Todd McCarthy

Jennifer Eight is an unusually intelligent and unexploitative late-season thriller, which probably won't help its chances at the box office. Involving without being exciting, pic is notable for avoiding most of the standard suspense film contrivances, as well as for Conrad Hall's utterly smashing cinematography. Interesting cast and sober approach will mean more to critics and sophisticated viewers than to general audiences, resulting in OK results during brief release window before Christmas heavy hitters put this out to video pasture, where it might fare better.

A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.

Geremy Jasper’s dynamic debut crackles with energy and grassroots authenticity. But it wouldn’t have worked at all without the right leading lady, which it found in Danielle Macdonald, whose rapping seems convincingly born of her character’s rough life experience.

Best of all, von Sydow is absolutely wonderful, with the great veteran actor clearly relishing this very unusual role as he darts, skulks and, in a stealthy way, mugs across town. Without saying a thing, he dominates the middle part of the movie.

Cohen employs a comic range that ricochets between wicked political barbs and the lowest anatomical farce, to often funny and occasionally hilarious effect.

A seamless, pulsating, dazzlingly visual revenge fantasy that stands as one of the most effective live-actioners ever derived from a comic strip.

Suffern puts this tragic story to purposeful and, in some respects, inspiring use: The power of forgiveness can be remarkable, and some countries in the world have actually improved over the past 25 years.

Charlie Wilson's War is that rare Hollywood commodity these days: a smart, sophisticated entertainment for grownups.

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.

A very loose and contemporized remake of one of the more celebrated late '40s films noir, Kiss of Death is a crackling thriller that feels unusually attuned to its lowlife characters.

A funny and unexpectedly beguiling account of the outrageous humorist's unlikely rise to the pinnacle of radio celebrity.

A film that is continuously enjoyable from its action-filled opening to the dazzling final shot, one that offers a very generous welcome to newcomers to the play, and reminds those familiar with it of its heady pleasures. Only real drawback, and not an insignificant one, is pic’s visual quality, which is unaccountably undistinguished, even ugly, especially considering the sun-drenched Tuscan location.

All the dramatic components have not only been well thought out by Talbot and co-writer Rob Richert, but they’re adorned, for the most part, by a sense of reality that keeps pretentiousness at bay. To be sure, this is a highly calculated and worked-out story, but the humor and lively playing of the entire cast keeps the film aloft across its two hours.

Although Nava's screenplay hits the subject of every scene right on the head and doesn't ask for much subtlety or subtext, Lopez is wonderful to watch in the dramatic sequences as well as in the numerous musical interludes.

Viewers looking for old-fashioned movie thrills as a change of pace from the glut of alien and digital-oriented features might paradoxically enjoy the feeling of being back on terra firma with this airborne adventure.

This is a Wes Anderson film -- more lightweight than some, possessing a stronger emotional undertow than others -- that will strike the uninitiated as conspicuously arch.

To his credit, director Scott Derrickson...navigates through the different zones with a fair degree of actual coherence, and delivers the entire package with evident ease and some flair.

In the spirit of the venture, the entire cast gets down and comes off all the better for it. Both Efron and McConaughey get very messed up physically, and both actors seem stimulated to be playing such flawed characters.

In revisiting his darkly comic 1998 ensembler "Happiness," Todd Solondz may have made his best film with Life During Wartime.

This vigorous, colorful and clever melodrama smartly rethinks both the play and the character, making her a far more proactive figure than Shakespeare did in addition to entirely reimagining her fate.

Nearly as extravagant as the characters it depicts, Martin Scorsese's comic, operatically-scaled film is, on a moment-by-moment basis, often madly entertaining due to its live-wire energy, exuberant performances and the irresistible appeal of watching naughty boys doing very naughty things.

The Whale is a thoughtful, philosophical, political and ultimately sad documentary that ponders the impulses behind, and advisability of, intense interaction between human beings and another smart species.

A violent fairy tale, an increasingly entertaining fantasia in which the history of World War II is wildly reimagined so that the cinema can play the decisive role in destroying the Third Reich.

Gibson still has all the energy, impulsive gear-shifting ability and growly vocal command to anchor a muscular film such as this; he co-wrote it for himself, after all, and he certainly knows by now what he does best. Hernandez is entirely credible as a tough little customer with real guts, and all the actors playing bad guys seize their opportunities with relish.

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.

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.

A wonderful, serious-minded romantic comedy-drama.

Feels lavish by normal documentary standards and will have great appeal in such F1 hotbeds as Europe and South America.