Rick Groen

Happily, in his adaptation of the Terence Rattigan play, The Deep Blue Sea, Davies has found a setting close to his heart and a subject more nearly suited to his style.

The running time is efficient, the direction is clean, the story is simple but resonant, the effects are understated yet impressive, and the near-wordless star of the show puts on an acting clinic. Damned if the risen one doesn't lift us out of our seats.

Plot isn't what drives the picture; instead, this is a cinematic tone poem, where the dominant mood is a Faulknerian mix of sorrow and endurance.

This time, though, Zemeckis has another technical trick up his sleeve – 3-D – and for once the gimmick succeeds.

Beyond the knights and rooks, Bobby Fischer Against the World tells the story of a Jewish kid raised in Brooklyn who spent his final years in exile as a fulminating anti-Semite and a raving anti-American.

Being Human is just that, and it's a profound delight. [06 May 1994]

This is still her (Wasikowska’s) picture. She’s its 10-foot tower, mysterious and brave and excited and withdrawn. Alice is the true magic in a Wonderland that’s mere movie magic – the happy surprise amidst everything we’ve come to expect.

Martin Scorsese, meet Djo Tunda Wa Munga, because you obviously have a lot in common. Viva Riva! is nothing less than the Congolese Mean Streets, oozing sexual heat and brute violence and powered by a locomotive's worth of raw kinetic energy.

THE Lover is lyrical and sensuous, very pretty and strangely hollow. Deliberately hollow, I think - the flatness at the centre of this film is meant to correspond to the emptiness at the heart of its young protagonist. And the audience is supposed to fall into that void and hear its echo, feel the residual ache. Yet we don't - we're content to comprehend the theme without feeling it. Our emotions are spared, and, as a result, we watch the proceedings at a safe remove - appreciative yet detached, admiring yet unmoved. There's much to love about The Lover, but not enough to love passionately. [30 Oct 1992]

It sure ain't the Christmas of Dickens's imaginings. Dysfunctional overachievers all, the Vuillards are a family bizarre enough to make the Royal Tenenbaums look like candidates for a Hallmark card.

It can definitely grate on your nerves but, at best, it also gets into your mind, and sticks fast.

A tender tale of semi-triumph.

Thrown into exalted company, Zellweger easily holds her own in the film's most difficult role.

Sitting through Red Eye is like watching a master carpenter at work on a custom bookcase. No one would call the result art, but you're sure bound to admire the sheer craft of the thing, the clean lines and seamless joints and meticulous attention to detail.

Visually impressive, splendidly performed, thematically significant, this is a movie in full possession of every key cinematic asset except one -- a solid script. Casino is a polished vehicle with an untuned engine.

In the end, is In America slight in its sentimentality and manipulative in its moral? Sure, but that's the job of any fable or myth.

Then again, Colin Firth is enough. Every movie is a performance, but very seldom is a performance a movie.

Ushpizin takes us to a fascinating place, and hands out the sort of brochure that tourists always need but seldom get -- the charming kind, fun to ponder and rewarding to browse.

Titanic is awesome even when it's awful -- you can't take your eyes off the extraordinary thing.

The documentary camera has made repeated trips to occupied Iraq, but never to such raw and honest effect as in The War Tapes. The reason is surprisingly simple: This time, the lens is being pointed not by embedded journalists, but by the American soldiers themselves.

Apparently, the faith that can move mountains is detectable in the microscopes that can track electrons. If so, the metaphoric is real and, to me, that thought is as scary as it is thrilling -- but what the bleep do I know?

The considerable charm of Mad Hot Ballroom can be traced directly to its choice of subjects. They happen to be 11-year old kids, and the lens loves every precious one of them.