Shawn Levy

There's a touch of whimsy to his misadventures, but the malfeasance he uncovers -- often using hidden cameras and microphones -- is anything but a joke.

For all the inactivity and resistance that mark the plot, there's beauty in the filmmaking and a kind of dazzling inevitability to the unwinding of the tale.

There's something personal going on, something deeper than slapstick. It makes a sometimes flat film shimmer.

Something like a finely-written and -acted soap opera. That isn’t death, but it’s less like life than you’d hope.

It's nonetheless a fascinating, thirst-inspiring, thought-provoking journey. Just one request for the lengthier version: fewer shots of dogs' swimsuit areas, please.

Even with the flaws of the final half, The Avengers is grand, brisk fun. It comes tantalizingly close to reaching the level of the very best comic book films of the current generation.

Capitalism lacks the surprising wit of “Roger & Me” and the sobering comparative journalism of “Sicko,” and it isn’t nearly as heartfelt as “Columbine,” which poignantly and repeatedly circled back to Moore’s beloved home state of Michigan.

Made with disarming craft and cunning. Intermixed in the memories it leaves of horror and disgust are glimpses of impressive technique and savvy psychological insight.

If you loved his (Gilliam) older work -- and if you can stand the twinge of pain that beholding the lamented Ledger will surely evoke -- it’s worth a visit.

Mostly it's inspiring: to think that a man of Antonioni's years and talents is still capable of producing such vital work.

The notions of sacrifice, patriotism, race and self-identity are compellingly questioned, and the battle sequences are realized with stirring intensity.

The result is a genuinely pleasing kung fu movie that kids and grown-ups can enjoy.

All the hammy acting and meandering storytelling in the world can't drown the essential appeal of the story.

It's a film that casually mixes comedy with dread more or less deftly until faltering near the end. Up to then, however, it imparts the sensation that, along with Lonnie, you are being cooked alive in a pot of water that's slowly but steadily heating up toward the boiling point.

Scott's cast is like a grand orchestra with various performers filling the roles of instruments: Thewlis a wise, ironic oboe; Neeson a stout cello; Norton a slightly battered flute. As it happens, the piece they're playing is a piano concerto and the keyboard -- that is, Bloom -- isn't big enough to match.

Reggio, who is sufficiently eager for a large audience that he has allowed his film to be distributed by Miramax, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Co., surely one of the villains in his piece, is neither so honest nor so bold (as Moore's "Bowling for Columbine").

If you've never seen any anime, set your sights on fun and leave your hard nose for drama and fine dialogue at home.

It's a stylish and sweet film with moments of affecting brilliance that counterbalance its flaws.

The Trip doesn't really go anywhere you didn't see it heading, but it's worth the journey.

It’s absolutely charming to be reminded of -- or, in most cases, introduced to -- Berg and her particular genius.

Soderbergh, who hasn't ever attempted a film of this sort before, brings his gifts brilliantly to bear, with gorgeous shots of outer space, delicate, swift edits and a captivating score by his longtime collaborator Cliff Martinez -- But when the script becomes more about telling -- or, rather, arguing -- than showing, the film loosens its grip.

To some, this will seem the height of aesthetic experimentation; to others, the most unendurable arty hogwash.

It's inconsistent fun, and it's a little too layered with self-congratulatory irony to be truly transporting.

Wahlberg is the centerpiece of Fear, director James Foley's surprisingly taut new thriller that's equal parts "Cape Fear," "Endless Love" and "The Wild One." [12 Apr 1996]

The combined effect is, as I say, small but sincere. McCarthy may prove to have something bigger in him, or he may be a miniaturist content to build little stories and fill them with all the humanity they can bear. If that's the case, there are far less worthy ways to spend a career.

Magic Mike doesn't sizzle often enough as either cinema or beefcake, though. It's medium-strength Soderbergh, which is better than the full-strength stuff most filmmakers can manage but not exactly the brand that keeps you coming back for more.

Moncrieff manages to get beneath the skin of several of these characters, a nifty trick considering what a crowded world she's created. In all, it's a grueling, emotionally taxing, discomfiting film.

Warm, winning and clever.

There are fine actors at work here. Chow is quiet and cunning, Gong Li is haughty and cold-eyed, Chen Jin is sturdy as a ghost who appears out of the past, and Gin Junjie is vividly bratty as the youngest, and most underappreciated, prince.

