Rex Reed

This futuristic tale of teenage violence is so not my kind of movie that I approached it grudgingly, so imagine my surprise when I ended up being totally exhilarated and enjoying it immensely.

What to say about an uphill slog called Crazy, Stupid, Love? It's not nearly crazy enough to clear the clogged arteries of summer comedies, and when the love appears, it's in all the wrong places. Oh well, at least they nailed the stupid part.

This is a movie about action, not acting, and although, under the circumstances, the cast does yeoman work in roles that can only be called generic, in the long haul they can’t save the script and direction from being sometimes boring and always predictable.

Ms. Deneuve has been directed by everyone from François Truffaut to Roman Polanski, but she has gone on the record saying she has a special rapport with Mr. Ozon (the 2002 film "8 Women" remains a classic). He brings out such a loopy delicacy in her that she shines-a charming, witty centerpiece from start to finish.

Charming, insightful and funny, The Meddler takes familiar material (the mother from Hell and the daughter from Hunger) and infuses it with affectionate, slap-your-thigh humor. It also crowns Susan Sarandon with one of her most endearingly irresistible roles in years.

A grand, shocking saga of a movie, The Homesman is the kind they don’t make much anymore.

Written and directed by the prolific François Ozon, Everything Went Fine is an exemplary work that intelligently explores the pros and cons of euthanasia with the kind of love, truthfulness and power that is rarely captured on film.

This is the most unwatchable horror movie masquerading as social comment I have seen this year.

A good cast and the speed-dial theme of eco-terrorism should really add up to a film of more substantial mind over matter than the dull, talky and ultimately pointless espionage thriller The East.

It’s as exhilarating as any epic American thriller, and better than most. Racing pulses and a state of awe and terror are guaranteed.

There’s nothing remarkable or even remotely intriguing about the dyspeptic gang of submental sad sacks in this dull, flat fiasco.

Misguided and lethargic horror movie.

It might prove to be too insular to appeal to a wider movie audience, but to a passionate Anglophile like me, Queen and Country is a funny and nostalgic portrait of a bleak, rationed postwar England still digging its way out of the rubble.

It’s quite a story and a cinematic task writer-director Angela Robinson is not always up to. But I wasn’t bored, and in this anemic year that’s saying a mouthful.

It’s a routine story, worth seeing for the galvanizing (pulverizing?) star performance by a smashing Liev Schreiber in the title role.

A debut feature by American writer-actor Brady Corbet, the film is sketchy, confused and too self-consciously aimed at arthouse audiences to thrive commercially, but it has a chilling impact.

Yes, this is a great one, and a magnificent centerpiece performance by an unknown actor named Paul Walter Hauser in the title role is a major reason it is so unforgettable.

Unfortunately, it’s a fairly unimaginative, largely unconvincing, often dull and always predictable example of the genre with few thrills and no surprises, and the only thing it raises is a surfeit of puzzling questions about why the wonderful actress Rebecca Hall can’t find a script to show off her abundant skills in a vehicle someone might remember.

It’s not the predictable plot that holds interest, but the unusual smart-aleck script by British writer-director Bart Layton that blends elements of the true story with an almost journalistic approach.

A family epic that is strangely ineffectual and disappointingly underwhelming.

The film, written and directed by Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz, is slow as Christmas, but the two protagonists grow on you, like a Virginia creeper vine climbing a garden wall.

You learn things from it that should be required viewing for the screening room at the Pentagon.

After "Enough" and five "Death Wish" movies, the revenge genre is not without its recurring clichés, many of which get defrosted and microwaved again in A Vigilante. The point, if there is one, is that “heinous criminal felonies are acceptable if they are justified by a woman driven beyond the limits of reason.” As one battered wife says, “Every graveyard is full of people who didn’t make it.” The same is true of old movies gathering dust in Hollywood film vaults.

She’s (Moore) the best thing in this toxic carnage of creepy, self-indulgent decadence, but under the direction of loopy Canadian David Cronenberg, she goes beyond the limit of acceptable artistry.

