Tom Keogh

Co-writer and director Lars Kraume brings muted colors and a claustrophobic, urgent energy to the procedural part of this story, while reminding us that not every moral hero looks like Captain America — in fact, like Bauer, they can be a rumpled, misanthropic mess.

Time to Choose tells us all is not lost — yet. But the hour is late.

A number of Kelly’s scenes play out like stand-alone sketches — some quite funny; not all of them essential — rather than parts of a whole. But that’s easily forgiven considering the candor of his insights and his strong cast.

T-Rex is ultimately about a remarkable (and likable) young person finding her personal power despite pressure from all sides.

In more careless hands, Middle Man’s deranged farce could have resulted in an unchecked, undisciplined movie with nothing to say. But beneath the roller-coaster madness here is an earthbound terror that art is meant to reveal.

Mustang could easily have been a pure heartbreaker, but it isn’t. It is surprisingly nuanced and even something of an adventure tale about a fight for freedom and identity.

There’s plenty here to enjoy.

If you’re partial to the Northwest outdoors, co-writer and director Alex Simmons (best known for documentaries) makes the long trip a visual treat, too. Indeed it is time for fresh air.

Few movies this year have been quite so rewarding with their 11th hour epiphanies.

Its own, tough-minded antidote to the grab-the-brass-ring whimsy of its premise.

Beyond the fantastic contrivances of Gods and Monsters, these performances are startlingly human.

The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.

Lots of movies deal with friends and lovers of a certain age growing apart. But few can hear, as Thraves does, the sound of death chains rattling in the background.

The film's bemused but genuine respect for the ingenious obviousness of a bygone cinematic language is quite moving.

If you don't ponder too much the script's muddled, self-serving influences, Arlington Road succeeds at discomforting a viewer and making one apt to look over one's shoulder for a day or two.

As he did in "Run Lola Run," he has clearly patented an original combination of cinematic eye and ear candy and a profound, irresistible fascination for the role of chance in this world.

One can be forgiven for leaving the theater feeling a modicum of hope, and for that we owe Warren Beatty something.

It is unusually but effectively organized as an almost unbroken chain of intimacies between the small and large players in this story.

It's possible that Ritchie's most important asset is the comic constant within his characters' existential dilemmas. To a man (and, indeed, they're all men), Ritchie's anti-heroes are at odds, in either large or small ways, with their own natures.

Quite smart, sensitive, and relatively sophisticated.

As with Bill Clinton himself, Primary Colors forces one to take the disappointing with the good, the letdown with the promise, the compromises with the hope.

A very pleasant experience in watching life unfold in its own direction and time.

An accessible but savvy political satire.

Let your children have their childhood while you have a rare, grown-up experience at the multi-plex for a change.

A film so driven by pure style that a script barely seems necessary in its first half, Boogie Nights becomes bogged down in a predictable aftermath of drug deals, post-stardom decay, cocaine-fueled nuttiness, and self-loathing.

If you like a little action with your war movies, or maybe some butt-kicking Resistance types and a Mission: Impossible-like finale, you won't be disappointed.

Will eventually be remembered as a disposable farce, but one that leaves a happy memory.

Whether or not Breaking the Waves succeeds as a profound work is something that's hard to say after one viewing, but it is certainly a wholly original piece of work.