The Oceanic Preservation Society doesn't change the world so much as call attention to something so very wrong with it. And in doing so, The Cove culminates with an image of political agitation that might be one of the most oddly effective public service announcements you'll see.

A lively and affectionate cross between an infomercial and a genuflection.

Not known for subtlety, Besson gets the expected laughs, and then some. He also exercises an unwonted finesse, not only with the allusions, but also with variations on the “f” word that, if not poetic, are at least funny.

D'Onofrio's affably wide-eyed weirdness generates not only pleasure, but a genuinely authentic conundrum, bouncing forward and backward toward the truth.

The film spends its first half explaining the song -- famously and vividly about the cycle of Southern lynching. Its better second half-hour unmasks its composer as a compassionate Jewish guy from the Bronx.

Very much a genre picture, relying on notions of suspense, surprise, and comeuppance. Indeed, at the center of this movie is a question of whether what we're seeing is really to be believed.

Rachel Weisz has become an exquisite camera artist. In a single shot, she can open up a whole movie. The Deep Blue Sea has a scene like that.

The movie won the grand prize at this year’s Slamdance, an even more indie Sundance-adjacent festival, and it marks the arrival of an earnest talent in writer-director-star Cooper Raiff. It’s also the rare youth movie to dispense with cynicism and wear its heart on its sleeve.

Many spy capers lose their intended irony and wry black humor, but The Tailor of Panama stays stylishly on target in ways that would put a heat-seeking missile to shame.

It's hard to blame Telfair for letting his celebrity go to his head. If I were on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 12th grade, there'd be no living with me either.

In some ways Easy Money recalls Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic." They have drug dealing in common, of course, but also a sense of constant swirl and density of onscreen population.

Though the plot gets a tad thin toward the end, “Heretic” does a good job of pelting us with uncomfortable questions.

But, fittingly, it's the kids who carry this outing. They're led by Sean Astin, who's rightly more of a dreamer than the others. Jeff B. Cohen engagingly handles the most cliched role, the fat kid who keeps stuffing his face. And I couldn't help wondering if Ke Huy Quan, who played Indy's sidekick in the Temple of Doom, knows that not all movies are made in caves. In any case, you can relax. The Goonies is entertaining despite its calculated flavor. [7 Jun 1985, p.61]

Mad Detective is equal parts gonzo inspiration and overwrought indecision. It could be called "The Lunatic From Kowloon."

Hyper-stylized, funny, a crowd-pleaser.

The situation is comic and yet quite serious, as are the ways in which language is used.

The only thing missing from The Hoax might be a couple of songs. It's that breezy and fleet a movie.

The film's most natural appeal is to adolescent athletes -- in particular, cleat-wearing young ladies who will bask in its hard-won girl-power message. This is a movie with bruised shins and a huge heart.

A Most Violent Year, then, is something of a science experiment, with Abel the good rat trying to make it to the other side of the maze, uneaten and in full possession of the cheese. In its weaker moments, the movie struggles to get out of the lab. At its best, it reminds us that the maze is as big as the world and as timely as today.

It's funky and funny, not just sleek, riding witty repartee that makes it seem an extension of the fizzy, romantic comedies of the '30s (as well as the Harlem Renaissance, invoked by its poetry club scenes). [14 Mar 1977, p.C1]

Isle of Dogs is a fascinating (and furry) place to visit, but visit is all it does. It’s a good boy. But it’s not a great one.

Cinderella — the new, live-action Cinderella, that is — is an attempt by the Mouse House to revive one of Walt’s oldest fairy-tale adaptations with care and class and modernity and timelessness.

It also bears something you rarely experience in a football movie. Friday Night Lights has a soul.

It's intelligently crafted, above average for this presumably dying genre, and if you can get past a couple of potential credibility problems, you'll find it absorbing. [23 Mar 1990, p.45]

It's a guaranteed good time at the movies.

At times, there's no escaping the schematic nature of what's unfolding - such as the buddies' horseplay, and an ending that seems tacked on. But Savoca makes it all happen with a charm that overcomes the lapses in the script. [04 Oct 1991, p.44]

Throughout the film, we know as much as ABC does and nothing more. Filled with scenes of process, it’s as suspenseful as any thriller.

The kind of film you've got to admire simply for the way it squares its shoulders and plunges into a message of unfashionable idealism.

True, a lot of marmalade gets spread around, and at times the zaniness gets a bit too slap-sticky, but it’s all good clean fun.

While most of the scenes in Tony Stone’s peculiar Middle Ages art project look like a homemade educational reenactment, the film is actually more involving than it should be.

