Stephen Holden

Not a horror movie but a witty, expertly constructed psychological thriller.

Focusing on the magazine and not its offshoots, the film is uproarious, not for what its many talking heads say but for its astonishing procession of brilliant, boundary-breaching illustrations and captions (augmented by some animation), many of which are as explosively funny today as they were when first published.

The Iranian director Majid Majidi’s sad, soulful film The Willow Tree is his second movie to explore blindness and sight on multiple levels.

Family dynamics examined through the prism of art: The Woodmans, C. Scott Willis's compelling documentary study of an artistic clan whose comfortable life was shattered by the suicide of its youngest member, asks profound questions to which there really are no answers.

This movie, directed and produced by Dave Davidson and Amber Edwards, digs deeply enough into Mr. Giordano’s world to convey the drudgery and headaches of being a bandleader.

The movie's biggest disappointment is the vague, unfocused performance of Ms. Ricci, an actress known for taking risky, unsympathetic roles. Here she seems somewhat intimidated by her character.

That it succeeds in being both stimulating and funny is a testament to the talent and open-heartedness of Ms. Dunye, who wrote and directed the movie and is its star.

Although Ms. Berg’s enthralling film tells a story somewhat similar to “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s recent documentary portrait of Amy Winehouse (who also died at 27), the demons that devoured Winehouse came from outside as much from within. Not so with Joplin.

In its unassuming way, this tiny, low-budget film is a universal reflection on issues of personal identity and choice for which there are no easy answers.

Tries to do too much in too little time. It would be a stronger film if it devoted more detailed attention to the plight of the returning veteran. As it stands, it is a scattershot antiwar polemic that doesn't bolster its arguments with any historical perspective or statistical evidence. No one from the government or the military is trotted out to give an opposing view. This is not to say that The Ground Truth, on its own terms, isn't devastating.

Looks and feels like a fever dream about an alternate universe. Suffused with a sense of wonder, it hovers, dancing inside its own ethereal bubble.

If there were more experimental films as entertaining as The Decay of Fiction, Pat O’Neill's luminous Hollywood ghost story, the notion of a thriving avant-garde cinema might not be so intimidating to the moviegoing public.

The movie’s unblinking observation of a friendship put to the test is amused, queasy making, kindhearted and unfailingly truthful.

Certainly an honorable film. But honorable is not always watchable.

As Harry and Julie, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Winningham make an unusually refreshing pair.

The film fails to convey the claustrophobic terror experienced by a man who called his book "Letters From Hell."

It places Basquiat's art in a cultural context with an enthusiasm and zest that make the many pictures shown come blazingly alive.

If Mr. Neil had the tonal mastery of Wes Anderson, Goats could have been so much more than an episodic sequence of whimsical little psychodramas.

[A] small, likably sentimental film.

Calm, deliberate and devastating, Jessica Sanders's documentary After Innocence confirms many of the worst fears about weaknesses in the American criminal-justice system.

At its best, Cast Away, like "Titanic," awes us with its sheer oceanic sweep and its cosmic apprehension of human insignificance.

This is civilized human behavior captured with a clinical precision and accuracy.

When it comes to actual historical details, Farewell crams too many notions into expositional blips of dialogue. And the scenes of conferences in the corridors of power, whether in Moscow, Paris or Washington, are strained and abrupt.

Frustratingly sketchy partly because it is not finally a survival tale but a mystical evocation of the power of Inuit mythology, and how the passing down of ancient wisdom can sustain the human spirit in the direst circumstances. But the unanswered questions still nag.

As End of the Century reveals even more starkly than the recent Metallica documentary, "Some Kind of Monster," harmony among band members becomes harder to sustain as the years gather, youthful enthusiasm wanes, and personalities define themselves.

Settles for being an atmospheric scenes-in-the-life biography of someone's most unforgettable character. It could have been so much more.

The brilliant, sinister French thriller Red Lights is a twisty road movie in which every sign points toward catastrophe.

A gripping and important documentary.

What distinguishes Raja from every other movie to contemplate the treacherous intersection of passion, avarice and power is its unsettling emotional honesty. The two central performances are so spontaneous and mercurial that the reckless flirtation seems to be unfolding before your eyes.

