Mick LaSalle

This is a movie that can be enjoyed in different ways and for lots of reasons. It’s dramatic and it’s funny, and it has a warm humanity at its center.

If you want to see great acting that’s unadorned, not fancy, and very much in the style of 2024, see Plaza in the climactic scene from “My Old Ass.” You will walk out of this film different than when you walked in, and a little bit better for the experience.

What's exciting is that the Sprechers have delved into territory that is normally the domain of literature and have emerged with a film that's neither overly literary nor simplistic.

It will bring joy in a way certainly not intended, as one of the most gloriously and unwittingly silly films ever devised by a major American filmmaker.

Less subtle than its predecessor, Tomboy is like a pint-size "Boys Don't Cry," and as such, it's practically unique.

More than most espionage movies, the film is about relationships, the men with each other, the men with their own disapproving wives, and governments with each other. Everyone courts someone.

Though the movie has a handful of shots that are downright gross to witness, what makes The Orphanage scary is not what it threatens to show but what it suggests about life.

Guadagnino has a choice, whether to be an artist or just the maker of artistically rendered, conscientiously realized garbage. It’s time to quit while he’s behind.

The movie’s length is, at times, a challenge, but Dune is so original and contains so many strong scenes that the length mostly isn’t a problem.

There's no joy and little playfulness about this caper comedy, which, despite a lighthearted script, has a sober undertone to it, almost a melancholia.

The sentimentality overtakes Wonder Boys when, in the last half hour, it tries to make nice with its characters and fashion a deep message from a trivial story.

The film is mentally graphic, not sexually graphic.

The result is a nice little movie that does its job and doesn't spread misery under cover of spreading joy.

Going into Armageddon Time, I had no interest in James Gray’s childhood. But that was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was to have even less interest going out.

An unlovable movie. It's morally ambiguous, which means there's no real rooting interest. It's episodic, with the same kinds of episodes repeated over and over, so there's little sense of forward motion. It feels philosophically and politically confused, so there's no message to take from it.

Though it would be inaccurate to reduce Thelma to an extended metaphor, it’s fair to say that Trier uses the supernatural element to illustrate, in a forceful way, the power of lust, the selfishness of love, and the world-obliterating intensity of a first romance.

Colette is never dazzling. It has erotic elements, but nothing like “Becoming Colette,” which is, on balance, a weaker film. There’s not a single great scene. But there is no scene that is less than intelligent. Colette is smart, conscientious and absorbing, and gradually, in its diligent way, achieves a certain fascination.

The women are remarkable, unforgettable. But don’t overlook Nivola, an enigmatic figure as the rabbi and husband.

With skill and also with love, writer-director Eric Mendelsohn creates a delicate and airy mood, a kind of cinematic haiku.

In "Fatal Attraction" [Close] was a woman out of control. Here she's in control of her emotions, too much in control. When Merteuil finally lets loose and gives way to complete animal despair, Close is horrifying. [13 Jan 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Thanks to Radner’s letters, diaries and autobiography, director Lisa D’Apolito is able to tell us, with great immediacy, what Radner’s thoughts were at the time. We come away with the portrait of someone who was never just going along for the ride, but who was always questioning and challenging herself, working toward professional excellence and hoping for an ideal romance.

It is old-fashioned in a good way, classical and well-acted, and that it has no surprises keeps it from being disappointing, even as it keeps it from being great.

Thompson and Asomugha are nicely paired. Too much is made by critics of the notion of “screen chemistry,” but there is something complementary in the personalities of these two actors, as well as in the roles they’re playing.

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind captures that special quality that Williams had, the extra quality that went beyond the laughs, that communicated his whole being.

There’s just one big problem here: It Comes at Night is about as enjoyable for the audience as it is for the people in the movie. On both sides of the screen, misery reigns.

The problem is that the story, as constituted, is of necessity against organized religion, but Farmiga, as director, pretends that it's ambiguous. So you get a movie slightly at cross-purposes with itself.

The chief asset of Ain't Them Bodies Saints is Rooney Mara, who gets more interesting with every movie.

There is history as it's remembered, and then there's history as it happened. This documentary gives us the latter, and it's a true education.

In Darkness is an extraordinary movie, and somehow good art creates its own uplift.

Don't be fooled by the casual style. There is nothing casual about these emotions, or about the talent of these two filmmakers.

Re-creates that chilling sense that comes when, in the middle of a pleasant conversation, one realizes the other person is off his rocker.

At 80 minutes, this might have been a delight. At more than two hours, it's so much of a good thing that it starts to become a bad thing.

A nasty little picture with a lot of wit and impudence.

(Washington) raises it to the level of importance with an acting job that's one unbroken chain of intense emotion.

