Todd McCarthy

The central character never develops in an interesting way. Well before the wrap-up of this brief tale, her cultivated recessiveness becomes tiresome and, in these particular circumstances, a bit dull.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes manages to do at least three things exceptionally well that are hard enough to pull off individually: Maintain a simmering level of tension without let-up for two hours, seriously improve on a very good first entry in a franchise and produce a powerful humanistic statement using a significantly simian cast of characters.

The pervasive chill, ugly feelings and downward spiral of the narrative make this a work that requires an equally sober, serious-minded attitude on the part of the viewer.

Meticulous care is evident in every aspect of the film. All three actors playing Pi are outstanding.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis know their parts here backward and forward, and they, along with the rest of the fine cast, bat a thousand, hitting both the humorous and serious notes. But with this comes a sense that all the conflicts, jokes and meanings are being smacked right on the nose in vivid close-ups, with nothing left to suggestion, implication and interpretation.

Convincing as a portrait of a marginal man gone beyond the emotional pale.

Revives the format but not the fun of classic Hollywood screwball comedies about rediscovering the virtues of a former mate.

Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.

The film’s sustained intimacy speaks highly of the trust the subjects came to feel for the filmmaker, who is able to cut to the quick as he follows and reveals their life phases while also maintaining a filmmaker’s discreet distance. It’s an unusual look at the slipperiness of the human condition.

This is Holofcener’s sweet spot, the depiction of the emotional confusions, self-deceptions, uncertainties and misguided decisions that can cloud and get the better of otherwise bright, aware people, especially the female characters she tends to specialize in.

Gripping, highly dramatic thriller that more than confirms the distinctive talent of young Brit helmer Christopher Nolan.

A labor of love made over the course of seven years that crucially matches the energy and passion Langlois himself embodied, this deep-dish account of the life and times of the longtime head of the Cinematheque Francaise will enthrall buffs.

Exceedingly imaginative, beautifully realized animated epic adventure.

Del Toro clearly knows his way around the camera, but the shadowy eeriness that saturates the early going slowly becomes monotonous and winds up being just dull, and even partially obscures the action in the long underground finale.

Taking film noir material and turning it inside out visually and morally, The Deep End is an absorbing, beautifully made melodrama that succeeds on formal levels more than it does with suspense or emotion.

Entertaining in a very showbizzy way.

Although marred by a couple of too-convenient plot contrivances, this often humorous drama lands firmly in the plus column among the Woodman's recent works.

Even if the film itself is relatively conventional, its exposure of a squalid city's most benighted neighborhood and its introduction of hope into nearly hopeless lives give it strong human interest value.

A not-bad futuristic actioner with three or four astounding sequences, an unusual hero, a nifty villain and less mythic and romantic resonance than might be desired.

Soderbergh and McCraney have entertainingly stirred the pot and put a perspective on the screen that will stir some reactions in the real world and get the issue of ownership and fairness talked about, at least for a while. It’s a sharp-minded film.

Entirely unpredictable and marked by audacious strokes of directorial bravado.

Director Craig Brewer has given his second feature film a vibrant pulse amplified by an outstanding cast led by Terrence Howard.

Francis Ford Coppola's take on the Dracula legend is a bloody visual feast. Both the most extravagant screen telling of the oft-filmed story and the one most faithful to its literary source, this rendition sets grand romantic goals for itself that aren't fulfilled emotionally, and it is gory without being at all scary.

Like a Rousseau painting splattered with carnage of warfare.

Makes everything in the rival Marvel universe look thoroughly silly and childish. Entirely enveloping and at times unnerving in a relevant way one would never have imagined, as a cohesive whole this ranks as the best of Nolan's trio, even if it lacks -- how could it not? -- an element as unique as Heath Ledger's immortal turn in The Dark Knight. It's a blockbuster by any standard.

The Lost City of Z is a rare piece of contemporary classical cinema; its virtues of methodical storytelling, traditional style and obsessive theme are ones that would have been recognized and embraced anytime from the 1930s through the 1970s.

On its own terms, the plotting of "Devil" is absorbing, and the pieces actually fit together pretty decently. On the other hand, when scenes directly call to mind similar ones in "Chinatown," this effort's stepchild relationship to the classic is forcibly demonstrated.

While constantly eventful and a feast for the eyes, it's also notably more somber than its predecessors. But just when it might seem about to become too grim, Robert Downey Jr. rides to the rescue with an inspired serio-comic performance that reminds you how good he can be.

Blue Ruin is a talented but sophomoric low-budgeter that straddles the divide between genre thriller and art piece with mixed results.

This first English-language outing by the ever-adventurous French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) is a connoisseur’s delight, as it's boisterously acted and detailed down to its last bit of shirt stitching.

Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such.

