Winehouse not been a briefly famous musician – had she been an architect or a teacher or even a woman who mopped floors – the documentary Amy might have been nearly as compelling.

Once you accept that he (Neeson) has the badge and gun, you’re in for an exciting trip.

Is “feel-good” a bad word? Critics often think so. But when a movie explores real emotions en route to its gladdening end, when it takes time to touch on serious issues along the way, it earns the right to make us feel good.

Whitaker’s performance reveals a man who unobtrusively changes white people around him – perhaps without trying or even knowing it – through his demeanor and ability.

Now comes director Baz Luhrmann, who’s incapable of taking anything literally, and what do we get? The “Gatsby” that, of three I’ve seen and two I’ve read about, seems most faithful to the spirit of Fitzgerald’s superbly sad book. His audacity pays off in a way that may not exactly reproduce the novel but continually illuminates it.

Any Preston Sturges comedy explodes American ideals, and this one mocks everything from patriotism to motherhood. [14 Jun 1998, p.1F]

Career Girls is a chamber piece: intimate and direct, two voices performing monologues and duets of irony, despair and hope. [29 Aug 1997, p.11E]

This may be yet another variation on the usual coming-of-age/sisterhood themes so familiar in Disney movies, but who does those better?

Eastwood has directed five war movies and acted in others, and he knows there’s no single truth to convey about combat.

Miller’s not interested in character development, plot twists or social commentary, with one possible exception. He wanted spectacular stunts, which he achieves with tremendous skill, and a bad-guys-vs.-less-bad-guys pursuit that goes through countless exciting permutations.

Yet nothing in their visually stimulating film registers as strongly as Jolie’s enigmatic, ever-changing face.

“22” merits a B grade. The long final credits, in which Dickson imagines dozens of future scenarios for the undercover boys, kicks it up one notch.

It's an honorable, straightforward, talking-heads-and-old-clips film that sometimes rises to profundity when it touches us deeply. [23 Apr 1999, p.10E]

Keaton reminds us what a fine actor he could always be.

This sequel is, by design, entirely absorbing and satisfying without being one whit memorable.

The movie ends so abruptly you might wonder if a piece is missing, and it relies on one extraordinary coincidence I couldn’t swallow. Yet scene by scene, I found people I knew or wish I knew: Ben’s romantic advice to the straight but awkward Joey would give any boy confidence about himself.

Overall, Noah represents a respectful take on an old story by filmmakers who pose a pertinent question. The Creator promises never again to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth, signing that covenant with the cheering image of a rainbow. Does that mean he won’t let us wipe ourselves out millennia later, if we’re hell-bent on doing so?

The result is one of the most honest recent comedies about romances that flourish, marriages that totter and the difficulties of raising children with the right blend of respect, discipline and support.

Virtually all science fiction functions as metaphor, and I took this film to be a metaphor for the act of becoming fully human.

Whedon has more on his mind than he did in the last one. The Avengers seem not just contentious toward each other but weary, sick of their brutal responsibilities.

Winterbottom has darkened the tone: The final scene takes place during a golden sunset that brings no closure to either man.

For now, the franchise has enough zip and humor to be worthwhile.

Anderson leavens the lunacy with a few acts of sudden and extreme violence or avert-your-face sex, which seem as extravagant as the rest of his notions. Perhaps they’re in there to change the flavor of the humor, the way Mendl might put a bitter coffee bean in a chocolate torte to keep it from cloying us.

Like many horror directors, Flanagan felt he could build a feature-length film around his brief idea. Unlike many, he was right.

All three leads give effective, low-key performances. (I don’t remember a single character raising a voice.) Their acting fits the tone of this movie and all the ones Reichardt directs: Her camera moves slowly, and she accumulates tension by showing detail after detail.

I spent The Kids are All Right wondering whether director Lisa Cholodenko was affectionate toward her self-absorbed characters or gently mocking them. In the end, I thought she was both and liked the film more.