Gran Torino amounts to one more elegiac movement in Eastwood's astonishing late-career symphony.

Slight but winning.

Director Bart Layton's film takes us to such strange and emotionally-charged places that we cannot believe that what we're seeing is real, even though it demonstrably is.

So filled with verve and wit for much of its running time that it's depressing to watch it devolve into genuine foolishness and borderline incoherence in its final act.

There's some great fun in the film, and a bit of unexpected wit, and lots of action, much of it ludicrous but some quite engaging.

So emotionally overwhelming that its aesthetics seem almost beside the point.

As it stands, the film is perhaps a tad low-key to catch the eye, but it's carefully enough made and, especially, acted, to keep a hold on the brain and heart long after it's over.

The film is somewhat sketch-like in its episodes and in placing Raquel within a larger world. But it’s very surefooted when it stays close in on her and her universe of chores, rituals and fears.

So did the world need another "Men in Black"? No, not at all. But if there had to be one, then it's certainly a relief that it should be one as agreeable as this.

Developing late in the film, the romantic subplot has the effect of retarding the war story, stretching it out and adding unnecessary elements of sentimentality and sensationalism.

The result is a hodgepodge: not as unpleasant as the alleged foodstuffs described in Schlosser's book, but not exactly prime rib.

Fabulously acted throughout.

In addition to being a funny movie about the movie business, it's a cheeky, ingenious motion picture puzzle.

The film has a dreary, worn quality; much of it is set in winter in Buffalo, N.Y., after all. You know before long that the best you can hope for is that these folks won't kill each other or themselves.

For Whitaker's performance alone, Last King is a substantial piece of work. Otherwise, the film is estimable but not quite great.

Fairly lightweight, going after targets we can all agree deserve the needle. But there are five, six, seven gags you've never seen before -- real surprises- -- and the film deploys them smartly to keep you laughing and unsteady for the duration.

The film has a candy-colored look that stands in well for the books' primitive appeal. And the all-star cast of vocal performers -- Will Ferrell as Yellow Hat, Dick Van Dyke as his boss, David Cross as his rival, Drew Barrymore as his sweetie -- aim squarely and appropriately at a 4-year-old audience.

Sufficiently resembles the first film that the heartiest fans should be content.

A film in which barbs of wit, anger and grief continually prick at you.

Rent isn't nearly as transporting a film as the Oscar-winning adaptation of "Chicago," but its energies and passions compensate for a lot of its deficiencies.

Combines spareness in plot and dialogue with luxurious, sensual technique in such a way that the craft sometimes overwhelms the slender story.

Though the fiction doesn't quite equal the documentary in razzle-dazzle impact, it's a credible, handsome and engaging entertainment.

Under the tight wraps provided by a veteran director and a generally clever script, he (Arnold) has, in The 6th Day, his best picture in many years.

A perfect example of an ordinary movie made unique by the powerhouse performance of its lead.

As it stands, it entertains quite a bit, frustrates too much, and leaves you feeling slightly undernourished, like a meal of tasty but not filling hors d'oeuvres.

There are a few chuckles, a few head-scratches and, thankfully, very few missteps. It charms.

Occasionally sloppy, with a finale so abrupt and incoherent that it feels like something is missing. But it's also pleasantly odd and truly funny, and it builds in strength as it goes along.

Gets behind the armor and the camouflage to give viewers a clear if brief view of the men and women who fight and die under the American flag every day in Iraq.

Van Sant has been quoted in recent media reports as being done with the type of filmmaking that these four movies represent. If that's true, then Paranoid Park is a fine summation of what he learned from making them.

The picture is Logue's entirely, and without him, it might not be worth a visit.

It’s a timely and lively film that reminds us that such phenomena as reality TV, YouTube celebrity and living one’s life 24/7 on Facebook and Twitter aren’t necessarily brand new.

Polisse won a jury prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, but it's only a patchwork success.

If Ruby Sparks doesn't warm you much or form a seamless whole, it's nevertheless got pieces that you can genuinely admire.

Ought to win a prize for sheer audacity.

Some aspects of Siddhartha seem terribly dated: the '60s-ish nude sequences, the wispy music, the big-eyed earnest acting. But it is a lushly beautiful film. Shooting largely in natural light, Nykvist creates a poetry more beautiful than Hesse's prose and as profound as the author's message.

It's not deep for a second -- indeed, it repels depth deliberately as if allergic to it -- but it's as swell a swell time as grown-ups could want at the movies.

