Shawn Levy

Grim, sordid and, as it progresses, increasingly dunderheaded.

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.

The most striking thing about it is what it's not...a richly atmospheric film that races surefootedly through complexities of data and emotion like a spy movie and not at all like a sentimental sob story.

Long and slow, granted, but it's so peppered with moments of realism and nuanced craft that it continually rewards careful viewing.

It’s not a great film, but parts of it are outstanding.

The result is a true conundrum: You can't say for sure if a scam is in play or if a genuine genius is being smeared. And the brilliance of the film is that it doesn't let you feel secure in choosing either side.

Phoenix makes an interesting case of Leonard's twitchiness and mooning, but neither Paltrow nor Shaw is particularly credible as a Brooklynite, and Rossellini and Moshonov seem like they've wandered in from another film altogether.

Some things in Sin City are almost too much to watch: the violence, the cruelty, the irredeemable evil. But it's irresistibly magnetic because it serves as a barely distorted mirror to our world.

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.

This is hair-raising, clever and winning entertainment. Even if his protagonists aren't entirely what they seem to be or think they are, Mr. Jones is, it's increasingly clear, the real thing.

That it's based on a true spying case seems almost incidental. The heart of the picture is the human drama.

Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, a veteran of low-tech Dogme films, work wonders with a digital camera, pausing to take in the beauty of the countryside or an eerily empty London…It's virtuosic without ever quite being showy.

It's a wonderful debut, despite all the pain you may feel watching it.

Feels like a lost film from the '60s in the very best way: unstructured and intrepid and free. As a result, it's sometimes a little indulgent and overlong. But, like its hero, it's never less than sincere in its search for truth and beauty, even as it stares death in the eye.

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.

Woo's hand is sure and his eye, as ever, finds beauty in everything, even death.

A near-perfect movie.

David Lynch's Inland Empire left me grasping for the merest crumbs of comprehension.

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

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

Anyone looking for a full-bodied account of the woman, her deeds, and her place in history shouldn't be encouraged to linger too long with The Iron Lady.

This film insists on being taken on its own terms -- the sort of demand, in other words, that defines the best art.

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.

By and large it's formulaic and dull.

There is life to The Proposition, though, and brutal, pitiless life it is. If it breathed more (and if Huston had spoken less), it might have been remarkable. As it is, it's monotonous, grim and uneven.

A charming but only partly satisfying portrait of its subject.

It's an entirely conceived work of art, dark and hopeless and maybe even callous, but glittering and wonderful in its determination and in its craft.

Emotionally brutal, ferociously acted, crafted with unflagging expertise and relentlessly locked in its vision of human darkness, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is as grim and despairing as any tragedy by Sophocles or Shakespeare.