Writer-director Caroline Link (who did the Oscar-nominated "Beyond Silence") adapted Stefanie Zweig's expatriate memoir gracefully, languidly and with full understanding of its heroine.

Super 8 takes its place among the best B-grade science fiction movies of this generation by copying the best of the past 50 years.

It’s the first Pixar effort that feels less like a creative outpouring and more like an obligation met to satisfy a distribution schedule.

The movie seemed a disappointment at first, until I decided I was missing the point: It’s actually a drama about the way people treat a celebrity – with fear or reverence, as a source of income or reflected glory– and the way their own personalities change around him, while his stays the same. In that way, the film’s a small triumph.

Madden has the wisdom to give most of the heavy emotional lifting to Mirren, who continues to shine at the age of 66.

Reflective, deliberate, building gradually to a climax that left me touched.

Roger Deakins, probably the best living cinematographer never to win an Oscar (he’s 0-for-10), was behind the camera. So the picture never lets us down visually, even when the story occasionally strays.

Like "Shattered Glass," the other picture Billy Ray directed, Breach probes a guilty mind and reveals how he baffled people. We get a Hitchcock-like pleasure from knowing the protagonist is guilty and watching other shocked characters realize his wickedness.

The film seems like a loose and uncredited updating of "The Great Man Votes," a more serious 1939 entry.

Zach Braff, who shot the film near his hometown of South Orange, N.J., directed this drama with subtle flair and wrote a star part that perfectly fit his acting range.

Try as he might, (Hanks) is miscast in Road to Perdition, a partly satisfying gangster drama that amounts to less than the sum of its handsome parts.

Jim Broadbent is the wild card in the cast; he screeches and growls his way through Madame Gasket's lines in the best traditions of British drag.

It never commits the sin of sentimentalizing old age, as Hollywood usually does when it deigns to admit that people over 55 exist.

If you used this guy's umbilical cord for fishing line, you could land a world-record marlin.

Cohen and his gang are smart enough to know when to quit. Like a loud but amusing guest at a dinner party, Borat collects his coat and goes home just as his hosts are starting to fidget.

The slender story seems overextended at times, with Lu finding new ways each week to insinuate himself into Yu’s life. Zhang doesn’t make a point once if he can make it twice, and the characters don’t change much over the middle hour.

Anonymous is fun – if you take the anti-Shakespearean tale as events set in an unreal, alternate universe.

Bogdanovich adds touches to appeal to serious film fans.

Will Ferrell strides through Elf like a crazily cheerful wind-up toy: arms swinging, legs stiff, mouth fixed in an impossibly happy grin, eyes wide with wonder. He's the Christmas gift nobody thought to ask for but everybody will want to play with.

This loose, slightly lazy sequel is both funnier than the original and more bizarre.

Nobody smells of sagebrush, campfire coffee, tobacco (smoked or chewed) and saddle soap like Duvall.

Bardem delivers the kind of performance the director might have given himself: subdued, thoughtful, wry, sometimes a bit too detached.

Hanks gives one of his least showy and most credible performances.

The movie comes off as Zootopia without social commentary or nearly as much imagination.

One of those rare action comedies that actually delivers action and comedy.

The film whirls by in a satisfying torrent of chases, escapes and discoveries.

It warms the heart in the hands of such sensitive storytellers.

He presides over the picture with such assurance that even longtime Denzel-watchers gape.

If it were 10 minutes shorter, it would've been just the right length and almost wholly honest.

MacDowell gives an uneven performance, as she often does, but Strathairn is ideally cast as the conflicted husband.

Stallone doesn't pander to audiences with unearned sentiment. He believes in his story, in the inspirational element that has sent thousands of folks running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art over 30 years.

It pays homage to the genre's most glorious days.

All his facets come through: the satirist, the prankster, the self-described political conservative with libertarian leanings, the anti-authoritarian who urged people to vote, the man tolerant of anything except intolerance.