For a Hollywood studio movie, you see, The Mexican is remarkably strange and eccentric with a plot like a wrinkled bed sheet and a black comic sensibility that consistently swerves away from the cliches that have been established in this Age of Tarantino.

"Sixth" achieves a rare hushed poetry where Stir, for all its strengths, is more earthbound and familiar.

There's little that's conventionally pleasant about the experience, save the satisfaction of having witnessed the novel and the extreme. But that sensation is at the heart of a lot of great art, from Poe to Stravinsky to Picasso to Diane Arbus to NWA. Nöe would likely, with a black-hearted grin, appreciate being ranked with such company.

The film is gummed up by Bruno Ganz as an intelligence officer who wants not only to capture the bad guys but to understand them -- and to explain them, hand-wringingly, endlessly.

An old-fashioned romantic adventure film strongly acted, ably directed and written with stolid sobriety, the film feels, save for a few moments of verbal or physical intensity, as if it could have been made 60 years ago with Ingrid Bergman in the lead.

It's a film with many strengths, but it's not a knockout. And that's Tarantino's own fault, though not in the first way you might imagine.

If any of what he says makes sense to you -- and even if it’s only a small piece, it’s terrifying -- then you’ll want to invest in gold and organic seeds and friendly relations with your nearest neighbors. You know: JUST IN CASE.....

Kenner mounts it all with a pleasingly fluent and varied style, which makes it more or less easy to absorb his arguments, even if they're familiar from other books and movies and are presented with unopposed certainty.

Turns out to be more ordinary than the recipe might suggest. Oh, it's dense and funny and assured, but it's also chatty and listless in a fashion that constrains a narrative film, which, however reluctantly, it is.

The chief attraction of Albert Nobbs is the acting.

Why We Fight attempts, somewhat sketchily, to connect the dots between Ike's Cassandra-like warnings and current events.

The humor isn't as sharp as it should be, and the story isn't as tight as it could be.

An often pedestrian film, one that never inflates to the epic grandeur to which it aspires or transfers its own emotional trajectory off the screen and into the viewer.

You still marvel at the visuals -- cinematographer M. David Mullen has done miracles with what must have been a microscopic budget -- but you're less invested in the tale. Which is a pity, because it might have been a perfect little potboiler. As it stands, it's merely pretty darned good of its type.

It's a remarkably intimate look at the man and his thinking, and you wish for more history to flesh out the biographical aspects of his life.

Doesn't make the case that watching truly bad movies is worthwhile. But it does make you realize that nobody gets up in the morning, showers, breakfasts, dresses and goes to work thinking they're making the worst film in history, either.

Sorrentino is a spectacularly inventive talent and has harnessed an astounding performance from Servillo.

You've never been quite this close to a movie star, and after enduring the experience you'll likely never want to repeat it.

The Dark Knight Rises is reasonably accomplished as a gigantic superhero movie; as a meditation on capital and its personal and social discontents, it's strictly from the funny pages.

Schlesinger's adaptation of Nathaniel West's classic novella, the Hollywood of the 1930s is decidedly as ruinous for its denizens as the Hollywood of the 1970s. [28 Jul 2000]

Tries less to dazzle you than reel you in with competence and restraint.

Wild demonstrates that even a workaday movie can become something special when blessed with once-in-a-lifetime casting and a couple of dozen hilarious one-liners. [19 Jun 1998, p.32]

Too well-made and well-acted to be entirely cute -- but the result is fairly tepid in comparison to the overheated highlights of Burton's career.

There are moments that stir, and it's always lovely, but it's generally too remote to gain hold of you truly.

For good and ill, there is only one John Waters.

With its protracted storytelling, its fuzzy philosophizing and its less-than-compelling leading man, it's far less gripping than the subject matter deserves.

Warts and all, Factotum feels very close to the real thing.

Finely etched and acted but too often limpid and punchless in its impact.

At times an uneasy mix of cold-eyed neorealism and soft-headed sentimentality, but after its initial struggles it presents itself as a moving film, made with loving craft, a painterly eye and luscious language.

It’s not earth-shaking, but it’s diverting and polished.

While it lacks the experimental razzle-dazzle of "Lola," the film is a similarly confident and fetching look at love, coincidence, tragedy and fate among the young, the bored and the beautiful.

The snaky cinematography pulls you through even when the writing doesn't, and the best performances keep you hoping that you'll feel the next one or the one after that just as powerfully.