By contrast, the undercard of Shirley is the bruising, scintillating war of wills between Jackson and her husband. Stanley Hyman was by all accounts a larger-than-life figure, and Stuhlbarg plays him with the exuberance of a clown and the insecurity of a bully.

Makes the surprising and seemingly inarguable assertion that, if we're not all Brazilian, then, at the very least, Brazil is a state of mind.

Much of the film is pure romantic comedy and a good one. Yet the filmmakers want it to be more.

Hot Shots! revels in absurdity. At times it's as surreal as the Marx Brothers. [21 May 1993, p.26]

Written by Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi, it mostly achieves its vision — especially in its wildly strong first half.

Arctic Tale has a very precise audience in mind: Young children who aren't yet ready for the graphs and sociopolitical alarm bells of "An Inconvenient Truth."

As pointedly as The Punk Singer looks at the past, the movie’s uncertain where the energy of that original moment has gone. Where are the riot-grrrls of today? Take your daughters to the movie, then ask them.

The movie feels exhaustive in its loaded 90-something minutes, showing and telling us much while leaving the meaning of the tangles and twists in this family open to interpretation. For once, the tip of the iceberg is enough.

It makes a nicely grim little Halloween appetizer, although you may want to go home and hide under the bed afterward.

A deft, disturbing piece of work, as cold around the heart as the Kubrick film, if infinitely more dismissible. It gets in, it messes with your mind, and it vanishes, leaving only an unsettling aftertaste of unresolved narrative. It’s an exercise, but some exercise leaves you gasping.

This movie could have been a nagging, preachy headache had either man exhibited a tendency for self-righteousness. But both are friendly, almost humble about their mischief.

After watching the movie, its relentlessly catchy numbers might keep playing for you; as one of the interviewees says, “You’ll be singing these songs for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not.”

Smoothly made and smart enough. It's not going for too much, but I laughed a lot.

What Zombieland’ has instead - in spades - is deliciously weary end-of-the-world banter.

Churns out dread, suspense, and hellish splendor with its derelict cityscapes and breakneck action.

Surely it’s no coincidence that Encanto is set in the homeland of the literary master of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez. That’s what Encanto is, magical realism brought to the screen by way of the Magic Kingdom.

Stephen Frears' Hero is a slyly entertaining reinvention of the old newspaper comedy - Frank Capra's Meet John Doe, William Wellman's Nothing Sacred, Howard Hawks' The Front Page - on the altar of TV. In an image-dominated age, what does the concept of heroism mean? Not much, once TV gets hold of it, Hero says. But it's peachy, not preachy, celebrating energy, resourcefulness and cheerful amorality. [02 Oct 1992, p.45]

The film veers from farce to tragedy and relates a twisted variation on the American Dream.

If The Mighty Quinn is slight, it's also very easy to take. And its soundtrack is a treat. [17 Feb 1989, p.90]

Because the "Harold & Kumar'' universe seesaws so delicately between the subversively smart and the ineffably stupid, even the lamest jokes get a witty spin - and even the cleverest ideas can turn into groaners.

From its title on down to the rugelach, Shiva Baby is an instant classic in the Jewish comedy of mortification, a genre that combines hilarity, anxiety, resentment and schmaltz.

Angry and tragic, Carandiru is finally, in its own way, uplifting.

The Big Lebowski isn't quite up to the level of the Coen brothers' best films - "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "Barton Fink." But second-level Coen brothers can be funnier than first-level almost everybody else. [6 March 1998, p.D5]

[Terence Stamp] and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as supporting actors Christopher Eccleston and Gemma Arterton, raise Paul Andrew Williams’s entry in the golden age genre from mawkish to genuinely heartwarming.

Is a chamber romance, in that there's nothing grand or sweeping about it, but it's got all the style it needs to go with those glorious Tuscan settings.

Give it a chance and you'll probably share the cast's collective impulse to dive in and embrace it.

Light on its feet and reveling in its deviousness, it stays one step ahead of us .

Director Baltasar Kormákur (“2 Guns”) and his cast craft a lean narrative tone that humanizes the action without an excess of gloss.

Sitting through Lethal Weapon 2 is like dating a jackhammer. It's a slick, cynical, high-speed assembly line of car chases, jokes, sex, explosions and blood. [41 Jul 1989, p.41]

Stylish, sad, opulent, brilliant, and clear-eyed, Wilde does justice to its complex subject. It should stand as the definitive biofilm for years to come. [05 Jun 1998, p.D6]

Vigalondo is only partially capable of building suspense (the film's latter stages contain one knot too many); his achievement owes more to his imagination than his pop craftsmanship.

Its strength and limitation is that it’s a gimmick that works.

There’s a similar shared joy among the participants, a similar sense of discovery for the viewer, and, of course, a killer soundtrack.