That dragon represents the best and worst things about the film. He’s terrifying yet slightly droll.

If you don’t confuse this with history – or with the French film “Marguerite,” a fictional piece loosely based on FFJ – you’ll come away touched. That’s mostly because of Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant.

I was a little disappointed by the cop-out ending, in which debut director Gil Kenan gives up the film's frightening elements and comforts the audience with comedy and superficial emotion.

This installment substitutes psychological action for physical thrills.

The balance between human interaction and mechanical mayhem works well until the end, when flying suits and exploding bodies fill the screen.

The movie remains quiet and deliberate, a synonym for “boring” in some minds (though not mine). In the end, it becomes an allegory for the times in which we live.

If the cast were less likeable, the predictability of the story might become wearisome. (Of course, it’s not likely to be predictable if you’re 9.) But all the actors, especially young Fegley and Laurence, engage us.

Someone in most Farrelly movies deserves the Good Sport Award; here it's split between Meryl Streep, who befriends Walt in a long cameo as herself, and Eva Mendes, who plays Walt's galpal in a way that mocks perceptions of her as a well-endowed ninny. Cher should get a share of this prize.

Director Michael William Gordon and writer Jim Davis give us a hopeful feeling about Logan without insisting on solving all his problems – or insisting that God will solve them for him.

The grandest presence here is Eastwood. His directing, like his acting, is minimal: unhurried, spare, unforced, rather somber.

The filmmakers fall back on melodrama fairly often.... Yet there’s freshness in the storytelling.

Bullock and Reeves have an unusual kind of charisma, one that works best when they're apart. Though the filmmakers sometimes put them in the same frame for visual ease, they mostly occupy different times.

Elvis & Nixon offers an entertaining meditation on the how and the why leading up to this famously strange photo.

The movie gives actors many chances to shine, and they do. But I went away most impressed with Verbinski.

One of those movies that sticks to your mind like a briar to wool slacks. It has no revelations, no high drama, no heartbreaking tragedy. What it does have is bone-deep honesty, and that's enough for once.

Could pass for any serial killer movie except for some pertinent philosophizing about the nature of evil and the operations of the soul.

Hoffman and Harwood aren't afraid to show us old people who are rude, demanding, unreasonable and foolish, though the final overall mood remains blissful. Hoffman might have more to say as a director, if anyone in Hollywood cares to find out.

The acting is so exact and the timing so crisp that it delivers precisely the satisfaction you'd anticipate.

Intermission is like a creme brulee, invigoratingly grainy when you bite into it but sweet and soft underneath. Director John Crowley and writer Mark O'Rowe infuse this Irish crime drama with such adrenaline that you don't realize how lightweight it is until after it's over.

You'll depart with memories of a well-crafted study in quiet horror, and with ideas whirling in your head about the nature of evil and what happens to children caught in its grip.

A sweet, innocent look at an impossibly idealized high school world.

Given a choice between this and the navel-gazing of the novel, I'll take the short ride on a fast machine.

It honors the tone of that wonderful comedy while setting it in present-day New York City.

Foggy allegories and misty metaphors.

[Jarmusch's] most accessible film after "Night on Earth," yet it's still elliptical and enigmatic.

It's about black athletes, and they swim. It's as reassuringly uplifting as its predecessors, but the African-American and aquatic elements set it pleasantly apart.

The director is a cinematic equivalent of his subject, but a man who was able to reach middle age and examine that culture's good and bad points with a clear, detached mind.

The director mixes the colors of his palette carefully. He uses (but never overuses) slow-motion, aerial shots, extreme close-ups and quick cuts, avoiding any self-consciously “stylish” display. He varies the pace of scenes and the angle of shots enough to keep the movie flowing, but we never feel we’re watching someone show us how clever he is.

Gripping, improbable plot marked by exciting sequences of action.

The Fords give us old-fashioned predators: Zombies shuffle slowly, silently, patiently forward, as implacably destructive as Time itself. Meanwhile, the Fords play off our memories from books, TV news and other movies.

