Shawn Levy

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?

A fine and sturdy picture, capable of standing alongside the many such films made when Westerns were one of our chief entertainments.

Is it dreary, stingy and strained? Well, yes: it's Jane Eyre, after all. But it's also robust and full-blooded and forceful: it's Jane Eyre, after all.

The character who emerges in the breezy, somewhat meandering Buck is plain-spoken, heartfelt, compassionate, witty, and wise. His horse-training technique is based on understanding the psychology of animals and on attuning his human and equine clients with one another.

An absorbing, entertaining, amusing and wrenching film.

A gripping movie about espionage, loyalty and betrayal.

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.

The film is like a lot like Effie: It occasionally vexes or disappoints, but -- I am telling you -- it dazzles.

The overall effect is awe and affection -- and a strange urge to get on a board and, uh, shred, dude.

An altogether astounding testimony to the band's longevity, vitality and verve.

For a picture about a stalker, Chuck and Buck is rather sweet, funny and winning.

A unique and masterful film, filled with surprises and felicities and moments of transporting visual power.

The film is shot (by Dan Lausten) with a credible creepiness, and it teems with clever touches. [17 Apr 1998]

It's best seen as a breezy entertainment and a reminder of how potent some of these performers -- many of whom are dead -- were in their primes.

There's a breeziness to Soul Kitchen, good performances by Moritz Bleibtreu as Zinos' slippery brother and Birol Unel as his fanatical new chef, and a peppy soundtrack.

Genuinely breathtaking.

The film does a lovely job of balancing emotional clarity, formal trickery, pop sweetness, and heartfelt narrative. It is, yes, cute, and it is, yes, quirky. And it is entirely justified, estimable and loveable in being those things.

Refreshing and disorienting movie.

Campbell Scott and Hope Davis, both of whom work with such subtlety and depth, rescue the film from Rudolph's seemingly native inability to keep it steadily on course.

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 may not be a great movie, but the acting in it is amazing.

The result is a gripping film about a subject almost too good to be true.

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.

This impressive film feels more like a display, if an often dazzling one, than a genuine experience.

Filled with nasty, nasty stuff.

It's a refreshing sensation, even if it makes you feel a touch seasick at first, and the fittingly eerie conclusion to a lavish and unsettling movie.

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.

Among the many documentaries about the Iraq war, this one stands our for its intelligence, variety and measured emotionalism. [06 Apr 2007, p.26]