There's a dignity about it, and it's only later that we come to realize that this dignity is misplaced, born of a fatal reserve and a lack of complete investment.

This is an important movie, but it’s not a perfect one. It has one enormous flaw, and it’s a testament to the smartness of the writing and the inherent fascination of its viewpoint that it doesn’t wreck the experience: Director Justin Simien doesn’t know how to shape scenes or pull performances from his actors.

As a great New York story, it’s also a great American story about ambition and failure, about the kind of people who make it, the kinds who don’t, and all the things that can go wrong.

Joy Ride feels like it easily could have been better, but it’s certainly good enough, and it might be remembered as an early milestone in some significant careers.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the best movie so far this year about a kung-fu fighting panda.

Ultimately, The Duke tells an enjoyable real-life story.

Somewhere in the translation from stage to screen, The History Boys has become an intelligent misfire. What's left is a literate but listless film.

The film starts off akin to a tongue-in-cheek “Twilight Zone” episode, then becomes a meditation on fame before transforming into a scathing satire of several things at once: Gen Z, cancel culture, and even the people who complain about cancel culture. Written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, it’s bleak and funny and provides Cage with his most satisfying role since 1997’s “Face/Off.”

It's never less than worthy and entertaining, but the importance of Invictus doesn't broaden as it goes along. It narrows.

The visuals are splendid. Even close-ups of face and hair are something to marvel at.

Great to look at but not much fun to watch… An emotionally uncommitted picture that's smirky and mawkish, by turns, and at heart, empty. [14 Dec 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

It is 140 minutes long and repetitious beyond belief. Yet for all its weaknesses - unconscious contradictions, travelogue simplicity and mix-and-match spirituality - Eat Pray Love is, like its central character, on a genuine quest.

It feels like living inside a pressure cooker with one particular family — experiencing their turbulence as if from the inside, while always a little glad to be watching from a safe distance.

In this film, whenever Harper gets to do nothing but direct, as in the action scenes, Heart of Stone works. It’s in the convolutions of its flat script that the movie falls apart.

The movie's satisfactions are subtle, but they run deep, and there are many.

It does not follow the usual pattern of a Hollywood film. It goes to places that are desperate and irrevocable.

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.

Levinson's sure touch keeps audiences smiling and manages to maintain an aura of good nature in a film that, at heart, offers a caustic, almost bitter vision of American institutions and contemporary politics.

A movie unlike any other.

It isn’t exciting, because such movies never are. Rather, it is consistently, calmly and compellingly interesting, not the story of a crime but about the process of revealing it.

Director Duncan Jones achieves a strange and winning amalgam, a gripping action film that also works as poetry.

Everyone comes out of Little Woods looking good, and DaCosta comes out with a directing career.

As Wade, Gary Poulter is the most authentic-looking old drunk you'll ever see onscreen - something I thought before I knew the story of his casting: Poulter was a homeless man who was recruited by a casting director. He'd never acted before, and yet he's remarkable in this.

This time it’s not too big. Thor: Ragnarok has a lot of human appeal and a spirit of silliness that it never loses and yet always carefully manages, so that the silliness remains an ongoing source of delight without ever undercutting the impact of the action.

Irrespective of what the future holds in terms of gun control, the movie is a striking portrait of a married couple who expected one kind of life, got another, and are making something useful from their misfortune.

Essentially, this is a two-person picture that falls flat.

To mildly respect Japanese Story is easy. To enjoy it would require an act of will.

By the finish, the movie is getting by on little but adrenaline and audience goodwill. Still, that goodwill runs fairly deep, because, taken all in all, 28 Days Later is a superior motion picture.

Nonstop crudeness, vulgarity and unpleasantness. It's without any redeeming social value whatsoever. And it's funny from beginning to end.

The complexity, richness and fullness of what Leo does here is acting at its most illuminating and useful.

As for Murray, it’s just a shame he can’t make a Sofia Coppola movie every year. As in “Lost in Translation,” Coppola brings out all of Murray’s many colors, sometimes all at once — his flippancy, his authority, his warmth, his isolation, his expressiveness, his inability to say everything he wants to say.

A big leap forward for Penn as a director and deserves to be one of the most talked about films of the season.

Shot in a glossy, appealing black-and-white and filmed in a single location, The Party generates a pressure-cooker atmosphere.

The picture, written and directed by Francis Veber, the screenwriter of "La Cage Aux Folles,'' is a complete success.

A tough movie about tough people for a tough audience. So prepare to get roughed up a little.

The movie suffers from two fatal ailments -- a dearth of vitality and a story that's shapeless and uninflected.

Eye in the Sky is refreshing in its lack of a political message. Mirren is chilling as the cold-blooded colonel.

This new film is exceptional and one of Ozon’s best.

Flawless is a fictional tale, but something in director Michael Radford's conscientious, methodical presentation gives it the feeling of true history.

Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer's, and you'll get an idea of this film's misplaced focus.

Anyone can make a bad movie, but it takes a good filmmaker to make one as bad as I'm Not There.

Wham! tells a sweet story, but also a goofy and entertaining one, because these guys were more ’80s than anybody, more even than “Miami Vice” and Duran Duran.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

They are naturals at acting, not because they're good at lying but because they can't be phony.

Moretti's performance is low-key but detailed. He makes the psychiatrist a fascinating guy, rather austere and restrained, a Northern Italian, not an expressive Neapolitan.

Almost everything that made "The Bourne Identity" refreshing -- the wit, the irony, the suspense, the novelty of its premise -- is gone in The Bourne Supremacy, and what's left is the spectacle of Matt Damon, with perfect posture and senses primed like a cat, making his way through a routine action thriller.

So this is fairly interesting history, not as interesting as we’d like it to be, but interesting all the same.

To put it into a larger perspective, if Creed III were a “Rocky” movie, it would be up there — nowhere near the original “Rocky” and a little worse than “Rocky II,” but certainly better than the rest of them.

The documentary is not always fascinating, but Tuschi's ultimate thesis - that Khodorkovsky, who started out a shady businessman, ultimately emerged as a hero, willing to go to jail for his convictions - is a persuasive one. Clearly, the man is a political prisoner.

Its virtues are velocity, energy, innovative storytelling - and something that seems even more the province of young directors: a certain heartlessness and ironic distance in the tone.

Now, thanks to A Most Wanted Man, we discover that it's really boring - practically sleep-inducing - to be an international spy.

Rarely does a movie come along that captures an aspect of everyday consciousness that has not yet made it onto film.

The tone of The Killing of a Sacred Deer is the best thing about it and the hardest to describe. You might call it skewed, except that what often is called skewed is extreme and outlandish, while this movie is quiet and precise.

An impressive effort and an impressive result that opens up a world that most of us have never thought about and renders it with sorrow and vividness.

Air might not quite be in the class of “Gone Baby Gone” or “The Town,” but it’s old-fashioned in the best sense: solid, confident, simple, straightforward and entirely entertaining. It’s the work of an intelligent classicist.

The superhero part of the movie will leave audiences with a flat feeling, thanks to computery-looking special effects and a sagging story line.

Sonatine eliminates the one virtue American action films can legitimately claim -- vitality -- and replaces it with fake- existential claptrap wrapped in an inept narrative.

The story is minimal, just a series of events in the life of a young man and his circle, but every scene is rendered with such authenticity that it’s riveting, almost like it’s a privilege to be stepping back in time.

It's an ambitious film -- but also a scattered, unfocused one.

As a work of art, the movie is merely on the bright side of OK. But as a vehicle for an emerging star, as a platform to show one actress in a variety of modes and moods, within a sympathetic and glamorous context, it couldn’t be better.

The film documents how Lucy used her clout to get her husband cast as her co-star. It was a way for them to see each other. The rest is history, but a really interesting history.

If one person survives and 6 million are killed, or one person gets out and 3,000 are crushed, it's not really a happy ending - or even an adequate representation of the larger event. This is precisely the challenge that The Impossible faces and never quite overcomes.

A cautionary tale as well as an expose on the power of the American fast-food industry. That the documentary comes across as more than a sermon has a lot to do with Spurlock's personality, which is outgoing and instantly engaging.

The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.

Estevez further undermines the film by casting himself in the lead role. He gives an odd performance, in which he consistently seems to be going for enigmatic, but he ends up just inexpressive.

It takes about half the movie, but gradually we realize that we’ve stumbled into something wonderful, that there’s magic happening here, both onscreen and within the lives of the characters.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

It moves, makes us care and involves us in the genuine drama of two young people trying to heal themselves. The austere beauty of the locations doesn’t hurt either.

This is what makes the distinctly unromantic Cold Mountain' such a breath of fresh air. Its battles are hideous bloodbaths.

Christian McKay who, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles"gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of an historical figure, ever.

If all the laughs come from Depp, who gives Willy the mannerisms of a classic Hollywood diva, the film's heart comes from Highmore, a gifted young performer who had a leading role in "Finding Neverland." His performance is sincere, deep and unforced in a way that's rare in a child actor.

Ultimately, “Mija” fails almost totally, and two main things tank it: (1) the lack of complete access to the subjects, who should have been grateful for the exposure, and (2) too much collaboration between the director and her subjects. There are documentaries and there are promotional films. A documentarian needs to keep those categories rigorously separate.

Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall have made as good a film as could be made from the substance of Kyle’s life and career. But greatness was never a possibility, not with a protagonist not all that interesting and with the surrounding circumstances making it impossible to go deeper and risk the movie’s critique of Kyle’s becoming overt.

