Tom Keogh

Captivating an audience from the get-go and drawing our attention and emotions ever deeper into the layered mysteries of a dreamy fable.

Snappy heist film that keeps changing the rules of a mystery so that one is never sure whose hands are at the controls.

This modest film’s heart is really in the mysteries of small moments.

Within this uncertain world, Lopéz-Gallego relishes such noir staples as fatalistic shadows, eruptive mayhem and terse, ironic dialogue. But he and his cinematographer, Jose David Montero, also carve out fresh visual territory.

For all its strengths, Krisha can also be self-indulgent and artificial.

As feverish and dark as this first feature by filmmaker Can Evrenol gets, there is a sense that something larger is at stake — an elusive explanation having to do with a recurring dream, twisted destiny and the bond of a promise.

The best material gives the excellent Scott and Kroll plenty of love-hate energy: Robbie’s condescension, Bill’s passive-aggressiveness. It will look all too familiar to anyone who isn’t an only child.

Director John H. Lee keeps the action taut and often deeply felt when it comes to sacrifices and losses. But the script is often bogged down by deifying MacArthur.

Mercury Rising could have been a terrific movie with a little more gumption. [3 Apr 1998, p.G5]

With its boyhood-to-manhood tropes (growing up means getting a girl’s attention and winning an idol’s respect), London Town can’t be taken too seriously. But it’s nice to see part of the Clash’s populist legacy in a fan’s journey.

Pali Road — an engrossing psychological thriller with a trapped damsel’s very sanity on the line — demonstrates how an enigmatic story can unabashedly overflow with disorienting puzzles and perverse twists, all for the sake of blurring the line between reality and illusion.

Brother Nature at least enjoys moments of deep-end mania from Killam and Moynihan.

Perhaps in an effort to tell a PG story about an all-ages storyteller, Te Ata lacks vitality, pulling its punches and sometimes resorting to a cheesy shorthand. (A scene featuring Greene’s reservation leader and a racist senator is especially cheap.) Despite that, Te Ata lingers in the memory as a tale of an artist’s promise — and fulfillment.

Bell can sculpt a funny moment to polished realization, but deprive it of oxygen at the same time. It’s not until late in the film’s third act that a different feeling emerges, a looser hand that provides room for characters to be more warm and human than pieces in a constricted design.

The effects never really get ahead of the characters or the script's layered personality.

The film's light success really comes down to Shannon, though, the exuberant "SNL" star whose alter ego actually seems more real and sympathetic here than she does in brief TV skits.

Doesn't go the distance in either story or style, unwilling to liberate itself from real or presumed expectations about what it takes to sell a movie featuring teenagers.

Look to the cast as the best reason to see this film.

If you're paying close attention, there is reason enough to find Up at the Villa a fascinating experience, almost an experiment in some ways, but it's not a fully realized work of cinema.

About two lives in which transformation is a constant, destabilizing threat to freedom and sanity. That's a very provocative premise, though halfway through the movie Doyle and Walsh abandon its potential to go for easy laughs.

It is an ostensibly serious story about being young and struggling to wrest control over one's life from the hands of fools, yet it doesn't behave like a serious drama that wants to lead us anywhere.

All fleeting charm where it could have been one of the most memorable films of the decade.

Jim Carrey is magnificent as Kaufman.

The true star of this film, funny and often breathtakingly lovely, Zellweger carries virtually every scene in which she appears -- which aren't nearly as plentiful as one might like.

A mixed bag, all in all (casting Huey Lewis was not the best idea), but worth seeing.

Streep delivers another of her chameleon-like transformations in appearance, accent, and manner.

The film is simplicity itself.

Shaft is a decent popcorn movie and Jackson rises to the responsibility of appearing bigger than life.