Apologies to Conrad Rooks, but the only reason his 1972 film, Siddhartha, is getting a 30th-anniversary rerelease is the appeal of seeing Sven Nykvist's amazing cinematography restored to its full splendor.

The backstory between Donny and Dame is too heavy and complex for a movie that aims to be a crowd-pleaser, but Majors and Jordan do their best to balance the material.

More than an hour passes before Khaled and Wikström’s stories intersect, and though it would be an exaggeration to say each redeems the other, in this film the other side of hope is not despair, but decency.

Blue Beetle is a watchable time-waster made better by the actors and the cinematography by Pawel Pogorzelski.

Frozen could also leave its mark as the next step in the Disney Princess feminist revisionism championed by last year’s “Brave.” Where that film staunchly pushed a men-don’t-define-me theme throughout, here it’s the requisite fairy tale ending that gets tweaked.

An effusive, sad, visually gorgeous, and illuminating portrait of the artist.

Small, sharply written, incisive comedy examines, with smarts and style and sexiness, the very nature of modern romance - gay, straight, and in between.

A screwball comedy that made me wish I were 13 again, because this is precisely the kind of movie I would have gone nuts for in the ninth grade.

It brings an enlivening wit to a comedy of culture collision.

I Went Down is an offbeat Irish gangster movie that overcomes its meandering nature with engaging performances, an avoidance of formula, and, above all, its characters' way of making us take everything personally - as they certainly do. [1 July 1998, p.F4]

The whole thing is as subtle as a watermelon in a bowl of Cheerios but necessary, nonetheless.

Fetisov, who looks like a cross between Sam Neill and Klaus Kinski, is a compelling figure. He has an unmistakable gravitas. He’s just a hockey player in the way that Reagan was just an actor. In fact, Fetisov is a member of Russia’s parliament and previously served as minister of sport. If all that weren’t enough, he has a winningly dry sense of humor.

The results feel a little life lesson-y but also well-earned and well-observed, and Hahn takes advantage of a rare lead role to locate both the ugliness and beauty in her character.

Anne Hathaway's Jane is headstrong and clever, balanced and true.

Cruise will never be a master thespian, but there's no one better at putting across the charisma of control, and the opening sequence of ''Report'' is an astonishingly fluid demonstration of his gifts.

In this era of Apatow and Ferrell and Rogen and Wilson, of men monopolizing movie comedy, Baby Mama feels absurdly momentous, and even political. Fey and Poehler aren't just taking back control of their bodies. They're taking back control of their profession.

Egoyan ekes out an engaging and meaningful potboiler.

It's not so much a remake as it is a loving re-creation of the 1933 original on extra-strength steroids, with a side order of Botox. You've seen it all before but most assuredly never like this.

In Mamet's understanding, straight white maleness is the most powerful weapon such men have. It can also be illusory, which is why the last scenes of Edmond are so touching.

Drinking Buddies is further evidence that Wilde has more depth and ambition than mainstream Hollywood can currently handle, and it marks Swanberg as one of the subtler talents of his generation — a deceptively casual moralist whose films observe their characters without judging them yet whose conclusions are unmistakable.

In “Vengeance,” Novak proves his chops both as an adept filmmaker and skillful satirist of contemporary mores.

Swift, brutal, lurid, often overheated, and occasionally comical, but it’s also a serious, well acted, and unromantic exploration of the rise and demise of a terrorist gang whose radicalism ultimately reached beyond the young men and women who set it in motion.

Best of all, An Education isn’t alarmist. It knows other people can’t seduce us if we don’t seduce ourselves first and that Jenny is level-headed enough to handle it and learn.

The movie makes the case that the best American filmmakers may be the uncelebrated ones who helplessly turn life into art simply as a means to get out of bed every day.

Zeiger's movie is a timely salute to the risky and brave men and women who had the temerity not only to think for themselves but to speak their minds.

What Meet the Patels could use is a little more meat.

Though it occasionally pulls its punches, the blows Chevalier does land sting and leave a mark.

The movie's inevitabilities (the humiliating loss, the ebb and flow of camaraderie, the triumphant finale) have deep resonance.

Loach makes a working metaphor of the old ant-and-grasshopper story, but the film's images are what echo the loudest.

As ambitious as this may be, however, the movie's objectives tax its energy even as the girls' plight tears at your heart.

This is a patient, simmering movie. It's contemplative but without his usual smitten indulgences.

The Brink shows a salesman tirelessly peddling poison door to door and knowing it’s only a matter of time before someone lets him in.

It is at least an "experience" that has to be labeled exhilarating.

The journey is always more entertaining than the destination, and this one’s a lot of fun.

Opens itself up to some splendid drive-in philosophizing.