Blessedly, the kernel of the writing remains undisturbed, and its arguments are still powerful.

Like waves lapping quietly at a beach, After Life makes its subtle effect, as we wonder which memory we'd choose. [8 Oct 1999, p.7E]

The movie Night Watch is - oh hell, I don't know what it is. Imaginative. A mess. A small miracle, if really filmed for $5 million. (Although in rubles, that's probably a huge budget.) The first Russian horror movie I've seen. The first horror movie I've seen of any kind with subtitles.

The story has overtones of “On the Waterfront.”

A wild, self-indulgent but completely captivating extravagance.

Even if you don’t get the references, you can enjoy the ripely robust acting – especially Russell, Jackson and Leigh – and Tarantino’s storytelling skill. I could have done without the bad-boy excesses, which always seem like the mark of his immaturity, but the rest of the film comes from a mature and capable artist.

The movie takes countless liberties, including the addition of the 13-year-old girl. But authenticity doesn't matter much; we're watching a fairy tale about trust, maturity and beating the odds, and those plot threads are woven tightly together. [13 Sep 1996, p.6E]

Stuff yourself with popcorn, let the gray matter rest and enjoy what may be the best two hours of nonsense you'll see this year.

Fire shows what happens when a government systematically denies rights to one racial group for decades, but its message is more current.

At the center of the film lies a moral question, not a literary one: Should Ginsberg abandon the potentially visionary Carr when he turns out to be a liar, an exploiter and an emotional traitor? Should he, in fact, “kill his darling” when Carr commits a heinous act and asks Ginsberg to lie for him?

A pretty good movie. It just isn't a very good "Sleuth," exactly.

Watchable family films are so rare these days that we shouldn't put a stake through one with so much heart.

Both the good and bad remind us that the most special thing about "Skull" is the man wearing the fedora and the rakish grin. He has never worn out his welcome, and this valedictory – it can be nothing else – is a fitting one.

A picture that gallops forward as soon as it breaks out of the gate. Anyone with an open mind and curiosity about history might enjoy it.

Alfred Molina makes an excellent foil as the easygoing, philandering Rivera, whose public murals were the exact opposite of Frida's private canvases.

A movie that's smarter than its trailer - in fact, totally different in tone and content? That's news, and it's why The Break-Up is a pleasant surprise to the open-minded.

The filmmakers have a vision of the way Shakespeare can be made vibrant and vital to modern viewers, with or without the lofty original dialogue.

Wandering, atmospheric, episodic yet strangely appealing story of love.

Atmosphere is the main virtue with which this "Devil" can tempt us.

It mocks folk musicians of the 1960s, who could sometimes be full of hot air. It also acknowledges that protests 40 years ago, often spearheaded by bards and balladeers, blew much-needed fresh air into post-Eisenhower society.

This isn't a film noir, but it hovers in the shadows of that genre of discontent and disillusionment.

Ides can't be said to enlighten any but the naive, and it's not likely to shock us into positive political action So what pleasure can we get from this movie? Quite a bit, as it happens.

The new version of The Ladykillers is like an able forger's copy of a masterpiece. The brushstrokes are broader, the colors are a little less subtle, and one or two portions of the canvas were finished in a hurry. But it's well worth a look if you're passing by.

The cheesier it got, the more I liked it.

Smith dominates the film. He captures the upright stance, slightly stiff movements and lilting accent of a highly educated African who realizes he doesn’t understand America, and America doesn’t understand him.

A perverse kind of payback for every terrorizing cabbie, bullying streetwalker, insulting bike messenger and screaming corner grocer in Manhattan.

Director David Yates, who did the last four “Harry Potter” films, delivers both big thrills at the climax and small, spooky ones when Tarzan and the others move through a world of beauty, terror and mystery.