For the most part, The Last Kiss engages and pleases with its shaggy earnestness.

Still, there's a decency at the film's core and a desire to do the predictable thing in a generally unpredictable fashion. Those traits make it impossible to reject "Happyness" out of hand.

There is greatness in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York: titanic acting, violent poetry, moviemaking on a grand scale, a real air of daring. And there is flab in it as well, and confusion.

Hilarious mixture of Greek tragedy and Aaron Spelling soap opera that spews nasty one-liners and winking '60 signifiers like a slot machine that's paying out.

An engaging chronicle not only of a memorable game but also of an era that seems at once more innocent and combustible than our own.

The laughs in Adventureland aren't as outlandish as those in "Superbad," but they seem more based in experience and truth. You could want something more raucous, I suppose, but that wouldn't necessarily be an improvement.

When the picture hits high gear, your qualms vanish one by one, and the script, credited to four writers, grows into its own.

Agreeably entertaining, peppered with rich laughs and very nice actorly touches.

Is it a silly movie? At times, yes. Is it creaky and blatant and obvious? Quite often, absolutely. But should you miss it in this splendidly colorful restoration? Not on your life.

An attractive, charming film that has fun with its period settings, its goofy plot and its off-kilter performances.

A tender and affirmative movie, if never a transporting one.

There are nice bits throughout, and your heart can’t help but go out to these impassioned young lovers whom you know are doomed. But Bright Star is too often tarnished by the ordinary.

The convoluted story is an excuse for comical tricks of the camera, fractures of chronology, acid punch lines and amusingly excessive performances. (In this latter category, Pitt, so deep into his character that you can smell him, wins the day gloriously.)

You can sense the deep investment Donzelli and Elkaïm have in what they're doing, which isn't something you get at the movies every day.

It's a brave film, particularly on the part of Allen, and in many ways an accomplished film. But it's so bookish and clever that you can never fully embrace it, even when you wish you could.

The film sometimes feels like the kid brother of “Fog of War,” Errol Morris’s far more compelling account of the mind of Robert McNamara, Ellsberg’s one-time boss. There’s reality and depth here, but a chill, too, that the filmmaking never quite manages to melt.

Even with Paul Green's invective echoing in the back of your mind, nothing's quite so heartwarming as the sight of a young person blossoming.

It's a funny thing: On the one hand, you fault Taymor for going out of her way to create some of the more disposable sequences. On the other, you can forgive her: Who wouldn't get carried away given the opportunity she has been given here to play with one of the world's greatest song catalogs?

Ultimately, The Adjustment Bureau shifts from paranoid dystopia to a more hopeful tenor, and that weakens it slightly.

Children of Men has some magnificent moments of moviemaking and is thoroughly infused with just the atmosphere Cuaron has aimed for. But it's so streamlined in its storytelling and unvarying in its tone that it's more deadening than transporting.

It's fast, it's sure, it's violent and it's fun, even as it sometimes pushes the limits of ready coherence or dramatic plausibility.

The film is filled with fascinating, static set-ups, beautiful but never fussy or artificial.

Loaded with fine performances, traffics in audacious images and generally comports itself with a great deal more grace and gravitas than most movies with roots in fantastic themes.

Brick is kinda brilliant and kinda demented, and you love it for the former far more than you hold the latter against it.

An engaging if overlong documentary.

Prometheus is breezy and comely and sufficiently clever to mitigate most qualms, and Fassbender, especially, is wonderful.

A modest little caper film that satisfies chiefly because of its relative familiarity and lack of ambition.

The sheer volume of amazing things that del Toro is able to mine from his unconscious and render plausibly on the screen is remarkable. Hellboy II feels pretty sequel-y, as these things go, but there's a lot in it that has no precedent of any kind, anywhere, ever. That stuff makes it worthwhile.

Never dull visually, but it's certainly monomaniacal and heartless thematically.

Heading South is strong in bursts, but the bursts are too diffuse for its best moments to last.

Red isn't edifying, ennobling, or artful. It's just an utterly satisfying combination of big kicks, cheap thrills and real laughs.

Filled with nasty, nasty stuff.

The problem here is that while some of Mann's work is overwhelmingly great, the sum of it simply never compels.

It offers the small delight of watching a master step back from more ardent work to put together a diverting miniature. And in the scheme of things, that's actually more of an accomplishment than it might sound. Minor Mozart, after all, is still pretty darned good.

