Steve Persall

A marvelous technical achievement when the director finally gets around to it.

There are a few typos in The Paper, but they're honest - and honestly funny - mistakes. [25 March 1994, p.5]

Gloriously, uproariously, there’s Rose Marie herself, sharp and tart as ever with total recall of every juicy moment, every conversation. A portrait of an indefatigable entertainer emerges, restless when she wasn’t working and fearless when she was.

For a good portion of Black's film, all this mayhem is great fun, since Russell Crowe is obviously funnier than he has ever allowed himself to appear, and Ryan Gosling is funnier than he has already proven. Together they form a deliciously dumb action duo; one brawn, the other sort of has a brain.

It's a very funny character needing more arc than Rauch's script offers or a shorter movie.

Stephen Fry's elegantly wry performance as Wilde ranks among the best acting of the year so far, elevating what could be a simple impersonation into the embodiment of a person too smart for his surroundings and too tempted by the ways of the flesh. [26 Jun 1998, p.10]

Get Low is a pleasant yarn, well-acted and dutifully mounted with period designs. There isn't a false note among the actors.

It's a heady blend, at times requiring more speechifying than throwaway pop deserves. But it keeps one guessing between ill-staged and frenetically edited fight scenes. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo handle vehicular mayhem better.

Almodóvar dives into perversity, practically daring the audience not to follow. The Skin I Live In is a mediocre addition to his resume, yet for fans, even bad Almodóvar is better than none at all.

Certainly amusing, but it never accelerates past one-note characters playing out separate personal crises in ways that aren't surprising.

This movie embraces its inner yokel.

Dragon: The Story of Bruce Lee is therefore one of those rarities, a biography as entertaining as it is informative. [7 May 1993, p.6]

Imagine a stuffy Merchant Ivory production blended with muted Michael Crichton sci-fi and you have Never Let Me Go, at least as it plays on screen.

Unstoppable isn't unwatchable, but it is a letdown after "Speed" and some of the Speed-on-a-(fill in the blank with a vehicle) flicks that followed. Forget missing Hopper; even Keanu Reeves might make this movie more entertaining.

Carnage gives Polanski the best opportunity to express his devilish sense of humor in decades, proving again that comedy really is tragedy happening to someone else.

The stories might work better separately as uninterrupted short films. Combined, they lack cohesion but suggest that Coppola has a fine framing eye and ability to guide actors to good work.

Lion can't avoid seeming lesser in the second half after Davis' mesmeric first but it's solid storytelling nonetheless. Bring the Kleenex.

The Little Hours is less than the sum of its many comedy parts but some of those many are hilarious.

King's book isn't hallowed literature, just a little vicious fun, if 1,100 pages can be considered little. This is the spooky, overlong movie It deserves and It deserves that sequel. Float on.

The Avengers is as brawny and lamebrainy as any comic book movie deserves to be, capped by a 40-minute assault pummeling senses as few action sequences ever have.

Hamm makes for a compelling guide, Bogart-weary and mind racing, assessing each situation with a readable face for the camera. Beirut won’t make him a bigger movie star, but more interesting actors are tough to find.

Hark's visual style occasionally strays from standard operating procedure with an arty camera effect or an odd angle. Those flashes of inspiration only serve to make the cliches - such as a coliseum showdown complete with land mines, snipers and a tiger - clunk a little louder. In the big game of entertainment, Double Team barely gets off the bench. [5 Apr 1997, p.2B]

Chronicle is so clever about the absurd, and so much fun to watch, that I'm almost disappointed the ending doesn't leave room for a sequel.

Parker makes an assured feature filmmaking debut, with poetic imagery and powerful narrative.

The Coens fashion an atmospheric descent for Llewyn, a meticulous re-creation of Greenwich Village's folk scene in 1961, around the time Bob Dylan hit town.

Like Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon before, Patriots Day is a brawny procedural, more than the exploitation flick it could be. Berg and Wahlberg's commitment to details beyond death and destruction feels like a calling.

I expected, even wanted to cry at The Fault in Our Stars, or at least choke up a little. Yet the transparent eagerness of this movie to break hearts, through means not entirely justifying that end, always pulled me back.

This movie embraces everything that should make it lousy, calling out itself for aping the source's bad ideas then flipping the script with meta precision.