Richard Corliss

A delicate counterpoise of passion and restraint, The Invisible Woman is a major work in a minor key.

Intent on both dazzling and punishing the viewer, Gilliam gets lost in creepy spectacle and plenty of old film clips (notably "Vertigo"). But at the sight of three giraffes crossing a city bridge, you'll think of a more recent movie. A bad one. [8 Jan 1996, p.69]

The movie is one continuous, exhausting, exhilarating chase.

The movie is not just spectacle; it's got a tender, ultimately tragic love story and enough deadly political scheming to fill a Gaddafi playbook. Indeed, in its narrative cunning, luscious production design and martial-arts balletics, Detective Dee is up there with the first great kung-fu art film, King Hu's 1969 "A Touch of Zen." We'd call it "Crouching Tiger, Freakin' Masterpiece."

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.

Side Effects virtually demands a three-word review: Just see it.

Ultimately, Titanic will sail or sink not on its budget but on its merits as drama and spectacle. The regretful verdict here: Dead in the water.

Repressing its rage to tell an important story, The Invisible War identifies soldiers who are true heroes because they dared to fight for justice.

A humongous, visionary parable that intermittently enthralls and ultimately disappoints. [8 July 1991, p.55]

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.

Everything finally came together under the sensitive directorial hand of, yes, Francis Coppola. The supporting cast is splendid. The film's occasional lapses never puncture the airy tone; they are easily forgiven, like Peggy Sue and her friends, whose only sin was to grow up. This prom-night balloon of a movie floats easily above the year's other exercises in '50s nostalgia. If you dare reach for it, it will land smartly in your heart.

The movie is way too colorful - cute, in a repulsive way, with its crawly special effects - and tame compared with its source.

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.

The impact of this sisterhood fable on viewers should be as warm and rapturous as Olaf the snowman’s dream of summer. Child, teen or septuagenarian, you’ll warm to Frozen.

Most films today are afraid to try anything new. Natural Born Killers is an explosive device for the sleepy movie audience, a wake-up call in the form of a frag bomb. [29 August 1994, p.66]

As both harangue and movie tragicomedy, Sicko is socko.

Plays like a vacation at a seedy seaside resort. The issue at hand - whether McKinney engaged in criminal behavior with Anderson - is of little moment; what's important is the personality of the lady in question.

Frankenweenie has that youthful verve and the ghoulishness of strange kids who will some day be eccentric creators. This movie is an attic experiment for its makers to be proud of and for audiences to cherish.

Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention is a cure for nagging ethnic generalities. This Palestinian sort-of-comedy has a sly wit that amuses and disturbs in equal, salubrious measure.

Both horrifying and hopeful.

For its first hour or so, this upscale heart tugger motors along familiar trails. So ennobling -- and predictable -- in director Penny Marshall's fidgety rendering of a case study by Oliver Sacks. [24 Dec 1990, p.77]

The movie may not soar like Aladdin or roar like The Lion King, and it demands plenty of parental guidance; but it fulfills the Disney animators' dream.

Inception is precisely the kind of brainy, ambitious, grand-scale adventure Hollywood should be making more of.

The 80 minutes it spends on the atoll alone with Hanks make for engrossing storytelling. The film is less sure-footed back in civilization.

Ceases to be a cogent study of the disease of genius and devolves into two lesser creatures: an ordinary weepie and an Oscar contender.

Doesn't offer much.

The pulse of Curtis Hanson's direction is lethargic; the comic bits are so slack and deadpan you could mistake the film for an earnest drama--an Afterschool Special for troubled kids and their pooped parents.

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

This is rapture in pictures. [22 December 1997, p. 81]

The film is one-note; misery is the only game in town.

An excellent film. [16 Jan 1989, p.64]

The real battle here is between two generations of acting styles: meticulous method vs. star quality.

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

Transcending Holo-kitsch, In Darkness is often a thrilling adventure picture - as if Anne Frank had found an "Inglourious Basterd" to help her make "The Great Escape."

Here is a picture that has wit, a hairpin-turn narrative, high pizazz and ensemble star quality. Ready, set, Go.

It provides intimate glimpses of people usually seen, and then only briefly, as faces on a post-office wall or numbers in a cemetery.

