I walked out of the movie on a cloud of happiness that was only slightly dissipated after a night’s sleep. A critical acquaintance found the whole thing much too icky-sticky sweet. It may be a generational issue.

A lot of jazz labels have mattered, but none has mattered the way Blue Note did — and, thanks to a proudly hip-hop-inflected present, still does. It’s the gold standard of recorded improvisational music. Sophie Huber’s briskly reverential documentary, Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, lets us see and hear why.

Rapt is smooth, cool, and efficient. It's a movie with very little wasted motion - or, for much of its length, wasted emotion.

It is epic in scope, intimate in detail, and otherworldly in its dimensions, like the Bayeux Tapestry with special effects and a stentorian soundtrack.

A brisk and reasonably thorough dog trot through a life that was simultaneously invisible and all powerful, and it’s goosed along with slick production techniques that more than once get in the way.

A riveting and sobering way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

You can sense Baye's struggling within the limits imposed on her. In her own way, she can convey the heat of a Penelope Cruz, the power of Mirren, the barely contained madness of Judi Dench -- but not here. They're just not on the beat she's been given.

Without Limits gives us the achievement, gives us Prefontaine'sflaws alongside the considerable appeal, makes us feel his loss. It's miles beyond the previous biofilm about him, Prefontaine. It works because it makes running a subset of being maniacal - and nothing works better in a movie. [13 Sep 1998, p.N25]

Poppy Hill doubtless plays most strongly to Japanese audiences — especially the musical score made up of old-timey jazz and early-’60s pop that sounds like corn syrup to Western ears — but its central conflict is gentle, unyielding, and universal. Which is to say that it turns out to be a Hayao Miyazaki movie after all.

A hugely enjoyable shambles. It’s a comic deconstruction of that most useless of Hollywood artifacts — the blockbuster sequel — that refuses to take itself seriously on any level, which, face it, is just what we need as the summer boom-boom season shifts into high gear.

Exit 8 is based on a best-selling video game released in 2023. I have not played it, but if it’s anything like director Genki Kawamura’s adaptation, I’d say it’s enough to drive a person crazy.

The final questions in Pervert’s Guide to Ideology nag at us, and in a culture so built upon and so profiting by fantasies of Hollywood apocalypse, they deserve to.

A grade A, meat-and-potatoes genre flick.

Diablo Cody wrote Young Adult, and it's an improvement over "Juno," her first script.

With its wry take on the manic triviality of the industry, it's not only the most sparklingly jaundiced showbiz entertainment since "All About Eve." It's also the gutsiest mother-daughter story since "Terms of Endearment." Call it "Terms of Endurement," plan on laughing a lot, and you won't be far off. [13 Sep 1990, p.97]

The only real tension the documentary has, once Steinbauer has his first meeting with Rebney, is whether the filmmaker is celebrating him more than exploiting him.

In Brad’s Status, Stiller becomes the face of white male privilege — and its comeuppance.

In its dark, relentless, devastatingly ironic way, The Pledge is an exhilarating movie, partly because it isn't afraid to be genuinely challenging.

A rambunctious joy.

I have seen the future of Hollywood movie stardom, and its name is America Ferrera.

Aileen is Broomfield working compassionately. Perhaps it's only because he knows he can't save Wuornos that he can offer her as she might have been: part wounded animal, part self-destructive martyr, and all tragedy.

Nobody's going to think of The Score as trail-blazing, but there's nothing small-time about its dramatic and acting payoff.

As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.

The family snapshots are more revealing. The sight of Colby wearing a tie at family picnics really says something about the sort of man he was. But they're not that much more revealing.

Each one of these performers uses the same adjective to describe the songwriter: “relentless.” Many more interviewees will testify that Warren earned the bracelet she wears — the one that says “relentless as [BLEEP].”

[Krasinski's] direction is so efficient and assured that the three or four rather ridiculous plot elements go unnoticed until well after the movie’s over. That’s how absorbing Part II can be.

Reichardt's satire is directed just as devastatingly at present-day mindlessness and its inability to reinvent pop myth as against the cliches people inhabit as a substitute for living. And yet there's an affection for the cultural and spiritual meltdown her film's world embraces. River of Grass is incisive and funny. What's even rarer, it's simultaneously subversive and compassionate. Reichardt is a filmmaker to watch. [15 Dec 1995, p.70]

Watching these pint-size Astaires and Rogerses practice the fox trot, tango, rumba, and swing is the immediate hook to Mad Hot Ballroom.

Slowly it emerges that Gaga is Naharin’s “dance language,” a way of expressing one’s inner being through external movement. Gaga is dada — for dancers.

Bronson isn’t a story in the traditional sense at all. It’s a meditation on the art of rage - an action painting passing itself off as an action movie.

I don't think I've seen an actor do more with deadpan expressions than Mara does in this movie. Her face doesn't move but, whether she's tasing a man or standing in front of a mirror watching a cigarette dangle from her mouth, we respond to her.

