Shawn Levy

As a film, Inside Job is polished enough, and fueled by piquant indignation, but it's also often scattershot and meandering.

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.

If it can seem like there's no end of films about the Holocaust, it might be because there is no bottom to the well of crime, inhumanity and evil described by that ghastly event.

There are hints lately that De Niro is trying to build a fourth, restorative act to his wayward film career, and he brings some real fire, without which Stone would be helpless.

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

Thirty-five years since its debut, The Conformist is still a stunning, challenging, transporting film.

The acting is so persuasive as to be transparent.

It's as sullying and disheartening an experience as the movies can offer .

The acting is the strongest thing about the film. Pitt nicely balances the dashing and wounded sides of Tristan's character. [13 Jan 1995]

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

It's a wonderfully crafted work, handsome, lively, stirring and utterly convincing in its depiction of the perils and thrills of sea life. But I'm not sure that my personal enthusiasm for it will translate entirely for viewers whose favorite movie about the high seas is, for perfectly good reasons, "Pirates of the Caribbean."

The film manages the rare trick of improving as it unrolls from the utterly putrid to the barely tolerable. And, friends, I wish to say that sometimes that is as good as you can hope for in this racket.

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?

There's drama here, and moments of genuine tension, but there's fun, too, which is the point of a movie like this. To Ratliff's credit, he never lets the considerable craft get in the way.

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

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.

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.

How the mighty (De Niro and Hoffman) have fallen? More like how the mighty have pile-driven themselves into the solid mass of rock at the core of the Earth. . . .

This fascinating and occasionally transporting film never quite transforms into something really great.

It's a lively, charming film, and if it gave us a little more of the band's history, it would be perfect. As it is, it's a perfect introduction to some great songs and fascinating characters.

It's a celebration of American female screen acting, it's a study of early feminism that feels relevant today, it's a carefully mounted exercise in period filmmaking and it's a beloved novel come to life for the fourth time. [23 Dec 1994]

It ends on a random note, making an awkward plea for better ecological stewardship of the Earth, which looked so small and frail to the astronauts regarding it from the moon. But otherwise it's a satisfying and heartening reminder of what a glorious thing a small group of men once contrived to do.

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.

Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.

A near-perfect movie.

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

It's energetic and occasionally inspired. Its gritty, sweaty, shiny feel deepens the case that there's a vital new essence to Brazilian cinema.