As in “Restrepo,” we never have the sense that Junger makes judgments. Near the end, soldiers in their 20s say their bonds with other servicemen run immeasurably deep, and they never expect to have relationships this meaningful with anyone else again.

A terrific thriller...until it turns into yet another Wes Craven movie.

Brice stops his story just before it becomes redundant – most filmmakers these days can’t say that – and although I didn’t believe the outrageous next-to-last scene, he caps it with a laugh-out-loud joke.

For the first time since "Chasing Amy," I realized why people like Ben Affleck.

Unlike its subject, "Henderson" breaks no new ground. But like its reliable star, it's a welcome exponent of a valued tradition.

Fuqua and his writers, Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo, have delivered not only the most satisfying and plausible action movie in months but one that's accidentally timely.

It's as pitiless and brutal as any of their pictures and funnier than any except "Raising Arizona."

16 Blocks is a burger movie, served by an old pro: 76-year-old director Richard Donner, who hasn't done work this interesting since the other Bush was president but who knows his way around a thriller.

Call it "Talladega Ice," and you can be nearly certain whether or not you want to see it.

Any critic likes to predict the rise of a star, so let me introduce you to Gina Prince-Bythewood.

The movie has been shot with love and wisdom, and its implausible premise doesn't get in the way of a sweetness and honesty too rarely seen.

At its best, the movie powerfully indicts our violent history. A montage of bloody U.S. interventions in foreign affairs over the last half-century, most overthrowing elected governments we didn't like, left me shaken.

The temptation to soften Grandma, to sentimentalize her character or sweeten her encounters with people she has cast aside over a long life, must have been almost irresistible. Luckily, writer-director Paul Weitz resisted it.

An honest, basic story set forth with brevity, skill, care and intelligence.

The best thing about the picture is Harry's new maturity: For the first time, he dominates a picture named for him.

Another surefire sports biography from Disney.

If you’re worried that the re-teaming of Clooney and Cate Blanchett in a World War II movie signals something like “The Good German,” fear not: She’s better here, playing a French art historian who worries the Americans will “rescue” the art in order to steal it for their own country.

Don Cheadle dominates Miles Ahead.

Martin Scorsese understands one character better than any other American director: the man who rises in the world to wealth or prominence without attaining what he wants most. That's why Howard Hughes is an ideal subject for this director.

Laughter trumps logic here, and the laughs flow freely.

The two actors are at their best when Emma and Dexter get emotionally naked. It's mildly enjoyable to listen to the self-deprecating banter people use to conceal anxieties, but we connect to them most deeply when they bare their souls.

The deliberate editing and quirky cinematography (both done by Cahill) sometimes seem at odds with each other but never get in the way of the story's honesty.

Scafaria doesn’t solve everyone’s problems or end with a miraculous change of mind or heart. She writes credible situations...and characters in whom we can believe.

An unforced, sweet-natured story about people who find small ways to touch others and rediscover the good in themselves.

Go with the flow, and it remains a taut and well-engineered thriller. Poke at plot incongruities, as I was doing literally on the way to the parking lot, and it starts to unravel.

This seemingly simple thriller has two subtexts, one more overt than the other, that should give pause to people who claim Hollywood is always too left-wing.

How you feel about Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, one of the most visually stimulating films of this or any year, depends on 1) how much you love animation and 2) what you think of Kahlil Gibran.

You don’t often hear the adjective “uncomfortable” used as a compliment. But you’re seldom going to come across a movie that makes you as uncomfortable as The Diary of a Teenage Girl yet seems as true to life.

I won't be able to talk anybody into or out of the Pirates of the Caribbean experience now, so I'll simply offer sage advice: Hit the bathroom just before it starts. To miss any five-minute chunk of this densely plotted trilogy-capper will leave you confused.

Like all his (Aronofsky) films, it's lurid, visually stimulating, thoughtful, absurd in spots, well-cast and unrelentingly intense.

In our post-Tarantino world, Fuqua shows remarkable restraint. The long, efficiently filmed battle doesn’t douse us in blood; for once, PG-13 is the proper rating for a violent film.