More glaringly than most sports documentaries, The Armstrong Lie reinforces the sad truth that the adage “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” doesn’t apply to professional sports. Maybe it never did. Winning is everything.

It's all very beautiful, not to mentioned high-minded. But the loftiness comes at a sacrifice.

[An] exquisite, beautifully shot meditation on love clouded by fear and doubt.

Mendelsohn's fusion of science fiction and Chekhovian melancholy finds a fresh perspective on a familiar theme.

A breezy, informal history of the Black Bear Ranch, a long-running California commune begun in the summer of 1968 and still in existence, offers the fascinating spectacle of observing people then and now.

For its courage to address a ticklish subject with warmhearted humor, Breakfast With Scot, adapted from a novel by Michael Downing, deserves a light round of applause.

Methodically ticks off the forms of oppression visited on gays and lesbians in the days before the gay rights movement.

The characters' faces reveal more about them than any words that come out of their mouths.

The New Girlfriend never pretends to be more than what it is, a delicious and frothy fantasia with a teasing erotic frisson.

Maintains a tone that remains as light and easygoing as the Australians living in the area.

More skin is shown in Spread than in most Hollywood movies. But despite twitches of insight into its characters and their world, Spread refuses go more than skin deep.

If Return to Never Land -- doesn't have a story to match the original's in breadth and imagination, it does a smooth job of recycling its characters and themes.

Washington leans into an otherwise schlocky movie and slams it out of the ballpark.

The kind of movie that seduces you into becoming putty in its manipulative card-sharking hands and making you enjoy being taken in by its shameless contrivance.

Because all of this looks blatantly unreal, and because the timing of the shock effects is so haphazard, Dead Alive isn't especially scary or repulsive. Nor is it very funny. Long before it's over, the half-hour-plus bloodbath that is the climax of the film has become an interminable bore. [12 Feb 1993, p.C16]

Above all How I Ended This Summer is a merciless contemplation of the fragile human psyche under siege.

The current of intellectual energy snapping through the ferociously engaging screen adaptation of Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning play feels like electrical brain stimulation.

A wispy pubescent comedy.

Bad Hair is an uncomfortably accurate depiction of a poignant mother-son power struggle in a fatherless family in which each knows how to get under the other’s skin.

Buoyed by the wonderfully natural performances of its young leads, La Jaula de Oro is a compelling social-realist drama that owes much to the style of the British social-realist filmmaker Ken Loach.

Explores interlocking themes of sexuality, immigration and power dynamics with a cleareyed sensitivity and refuses to demonize even its shadiest characters.

As I Open My Eyes is best when it observes the fraught but loving mother-daughter relationship between Hayet and Farah.

Mr. Young's passionate cracked whine assumes an oracular power.

This deliciously nasty French deconstruction of male pecking orders, directed by Bernard Rapp, should send a pleasant shiver down the spine of anyone who has ever obsessed about wanting to please a devious and manipulative boss.

Uplifting, witty.

Mr. Cage gives his most committed performance in years as this divided soul, but it still looks like acting when compared with Mr. Poulter’s embodiment of pure evil.

Although The Song of Sparrows has some of the trappings of a naturalistic drama, it is really a series of strict moral lessons pieced together into an austere Islamic sermon.

Julie Gavras’s wonderful film, Blame It on Fidel, views its ideological conflicts through the eyes of a smart, willful child.

Narco Cultura feels like two short films sandwiched together to make a feature. One is a shallow pop-music documentary focusing on Mr. Quintero. The other is an equally superficial portrait of the embattled Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.

A wrenching, richly layered feminist allegory as well as a geopolitical one.

The movie's unhurried rhythm eventually works a quiet spell, and after a while you find yourself settling back, adjusting to the film's bucolic metabolism and appreciating its eye and ear for detail.

Very funny, extremely obscene movie spinoff from the popular animated Comedy Central series.

In withholding biographical information about the characters, the movie supplies just enough material to prompt you to fill in the blanks.

The movie's disparate voices coalesce here as an emotionally charged microcosm of the conflict.

A grim, suspenseful farce in which unpredictable human behavior repeatedly threatens an operation of astounding technological sophistication.

The movie, which often threatens to disappear into a tub of soapsuds, is elevated immeasurably by the calm, stately performances of Mary Alice and Mr. Freeman.