It's a testament to Van Sant's way with actors that the performances are better than the lines and that the film tugs undeniably at the heart as the awful finale falls. But a lack of poetry and freshness in the writing nags.

Still, when a director of his pedigree and years brings so much life to the screen, inconsistency hardly seems to matter.

Soderbergh's experiments are gripping -- the photography, music, wobbly chronology and so on -- but the movie is more of a curiosity than anything else.

What we've got is a mixed though certainly entertaining bag.

The issues the film raises are truly profound and discomfiting whether you work in the media or just consume it.

Freaknomics is breezy, but you can't help but think it belongs on TV, where the filmmakers would have gotten more time with their subjects and the tone mightn't seem so forced.

Watching The Queen of Versailles you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

The Killer Inside Me isn’t for everyone, and even some people who think it’s their sort of thing might be offended. But it’s too well made to dismiss outright for its twisted cruelty. Maybe that’s a compliment, maybe not.

Space Jam is a high-energy comedy that mixes live action, animation, cornball storytelling and rowdy humor into an energetic, gee-whiz confection that will probably delight just about everybody. [15 Nov 1996, p.20]

Even though Spurlock, a totally likeable Everyman, is in the middle of it at all times, "PWPTGMES" never feels like the work of, oh, Michael Moore.

Moore's movies may not always be fully accurate in their details, but they almost always spur vital national conversation.

It's contrived, but that doesn't keep it from being kinda nifty.

It's clear that Weerasethakul knows exactly what he wants to do and that he does it in his own way. And that's why his film, even if it can't be recommended to everyone, blossoms inside you the longer you allow it to.

The result is typical Mendes: accomplished, calculated and uncommitted. Maybe it's because his talent comes to him too easily, but I've yet to sense his heart and soul in a film.

There's a touch of second-rate playwriting about it that imparts a flattened feel to the end of an otherwise crackerjack picture.

It's got a bust-out performance from Eckhart that's worth remembering.

If you're not a Beasties fan, you'll get almost nothing out of this after about two minutes. But if you like the band and want to see them rock hard in front of their oldest fans, it's a tasty treat.

There are real thrills here, especially as the Bang Bang starts touring and becomes a minor sensation. But it's a little too hermetic and goopy and humorless and cool to invite you to wrap your arms around it. The Howes shared a single liver, but what this film version of their lives needs is more heart.

There's powerful craft here, and Larsson's story has more than proven its ability to grip. But missing almost entirely is a sense of urgency and discovery.

The 155 minutes of Watchmen are studded with inspired spectacles: fights and flights and imaginary creatures and reworked bits of history.

Hollywood used to make a fair number of films like The Escapist (sigh: remember grown-up dramas?), and it's a satisfying variation on a once-familiar theme.

A worthy and compelling look at a unique and essentially American figure.

At once breezy and substantial, but it could have been more powerful if it were, paradoxically, sharper and blunter.

It's not an ideal film, but it has the virtue of the ideal star, and that counts.

It's played with real zest and energy, and if you can stand the heat it gives off it may charm you despite yourself.

Witty, treasure-filled and nostalgic in the best sense.

There are strange variations in the mood of Three Burials that may strike some viewers as flippant. As gritty and real as the business of toting a corpse at gunpoint gets, the tone occasionally veers into farce. But it's never too long before the focus returns to Jones' weathered eyes.

A story like this requires a villain worthy of decades of built up horror and rage, and Christensen provides a thoroughly credible stimulus for the nail-biting events of the film.

It's possible for a despicable heart and mind to make great art. And if Gibson hasn't quite done that with Apocalypto, he's nevertheless made an impressive and engrossing film. If you choose out of hand to miss it, which is your right, you'll be missing something.

There's a lot of pleasure in seeing a mature filmmaker put together something so intricate with what seems like so little strain.

Packs the power to make you see at least a few corners of the world in a new and bracing light.

The ensemble rolls gleefully with the script's twists (which aren't all that twisty, to be fair), and the film piles up laugh after laugh agreeably.

There's talent here, and creativity, but there's that rankling question at the core: Are we meant to sympathize with these outsiders or laugh at them?

The most adventuresome element in The Wackness isn't its pop-culture skin but the unlikely friendship of Luke and Squires...As buddies, they're a kick. But you wish they had a kickier picture to support them.