Yet, even at its worst, Zombieland is better than most movies of its kind - disgusting but not too disgusting, and with a few laughs.

It’s admirable, but it has long stretches of dull, and the tickets aren’t free.

It’s coolheaded and incisive, a thorough and informative study of corporations, their origins and their place in the modern world.

A tense, intelligent and sober film.

It’s written by six screenwriters, and it feels like it.

Jay Kelly is Baumbach’s best film and, from an artistic standpoint, his first complete success.

Maybe this mixed-up and weird, awful but awfully likable movie is what Dirty Harry had coming to him, after all.

There’s an absurdist edge, but with nothing of the smart-aleck about it. Rather than use wit as a way of bypassing thought and emotion, Bujalski’s concerns are serious, and his attitude toward his characters is warm without being indulgent.

Curiously and unexpectedly, the movie brings on a suffocating feeling of constraint. It's a consequence of seeing characters with such terribly limited mobility.

The ultimate Julia Roberts movie.

Both curious from a cultural perspective and refreshing.

Almodóvar presents this material in a way that never splits our attention, even as he’s giving us a deluge of sensory and emotional detail. It’s as if he’s internalized the story so completely that he can’t make a gesture — can’t move the camera, can’t shape a moment — without saying something true.

As Enzo Ferrari, Driver looks stylish and commanding, but the movie doesn’t figure out how to make him into an interesting man.

Whores' Glory, is as sad a film as you can possibly see. To experience it is to be haunted by the bleakness and ugliness of prostitution, the hopeless trap of it, and the defeat of love that it represents.

The funniest movie so far this year.

If The Square has a point — and it probably has several — it’s that the visceral aspect of life cannot be fully suppressed and shouldn’t be denied.

Would be worthy of the highest rating, except for a slight slackening of energy in the last 20 minutes.

To take such a subject and render it without focus, interest, or joy—to make a long, dull movie from it — qualified as some perverse sort of achievement.

Both Sides of the Blade is what people like about French cinema. Its indulgences are worth wading through because, in its commitment to the truth about people and its willingness to explore the hugeness of normal human life, it’s unlike anything you’ll find in America.

All this is dramatized expertly and with a lightness of touch in Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay and in the direction of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the team behind “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Then there's the acting, particularly that of Sam Shepard, as an old ex-con without much in the way of limits.

A crime drama in a special class.

Foxx's complex performance and the filmmaker's willingness to look at the dark side place Ray safely out of the realm of typical Hollywood hagiography.

The film is thorough and entertaining. It's enthusiastic about his contributions, but it's no hagiography, and it serves as both a celebration and a cautionary tale.

Has some hilarious moments and still succeeds in dramatic terms.

A masterpiece.

In This Corner of the World is 129 minutes, an eternity for an animated film, especially one so wispy in look and so sparing in plot.

Under the cover of what seems like a charmingly slapdash style, the Duplass brothers have created a disarmingly shrewd movie.

Remarkable in several big ways.

It is, simply, the alienation-invasion movie to beat all alien-invasion movies: meticulously detailed and expertly paced and photographed, with sights so spectacular and terrible that viewers will have to consciously remind themselves to close their mouths when their jaws drop open.

Captures the flavor of putting on a show on Broadway.

All of it works. All of it holds together, guided by the sure hand of director Simon Stone, who subtly imparts his sense of the story. His idea is that everyone involved mattered, and so we come away with an impression of an entire moment of time.

The picture is more impressive as it goes along, revealing a symmetry of construction underneath the rudiments of a thriller.

CODA is lovely. If you want to see a movie that will make you feel good, this is it.

Eichner is quick and funny, and Macfarlane is a strong leading man and a sensitive listener — with Eichner constantly deluging him with a torrent of words, Macfarlane would have to be. Audiences will become very fond of both long before the end of the picture.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

Directed by Matthew Warchus, Matilda is a curious creation, one whose tone maintains the barest toehold in light musical comedy, while introducing dark, disturbing elements. The movie taps into the reality and the magnitude of childhood trauma.

Subdued yet percolating with suppressed emotion.

As an exploration and celebration of a sub-culture, the movie fails. The people don’t seem especially bright or interesting. Whatever fascination Moselle felt for this world doesn’t come across in the movie.

A story so good that maybe anybody could have turned out something decent.

The writing is subtle and refreshingly without sentimentality — sentimentality being a common flaw in Middle Eastern cinema.

The movie’s stylistic idea gets in the way of its story, and the story is too slim to sustain a full-length feature. And as the political ideas become as self-conscious as the style, Where Is Kyra? starts to feel a little like poverty porn.

If it falls short of greatness, it's not by much - and it could end up growing with the years. At the very least, it is exceptional and one of the best and most original pictures to come along in 2012.