Frantz takes pains to show both sides’ lingering hostility after a devastating and (the movie implies) senseless war.

A mildly diverting period heist movie.

The performances are so crackling that you can imagine Ms. Salazar and Mr. Pally, given richer material, becoming a slapstick comedy team: the spitfire and the nerd.

The movie's rejection of even a tinge of melodrama lends it a special integrity.

This is high-speed action realism carried off with the dexterity of a magician pulling a hundred rabbits out of a hat in one graceful gesture. The crowning flourish is an extended car chase through the streets and tunnels of Moscow that ranks as one of the three or four most exciting demolition derbies ever filmed.

The prisoner rather eloquently portrays himself as a victim of human rights abuse.

Ms. Hamilton’s straightforward documentary skillfully interweaves reminiscences by members of the group with re-enactments of the burglary.

Dramatically Joe the King feels unglued, as if crucial sequences had been left on the cutting-room floor.

Somersault, which the Australian Film Institute garlanded with 13 awards, including best film, director, actor and actress (for Ms. Cornish's astonishing performance), is a movie about the looks on people's faces and the disparity between the surface and the roiling chaos beneath.

As technically innovative as it is emotionally unsettling.

A facile exercise in nihilism posing as an indie "Training Day" with street cred. Don't believe it.

Few films have explored the human face this searchingly and found such complex psychological topography. That's why The Wings of the Dove succeeds where virtually every other film translation of a James novel has stumbled.

Sonatine, made in 1994, predates the Japanese director's art-house hit Fireworks by three years and is arguably stronger than its successor.

Like most of Mr. Davies’s films, Sunset Song makes you see the world through his sorrowful eyes. He is a die-hard romantic, whose acute sensitivity to the passage of time conveys a bittersweet awareness of the fragility of beauty, which, for him, is synonymous with melancholy.

May seem frustratingly elusive at times, but it's a rewarding film that's beautiful to look at.

Although the movie takes on many of the characteristics of a conventional thriller, it refuses to go for cheap, vicious shocks, and the adults are seen through the curtain of Michele's trust.

Reminds you that marital discord knows no geographic boundaries.

A beautifully written, seamlessly directed film with award-worthy performances by Ms. Rampling and Ms. Young.

I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive is anything but the clichéd fantasy of a blissful mother-child reunion. Although there are hints of joy once they reconnect, the wounds are too deep, and the characters too complex.

The surest sign of the movie’s integrity is that it resists any temptation to build the story to a climactic debate.

Like most documentary polemics, it simplifies the issues it confronts and selects facts that bolster its black-and-white, heroes-and-villains view of raw economic power.

For all its quirks and tangents, Declaration of War feels entirely alive. This story of two people who transform fear into action is inspiring.

Couldn't have succeeded had it been cast with movie stars. Its authenticity derives not only from the streets on which it was filmed but also from its able Colombian cast.

In its harshly realistic scenes... it stirs your blood.

“Saturday Night Live” deserves much better than the documentary equivalent of what a book editor would surely dismiss as a rushed, careless clip job.

Where the director Paul Verhoeven infused the original Robocop with an attitude of mock solemnity, Robocop 3 has the energy and style of a cartoon free-for-all. [05 Nov 1993, p.C29]

For all its disorganization and lack of an ending or even a sense of direction, Appropriate Behavior is alive. The screenplay is packed with smart remarks, clever and unpredictable turns of phrase that knock you off balance.

The movie rides on Ms. Abbass's serenely confident performance. As Lilia metamorphoses from a shy housebound widow into a woman calmly rejoicing in her body and her sexuality, Ms. Abbass marks her character's every blush and hesitation in the process of letting go with a winning delicacy and sweetness.

Such an accomplished piece of filmmaking that it interweaves enough characters and themes to fill three movies.

For all the hardship they endure, this intimate dual portrait, directed by Lynn True and Nelson Walker, with Tsering Perlo, suggests that their lives are neither more nor less fulfilled than those of any highly stressed upper-middle-class Americans.

Quietly powerful but dispiriting documentary, which compares the world's oldest profession as practiced from place to place.

Above all, this beautifully photographed documentary is a poetic meditation on refined sensory perception.

What Slam possesses is real passion, and that is in short supply in movies these days.