Peter Rainer

Intermittently gripping, but overlong.

Lanthimos doesn’t have the directorial energy to stir this thick allegorical stew. Lacking any of the conventional action-thriller movie skills, his deadpan style may be the only one available to him.

Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend.

Parts of this film are as blandly lulling as a mood tape, but at best it’s a literally soaring experience.

Linklater, whose previous movies include "Slacker," "Before Sunrise," and "Waking Life," may be the most versatile director of his generation. School of Rock is his most unabashedly mainstream movie by far, and yet it’s commercial in the best way.

The young cast is mostly callow and TV-bland and the special effects don't quite seem worth that hefty price tag, but overall this is a presentable addition to the franchise.

What seems to start out as a burlesque against the rich -- a satire of class-consciousness -- ends up mutating into something stranger and richer and more ambiguous. [10 Dec 1993, p.F4]

It transcends its genre even as it fulfills it.

The Namesake takes in a lot of territory, and at times is too diffuse, too attenuated. But the actors are so expressive that they provide their own continuity. They transport us to a realm of pure feeling.

It’s a skimpy, overextended riff, but some of the seemingly tossed-off moments are lovely.

Although the film, for the most part, is told from the perspective of the IRA, it does not blithely take its side.

His (Lindholm) steadfast, unvarying gaze has its own authenticity. He’s made a thriller that thrills while also respecting our intelligence.

Watching it is like getting a peek behind the curtain. But it's frustrating, too, because the casting of Emadeddin as a murderer-in-the-making precludes any psychological depth. And as an indictment of social inequality, which is the film's calling card, Panahi inadvertantly makes a far better case for the haves than for the have-nots.

The odyssey goes on a bit too long, and I suppose a taste for extra dry British comedy is a requirement, but this "Trip" is well worth one.

The most powerfully entrancing children's film in years. Of course, a true kid's classic is just as magical for adults.

Without the steadfast intelligence of Clooney's performance, Michael Clayton wouldn't work half as well as it does.

James Ponsoldt, who directed from a script by Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter, is a bit too glib to do justice to this material, but the young actors, especially Woodley, are quite fine.

Face/Off wouldn't work without two great actors, and it doesn't always work with them. But their gifts justify the whole loony enterprise.

Rams confirms what I have long maintained: Often the best films come from the unlikeliest places.

Despite the film's coy artiness and a lassitude that sometimes passes for soulfulness, Certified Copy is strangely haunting.

There is one bit of good news. For all you abominable snowman fans out there, "The Mummy" is filled with yetis. And, boy, are they ever angry.

Marjorie Prime, which has a soulful score by Mica Levi, is essentially a chamber drama, and yet it rarely feels stifled or stagey.

For most of its two hours it’s brainy, high-speed entertainment, but the filmmakers are not quite as smart as they think they are. For all its flash and hypertalk, Steve Jobs is an old-school movie in new-style camouflage.

Free speech isn't merely a shibboleth in The Agronomist. As embodied by Dominique, it's a fire-breathing force.

As a piece of inspirationalism about human stamina, Touching the Void is peerless, but what it doesn't--perhaps can't--explain is why people place themselves in such peril.

What enlarges Giamatti’s performance, and makes it ultimately more than a glorified comic turn, is how he gradually articulates Paul’s self-awareness for us.

In the end, the power poetry workshops, as the teachers are first to admit, are not about creating Shakespeares. They are about survival.

Hartley has such a spare, controlled touch in this film that this landscape seems both realistic and fantastic. [16 Aug 1991]