Steve Persall

The Fate of the Furious doesn't merely suspend disbelief, it expels it like a delinquent student told to never come back.

Alien: Covenant is smarter than the average horror flick with a healthy dose of gross.

The Runaways isn't just about rock 'n' roll; it IS rock 'n' roll, as loud, sexy, sometimes sloppy and ultimately exhilarating as the music can be.

The role of Albert in Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said is closer to who the man was, and who the actor seldom got the chance to play: bearish yet soft-spoken, a self-confessed slob with a soul bigger than his gut. There's warmth pouring from those slitted eyes, loosening up guarded smiles as Albert takes a chance on love again.

Green Room is a blunt instrument of terror announcing Saulnier as a filmmaker to watch, just as soon as you pry those fingers off your eyes.

This movie is a last chance to save the series, which it does.

It's deja vu all over again in The Hangover Part II, only dirtier and more dangerous, if you can imagine that.

2 Guns is a movie based on smart callbacks and sly flip-flops of loyalty, regularly interrupted by spasms of well-staged violence.

If comic book movies are the last place you look for a soulful, serious performance, The Wolverine should be your first.

Whatever Career Girls lacks in polish or ambition, it compensates with three memorable performances and an unwavering filmmaker working on nobody's terms except his own. [5 Sep. 1997, p.3]

The pleasures of The LEGO Batman Movie are plentiful, especially its cockeyed reverence for the Dark Knight's past.

The makers of Jingle All the Way have the nerve to declare what the rest of us have only grumbled about: that the superficial reason for the Christmas season is found nestled in your wallet. Schwarzenegger's ho-ho heroics should have moviegoers gladly tapping into that source into the new year. [22 Nov 1996, p.3]

Roger Michell's revival of My Cousin Rachel is a graceful note amid summer's movie din, adapting Daphne du Maurier's black widow mystery with class bordering on defiance.

There is a genuinely epic quality to Unbroken, cribbed from masters and capably traced. That's really all this inspiring story needs.

A Dangerous Method is a movie believing the most formidable sex organ really is the brain.

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.

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.

Pierce Brosnan is dashing and deadly, finally meeting the gold standard. And director Lee Tamahori detours from convention, taking the franchise up a notch in Die Another Day.

There is still Spider-Man's personal turmoil, crises of romance and loyalty, that Webb occasionally holds a few beats too long. Yet the performances ring true, with arresting chemistry where it counts.

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.

Eat Drink Man Woman cleverly leaps between the two generations, with a wise sense of humor that illuminates the security and restrictions of the ties that bind. [02 Sep 1994, p.6]

What happens in Vegas happens a lot in movies. Think Like a Man Too goes to the same casinos, strip clubs and pleasure pools with a fistful of jokers and an ace up its sleeve, the irrepressible Kevin Hart.

The movie has a caffeinated spirit worthy of its graveyard shift milieu, a darkness artfully breached by cinematographer Robert Elswit, who previously framed L.A.'s unstill life in Magnolia and Boogie Nights.

Frozen impresses by conveying coldness in all its frostbitten beauty, from northern lights and blizzards, to ice magnifying, refracting and reflecting light. The movie is a lovely example for animation enthusiasts to study.

When she's (Hawkins) on camera, I'd swear the screen bends into a smile.

Like the genre's top filmmakers - the Coens, Polanski, Hitchcock - Capotondi builds dread with wicked winks at the audience, dropping subtle surprises along the way.

Director Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female) has the proper foreboding drive in his technique to make every minute of his movie hum with fascinating dread. [21 Apr 1995, p.2B]

The easiest way for filmmakers to show injustice in the world is through the eyes of a child. In the case of Haifaa al-Mansour's movie, the injustice is Saudi Arabia's male-centric culture, and the child is a preteen girl named Wadjda.