With Interstellar, Nolan’s reach occasionally exceeds his grasp. That’s fine: These days, few other filmmakers dare reach so high to stretch our minds so wide.

Ward Serrill's feel-good doc, which covers seven years in the life of Resler's Roughriders, is hobbled by a narration so syrupy, it could be poured on pancakes. But the movie soars because of the sport's natural drama and its luck in finding a complex heroine.

The perfect e-ticket for a flight of fancy into a world far more gorgeous than our own. The film doesn't halve itself to appeal to two generations. At its best, it turns all moviegoers into innocent kids, slack-jawed with wonder.

The better class of moviegoers will love Billy Elliot. And I loved hating it.

The invention is impressive, but there is little indication of the Henson-Oz trademark: a sense of giddy fun.

The new picture provides a master coursed in cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment.

Sixty years after Snow White, Hercules proves that Walt's art form is still sassy and snazzy.

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.

A witty comedy of manners that arcs into poignance, this is a Christmas movie only a Grinch could hate... One of the brightest, bittersweetest fables of this or any-year. [10 Dec 1990, p.87]

Sin City is brazenly, thrillingly alive.

Take this Shower and feel refreshed; it's a cool dip on a hot day.

Has a whirligig wit, and 11 songs crammed into its 67 minutes: that's more melodic content than in most Broadway musicals.

Boyle's ingenuity with the camera gives this fraught journey plenty of menace and pizazz.

Here's another warning: you may laugh yourself sick--as sick as this ruthlessly funny movie is.

With his round, ruddy face, Tighe always seems on the verge of derisive laughter or flash-fisted rage; it's enjoyable guessing which fever will surface first. The rest of the movie is less entertaining, a righteous homily without the grits.

Martin, who wrote the pretty-funny, too-soppy script, means to drink from the river this time. He wants it all: laughs, tears, low comedy, uplift. It doesn't quite happen, partly because the movie begs for poignance like an orphaned puppy, partly because modern plastic surgery makes the plot anachronistic, partly because, even with his Cyranose, C.D. is a darned sight more attractive than his beefy rival. Aaaahh, who cares, as long as Steve Martin gets a chance to strut his physical grace, wrap his mouth around clever dialogue, clamber up to rooftops like a Tarzan of the Northwest, give new life to the old-fashioned nobility of the love letter, and drink wine through his nose?

The film is a lavish, linear, way-too-long (3 hr. 21 min.) storybook of Malcolm's career, the movie equivalent of an authorized biography, a cautious primer for black pride.

A gravely beautiful fairy tale of longing and loss. [20 Sept 1993, p.82]

Soderbergh slices, dices and Cuisinarts the script into flashbacks, scene shifts, stop motion and other distracting foolery.

Sometimes engrossing, sometimes exasperating romance. In these scenes, Cotillard shows she doesn't need the validation of Cannes or the Academy. Her strong, subtle performance is gloriously winning on its own.

This film is as smart and funny as its topic and its stars.

The Iron Lady is a clever and oddly touching entertainment.

Savvy family entertainment.

In an amazing year for animation, The Princess and the Frog is up at the top. Go on, give it a big kiss.

The film causes no tremors, only a hemi-Demme-semiquaver.

Raimi directs the film at Maguire's pensive pace. Some scenes are just inert.

When Eastwood, who also directed the picture (from a Michael Butler-Dennis Shryack script), faces off against Russell's Maleficent Seven, viewers may get an old-fashioned western tingle. But Pale Rider does nothing to disprove the wisdom that this genre is best left to the revival houses. A double feature of Shane and Eastwood's High Plains Drifter will do just fine, thanks.

The script, by Peter Hedges from his novel, spins out a few too many eccentricities, and the direction, by Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog), meanders. But DiCaprio and Cates bring loopy authenticity to their roles, and Depp is, as always, a most effacing star.

A grand and poignant movie epic about what is lost in war and what's worth saving in life. It is also a rare blend of purity and maturity -- the year's most rapturous love story.

The film offers no message, no solutions, only a great time at the movies.

It shows Eastwood, at 84, in his finest directorial effort since the 2008 "Gran Torino," while painting on a much broader canvas. Utterly in command of his epic material, he films the Iraqi action in terse, tense panoramas with little cinematic editorializing, as if he were an old Greek or Hebrew God who is never surprised at man’s ability to kill his fellow men, or to find reasons to do so. Directing 34 films over 44 years, Eastwood has honed his craft to its essentials: make it seem as if the story is telling itself.