Juror #2 is very much the work of an engaged, sensitive director — a series of tight, focused scenes informed by strong performances. There’s something classical about it, old-fashioned in the best way, like a 1974 Coupe de Ville or a 1962 Buick Electra. It’s a smooth, solid ride.

It's a compelling minimalist drama about spiritual evolution, with strong performances and exotic locations.

To his credit, writer-director Jonathan Kasdan is sensitive and observant...But he doesn't know what he's talking about, not really, and though he structures the film around his areas of ignorance, that only works partially.

With its fake-looking technology and empty characters, Volcano eventually becomes as obvious as its what-if premise.

I'm as reluctant to stop writing about this movie as I was to stop watching it: At 166 minutes, it flies by, and you don't want to leave that world. But one thing is certain: This isn't the last word. People will be writing about this film for years - and looking at it to discover the lost history of our time.

The Substance gets more wonderfully appalling as it goes along, but it’s impressive from its first moments, and it never lets up.

It’s as realized a thriller as you are likely to find, not only in the precision of its performances, but in its evocative use of location (Rome, London), its period detail (especially Williams’ clothing) and the tension of the younger Getty’s months-long captivity.

It's a romantic comedy with insights into sex and relationships that are old and obvious.

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

Miami Blues is offbeat and fun. [20 Apr 1990, p.E1]

Reveals essential truthfulness about families.

It's watchable and reasonably entertaining, to be sure. Eastwood doesn't make movies that are hard to sit through. But something in the film's point of view is off, not at cross-purposes, not contradictory, but incomplete, irrelevant and ever-so-faintly ridiculous.

Despite its actors, its lush photography and its obvious seriousness of purpose, is as close to a form of torture as any film ever devised. I can't think of any individuals I dislike so much as to force them to see this picture.

Heartfelt but somewhat bloated documentary that's partly an homage and partly a literary mystery.

Apart from the excellence of this film, Fennell may have tapped into something tonally that truly expresses the moment we’re in. Point being, we’re in a time of horrible ridiculousness, and ridiculous horribleness. The revelation of Promising Young Woman is that its heightened reality feels more real — closer to actual reality — than comedy or drama.

This is one of the greatest films of the 1950s, a prophetic film about the dangerous power of modern media.

The picture gives the impression of a director in control of his vision, making precisely the film he intends to make. But the vision is a distinctly idiosyncratic one that will appeal only to certain tastes.

Ross surrendered himself to the tale, lavishing time on the characters, getting the period details right and making the races look authentic. The result is a faithful, loving piece of work, and the love shows.

A complicated family story that takes place in three distinct time periods, and that's handled with astonishing ease and fluidity by director Claude Miller.

Not a masterpiece that will change your life, but you’ve probably had your life changed enough lately. It’s 90 minutes of thoughtful, atmospheric, well-made entertainment, and that’s more than good enough.

Happy End is the latest from Michael Haneke, an uncompromising filmmaker whose work is sometimes brilliant and sometimes hard to watch, and sometimes both, but not this time. Happy End is just hard to watch.

Capable of astonishing even the already cynical.

To be sure, The Death of Dick Long is a weird one, in that it starts out intense and gradually loses steam, until nothing really matters and the audience might as well leave. This movie could be used in film schools to teach how not to structure a story.

It would be nice if there were more movies like this, but few have the talent to make them this well — to take a human scale story and make it feel, not bigger than life, but as grand-scale as life actually is.

The movie consistently delivers in lots of little ways, but in a big way only once, in a spectacular sequence that begins with a series of earthquakes and culminates in an airline catastrophe.

Summer fluff that admits to being summer fluff, but it's no better off for admitting it...Intended as lightweight comedy, but if you think about it too much, it's not so funny.

The picture moves slowly but never sluggishly, and it never grinds down. The measured pace shows real assurance on the part of Costner. [9 Nov 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Bride Flight gives a panoramic sweep of lives as they're lived, as there is a lot of beauty in it.

Ford's bottled-up fierceness is perfectly in sync with the sustained atmosphere of quiet tension provided by director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men). Presumed Innocent is more than two hours long and has a leisurely pace, yet maintains a high level of interest most of the way. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

Let It Rain touches on class issues, feminism, immigration and the particular challenges facing a single, driven career woman in her 40s. But it's graceful in presenting its ideas, and what emerges is not a polemic but a kind of snapshot of modern-day concerns.

Even a mediocre David Mamet movie is still a David Mamet movie. That means there are lines to savor, partly because the lines are so good, partly because they are so Mamet.

We encounter a man of great talent and usefulness, and yet someone most of us can be glad never to have met.

As presented here, the novelist Violette Leduc is fascinating and strangely lovable, at least as seen from the audience. But actually knowing her? That would have been work.