Von Trotta comes closest to the object of her search when she looks at images from his movies. Especially images of the seashore.

It's a treat to encounter the deadpan light-handedness with which Mamet goes about his business.

Most franchises use a cookie-cutter approach to their entries, so it’s refreshing when a sequel tells its story in a different tenor than its predecessors. On that note, “Predator: Badlands” is a rousing success.

Will print books ultimately disappear, replaced by digital versions? The ever-entertaining and insightful Fran Lebowitz offers anecdotal evidence to the contrary. She notes that on the subway she sees many people in their 20s reading actual books. So perhaps there is hope a new generation will revive the bound medium.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World has a visual sumptuousness and a fluid agility that make it worth experiencing even if you’re not paying attention to the story. It moves the way you imagine a flying dragon might.

It's a tough balancing act and probably a futile one. As greedily as Hollywood looks upon these books as a franchise to strip-mine, the hard fact remains that what's good about them - Ted Geisel's untrendy gentleness, humor, and intelligence - resists translation to the big screen.

It’s still a clever-clever cartoon version of the book, with broad physical business in place of wit and Austen’s insights on gender roles and social hypocrisy tossed overboard. But I guess if the Empire waists are high enough and the male leads strappingly repressed, nothing else really matters.

Succeeds at its main tasks. It re-creates new wave New York with Proustian force, from the Kiev (the diner) to Fiorucci (the clothing store).

The best scenes come when the family gathers under tense circumstances that give Ian Bannen (as the MP's father) and Miranda Richardson (as his wife) the chance to unleash some civilized ferocity that's genial in his case and icy in hers. Her spurned-wife scene toward the end is the film's most powerful, and still would be even if the stilted sex scenes were volcanic. [22 Jan 1993, p.25]

Stylish and arrives at a satisfying cumulative weight, even if it isn't Austen pure.

The fundamental problem with this Macbeth is that it insists on reducing the mystery of motivation to the pop psychology of a magazine article.

This is bench-press melodrama, and it's as manipulative as anything Bette Davis or Jane Wyman ever starred in. You can't abide the shamelessness of any of it.

Far From the Madding Crowd is a Masterpiece Theatre version of Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel, shot with sumptuous taste and care, rife with emotions repressed and unbound, and featuring expertly nuanced performances from a tony, mostly British cast. It will greatly please discerning audiences while causing Hardy to spin discreetly in his grave. That’s a fair trade-off, especially if the movie sends you back to the book.

Birbiglia, who's from Shrewsbury, has done some wonderful things with awkwardness. I'm sad to report that Sleepwalk With Me isn't one of them.

It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater.

Fellowes is so desperate for us to like these people that, despite how guilty everyone seems, there's scarcely any pleasure in the film for us.

Whenever a band plays in “Persian Cats,’’ the director treats us to a fast, vibrant montage of Iranian faces and street scenes -- as if to say, look, this is who we REALLY are.

This version of Where the Wilds Things Are isn’t about childhood at all but about childhood’s end and what’s gained and lost by it. That’s why very young kids, dull Disney princesses, overprotective parents, and self-serious grown-ups should probably stay away.

Ingrid Goes West doesn’t offer Plaza a breakout role so much as a dig-deeper role. There’s a bravery to her performance that recalls De Niro as Pupkin. Actors really, really like to be liked — and understood. Ingrid is intensely unlikable — and opaque.

Grabsky’s goal appears to have been more circumscribed: an introduction to the composer that speaks to both the classical newcomer and someone who has loved this music for years but pieced together its back story only from hundreds of disconnected program notes.

A documentary love letter to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and it assumes you love her too.

The 70-something director puts us back in luxury's lap with Roman de Gare, which looks just like the high-roller ads you get in the first 40 pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair but feels vaguely more emotional. Lelouch wants to tie a Hermès scarf around our hearts.

Hurls its Holocaust at us in a series of justifiably horrific images.

It's a treat, nevertheless, to watch the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni in a rare leading role. Chiara Mastroianni has her mother's hair and face with her father's sorrowful eyes stuck smack in the middle, and she moves as if conscious of the weight of her genetic splendor.

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

Bizarre, shadowy, enticingly eerie...more poetic, more tantalizingly original.

The most playful film to come out of the French New Wave, it's also the last time Jean-Luc Godard appeared to have any fun.

He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.

Preposterous without being much fun about it. That's a shame: How often do you get to see Cruise play a professional assassin with Bill Clinton's hair?

It’s a strong story with devastating implications, but also one told at an artistic remove that renders its meanings less subtle than diminished. There’s a fury underlying this film that goes unexpressed to the point of almost going unacknowledged, and it saps The Third Wife of a strength and momentum it could use. If Ash Mayfair ever taps into that fury, she may become a filmmaker to reckon with.

Exacting but disappointing thriller.

