Roger Ebert

The most that can be said for the characters here is they all seem mighty pleased.

The Lie is dark enough, but it has affection for its characters and doesn't destroy them. It paints them in three fallible human dimensions, and the actors are warm and plausible.

What happens is that we get vested in the lives of these characters. That's rare in a lot of movies.

The Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see.

There are few reasons you must see this movie, but absolutely none that you should not.

So Paine's 2006 doc has a happy sequel. His film is just as polished and good-looking as his first one, gives us a good look at automakers we like, and is entertaining. But the first film was charged with drama. "Revenge" is somewhat anticlimactically charged with a wall plug.

Into the Abyss may be the saddest film Werner Herzog has ever made. It regards a group of miserable lives, and in finding a few faint glimmers of hope only underlines the sadness.

If I were choosing a director to make a film about the end of the world, von Trier the gloomy Dane might be my first choice. The only other name that comes to mind is Werner Herzog's. Both understand that at such a time silly little romantic subplots take on a vast irrelevance.

As a period biopic, J. Edgar is masterful. Few films span seven decades this comfortably.

Here's a bad movie with hardly a bad scene. How can that be? The construction doesn't flow. The story doesn't engage. The insistent flashbacks are distracting. The plot has problems it sidesteps. Yet here is a gifted cast doing what it's asked to do. The failure is in the writing and editing.

Like Crazy is a well-made film. The scenes showing Jacob and Anna falling in love have a freshness, and I learn Doremus handed his actors an outline and together they improvised every scene. Some of the whispered endearments under the sheets are delightful.

The movie was directed by Michael Brandt, who co-wrote the script with Derek Haas. Together they wrote a much better movie, "3:10 to Yuma." The Double doesn't approach it in terms of quality. None of it is particularly compelling.

This movie is as lovable as a silent comedy, which it could have been.

The movie is broad and clumsy, and the dialogue cannot be described as witty, but a kind of grandeur creeps into the screenplay by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson.

I have no idea if this movie was made stoned. Like its predecessors by Cheech and Chong, it might as well have been.

One question is not addressed by the movie: Why were the children deported in the first place? Yes, we know the "reasons," but what were the motives?

A linear story, or one that was fragmented more clearly, could have been more effective. Still, a good film, ambitious and effective, introducing a gifted young actress and a director whose work I'll anticipate.

We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success.

Justin Timberlake continues to demonstrate that he is a real actor, with screen presence. But after the precise timing and intelligence he brought to "The Social Network," it's a little disappointing to find him in a role that requires less. He has a future in the movies.

Because of the ingenious screenplay by John Orloff, precise direction by Roland Emmerich and the casting of memorable British actors, you can walk into the theater as a blank slate, follow and enjoy the story, and leave convinced - if of nothing else - that Shakespeare was a figure of compelling interest.

The movie unreels his musical biography with an unending series of tastes of songs and performances. You may be surprised by how many you recognize.

Inexplicably, there are people who still haven't had enough of these movies. The first was a nifty novelty. Now the appeal has worn threadbare.

Texas Killing Fields begins along the lines of a police procedural and might have been perfectly absorbing if it had played by the rules: strict logic, attention to detail, reference to technical police work. Unfortunately, the movie often seems to stray from such discipline.

There is nothing to complain about except the film's deadening predictability and the bland, shallow characters.

For me, Richard Jenkins is the heart of Norman. How often I've admired him; even in unworthy roles, he has such strength, he never seems the need to try.

Margin Call employs an excellent cast who can make financial talk into compelling dialogue. They also can reflect the enormity of what is happening: Their company and their lives are being rendered meaningless.

Though I usually take pleasure in Almodovar's sexy darkness, this film induces queasiness.

Here is a film of great beauty and attention, and watching it is a form of meditation. Sometimes films take a great stride outside the narrow space of narrative tradition and present us with things to think about. Here mostly what I thought was, why must man sometimes be so cruel?