Like "Crumb" or "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," it's remarkably close-up moviemaking, with family secrets laid bare for all the world to see.

The least erotic, exotic, luxurious and sarcastic Bond film ever made. Its hero is haunted, obsessed, merciless, cold. There are no gadgets or flippant one-liners and there's almost no sex.

If this sounds like cheesy melodrama, that's exactly how director Francois Ozon ("Swimming Pool," "8 Women") wants it.

Pieces of April isn't the biggest or best film of the year, but it's touching, witty, smart and well-made. You have to sort through a lot of chaff at the multiplex to find all those qualities in a single movie.

Moves with lightness, verve and charm, which Magnetic Fields fans might find amusing, given Merritt's well-known morosity. But there is more than a suggestion here that his persona is just that, and that those sweet melodies he sings so dryly arise from a truly sweet core.

The delicacy of the film might frustrate some audiences. As if watching a listless young relative do nothing in particular with his or her life, you sometimes want to shake these folks by the shoulders and tell them to get in gear. But then you realize that life has many gears and that moving slowly and somewhat aimlessly is no sin.

The trouble is that the film forsakes one sort of energy for another, and the downshift is a drag.

Racy, obscene, spirited and infectious.

The film may have its troubled spots, but its poignant depiction of human tenderness more than compensates for them. [18 Nov 1994, p.17]

The film isnt without bumps -- theres something rather gnomish and self-serving about its tolerance for grotesqueries and caricature -- but it presents us with a wholly rendered, largely credible world peppered with witty little moments and wryly chosen details. [19 Jun 1998, p.30]

Ted may not be profound or deft, but when it hits the sweet-sour spot, which it does regularly, it can win you over.

In breezy fashion, it introduces us to a handful of crossword savants, the history of crossword puzzles, a number of celebrity crossword addicts...

Why would you watch a film about a creep like Greenberg? Well, aside from the fact that it’s well-done and intense and occasionally funny (in a dark, dark way, mind you), there’s the sneaking suspicion that there’s a little of this fellow in all of us, and self-knowledge of that sort is a gift that, often, only art can give.

Resembles an amusement park ride -- a visit to a house of horrors that ends, more or less, where it begins.

Its sense of play, its sleek design and Yuen's spectacular action sequences will make it, I suspect, attractive to palates not accustomed to the spicier or cruder forms of this genre.

The result is persuasive but incomplete. Dick is working here as a journalist, and the story is far from fully unfolded. Still, what he proffers will keep you thinking, talking and engaged.

Characters in Bullhead act out of stupidity, greed, anger and vanity; their world is filmed in a washed-out haze; the miserable fortune that devastated young Jacky haunts him ceaselessly still. The film's final notes hint at a state of grace, perhaps, or at least of release. But there's a tautological determinism throughout that suggest otherwise.

Studded with sturdy acting.

A light, old-fashioned, likable film that capitalizes on the personae of its three key performers and a sort of playfulness.

Sincere, delicately funny, a little staid, a little precious, and more interested in the ebb and flow of the heart than in the dubious rewards of sensational narrative twists.

Frightening stuff, and made all the more so because of how matter-of-factly by writer-director David Michôd plays it.

The little film is made uniquely engaging by the performance of its young star, Chris Marquette.

Ladybird, Ladybird is a scathing indictment of a meddlesome social-service sysBased on a true story, and set in a large English city, it is wrenching viewing, guaranteed to make complacent audiences reconsider their attitudes toward social welfare, single parents and the lot of battered, state-dependent women. [27 Jan 1995, p.12]

Spirited and saucy, Hit and Run is a small movie with big spirit, a Tarantino-ish sensibility, and a scattergun ethos that results in more hits than misses.

You'll laugh and cry at the film, but you'll bridle, too, at Brooks' clumsy technique.

Weir is the real deal, and his gifts more than repay the time you invest in the film.

Because nothing says 'holiday fun' quite like an intellectual struggle between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung peppered with a few vivid episodes of S-&-M sex, voila A Dangerous Method.

It never exactly lights you on fire, but you always believe it.

It would've been nice to hear Robinson or Wonder reciprocate the affection of the band, and it would've been even more interesting to hear Gordy try to defend himself -- as if he could.

It's not a happy film, but it feels true.

The film is amped up to insanity in its language (both verbal and cinematic), in its ironic embrace of teen-salvation movie clichés, and in its depiction of a small town as a ghetto hell. But just when you think they've gone too far, the Trost brothers 1) go further and 2) wink.