The admirable feminist agenda occasionally trips up the narrative, but the film's performances keep it on track.

Testament deserves some credit for its message; it's too bad that its delivery is strictly third class. [04 Nov 1983, p.48]

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

Most of the time Things Change makes you marvel at how fresh a mob comedy can seem in the right hands. [21 Oct 1988, p.49]

Of course, the comedy is Manhattan-neurotic, but the film's tone is playful and its mood is comfortable. This movie may not stay with you a long time after you leave the theater, but you'll enjoy it a lot while you're watching it. [20 Aug 1993, p.41]

An original thriller about a home-invasion robbery gone wrong. To clarify, that would be “wrong” as in “not according to plan” – but also “wrong” as in “so dementedly repugnant, it just isn’t right.”

It’s tempting to think of Molly’s Game in poker terms: Sorkin’s holding a queen, a king, and at least a couple of aces, but the tell is that he talks too much, and in the end you realize he’s bluffing.

Sadly, this is the sort of movie in which the white Europeans do all the talking and worrying with each other. The Africans, for the most part, are either terrified, cowering, wincing masses or corpses strewn in the dirt.

Even when it falls back excessively on coincidence and contrived set pieces, even when it gushes irretrievably over the top in its final act, Washington makes Training Day sizzle.

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger isn’t so much inspired as disgusted by the notorious gangster in his newest documentary.

By the end, you don't entirely understand either of these people, but you come to understand why they need each other.

Stirs excitement about exploration of all kinds.

Ultimately, Bingenheimer seems underwhelmed with himself. The people who know him say, in the movie, that he's a relic. Mayor of the Sunset Strip makes heartbreakingly clear what a glorious relic Bingenheimer is.

The movie’s sentimental, predictable, fairly sloppy. It’s also a thoroughgoing joy — a cherry popsicle for the end of summer. If certain elements seem familiar from the recent “Yesterday” — classic rock and a South Asian lead character, primarily — “Blinded” is the better bargain: less slick, more cliched, but also more genuinely felt.

The movie feels loose and unpredictable. You're never sure where Paul or the story is going, and while that makes The Big Picture unexpectedly gripping for much of its running time, the shapelessness ultimately wins out.

Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander's dark-comic expansion on his cult Internet shorts, in which he crafts a back story for Santa that's as black as stocking coal.

The documentary loses a bit when Dagg returns home, and an alarmingly perky score doesn’t help. Late in life, after her tenure struggles, she published a new edition of her dissertation and found herself rediscovered.

Flatly filmed, drably lit, and sluggishly paced, Yes, God, Yes takes a cheeky premise and slowly lets the air out of it.

Through Ferreira’s skillful navigation of her character’s growth, and Leguizamo’s preternatural ability to show kindness in earnest, the film worked its way around my defenses and hit me square in the tear ducts more than once.

Sweet little crowd-pleaser.

Smart, unpredictable, and alive with the energies of actors who clearly are enjoying being stretched by their material.

Black Book takes the conventions of the WWII epic -- the prison breaks, the interrogation scenes -- and undermines them with craft and muscle and the ripe lack of restraint we've come to expect from this director.

She (Tsai Chin) and she alone makes the movie worth your time. Written by Angela Cheng and Sasie Sealy and directed by Sealy, Lucky Grandma is a low-budget labor of love that’s very funny until you realize it has no idea where it’s going.

Girls Trip is a hilarious reminder that we all need a Flossy Posse to make us laugh until our sides ache and give it to us straight when no one else will. Black girl magic, indeed.

As for the performances, only homely Giovana has heart and depth. The two boys lack chemistry, even in chemistry class, due in part to the trite dialogue, or at least as it is translated in subtitles.

What Happened Was nails contemporary isolation as few films do. It's filled with acute insights and observations of the wary yet hopeful circling that people do in conversation on a first date. It's a gem of a chamber play. [17 Sep 1994, p.37]

[A] stagy, troubling, bizarrely entertaining movie.

A bittersweet, wryly comic, keenly observed look at senescence.

Sokurov’s elegy for Europe — and for art — is eloquent, sorrowful, and challenging.

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.

The Theory of Everything, in other words, is Jane’s movie as much as it is Stephen’s, and while Eddie Redmayne’s performance deserves every bit of praise and statuary it will get, Felicity Jones has the subtler, less showy role to play and matches him frame for frame.

The title is Portuguese for "send a bullet" and the clever American tag line is "the rich steal from the poor; the poor steal the rich."

A cult classic is born.

An invitation to see something a little less pretty, and potentially more enduring.

In short, it's a gripping film with some surprises that emerge from around the edges. [24 Nov 1993, p.39]

The movie convinces us that the hero sees and understands Simone’s evil even as he continues to enable it — even as he allows his own life to be ruined. Dogman ends with a paroxysm of cathartic violence and an eerie echo of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (also with Mastroianni).