Daybreakers is more serious, from its A-list cast to its political commentary, with blood as a metaphor for oil. Like the best genre films, it has something on its mind.

Sometimes you have to praise a movie backwards. In a season of clamorous action pictures, dopey comedies and grisly horrors, The Way Way Back is notable for what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t yank on your heartstrings, though you’ll be touched gently at last.

The leads, who were born six weeks apart in 1937, have remarkable hare-and-tortoise chemistry.

Choreographer Hi Hat and director Ian Iqbal Rashid kick the film into high gear every so often with dance sequences, climaxing with a dance-off in Detroit that seems too short.

It's hardly a balanced biography: There's no mention of Jordan's gambling problems or connections with Nike, whose factories overseas were criticized for underpaying workers and treating them badly.

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.

The writing is haphazard at times, though the situations are funny enough in themselves to sustain our interest.

It's a satisfying experience, whatever kind of picture you label it.

Though this film doesn't have the novelty value of the first or the complex plotting of the second, it boasts the most spectacular single sequence.

The picture should satisfy both diehard fans, who liked the plotting and interaction of early Bond films, and "Die Hard" fans, who prefer Bond shaken and stirred by massive explosions, vehicular crashes and gunplay befitting a Central American revolution.

The script by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling gets relaxed, throwaway laughs, even if it doesn’t always hold together.

If you're fond of wigs, you may be in heaven. If you're more interested in Whigs, you may wish the movie had dug deeper under the lovely powdered surface of Lady Georgiana Spencer.

It's hard to fault a script that keeps finding new dilemmas for characters and rewards attentive viewers with in-jokes.

Qualifies as a solid double, maybe a triple.

Rampling carries the film, appearing in virtually every scene.

It's handsomely shot, acted with fervor and reasonably subtle in delivering its message:

It's the chemistry between the stars that makes the film stand out in a drab spring.

If we can’t believe these characters could really be friends, we can live for 101 minutes in a world where they do.

The mediocre original, hampered by a saccharine plot and unconvincing reversals of character, earned lots of money but few plaudits. Now comes Ice Age: The Meltdown, a sequel with more humor, topicality, intelligence and appeal.

When the movie becomes pure fantasy, it's impossible to swallow. (No landlord rents an apartment to a 12-year-old with no adult in sight.)

The rest of this well-intentioned picture never reaches (Washington's) level of subtlety and intensity.

A documentary that's as chaotic, rude and funny as the band could be.

Often powerful, though presented throughout with British understatement.

In an elemental way, though, the film always works. The acting can be basic, a cross between Bollywood directness and Western nuance, but it has weight.

Vertical Limit is like riding a roller coaster for two hours. First it's frighteningly exciting. Then it's mind-numbing

Greene's words haunt us like a prophecy from half a century and half a world away.

This is one of the increasingly rare Hollywood films that treat people in middle age as though their feelings were just as intense and their needs just as valid as those of people half their age.

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

Depp gives yet another introspective, slightly mopey performance -- Graham never begins to act (and never has begun, as far as I know). But they're surrounded by an authentic, first-rate English cast.

If your senses haven't been dulled by slasher films and gorefests, if you're a connoisseur of psychological horror, this is your ticket.

One dazzling (if overlong) bridge: technologically advanced, brilliantly designed, spectacularly executed, solid as steel in its unspectacular elements. But unlike its 1999 predecessor, this is a movie that nobody but avid video gamers and motorcyclists needs to see more than once.

Its main pleasure lies in watching Bush thaw under gentle emotional heat applied by the few people who haven't given up on him.

Except for moments of labored symbolism and a too cozy ending, the movie stays sharply focused on its well-chosen targets.

If you've never heard his voice, this is your chance, and you should take it.

The result is an odd mix of honesty and hokum that pilots a course toward greatness before settling into a somewhat lower orbit.