Shawn Levy

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

It's a film that can leave you on the fence. There's great facility with non-pro actors, with unusual locations, with both intimate and epic-scale scenes. Yet at the same time, Takata's reserve overwhelms the picture and makes its efforts to elicit emotions seem clumsy.

Alas, Robbins is far more interesting than Cruise, and you wonder what the film would have been like if their roles were reversed -- if Robbins were the loser in search of redemption and Cruise the agitated freak in the basement.

Oacks more heat, acid, danger and drama into its brief running time than most films of nearly double the length.

As a fable, The City of Lost Children may not have a resonantly significant moral, but as a film, it is without a doubt the most incredible thing that the cinema has brought us this year. [22 Dec 1995]

It may not add up to a narrative, but it's a fascinating compilation -- a mixtape you may want to hear more than once.

It's a dark, brooding, moody film that follows a grim narrative to a logical inevitability and is nonetheless fully infused with a spirit of humanity.

It's the sort of history you could nibble on for hours.

It's a fine debut, far more grounded, plausible and engrossing than most Hollywood thrillers.

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.

So rich, moving and surprising that a familiar story starts to feel new again. The details, the personalities and the final twist grab you until you're left truly shaken and inspired.

It's a film full of clever moments that may at first seem cheeky but come to feel inspired, with a third act (which only a churl would describe) that rises to a dizzyingly heightened level of metaphysics and mayhem.

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

A sweet and wise little film.

There's a lot of fascinating talk here and a genuine passion for ideas and words. But it's also a case where the messenger is so grating that we feel the perverse urge to kill the message that he carries just to spite him.

Impressively reframes the gun-control debate in terms that advocates of both sides might find fruitful, but Moore doesn't do anything to shed his reputation as a snot.

Johansson, fittingly, is the focus. In her face, as in the faces of Vermeer's handful of captivating subjects, the viewer intuits whole stories and worlds.

This is grand, inspiring entertainment of a sort that Hollywood aspires to and rarely achieves.

Creates a thoroughly curious combination of tension and eroticism.

A dull, uninspiring film that combines pedestrian acting, lackluster special effects and deadly pace with a pseudo-religious theme.

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

Simple enough for children, deep enough for adults, clever enough for cynics.

The overall cheekiness of the film far outweighs its preachy moments. For the most part, it's a brisk, funny and engaging movie that does genuinely exciting things with little bits of string and wire and such.

You'll gasp appalled and laugh outraged and possibly, watching the spectacle of a promising young lad treading desperately in a nasty sea, shed an errant tear.

It's spirited and funny and deeply entertaining, a summer movie for kids who think like adults and adults who feel like kids.

Pieces of War Horse that may charm some eyes might well bore others to tears.

In the wake of everything we've seen on TV and in movies in recent decades, it's amazing that something as harmless as language can still stupefy us. As The Aristocrats demonstrates, there is real humor in the confrontation of taboos.

The combination of immediacy and intimacy in Armadillo is exceedingly rare.