I prefer to think of Juniper as chamber music—muted, soft, with a certain ache that lingers.

No Time to Die may not be the worst James Bond movie ever made, but it’s in heavy competition as the dullest one since Octopussy.

The kids make stunning debuts, but their accents are thicker than porridge, rendering a good 90 percent of the dialogue so unintelligible that it might as well be in Swahili. Some subtitles are provided out of necessity, but not enough.

Another eccentric example of style over content, The Double stars creepy Jesse Eisenberg in two roles, when one is always more than enough.

I think you’ll find it as fresh, original and breathlessly exciting as I did.

While Crawl never quite achieves the classic status of Jaws, it’s so convincing that you forget about the mechanics and become petrified by the gore.

See it and prepare to be stunned and exhausted at the same time.

The director’s vision is so dark — and Mr. Crowe’s grumbling, sour-stomach persona so much like a Tums commercial — that you don’t care much what happens to him or his ark, which looks like a big barge with a stove pipe in the middle.

Crimes of the Future is a load of crap. I would like to find a more civil way to describe even a sick and depraved barf bag of a movie like this one, but it defeats every reasonable attempt to try.

Beautifully acted, sensitively written, carefully and economically directed, American Woman is the best film about the gradual but triumphant empowerment of an abused woman I have seen in this age of distaff political enlightenment.

This gruesome thriller set in a fogbound insane asylum is incomprehensible and fatally flawed, but having said all of that, I will also say this: It never seems anything less than the work of a skillful film buff. Mr. Scorsese may be a smart aleck, but he’s a professional smart aleck.

Contrived, pretentious and not worth seeing even for the perverse pleasure of watching first-rate talents make second-rate fools of themselves.

This one is too close for comfort to "The Road" to inspire much fresh or original thinking.

The juxtaposition of tone, theme and content in the narratives fails beyond the basic ideas. This leaves the capable Gyllenhaal to do little more than scream and rant hysterically.

Halloween addicts just want more — and so do I. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t deliver the goods with any new ideas or fresh suspense. It just lays there, like leftover pumpkin.

The writing (by Todd Stephens) and direction (by David Moreton) are untidy, but the film gets along on its own sweetness and sincerity before everyone removes the masks and realizes it's O.K. to be who and what you are in life. [10 May 1999]

Haywire makes no sense whatsoever, which should come as no surprise. It's the latest brainless exercise in self-indulgence from Steven Soderbergh, whose films rarely make any sense anyway.

Although it’s a sick and depraved menu, director Mimi Cave’s direction, for the most part, strives to be different—and succeeds.

Several aspects of this sad, grim story remain a mystery, but I am pleased to report that for the most part, Chappaquiddick catalogues the facts and eschews the sensationalism. The result is a film of integrity and disclosure, a controversial chapter in American history that substitutes clinical accuracy for Hollywood embellishment, with an impressive attention to detail and an admirable respect for suspenseful narrative.

Playing the cello is such a pleasant change of pace that he (Walken) eventually grows on you, scene by scene, proving for the first time since his role as Leonardo DiCaprio's troubled father 10 years ago in "Catch Me If You Can," that he really can act. He - along with the rest of the elegant cast - keeps A Late Quartet in tune when it threatens to go flat.

Directed with a pulsating fervor by Neil Burger, Limitless is absurd but entertaining action-adventure escapism. Bradley Cooper is versatile and virile, and a valiant leading man.

Sovereign is an ambitious, above-average action thriller with the extra bonus of being a thought-provoking civics lesson.

A cynical, polished and deeply disturbing look at the kind of camera-ready liberal dreamboy who gets elected in 60-second sound bites, it is one of the most important films of the year.

It roars and ignites and hits the ground running.

A structurally messy but emotionally effective coming of age movie that gets a lot of it right. High school is an ordeal only the fittest can survive.