Mostly, constant little reminders show that Breillat knows the business of movies in her bones. You can learn from it and enjoy it -- two things I never thought possible to say about a Breillat film until now.

See Casino Royale for a Bond you've never seen before, and then imagine him in a film two-thirds the size. Here's hoping the writers of the next Bond movie employ the same personal trainer that Craig did to keep the script tight and lean.

It's a film that gently spoofs such cultural staples as ranchera music, illegal gambling, labor exploitation and tabloid media. And it's the sort of film that sneaks serious themes and emotions in just when you think it's about to dissolve into farce. Small but largely satisfying.

A frustrating combination of inspiration and routine, acuity and dullness, originality and fashion. Part web-of-life indie film, part troubled teen drama, part suburban satire, part comic book fantasy, it vacillates between the engaging and the silly, buoyed by energetic performances but pulled underwater by self-satisfied writing and direction.

Effectively cast and shot with exciting immediacy.

By now, you know exactly what to expect, which is both good and bad. To my mind, Anderson reached the acme of this formula in the first go, in "Tenenbaums," and has now replicated it twice, evoking smaller pleasures each time.

Despite the film's inevitably downbeat tone and occasional repetitiveness, there is that heavenly music to remember -- or to encounter for the first time. You will leave the theater singing, if with a touch of melancholy.

To quote a source as authoritative as Francis Bacon -- namely a "New Yorker" cartoon: "On the internet no one knows you're a dog."

Monsters is a tiny sci-fi thriller that makes up what it lacks in big effects with a fine photographic eye, a low-key sense of scale, and a genuine (if not always well-performed) human drama.

The result is a film that's more credible in its building blocks than in its whole.

What Machete does have -- and what saves it from itself -- is comic bloodthirst, shameless vulgarity and the determination of Rodriguez and Maniquis to wink at their audience at every moment.

It's a movie of charm and insight, well-acted and carefully observed, but it's also one that lacks any real heights to offset the generic competence that characterizes it. There's no real drama to follow, no surprises of sufficient magnitude to enliven the experience.

Zobel isn't a sadist about all of this as, say, Roman Polanski or David Lynch or Todd Solondz might have been. There's a humanity here, even for the restaurant manager. But that still doesn't make Compliance easy to ingest.

Lennon's story is so remarkable and the footage assembled here so fresh and fascinating that the film engrosses despite its formal failings. Give it a chance.

Perhaps Following Sean is as much of a cultural oddity as "Sean" itself turned out to be. But it's a decidedly interesting one nonetheless.

More seriously, Jarecki never quite pierces the skin of this world, capturing its shiny and grimy surfaces but failing to immerse us in its flaws; too often it's like flipping through a magazine story on the lives of the rich and corrupt.

As you can reliably expect of a work by Alan Bennett, The History Boys is bubbly, witty, sneaky-smart entertainment with the additional virtues of heart and cunning.

With its weary introductory and concluding passages, it announces itself as the most typical of fare, a real letdown after that stirringly fresh central part.

It’s an eye-opening and modestly funny look at a massive business and a culture with its own signifiers and language.

A deliriously entertaining field report from a historical moment when porn darned near became mainstream.

The film is never less than beautiful, but it's never truly absorbing.

Although there is some gimmickry, this is one of the most straightforward versions of the Tempest ever filmed, making it edifying as well as -- when Taymor hits a groove -- dazzling.

An unexpectedly charming little film.

A handsome film, an earnest film, a film with taste in music and photography and a real sense of intelligence. But too often it feels like an exercise. And even when you're impressed by it, you know you're being played.

An ascerbic swipe at family counseling, holiday dinners, small-town mores and baby-boomer marriages, ``The Ref'' is acted and written with such pleasure that its meanness becomes cleansing, a stripping-away of the sentimentality that suffocates most Hollywood films about families. [11 Mar 1994, p.AE15]

It may be mindless and sexless and humorless, but Jumper jumps.

Apparently it’s the second film of a trilogy Demme intends on Young -- and the middles are always the hardest parts to get right, yeah?

Tt is a comeback, and if it leads the director to better work, it can be forgiven as a warm-up.

Though serious, well-crafted and handsome, lacks most of the pungency of the epitome of the genre, "Lawrence of Arabia."

As cinema, it's polenta, but it's made palatable by the piquant sauce with which these two great stars season it.