Intoxicating. [19 Dec 1988, p.78]

A cheerful entertainment, suitable for kids and parents of the brighter stripe. It's just not Nick Park great.

With his instinct and craft, Miller has provided more autosuggestive violence on a $1 million budget than The Blues Brothers did with half the Chicago police force and $30 million.

The film's pleasures are simple and obvious: an original plot, lots of slapstick and a lead performance by the Bushman N!xau, who registers every absurdity with the aplomb of an aboriginal Buster Keaton.

An exhilarating ride, start to finish. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg set a high bar for this subgenre with "Shaun of the Dead," but Reese, Werner and Fleischer may have trumped them. This isn't just a good zombie comedy. It's a damn fine movie, period. And that's high praise, coming from a vampire guy.

To Western eyes, this meandering parable registers as a perplexity and a disappointment.

It blends tension and emotion, computer wizardry and dramatic skill in a vigorous climax--and the most impressive, haunting final shot of the movie year.

The first great movie of the summer.

Erin Brockovich is slick, grating and false. We bet it makes a bundle.

Even Galifianakis's pervy charm, and a deeply weird cameo by Mike Tyson, can't save The Hangover. Whatever the other critics say, this is a bromance so primitive it's practically Bro-Magnon.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is no "Fast Five."

Binoche is especially subtle and radiant in another splendid drama from Leconte.

If there were an Oscar for ensemble acting, Ray would win in a stroll.

This is no breathless film fantasy; its pulse is stately, contemplative. But anyone who has keen eyes and an open heart will surely go soaring and crashing with the lovers lost in Malick's exotic, erotic new world.

Shelton has written the wittiest, busiest screenplay since Moonstruck, and his three stars do their very best screen work. [20 June 1988]

The new film is a toss-up with George Pal's very watchable 1953 version: the special effects are even better here, the drama even lamer.

Blending plot elements of "Double Indemnity" and "Natural Born Killers" with the ripe sensuality of Francis Coppola's take on "Dracula," the film should make audiences sit up in startled pleasure, as if they'd just received the most luscious neck-bite.

It's like a restaurant where you go for the food and go back for the atmosphere. Or for the waitress. [13 July 1995]

A home movie of a fictional home life, an epic assembled from vignettes, Boyhood shimmers with unforced reality. It shows how an ordinary life can be reflected in an extraordinary movie.

The film manages to be both sensational and stodgy, like a guided tour that goes on until it drones.

This is a serious filmgoer's treat: intelligence cloaked in elegance.

Rambunctious, disturbing, often hilarious new documentary.

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

Politics aside, this is a handsome film with orange skies to die for, or under, and a lovely score by Carter Burwell. The picture has some ponderous and snooze-worthy stretches, but it attains a certain melancholic grandeur, with the actors and crew fighting as desperately as Crockett and Bowie to make the best of a fated adventure.

The best Hollywood movies always knew how to sneak a beguiling subtext into a crowd-pleasing story. Superman Returns is in that grand tradition. That's why it's beyond Super. It's superb.

I wish I found The Illusionist as pleasing to sit through (twice) as to write about. I'm glad there's a "new" "Tati" film to add to his small, important body of work, yet I wish that the creator of "The Triplets of Belleville" had made a true Chomet film instead. I'll be waiting for that, with a hope to be found nowhere in this handsome, airless movie.

"How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure." Irony aside, that's how to respond to this magnificent study in ink and blood.

This series will survive as well, until 2016 — when, you can bet, there will be a third Star Trek to celebrate the TV show’s 50th anniversary. Here’s hoping that those three years will bestow a measure of maturity on all concerned: Kirk and his bright curators too.

All these roles could have been found at a garage sale of comedy stereotypes. To the extent that 50/50 works, it is because of Gordon-Levitt, one of my favorite actors.

The year's most thrilling, FEELING mainstream movie.

In his most painterly film, Spielberg has appropriated the lavish visual palette of John Ford movies: "The Quiet Man" for the rural settings, "The Horse Soldiers" for the war scenes. Boldly emotional, nakedly heartfelt, War Horse will leave only the stoniest hearts untouched.