Steven Rea

If you're going to take another stab at this tale of a taunted, traumatized teen who exacts fiery revenge on, well, everyone, then Kimberly Peirce is the director to do it.

The footage is spectacular, the colors electric, the life aquatic trippier than anything you'll see in even the most wildly imaginative animated fare.

And tell me if I'm nuts, but another distraction: Doesn't the BFG bear a striking resemblance to George W. Bush?

Moretti knows how to orchestrate a good laugh when it's needed, but he can plumb more soulful, sorrowful depths, too. In Mia Madre, with its self-doubting director and wild-card American interloper, Moretti works a palette of shifting moods. Triumphantly.

Bringing a wily, slow-burn energy and a southern accent to the role of Lyle, Dennis Hopper adds just the right touch of warped malevolence to Dahl's film. [29 Apr 1994, p.5]

A deadpan delight.

As entertaining as it is exasperating.

As soon as it's over, and you find yourself back in the harsh light of the workaday world, you'll be hard-pressed to remember what happened. Except that you'll remember enjoying yourself - immensely.

There's a playlike quality to Complete Unknown (Marston's cowriter, Julian Sheppard, has extensive credits in the theater). That's not a bad thing: The talk is smart. The actors doing the talking are easy to like.

What began as a bold and thrilling story descends into Hollywood cliché. But Crowe and Connelly's work rises above the mush. They make A Beautiful Mind go.

It's a view filtered through a prism of memory and emotion, but one well worth investigating.

While there are similarities to the hardscrabble saga of "Angela's Ashes," Frears' film avoids the mawkish pitfalls of Alan Parker's screen adaptation.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but a strong, heady brew.

A Kiwi nerd love story and loopy portrait of Down Under underachievers, Eagle vs. Shark offers a deadpan take on family, friendship, obsession and self-delusion.

A "small" movie. But in its keenly observed examination of strangers who become intimates - and of family members who remain, in part, strangers - it has big things to say.

Tokyo! is a must-see for the Gondry segment, and a strange, diverting pleasure for the rest.

Ajami brings its audience into a world where the cultural conflict is fierce, emotions run high, yet the hopeful vision of peaceful coexistence shines through the cracks.

It's not impossible to address grown-up issues of commitment, of responsibility, of love, and have some fun, and some profanity, while you're at it.

An accomplished and compelling film by writer/director Josh Mond, James White is also pretty much a bummer.

Batman v Superman lacks the levity (forced or otherwise) of a typical Marvel Universe entry. But Snyder's superpowered epic does have a sense of import and grandeur about it.

Although Toy Story 3 plays with themes of aging and obsolescence, it's really a straight-ahead action pic, with the toys planning, and attempting, their escape and rescue missions. (Hey, it's The A-Team!)

Offers dazzling cinematic family fun, and a mad medley of tunes.

Swiss Army Man is a quest movie of sorts, and also a sort of modern-day piece of absurdist theater. Samuel Beckett by way of Monty Python, it is a story that is at once rooted in the fixations of adolescence (sex, the idea of sex, bodily functions, more sex) and in the loftier firmaments of the mind.

Informative, funny, sad and intriguing.

Comes across as gratifying, not grating: the same way the familiarity of a well-crafted whodunit is part of the book's pleasures.

Quiet, finely etched and beautifully acted by Dina Korzun and the wise-beyond-his-years Artiom Strelnikov.