First-time helmer Jan De Bont, the ace lenser of most of Paul Verhoeven's films as well as "Die Hard" and numerous other large-scale pix, handles the action with great nimbleness and dexterity; film can hardly be faulted for its visual presentation of very complex action.

A great title in search of a movie to live up to it, this startlingly uneventful compendium of thick-headed boy-talk and female tolerance squanders a fine cast on incredibly ordinary characters and situations.

An intermittently compelling and occasionally hilarious road movie.

Nearly every scene offers a general backdrop of tragic sadness leavened by the quotidian necessity of fulfilling basic requirements, doing a job, tending to the moment-to-moment needs of others and finding hope wherever one can.

Sedentary at these encounters may be, they are also frequently riveting and invariably fascinating, as they provide first-hand accounts and insider insights of the sort infrequently heard. These almost invariably underline the significance of the film's title in the scheme of diplomacy and rewardingly reveal the hopes and regrets that come with the territory.

Even if the film is mostly hitting familiar notes in terms of story and theme, it expresses a concise, focused and expertly managed vision with which there’s little to quibble, and the extraordinary style represents the fruition of a long-imagined dream on the part of many directors and cinematographers. From now on, when the discussion turns to great works of cinematography and camera operating, 1917 will always have to be high on the list.

A nice looking but heavily formulaic DreamWorks animation entry.

Working with a script by first-time writer Rebecca Blunt, Soderbergh has made the sort of breezy, unpretentious, just-for-fun film that scarcely exists anymore, one almost anyone could enjoy.

It's exceedingly linear structure, while unavoidable, renders it rather methodical and shallow in characterization.

A disappointingly routine thriller that prefers to lean on tired Hollywood conventions rather than to explore fresh dramatic and stylistic territory.

An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes.

It's as if Neville, inspired by the scattershot commentary of the party guests in Wind, felt he'd been given permission to be a bit wild, even chaotic, with his documentary film style, an approach that proves both apt and a bit frustrating.

While rambunctious and passably humorous, this offspring isn't nearly as imaginative and nimble-minded as the forerunner that spawned it.

One of the very best directed animated films on record. Not surprisingly from the force behind the "Babe" movies, the attention to detail is phenomenal, the humor ample.

The psychological dimensions of the story remain underrealized, but the loaded central premise and intimate focus the film sustains combine for a very involving and dramatic piece of crime lore.

This overwrought and egregiously self-serious thriller about the poisonous fruit borne of child abuse grows more ridiculous by the quarter-hour and is poised for a theatrical life span scarcely longer than that of its eponymous insect.

A pictorially unusual but dramatically listless tale.

An animal, kid and family picture of the first order, "Fly Away Home" marks an impressive return to form for Carroll Ballard, his best work since "The Black Stallion" 17 years ago.

For American viewers of an intellectual/historical persuasion, there could scarcely be any documentary more enticing, scintillating and downright fascinating than Best of Enemies.

This aggravatingly empty would-be suspense piece puts all its trust in its star to save the day, but even this compulsively watchable performer can’t elevate such a vapid, undeveloped screenplay.

The rough power, as well as the humor and sensitivity, of pop phenom Eminem is delivered intact in 8 Mile.

A self-indulgent drama about a Harlem drug kingpin trying to go straight, Sugar Hill plays like a dreary variation on New Jack City.

Even as the drama and its treatment become increasingly conventional and familiar as the film moves toward its patly (and arguably overly) audience-pleasing wrap-up, the exceptional visual quality and lifelike animal renditions remain stunning throughout.

It’s an eyebrow-raising true tale, one aided and abetted onscreen by the solid cast and strong sense of commitment. But Heckler is caught somewhere between being a journalistic historian and a dramatist without seeming expert at either. His screenplay connects all the dots of the story with no sense of shaping or modulation.

[A] mostly engaging but only fitfully inspired serio-comedy.

Fukunaga refrains from artificially amping up excitement for its own sake, maintaining an intimate, observational style that offers up a host of things to look at and think about.

Nunez achieves a rare, and rarely earned, emotional depth that rewards the moderate demands he makes on contemporary viewers' short attention spans.

Planet Terror delivers only momentary kicks...while Tarantino's Death Proof is a juicy, delicious treat, its pleasures stem much less from the play with genre conventions than from great dialogue and electric performances.

An exceptionally tasty contempo comedic romance.

Even if the now-veteran director lays everything on a bit thick, repeatedly makes many of the same points and lets things go on too long, he's still found a lively and legitimate way to tackle urgent subject matter that other filmmakers have found excuses to avoid.

The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.

It’s hard to detect a strong raison d’etre behind Sofia Coppola’s slow-to-develop melodrama.

A muted but nicely observed study of a Russian woman's gradual estrangement from her domineering Memphis music-legend husband.

Silk is a snooze. Vacuous, arid and terminally dull, this adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's freak bestseller hasn't a trace of real life or energy to it, and is hamstrung by a lethargic lead performance by Michael Pitt.