One of the Coens’ most inspired, bizarre touches is to cast Tilda Swinton as rival gossip columnists, twins who hate each other. She’s quite funny — blithe and vindictive in one incarnation, insecure and vindictive in the other.

A documentary that doesn’t have the stomach to tell the story of what happened on Jan. 6 explicitly, and to express the real threat to American democracy that that day represents, is of no use to anybody.

Mean-spirited and not remotely clever, though it strives for archness at every turn.

The Signal starts off as an alien version of "Blair Witch Project" and then drifts off into cold plotlessness. But for a while, a little while, it seems like it just might be interesting.

It's brisk and assured and never begs the audience's indulgence. No time is wasted. The movie is, at every moment, either funny or pushing the story forward, or both.

The plot alone is a thing of beauty.

Full of humor, some exciting scenes and some intelligent parallels between the world of the film and the political and moral issues facing us today.

It’s a movie about a geeky teenager living in the Los Angeles hood, and something about it, or rather everything about it, feels real.

Long before the finish, Possessor descends into ugliness, with grotesque scenes of violence and lots of blood. You may feel creeped out, like you want to take a bath. But no, not in a good way.

It’s also a film with horrific shots of open graves. By all means see it if you have the inclination, but do be aware of the experience you’re letting yourself in for.

Just as essential is Seth Rogen, as Adam's best friend. Rogen isn't even 30 yet, but he is already an important actor - not just because he's popular but because he best embodies this particular comic moment.

The pacing is superb, quick and agile without being frenzied, and the special effects are jaw-dropping.

There are extraordinary and beautiful things in War Horse, enough of them to make the movie a pleasure and a worthwhile experience, though not enough to trick the eye or get you believing this movie hangs together.

A one-joke documentary stretched, with surprising success, to full length.

At first, The Oath looks as though it will be a study of the soul-corroding effects of twisted ideology, but it emerges as the reverse.

Stop laughing long enough, and you'll see that it's a picture about compromised lives and love for sale. But no one who watches Priceless will stop laughing for that long.

It's shockingly funny - you don't sit there deciding to laugh. Your own laughter catches you by surprise. [14 Apr 1989]

Unfortunately, the characters are so programmatic, the premise so ridiculous and the situations so far-fetched even if you accept that premise that no energy can be built, and the little that's there can't be sustained. Red Dawn is a vigorous but pointless exercise.

Lacks one thing -- an epic grandeur.

Eschews cliches and cuts to the truth.

Big Miracle is not the most sophisticated adventure film, but compared with most family movies, it's practically something out of Noel Coward.

If ultimately Slow West seems more like a filmmaking exercise than an engaging piece of work — despite Fassbender’s star presence — that’s all right. Filmmakers need to get their exercise. Let’s see what Maclean does next.

John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy directed this fine adaptation of the stage hit, a comedy-drama about a first officer on a cargo ship (Henry Fonda) who wants to be reassigned to combat duty. [05 Jul 1998]

It’s fascinating to return to this movie after many years. [2024 Restored Version]

Don’t be misled by the middling rating attached to this review. Midsommar is anything but mediocre. It’s horrible and brilliant, a crashing failure but one with many good moments. What do you say about a movie that’s both a disgusting, tiresome and predictable endurance test and an irrefutable demonstration of real directorial talent? Perhaps, this: Ari Aster is definitely someone who should be making movies. But maybe not this movie.

Tasteful but not compromised.

Though “Society of the Snow” has its moments, it’s difficult to see what was gained by telling the story as a dramatic feature. Yes, in a documentary we’d lose the amazing crash scene, but the story would otherwise be better served by a straight laying out of the facts.

Cumberbatch fleshes out a portrait of uncompromised and resolute selfhood. In that way, he carries us and the movie over some long stretches of blue-screen emptiness.

Polanski directs the film without a wasting a moment. The occasional humor does nothing to relieve tension but, as in a Hitchcock picture, has a way of increasing it.

In The Suicide Squad, writer-director James Gunn has done the seemingly impossible: He has found the fun in the Suicide Squad. He has come up with a way to take what seemed like a dead concept and turn it into an action-packed joke machine.

The documentary shows the stranglehold that the teachers union has on politicians, particularly Democratic politicians. The arrogance and ignorance of some of these politicians is galling.

Little gem.

A passionate, chronicle of an extraordinary artist, and a love story that can't be beat.

Guare's play is austerely funny and cerebral, and the film stays true to it, neither warming it up nor dumbing it down. [22 Dec 1993, p.E1]

A Hungarian film -- an existential thriller, one might call it -- about an intelligent man who happens to have this lowly nuisance of a job.

Allen's most satisfying film since "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) and his most compelling since "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989).

