Liam Lacey

Whether Omar will ultimately serve to change or harden hearts remains ambiguous, though it’s a movie that’s entertaining enough to appeal to the kinds of ordinary kids we see in the movie.

The work is more muted than Miyazaki’s more fantastical films, but visually complex and gorgeous, from the rustic mountain scenes to the urban scenes and soaring aerial views.

As usual, the Coens' visual elements are pristine. The contrasting colours in the fire-lit interiors are gorgeous, while cinematographer Roger Deakins keeps the camera close, resisting traditional panoramic views.

The best thing about the movie is the performance of Stephen Fry, who makes you hope that the real Wilde was like him. [05 Jun 1998, p.C5]

Fortunately, there's always the fascination of watching actor Toni Servillo, who does a brilliant job of playing Andreotti (known as Beelzebub) as a kind of devil with a clown's exterior.

Though the threat of exposure and incarceration lurk behind every story, the characters' ingenuity and humour serve as impudent alternatives to authoritarian stupidity and brutality.

It's a screwball comedy, with a possible debt to Preston Sturges's 1942 film, "The Miracle of Morgan Creek," a movie inspired by the Dionne quintuplets, and similarly set in a small town turned upside down by media and political showboating.

A horror movie based on history, offering some of the most spectacularly brutal, viscerally intense battle scenes ever brought to a Hollywood movie.

Though it comes with good credentials, four hours feels like a lot of screen real estate for a what is essentially an elevated soap opera. For the home-streaming viewer though, The Real Thing meets the essential requirements for binge-watching: it’s undemanding to follow but sustains enough of a mystery to keep us hooked.

In many areas, Food Inc. could be accused of being a fast-food version of a documentary – it's everywhere at once, skipping across the surface of a vast subject, and adding nuggets of sweetness to the scary filler.

The film is an attack on religious hypocrisy, mixing melodrama and black humour in a volatile blend.

A very funny, very unusual ensemble comedy that falls somewhere between slapdash and brilliant, an improvised comedy with more hits than misses. It's also an oddly touching tribute to the joys of show biz.

Smart, serious and deftly composed, New York director Jill Sprecher's jigsaw anthology film, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, is the kind of work you want to applaud just for its ambitions.

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?

A Touch of Sin is a distinct departure, dipping into the pulpy martial arts tradition in a scathing portrait of post-Maoist China, where money is the new religion and horrific violence is its by-product.

The film is a vertiginous experience of hanging 350 kilometres above the Earth.

The results are what might be best called “solid” journalism, with the occasional eye-brow raising surprise (Nixon wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute?) There’s a wealth of archival, often familiar, television clips along with fresh interviews with some of the first-hand witnesses and participants.

Undoubtedly the rudest and possibly the most inspired comedy of the summer.

Though there are moments when the drama turns into intellectual debate, the film is also emotional, moving with a fluid, mounting tension and moments of anguish and strange, startling humour.

An unusually smartly written and performed American independent film.

The best of The Desolation of Smaug is saved for the last, when Bilbo goes to steal from the massive fire-breathing dragon, Smaug. The orange-eyed beast is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, who, through a sludge of voice-altering electronics, seethes and preens between fiery exhalations; this scene is one of the few occasions in the film where anyone actually takes time to talk.

Yet, about as often as Marvin's Room strikes a chord of emotional authenticity, it hits a fistful of false notes as well.

Timoner offers a resonant, often painfully funny, drama about two good friends who become enemies against the backdrop of the pop-music business.

What holds all this, mostly, together to the presence of Mulligan (An Education, Shame) and her own ambiguous performance.

The freestyle approach is an apt fit with the freestyle, spontaneous comedy, as both the playful director and affable star capture moments on the fly.

The pitch on Dear White People is that it’s “Do the Right Thing for the Obama generation,” which is both an oversell and a disservice to Justin Simien’s witty satire about race relations on a fictional Ivy League campus.

Mostly, it's a Coen brothers movie so slick, so careful in rationing its darkly perverse and personal elements, that it seems suspiciously sweet. Intolerable Cruelty feels like the Coens' peculiar new way of being cynical, by pretending they're not.

But it’s Rooney who commands the most attention. As she already proved in David Fincher’s "The Social Network" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," she has an oddly fascinating screen presence, suggesting both vulnerability and inscrutable levels of calculation. Few actors or actresses can make inexpressiveness look so smart.