Liam Lacey

Cynical, hip, politically opportunistic and loaded with kick-ass comic action.

Zathura involves a lot of yelling, a lot of explosions and a lot of flying objects -- but what else would you expect from a movie that is, honestly for a change, intended for 10-year-old boys?

Much of what happens in Silent Light can feel painstakingly mundane: milking cows, harvesting wheat, a long drive at night in and out of shadows. Yet throughout, there's a sense of something ominous impending, and while it remains gentle, the ending is genuinely startling.

Only Lovers is so fluidly edited and thinly plotted that it feels almost off-hand; yet, it’s also made with great care, beautifully lit and set-designed to an eyelash.

The somewhat awkwardly titled documentary, The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile, turns out to be an accurate summary of a film that celebrates two women.

Taken strictly as a movie, though, Selma is an uneven yet generally skillful effort that has probably drawn more praise and criticism than it warrants.

What we have is a solidly crafted reworking of some familiar Western tropes by director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), a Texas native who shows care for the period details, with handsome cinematography on the original Lone Star State locations.

Kokomo City is a vibrant, original work, shot in black and white, in a kaleidoscopic blend of monologues, conversations, and re-enactments. At a moment when the American right are obsessed with criminalizing health care for transgender people and erasing Black history, it’s also timely.

The most unexpected thing about the Lebanese film Caramel is its predictability.

Less satisfying are the moments when the film concedes to American horror conventions, especially the scuttling vampire effects, which pull us out of the haunted world of these lovely damaged creatures into a place that, while not of this world, feels entirely too familiar.

Kimi is executed with a brisk sketch-like lightness, propelled by a jittery score from Cliff Martinez and pulse-jumping blasts of music from Billy Eilish to The Beastie Boys.

Light to the point of disposability, Sweet Home Alabama is a small screwball comic idea that spins out far too long.

The most provocative aspect of this compulsive riddle is how it resists closure. The end comes not when we have the answer, but when the movie reaches its irresolute end.

Taken on its own, this is a masterful little slice of computer-generated animation, but it gets lost here in the visual racket.

Audaciously whacked-out and never less than entertaining, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan mixes a backstage dance drama with a Freudian psychological thriller that's indebted to Roman Polanski's studies of shattered feminine psyches and David Cronenberg's movies about repressed bodies in rebellion.

Some scenes in The Painter and the Thief feel stagey, including a couple of delayed dramatic reveals. And the characters certainly seem aware of the camera’s presence. Seen in its best light though, The Painter and the Thief is a kind of Rorschach test: Do you see a tale of improbable friendship and compassion, or a story of trespassed boundaries and compulsion? Or, is this one of those “bistable” optical illusions, like the vase and the face, where different things are true, moment to moment?

The wildly ambitious but flawed biographical film about the English cellist Jacqueline du Pré.

Enough Said confirms filmmaker Nicole Holofcener’s status as one of America’s best stealth satirists.

The archival clips are an enjoyable reminder of Fox’s ‘80s onscreen persona, as a 5’4’’whirlwind of mental and physical energy, with dazzling comic timing.

The truth is you can find more entertaining absurdities and thrilling nihilism from watching the average episode of Melrose Place or Beverly Hills, 90210 and, at least on those shows, they don't confuse dumb with doomed. [13 June 1997, p.C6]

This is a human-sized drama about people with contradictory motives, trying to help or use each other.

Comes alive with the more relaxed performances from its senior set.

Though sometimes over-explanatory, the film gains in complexity as it progresses, raising thorny questions about the duty of victims to maintain their humanity.

In a movie about an ant colony, perhaps it's futile to complain about a superfluity of characters. Yet this need to cover every permutation of cuteness is one major drawback to the cast of A Bug's Life.

Though the progress of Atim's increasing empathy is predictable, the film understates its points effectively, without simplification.

Precious is a bit like having a piano dropped on your head: messy but memorable.

Like a lot of well-staged parties, though, the affair peaks shortly after the introductions, and then devolves into intrigues, fights and mayhem.

The characters are entertainingly contradictory, though in a somewhat predictable way: Nice people aren’t honest, and honest people aren’t nice.