For all the movie’s honesty, the reality of Alzheimer’s disease is a lot worse than what you see in Still Alice. Perhaps directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland made a calculation as to how much an audience can take. They were right.

Writer-director Caroline Vignal could have made "My Donkey” into a 90-minute monologue, with Antoinette talking to the donkey. Instead, there’s lots of variation, smart turns of story and well-drawn, well-defined characters. Vignal makes even the bit characters, the ones with just three or four lines, vivid.

When compared with the ambition and achievement of recent animated films, such as "Coraline" and "Toy Story 3," Despicable Me hardly seems to have been worth making, and it's barely worth watching.

It is funny in an absurdist way, but it’s heartfelt, too. It creates unease, but also sympathy.

Sometimes I Think About Dying is a good calling card for Ridley, who proves that she’s not limited to playing spunky adventuresses from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Rather, she has a compressed intensity that could be put to good use in a variety of roles.

Eileen builds and builds and builds, and it definitely goes somewhere, but in a way more gimmicky than true — and that leaves us feeling like we were wrong for taking it seriously.

It’s a wail of grief, an expression of love, a testament to the body. Cronenberg puts it all on the line here, and he gets his actors to put it all on the line with him. If you don’t feel its visceral charge, you’re not paying attention.

The movie’s intelligent respect for that which is unknowable allows it to cover an enormous swath of ground in just 85 minutes. Sarah Silverman is very good in I Smile Back, and the movie is even better.

No matter how bad things get, you can always be thankful for this: You're not on trial for murder in Russia.

Elisabeth Moss is an acting event all by herself, a modern version of Bette Davis, and The Invisible Man gives her a chance to embody all kinds of emotional extremes — terror, dread, madness, inconsolable grief and murderous rage.

Nothing that works here adds up to anything worth a long slog in a movie theater, watching Pattinson punching guys and knocking guns out of their hands. From start to finish, The Batman is mostly just a collection of bad ideas.

Despite very little dialogue and only one actor with a speaking role, Arctic has a smart script. Something is always happening.

Taken as a motion picture, the new "Harry" comes up short. But taken as a visual aid to the experience of reading a book, the new "Harry" does its job.

Director James Ponsoldt knows what his job is here. He keeps the camera on his lead actress and doesn't cut away. For Winstead, Smashed is the doorway to great things.

It's as if there's a barrier between the viewer and the story that never comes down.

It's a modest and mildly funny effort, with good scenes and touches of incisive satire, but it's not quite funny enough, and it's undermined by its camera technique.

The Imitation Game is the one film that might have been better off longer. Starting the story in 1938 and just going through Turing’s life chronologically might have taken an extra 20 or 30 minutes, but it would have been worth it.

Here's a tiresome feature that could be made into a wonderful 20-minute film -- or, with a few adjustments, into two or three 10-minute shorts.

Suspiria is not just a movie unworthy of your time. It’s an experience one should reflexively recoil from, up there with things like fire, pain, humiliation and embarrassment. Easily, it’s one of the worst movies of 2018.

Married to the Mob picks up pace throughout and builds to an exciting finish. [19 Aug 1988]

Maria By Callas finds lots of press footage that most of us have never seen, filmed interviews either for television or newsreels, and it’s all fascinating.

It's two hours of your life wasted, time once spent that can never be regained. Don't go. Don't do it. [30 Mar 1988]

Witty, adult treatment of an offbeat subject: a pubescent boy's infatuation with an older woman.

It's entertaining and inoffensive.

Loses steam only when it strays from the sisters and attempts to depict their parents' loveless marriage.

It’s a good sci-fi action movie, too. Far be it from me to give this movie the kiss of death by making it seem too serious for its core audience. Chappie is everything it has to be — but it’s everything it should be, too.

It’s maybe not one of the best movies of 2022, but it was certainly one of my favorites.

It eschews obvious effects, but even more impressively, it tells a story without an obvious moral. It assumes that kids can wrestle with a fairly complicated narrative and draw their own conclusions.

This is a movie made by and for adults, and adults should consider seeing it.

September 5 succeeds as a tense and involving film, at least partly because it makes the case that the tragedy, despite all its other consequences and ramifications, marked a signal moment in news broadcasting. It was the first time that a hostage drama played out on live television.

A glib satire with a slick surface, lots of snappy patter and nothing to sell but its own cleverness.

Made mostly by white people, it's a film largely about how awful white people are -- just the kind of thing many white viewers will love and consider important. But however you might feel about this kind of movie, Map of the Human Heart is fake merchandise, an unfelt, boring travelogue that covers itself in its anti-racist, anti-war message and then dares audiences to notice its barrenness at the core. [14 May 1993, p.C6]

Entertaining, but it's about one notch below being something anybody really needs to see.

