Rick Groen

You don’t need to root for the best movies and you don’t want to root for the worst. But, occasionally, along comes a picture so nearly good that you dearly wish it were better. Welcome to She’s Out of My League, where the rooting interest is strong but so is the frustration.

This is a mannered comedy, more stylized and theatrical, almost surreal at times, and less accommodating to his trademark brand of razor-sharp dialogue.

Everything you've come to expect, and cherish, in a Mike Leigh movie.

What it doesn't have is the resonance of Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," a film that exploited the same genre even while transcending its limitations. Eastern Promises delivers, but not on that scale.

Waydowntown may not be perfect, but it is perfectly astute in the target it selects and in the questions it raises.

It's perfectly admirable, absolutely controlled, and fully understandable. [09 Oct 1992]

Breakdown is a taut little thriller, the kind of well-crafted yarn that sets itself attainable goals and then meets them.

All that's deliberate, but the lingering question is not: Is Melancholia a sly depiction of the end we deserve, or simply a lovely load of bombast? Be prepared to choose one or the other; unless there's an extra moon in tonight's sky, it can't be both.

The movie doesn't have the heart of the book, but it does have a solid mechanical pump, strong enough at least to keep a robust story on two-hour life support.

Certainly long and not always engaging and comes with a predictably basic ending, yet there are unexpected pleasures, moments of beauty and tiny pockets of joy to sustain you through the journey.

A masterly piece of documentary chicanery that kills George W. Bush without once pandering to his legions of ill-wishers.

The Canadian film "Atanarjuat" travelled back to the past to meet an ancient legend on its own ground and treated the tale realistically. Whale Rider whisks its legend up into the present, and then adds a touch of lyricism.

With his breathy, antic delivery, pouring out his heart in staccato bursts, Cusack puts a nice loop on the sensitive teen theme. For his is an upbeat, mature brand of sensitivity, the healthy kind that makes fine discriminations, not nasty judgments.

Whether the film is uniquely brilliant or dismissively dumb is not the issue here. Either choice can (and will) be offered – it’s the choosing that counts.

No, this isn't the Care Bears. But it is a compelling yarn, in a Grimm sort of way, a throwback to a time when storytellers felt freer to tap the emotional currents that run deep and often dark in all children, and when the stories themselves formed a moral maze that trusted the kids to find their own way home.

Unfortunately, as the phone battery wears down, the plot's theatrics heat up to pot-boiling degrees of incredulity – a senile mother, a vicious personnel director, even a coiled serpent, all vie to raise the ante. Talk about your bad day.

If you long for the bleak intelligence of an Ingmar Bergman film, where humankind is deeply flawed and God is indifferently silent and the landscape is cloaked in perpetual winter, then Beyond the Hills promises to be your cup of despair.

Beijing Bicycle is a good film that owes a huge debt to a better film. And that, of course, is Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief."

What saves it, however, is Gerwig. The love story ain’t credible, but her performance is, perfectly capturing a young woman who doesn’t lack confidence so much as a sense of self.

This is a grown-up film that puts liberalism under the microscope and finds it tired -- not a dirty word, as neo-cons believe, and not a panacea, as sentimentalists wish, but just tired and longing for rejuvenation.

The comic spirit in this type of picture is wonderfully democratic, and so is the result.

So this is a light/bright movie that actually illuminates our dull grey lives, reminding us that intrigue can be, well, intriguing. And damn sexy too.

The movie's main attraction isn't hard to find. It's essentially a character study, but one where the nature of the study is as unique as the stature of the character.

Pleasant because, instead of the usual hero-and-mayhem jive, Snitch is an honest exercise in workmanlike craft. This is to film what ceramic is to floors or Billy is to bookcase or what a third-line centre is to a winning hockey team – hardly great but good and solid and functional.

Jeunet manages a terrific pass in an extended underwater sequence, but, beyond that, he runs out of ideas as we run out of patience.

A drama that's often insightful and occasionally powerful but is still, at heart, a piece of television and not a work of film.

Strange and beautiful and transfixing and confusing, it's quite the sight - martial-arts fans may find themselves disappointed, but Wong Kar-wai addicts will be delighted.

A maniacal, hallucinogenic dip into the bloodbath drawn by a pair of mass murderers, it's the quintessential Stone opus - topical, testy, and wildly controversial, as brilliant or egregious as you wish it to be. [26 Aug 1994, p.C1]