Don’t miss Tom at the Farm, the latest controversy in the oeuvre of acclaimed French-Canadian actor-writer-director Xavier Dolan, who has been labeled the “enfant terrible of queer cinema.”

The film knocks itself unconscious trying to be whimsical and offbeat, but is so contrived that it is as embarrassing as it is unfunny.

The movie is so clueless and time-warped it could be comprised of outtakes from "Father Knows Best."

Flawed but bittersweet and enjoyable, this film may be the final chapter in a colorful and illustrious life.

What emerges is time pleasantly spent with a slice of life that examines a romantic détente between two cultures. Like smoke from an Egyptian hookah, the melancholia lingers.

The movie piles on one damned thing after another, often turning a truly original life story into a Rabelaisian soap opera replete with powdered wigs and violin concertos.

Grousing aside, this is a disarmingly sweet movie, enjoyable to the hilt, with music that really stomps.

In their seventh slog around the forbidden tropical island that author Michael Crichton originally created, the prehistoric monsters are noisier, the people they terrorize are prettier, and the screams are louder than ever. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

The latest calcified bore by Sofia Coppola is less pretentious than "Marie Antoinette" but every bit as inertly stupefying as "Lost in Translation."

Every generation gets a new one, and this time, replete with computer graphics and singing mice, Kenneth Branagh has created a live-action fairy tale that pulls out every stop and spares no expense.

I found the whole thing pokey and plodding, but there’s no denying the fact that even when sitting through Mr. Holmes seems numbing, Mr. McKellen is a force so powerful he’s his own reward.

The script is breezy, but neither of the two leads have the heft or charm to carry an entire feature-length film - separately or together.

Sensitive performances, mature and self-assured direction, and understated writing make Keith Behrman’s Giant Little Ones an emotionally involving, above-average coming-of-age story with a profound impact and mercifully few clichés.

It's uneven, but its optimistic message-lost causes can find strength through friendship and bonding-is contagious.

Remakes are odious, but Speak No Evil, while thoroughly unneeded and unasked for, is an Americanized remake of a 2022 thriller from Denmark that services its original material well, thanks mostly to a sprawling, contradictory and totally galvanizing centerpiece performance by James McAvoy.

Bring plenty of Kleenex. A nickel pack won’t do.

Another truthful, intelligently calibrated and fully committed performance by the remarkable Lucas Hedges following this year’s previously acclaimed "Boy Erased" rewards the sensitive, pulsating and intimate family drama Ben Is Back.

It shouldn’t happen to a dog — or to an audience of dog lovers.

A saucy, twinkling star performance by Michael Keaton make this one of the must-see entertainments of the year.

Sensitively directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter, Gia Coppola, it’s a film about a familiar subject, but with a heart as big as the Vegas strip and a style of its own that holds interest from start to finish.

This film is too long for a documentary, and only a true Sidney Lumet fan is likely to sit through nearly two hours of it undistracted. Still, it’s a fascinating exploration of how a great mind worked by allowing the quality of his scripts to determine the style of each film—including not only the inner life but the camera, the clothes, the entire visual approach.

Writer-director Nicholas Tomnay knows how to make maximum use of plot twists that keep an audience on its toes, and Nick Stahl is a skillful master of how to move the gore with exactly the right pace to exude charm in spite of his character’s ongoing toxicity.

The result is a twitching convulsion of vicious drivel passing itself off as a movie, which can be best appreciated by the kind of people who dig "Showgirls," the "Saw" franchise and Spike Jonze-Charlie Kaufman flicks.

Kate Beckinsale is marvelous as a ruthless baddie in a bustier, and in summation, Love & Friendship gives off a lovely, restrained glow at a time in films when almost everything else has the subtlety of headlights.

The actors are so exemplary that it is difficult to imagine this is not a documentary. They might not be household names, but they will be.

Causeway is a disappointment, but the thing you take home is Jennifer Lawrence’s nuanced performance as she shows every shifting emotion and contrast in the life of a woman soldier searching for definition who doesn’t feel at ease in either world—war or peace.