A grim and sometimes funny examination of life on the margins and of a singular artist's world.

A smart, arch and rather cold-blooded comedy.

A strange almost-thriller.

The filmmakers put their faith in a character, not fireworks, and the result is big blockbuster that feels more like a sweet little movie.

The new Robert De Niro film with Bill Murray, Mad Dog and Glory, is just off-balance enough that it may throw audiences off, too. It is not a romantic comedy by a director who can't do that particular dance, but a strange hybrid between comedy and drama. [5 Mar 1993, p.C1]

War Game is one of the more timely and disturbing movies of recent months.

Though specific to the stories of its central characters, this documentary is as complicated as life. It’s happy, sad and uncertain — genuinely moving and uplifting, yet never reassuring.

The tone is low-key, and Franco never presses the audience. Instead, he lets scenes happen, avoiding close-ups and all other means of exaggeration or emphasis.

Edge of Tomorrow covers familiar ground with unexpected wit and economy, and the result is a thoroughly entertaining sci-fi fantasy.

An elegant and rather even-tempered documentary.

Wonderstruck should not be confused for a brilliant but challenging film. Rather, it’s narratively deprived and with entire sections that are completely charmless.

As thrillers go, Rapt is long on intellect and short on action, a virtue to some degree, though not entirely.

Hacksaw Ridge is one of the best films of 2016. And the victory is all the more sweet for Gibson in that he succeeds on his own weird terms.

The picture... is well- made and entertaining, but it holds a special interest in what it says about Hanks.

More than on "Prime Suspect," more than any film in recent memory, Le Petit Lieutenant conveys the relentless toll of big-city police work.

22 Jump Street is exactly what comedy is today. It's coarse, free-flowing and playful.

A dark comedy that confirms Diablo Cody as a screenwriter of importance, eliminates the last shred of doubt that Jason Reitman is a major director and gives Charlize Theron her best showcase since "Monster."

It's a generous tale, told through big performances by a talented cast, presenting a range of colorful characters that only Dickens could have created.

Onward goes on and on, but it barely moves forward. Long before its 114-minute running time has elapsed, it has overstayed its welcome.

So The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a misfire, and what a shame, because Andra Day had it in her to be great in this. The movie just didn’t let her bring it out.

The idea of a worldwide calamity returning with a vengeance is an awful prospect that audiences, at this moment in particular, might find dreadful. So, it’s especially easy to sympathize with the characters in these early moments. Yet after the opening, A Quiet Place II doesn’t show us anything new, and soon the movie’s energy flags.

The resulting film is neither better nor worse than the Swedish film, but it's more cinematic.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the subliminal appeal of the dragons — why these animated creatures look adorable on screen and not menacing at all — here’s why: Their movements, behaviors and expressions are based on cats. Once you know, it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It's no masterpiece, but it's real.

The Wonder is no fun at all. It’s not even fun in the way it’s not fun. Even for a movie about starvation, it’s not a nourishing experience. The more the audience finds out about what’s actually going on, the less compelling the movie becomes.

It’s funnier than most Austen adaptations and more visually beautiful, and then there’s the movie’s odd tone, which combines a rigorous attention to period detail with an arch and seemingly modern sensibility.

Kurzel and three screenwriters have figured out a way to make Macbeth boring. Now that they proved it can be done, no one need ever do it again.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is tasteful and restrained, and though it was made by someone known as a wild man, there’s no grandstanding here. The performances are modulated, not pushed. If anything, the viewing experience is like being a fly on the wall of a real court-martial. The difference is that every minute of it is interesting.

An adaptation not firing on all cylinders.

The most daring thing that Jonze and Eggers have done is make a children's film that might not really be for kids.

An ideal vehicle for Aubrey Plaza, in that it taps into everything we know she can do and challenges her to do other things that she hasn’t done before.

Ginsburg herself is determined to last. Several scenes show her working out with a trainer. Her goal is to live long enough for a Democratic president to appoint her successor.

A brilliant piece of construction, and talking too much about its specifics would only spoil the overall experience.

Harrowing but compassionate.

Collateral is a good idea for a movie, backed up by expert execution... It's straight-up entertainment, not something to see and then talk about a month later, but definitely something to enjoy.

You can watch 100 movies and never see such joyless joy as in Blinded by the Light.

When one performance in a movie is exceptional, you can credit the actor. But when everyone is great, it has to have at least something to do with the director. That’s the case with “Bob Trevino Like It,” which has three standout performances.

Hawke is the movie's revelation.

Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.

Girls Trip balances sincere sentiment and boisterous comedy with honesty and skill, and for people who like their comedy a little nasty, this one’s a blast.

It’s mildly amusing when it should be funny, sentimental when it should be deep and all too easy when it should be unsettling. It’s still some kind of success, but a modest one.