Both a stimulating social satire and, for thinking people, a depressing commentary on the devolution of the American political system.

Enhanced by a splendidly atmospheric recreation of the Lower East Side, the intimately focused work is anchored by another superior performance by Marion Cotillard.

Outstandingly realized on all levels.

Intense and physically powerful in the way it conveys its atrocious events, the film nonetheless remains short on complexity, as if it were enough simply to provoke and outrage the audience. It's a grim tale with no catharsis.

This is a tale that, like any number of fanciful genre outings, both pulls you in with its intriguing central dramatic situation and pushes you out with some mightily far-fetched plot contrivances.

Alive to cinematic ideas, generous to its actors and peppered with unexpected humor, this ultimately sweet-natured low-budgeter is nonetheless riddled with enough off-putting and digressive material.

A deeply metaphysical film by contempo Hollywood standards, this middlebrow trifle may engage the emotions of a certain tier of young professional women.

This middle portion of an intended trilogy will only play to the converted who have already seen Part I, and then only to the most gullible among them who will swallow mediocre filmmaking for the sake of ideology.

The story is told in a hammer-on-anvil manner that evinces no gift for social satire or sharp cultural insight.

Banal and trite where it could have been insightful and emotionally truthful, this Fox release is also notable for featuring the first disappointing performance by teen star Natalie Portman.

Mike Leigh has made one of his most modest pictures, although one that offers quite a few laughs and other quirky pleasures.

Herzog's quick visit to the front lines represents an appealing, scattershot, easily digestible progress report aimed at a general audience that's now becoming vaguely aware that we're all living at the beginning of some kind of new world that could be brave or extraordinarily homogeneous. Or both.

Character-driven to a fault, Heavy proceeds in such leisurely fashion that there are times one wishes it would shed a few minutes in order to get on with its business.

A rather ordinary account of youthful summer misadventures that goes down easily thanks to a sparky cast, more than 40 pop tunes that anchor the action in the late '80s and characters who get high both on and off their jobs at a tacky amusement park.

A flashy cast, clever script and vibrant showcasing of New York City as the ultimate melting pot are strong plusses for Spike Lee's most mainstream studio venture.

Blissful, whacked-out, inspired, juvenile, dementedly inventive, hyper-energized — all of this and more apply to music video and advertising whiz Makoto Nagahisa's first feature We Are Little Zombies.

Warm and borderline sentimental...also brimming with true and privileged moments, as well as an optimism in the face of tough circumstances that serves as a corrective to some of the more fashionably grim modern accounts of similar stories.

James Mangold's remake walks a fine line in retaining many of the original's qualities while smartly shaking things up a bit.

Fassbender cuts a more prosaic, realistic figure as the tormented, romantic Rochester than did the screen's most celebrated performer of the role, Orson Welles, in the effective 1944 version.

Lusterless trifle.

A weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, Stephen Gaghan's second directorial effort uses the same mosaic storytelling technique as in his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Traffic."

The film's slender conceit is given some weight by its 11-year-old leading lady Sydney Aguirre, whose portrait of a flinty, instinctively mischievous tomboy growing up without benefit of parental guidance provides gratification even when there's not much going on.

This absorbing drama provides Denzel Washington with one of his meatiest, most complex roles, and he flies with it.

An urgent work, the burning anger of which will viscerally connect with many viewers, who will recognize themselves or people they know up on the screen.

Martin Scorsese’s energetic account of a Stones concert at Gotham’s Beacon Theater in fall 2006 takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time.

Bisset throws herself into what is by far the most emotionally demanding role of her career and emerges honorably.

Stunningly made and incisively acted by a large and terrific cast, Michael Mann's ambitious study of the relativity of good and evil stands apart from other films of its type by virtue of its extraordinarily rich characterizations and its thoughtful, deeply melancholy take on modern life.

Solid middlebrow biographical fare in which meaty roles are acted to the hilt by a cast more than ready for the feast.

Technically and in his work with actors, Philip represents a great leap forward for Perry; a subsequent jump might involve presenting a central character with whom viewers could legitimately engage.

Boy gets girl and boy loses girl in convoluted, sometimes cloying but ultimately winning fashion in 500 Days of Summer.

One imagines Godard spending whole days playing with dials, switches and buttons to discover the very moments he wishes to emphasize in his clips, and a good many of them are passingly arresting.

Director Alan Rudolph achieves fresh as well as humorous insights into family life and strategies for keeping a damaged relationship from expiring. But a tiresome final act proves trying.

Pushing both brutal realism and extravagant visual poetry to the edges of what one customarily finds in mainstream American filmmaking, director/co-writer Alejandro G. Inarritu, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and a vast team of visual effects wizards have created a sensationally vivid and visceral portrait of human endurance under very nearly intolerable conditions.