Carefully directed and gorgeous to look at, with haunting performances and maximum suspense.

I haven't seen a movie this bad since "Battlefield Earth" and "Howard the Duck."

It’s anyone’s guess whether the amazing Mr. Redmayne’s most prestigious performance will go down in the archives as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" or as the tortured, androgynous woman trapped in a man’s body in The Danish Girl. But it’s a sure thing that he’ll be nominated for another Oscar.

He (Gordon-Levitt) can act, and there’s a possibility he can also direct, but there’s no evidence in Don Jon that he can do both at the same time.

The Vow is not exactly a woman's picture. It's more about how a man falls in love, loses his love and gives up everything in life to focus on regaining his love. Maybe it's a woman's picture from a male point of view. However you slice it, it's a welcome loaf-far from perfect, but as filling as a home-cooked meal.

Despite an avalanche of misguided raves, Renée Zellweger as the greatest entertainer of the 20th century in a film called simply Judy is nothing more than another gimmick. You won’t get the real deal here, no matter which gushing hysteric you read.

Mr. Redford doesn’t look like Dan Rather, but displays the same dedication to — and respect for — journalism that he brought to the role of Bob Woodward in "All the President’s Men."

A sobering, documentary-style film commemorating eyewitness accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the tragedy, some of them fresh as a new wound, all of them painful but vital to a deeper understanding of one of the darkest chapters in American history.

It’s not perfect, but when it works, Byzantium towers above all of the romantic vampire slobber we’ve been getting lately. I fear that Dracula is watching from some moldy crypt somewhere, nodding approval.

We know about Anne Frank's diary and Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece "Black Book," but director Martin Koolhoven has shed new light on what happened in Holland with a powerful and touching film.

As scripted, documentary-style fact-based dramas go, it doesn’t get much better than this.

With enough terror to satisfy modern audiences and enough underplayed plot movement to save it from conventional biopic trajectory, Harriet holds interest and invites respect. It is still not the great Civil War epic it could have been, but it’s solid enough to work, and Cynthia Erivo’s valiant and committed performance is a wonderful achievement.

Neither another bland biopic about a self-destructive artist nor an historical scrapbook about a country in the grip of slavery, Black Butterflies is a dark, moving depiction of the life and death of a brave rebellious, idiosyncratic woman who made significant strides toward changing the world around her and paid a heavy toll for her passion.

The plot may be formulaic, but there’s nothing predictable about Ben Affleck’s commitment to the role of Jack, or the subtlety and sincerity with which he plays it.

I guess it claims to demonstrate how repetitive and routine the lives of professional assassins can be (yawn), but in my opinion, movies about them have an obligation to be juicier and more consistently fascinating than American Star.

The intelligent script provides rare insight into character development and the meticulously layered performance by Macdonald give the film a credence and balance that touches the heart.

The movie is full of joyous, unexpected things to applaud.

I think everything about the movie is too subtle and real to appeal to the "Batman" demographic, but for mature audiences who have forgotten how to smile, it takes up where "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' left off.

The theme is nothing new, and the film has no shortage of clumsy biopic clichés, but sometimes we need to see the simplicity of humanity at its best. On that score, this movie delivers in spades.

Depraved, delirious, and downright stupid, Last Night in Soho is two hours of amateurish drivel by B-movie director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead) that pretends to be half-retro Swingin’ Sixties comedy and half-horror thriller.

The effect is genuinely creepy, but do not even think of seeing Buried if you suffer from claustrophobia.

From Ireland, Mr. Malcolm’s List is a lavishly photographed romantic period piece with a cast of enchanting unknowns that attempts to be a colorblind Jane Austen social satire. Its failure is nevertheless lovely to look at and worthy of attention.

The heart of the film derives from the fact that the more they all get to know each other, the more they all mature and their differences blend. The title comes from a lesson in Huckleberry Finn—that a lie is good if it helps others, the way Huck lied to save Jim from the slave traders.