Indeed, Green Zone plays a little bit like a video game version of the Oscar-winning film (The Hurt Locker)-- which should tell you right off whether it's for you or not.

A frustrating, pedantic, cacophonous jumble of a picture, peopled with as many straw men and caricatures as living, breathing humans.

One Day, despite its attractiveness, never manages to find a way to bring the conceit fully to life.

The film has a spry quality, but the jokes are neither funny nor dark enough, the quirky roadside episodes aren't sufficiently outlandish or imaginative, the romantic sparks don't convince and the plotting becomes increasingly silly and tedious. Dukic conjures an air of play and naughtiness, but that's about as deep as he cuts.

It's not Allen's weakest work, not by far. But its impact is shockingly superficial.

Stardust in a nutshell: hardly great shakes, but better and more satisfying than it first seems.

When the picture's good, it's really something; when it's bad, you grit your teeth and pray it will end.

Although it tries continually to focus on the heart, it ultimately fails to ignite it.

It's a movie, finally, that feels longer than its exquisitely brief source material, which is a crime of sorts.

A nearly perfect piffle in an age when hardly any movie seems to know how to play the light notes well.

Isn't a particularly good movie if what interests you is the art of film -- cinematography, editing, screenwriting, staging, little things like that. But if you're chiefly interested in turning off the upstairs lights and relaxing with a few laughs, you could do a lot worse.

It's not a question of agreeing or disagreeing with this film's point of view to say that it isn't as often convincing as it is convinced.

Heart and verve in surfeit makes the film rise above its flaws often enough to win you over.

Salt is hooey, but in a medium in which hooey is the stock-in-trade, it's effective hooey, and hooey with admirable craft, and, most of all, breezy hooey.

Eastwood never manages to bring the past to life, even as DiCaprio and company dive gamely into the material.

Feels like a tonic for its makers, a means of clearing the palate after a series of rich meals. For viewers who appreciate risks, it should be just as refreshing.

Built on an absolutely marvelous idea but manages to make only about two-thirds of a good movie of it.

Bounces along magnetically even when the storytelling goes a bit flat.

As a brief introduction to Belle and his amazing gifts, District B 13 is a treat. But as a movie its feet are dully planted on the ground.

It adds up to a chatty film of genuine visual interest and occasionally sharp acting but no visceral appeal or satisfaction. It's a movie that plays like a book -- that is, watching it is more like reading than a thriller should ever be.

The young guns on board are Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh, and it's sad to report that they massively outshine the nonagenarian Antonioni.

Like many things about Brick Lane, this story is dealt with in too cursory and pat a fashion. The film's heart can't be faulted, but its head is working in a regrettably low gear.

The movie isn't uniformly taut, but it's funny, acid and clever, the work of a fine craftsman working in a comfortable metier.

It's fine ensemble work, but you nevertheless grow itchy wishing Roos had focused it a little better.

If The Good Thief isn't up to the work that inspired it, it's nevertheless fresh and distinct, a shot of citrus in a movie season far too often tasting of pablum.

Despite the rich, atmospheric textures, Norton's artificiality, Watts' unlikability, and a plot comprised of one melodramatic wrinkle after another all contrive to frustrate our empathy.

It's modestly effective at creating a mood and at critiquing both business place mores and the evils of Western hubris. But, chiefly, it's about gory scares and sniffling laughs.

Distinct from others of its lowly stripe because of the credibly real-feeling performances by much of its youthful ensemble.

A handsome work of impressive sweep dotted with fine performances. It offers a few fine moments of wit, fear and emotional intimacy. But it rarely pulses with vital life.

Whatever you make of the film's politics, Luke makes a vivid impression in his most substantial role since "Antwone Fisher," and Robbins resists the temptation to make the thinly written Vos a villainous caricature.

Handsome, professional and dutiful, but it never feels inspired.

Some truly memorable moments, but they come early and, as the film wears its way along, become increasingly hard to call to mind.

With the grounded performances, a pleasant look and feel and the brains to refrain from anything more than a quiet portrait of life, The Housekeeper makes for the sort of well-seasoned meal that's so refreshing in the summertime.

Neil Young Journeys is the third documentary/concert film focusing on the great Canadian songwriter that director Jonathan Demme has made since 2006, and it's the weakest of the three, even as it sporadically charms.

Yet another, albeit sparer, Iñárritu gloom-fest.