Richard Corliss

Fresh alchemizes the terrifying cliches of urban melodrama into annihilating poetry.

Can a movie have too much good stuff? Not when it's stuffed like this one.

An exhilarating two hours of serious fun.

Kick-Ass moves with such bloody assurance that you'd be forgiven for not seeing how smart it is. But smart it is. Smart, important and deadly.

The Trip may have familiar elements - it's pretty much "My Dinner With Andre" pinned to the plot of Alexander Payne's "Sideways" - but the badinage provides an immediate and lasting kick, as well as the spectacle of two champion combatants at the top of their game.

Beetlejuice means something good: that imaginative artists can bring a fading genre back from the dead. [11 Apr 1988]

Both horrifying and hopeful.

A banquet of creepy, gory or grotesque incidents is on display in Hannibal. but this superior sequel has romance in its dark heart.

Droll, reticent, flawlessly filmed fable of generosity.

This miniature epic is a film that, like its young hero, will enrich those who peer into its poignant heart.

If The Hobbit doesn't equal the achievement of Jackson's earlier Middle-earth movies -- and, honestly, what could? -- it is still, in sum, a thrilling effort.

In this arid landscape, the edifice of Ghost World, with all its acute insolence, stands out like the Taj Mahal.

Plenty of tech-noir savvy to keep infidels and action fans satisfied.[26 Nov 1984, p. 105]

Most of the movie is Actors Acting: gifted guys (Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn) running nattering riffs on familiar lout themes. [16 Nov 1992]

A gross-your-eyes-out horror movie that is also the year's most poignant romance.

But the carnage, like the sex scenes, is shot so pristinely that it becomes a nouvelle-cuisine feast; this is a splatter film Martha Stewart could love.

A careful, finally powerful film.

The next time you hear a director complain about the studio or his stars or the weather or whatever, think of what Jorgen Leth achieved with Lars von Trier as his boss -- when five obstructions became five splendid opportunities.

No film with an ambition this large, and achievement this impressive, can be anything but exhilarating, a vital affirmation of the creative process.

It is indeed impressive; and we mean not just this solid, satisfying final film - in which the Potter saga reaches its climax, if not quite its emotional apex - but the entirety of producer David Heyman's blockbuster franchise.

His performance is a canny portrait of leadership - part genius, part crazy guts, part dumb luck - and worthy of moving Pitt up to the playoff round of Oscar finalists for Best Actor. We'd put money on it.

Rich in humor, pained or frolicking.

An easy charm, a cleverly unforced sense of humor and a benignity toward all its genially oddball characters. If moviegoers skip this one, they'll be missing a real treat.

Through his art and passion, Stone makes JFK plausible, and turns his thesis of a coup d'etat into fodder for renewed debate.

But the writer-director is canny enough to salt the stew with poignance, so that by the end these attitude machines have become human beings -- more than the sum of their chiseled jokes.

Director Barry Levinson and screenwriter Paul Attanasio are great guys to waste time with. The latter has a real flair for writing strong, confrontational scenes -- brisk, needling, well shaped -- and the former stages them with coolly concentrated intensity. And the cast is terrific. [19 Dec 1994, p.75]

A grand, sprawling entertainment that incites enthrallment for much of its 2 hr. 38 min.

Miss Bala is a tragedy rendered with the savviest, moviewise virtuosity. A young woman's despair, and a nation's, was never so damned entertaining.

The picture packs a wonderful wallop.

It could as well be called Best Thing of Undetermined Species.

Weird, beguiling premise.

A devious mind game, Trance is also the most entertaining smart movie so far this year.

A documentary as vivid as any horror film, as heartbreaking as any Oscar-worthy drama.

Beyond the viral ingenuity of the marketing, what's cool about PA is that it's not just a fun thrill ride; it's an instructive artistic experience. A horror-movie revisionist, Peli follows a less-is-more strategy.

Robots goes for a color scheme that is cool, muted, instantly aged. Director Chris Wedge wants the eye to concentrate on the gags he and his writers (including veteran comedy craftsmen Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) have stuffed into the film.

It stands, soars on its own. It moves to a seductive rhythm and vision.

Diane Keaton, directing her first fictional feature, gets us safely through a movie that could have turned to mush at any moment.

Despite its elements of brutality, this is a buoyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate.

Sex, drugs and rack 'n' ruin; pretty people doing nasty things to one another...honestly, what more could you want in a movie?

Chris Paine's documentary makes an unapologetic case for the car and an unofficial indictment of the forces allied against it.

[Pfeiffer & Demme] and a gang of co-stars have created a coherent farce symphony.

To absorb God's body blows, this disquieting, haunting movie says, is to be fully alive. To do otherwise could kill you.

The film's spare wit is as applicable to Broward County as to the Persian Gulf. Secret Ballot offers further evidence that an Islamic regime can foster humanist satires with a critical, political edge.

Orchestrating the efforts of a superb production team — and of the reluctant Mr. Chayefsky — Russell has devised a film experience that will astound some viewers, outrage others and bore nobody. Laugh with it, scream at it, think about it.

A pastiche that's nearly as funny as it is long (2hr. 45min.), and quite as politically troubling as it may be liberating, Django Unchained is pure, if not great, Tarantino.

Fetching little monument to the bard of rapturous bereavement.

She's (Jolie) got what no other Hollywood woman even tries for, and which is embodied among recent international stars perhaps only by Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh: feminismo.

Writer-director Ramsay neither sentimentalizes nor garishes up the lost children in this observant and poetic drama.

Damon, beefed up for the occasion, makes Pienaar a stalwart yet courtly figure. Freeman infuses Mandela's speeches with the same gentleness and gravity he's brought to his numerous God roles and the Visa Olympics commercials. But the real deity here is Eastwood, still chugging away handsomely in his 80th year.

Niftily quirky.

It's a real and rare pleasure to see Costner and Duvall together -- these masters of intense passivity, who know how to be watched when they're listening.

Isn't an audience that was nurtured on the doomsday screeds of art-house cinema entitled to vacation in the warmth of a superior film about a boy with almost too many people to love?

Well-made fictions like Fatal Attraction prosper because they seem more persuasive than fact.

No kidding: this is the feel-good movie of the year and a cinematic soul massage.

As director, Farmiga is a strong believer in cinematic democracy, allowing the other actors to seize the center of the action and the frame.

Quite a good movie--a big, fat, rousing, intelligent, daring, retro, many-adjective-requiring entertainment.

This remake hits the jackpot with Wasikowska (pronounced VashiKOVska) and, not far behind, Fassbender.

In this vigorous, stalwart epic, they blend martial breadth and emotional intimacy, honor and obsession, romance and machismo to show the glamour and folly of war.

It's a bright, engaging bauble with half a dozen Elvis Presley songs for Mom and Dad, and just enough sass -- Stitch sticks his tongue into his nose and eats his snot -- to keep the tweeners giggling.

Apt to leave a haunting impression on the children who see it.

Jaden may have to carry the burden of family celebrity, even as he carries his new film. Expertly.