Affecting, troubling, dazzling film.

The enjoyment of the film comes from watching Mesrine's ambitions grow slowly but exponentially; the shock is in being reminded and re-reminded of his sadism.

A triumph — a messy, qualified triumph that even at 138 minutes makes an incomplete case for Brown’s meaning to American life and culture, but a triumph nevertheless.

The actors turn in great work, but the true stars of “Blitz” are the production design by Adam Stockhausen and the cinematography by Yorick Le Saux. Collectively, they put you inside the Tube stations and shelters that were occupied by Londoners trying to escape the Blitz.

Swinton’s vocal performance as Bell is so vivid and absorbing it could be entered as evidence for the defense. Swinton makes Bell so compelling it’s easy to overlook what a paradoxical figure she was.

The debut feature from 26-year-old director Richard Kelly shows plenty of promise, but it's somewhat self-involved and won't appeal to audiences who like a straightforward -- even if fantastical -- narrative.

The stone-faced silent comedian’s influence on every possible aspect of physical comedy is wide and deep, attested to in this movie by entertainers old (Bill Irwin, Paul Dooley, Richard Lewis), ancient (Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner), youngish (Bill Hader, Quentin Tarantino), and random (Cybill Shepherd, Werner Herzog).

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.

Shazam! is pretty entertaining. It’s a lark that aims to distinguish itself from too-familiar DC dourness a bit like “Guardians of the Galaxy” playfully tweaked Marvel’s formula.

Although idiotic, The Evil Dead at least is propelled by energy and enthusiasm. It's scarier than many a more pretentious effort, and not everything in it is borrowed. [8 Oct 1983, p.Arts1]

It’s a galling and provocative experience to viewers of any political persuasion, and a reminder to the left of how easily idealism can run amok.

This one is a tensely clammy screw-tightener about an ex-con (Gene Nelson) pressured to become part of a bank heist. No cop ever chewed a toothpick better than Sterling Hayden does here. [07 Jan 1996, p.C31]

Mrs. Henderson Presents is a very old hat, and Judi Dench wears it beautifully.

There are a few tonal glitches, but Newell's hand is remarkably sure, the actors are winning, and Into the West is a treat. [17 Sep 1993, p.54]

This dramatic two-hander partners one of the cinema’s greatest talkers with one of its best listeners, Julianne Moore.

For a while, Light Sleeper hangs together promisingly. But when Dafoe's character meets old flame Dana Delaney, the plot spirals into preposterousness involving a sinister Eurotrash client, and the film also gets away from Schrader, who isn't a deft enough director to conceal or minimize the flaws in his script. [15 Sep 1992, p.71]

A fascinating shambles of a documentary - fascinating because its subject is so influential and so deranged, a shambles because its filmmaker can't decide which approach to take and so takes all of them.

Focuses on a parallel universe that moviegoers rarely consider: that of the invisible, hard-working craftspeople who put the illusion together.

Kang balances the uproariously comic with the profoundly sad, and the two tones amplify each other with subtlety.

What the movie lacks in ambition, originality, and grit, it makes up for in pure feeling.

As gripping as it is grueling, with performances that swing for the fences and a central mystery that seems an unresolvable tangle of knots until those knots come undone in a somewhat forced final act.

Shannon gives the movie its inner life. Maybe the movie will give her back her comedy career.

In Batman Begins, Christian Bale gives us the best Bruce Wayne that has ever graced the screen.

The rare ecological documentary that doesn’t nag us to run out of the movie theater and change the world.

As a tale of adolescent sexuality warped by passion, though, Bad Company is less compelling and more exploitative than its makers think.

One of the year's most winning performances, Logue's Dex will grow on you as he stumbles toward emotional fullness.

This is a sizzling, invigorating Hamlet.

A witty yet fiery and, in the best sense, provocative play of ideas about freedom of expression.

Delightful and original, the film conjures up a corner of Paris distinct and specific, yet fairy-tale fanciful.

At the very least, some of the answers and observations offered up in this hybrid documentary/drama/thesis project will surprise you.

Under a different set of circumstances - in a different society - the development might have flourished. But The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary, not fantasy.

Fatal Assistance has few answers, and adds little clarity.

This musical should have taken center stage in Theater Camp. The dreadful story surrounding it deserves to get the hook.

In Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris does something inconceivable and, at first glance, ill-advised. He gives the US soldiers of Abu Ghraib back their humanity.

The movie stakes out a whole new arena - male social performance anxiety - and ruthlessly mines it for comic embarrassment.

The biggest problem with Where’s My Roy Cohn? is the documentary’s attitude toward its subject: not that it’s critical (an uncritical approach to Cohn would be about as interesting as a daytime visit to Studio 54), but that it so thoroughly accepts his view of himself.

A narrative feature can do what the documentary couldn’t: re-create the tightrope act in full, glorious motion, rather than editing together surreptitiously snapped photos. These dizzying IMAX 3-D visuals truly are big-screen magic.

A honey, but your response to it may depend on where you fall on life's big curve.

So despite Tcheng's effort to add a metaphysical layer to the film, it pretty much repeats the narrative seen in many other documentaries about the fashion world, from Wim Wenders's “Notebook on Cities and Clothes” (1989), to “Unzipped” (1995), to “Valentino: The Last Emperor” (2008).

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a classic-rock station, except instead of getting the genuine articles to serenade you, you’re stuck with a bunch of actors cosplaying famous folk singers.

I know it's not "Citizen Kane," but it pushes my buttons. [25 March 1994, p.47]

Only a true grinch would grumble loudly at a film that delivers its pro-environment message with a light touch that avoids preachiness.

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

Cancer dramas are not uncommon; what lifts Ordinary Love just enough out of the ordinary is its concern with how a married couple survives the ordeal. Intimate, unsparing, and attuned to the micro-nuances of a longtime relationship, it is made special by the two actors at its center, both out-size talents who here relish the opportunity to play close and draw from life.

Like Lyon balancing looking out and looking in “The Bikeriders,” Nichols balances the mythic and mundane in this version.

A small film and, ultimately, a satisfying one.

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.

Agreeable eye candy and ear candy, but it's too slight to reach as deep as it thinks it wants to reach.

Frustratingly, Carnahan barely trusts his storytelling to keep our attention long enough to get through a scene without some grisly cutaway -- a gun to the head, the writhing wounded.

A clever, affectionate, and entertaining holiday snack for sci-fi fans. Falling somewhere between slick and cheesy.

Despite the music, and no matter how the film’s editors slice it, the attempt to get a rise out of the audience by way of the endangered child device verges on emotional pornography.

What's most vexing about Portrait of Wally is its lack of nuance.

It's fair to say that a meaner documentary might have packed more punch. But it's hard to imagine Michael Moore turning out anything that feels as pleasantly nourishing.

Fitfully good.

The parts, in other words, promise a brilliant whole. So why is this movie one of the signal disappointments of the year? You have to go back to the basics: Public Enemies has everything going for it except a reason and a script.

Like many other contemporary psychological thrillers, “Resurrection” is far better at building up tension than it is in pulling together its narrative threads. It’s a little over-infatuated with its own perceived complexity, as if giving the audience any kind of conventionally plausible wrap-up is beneath its mission.

It's a solid, earnest drama of moral redemption that places old cliches in an unfamiliar setting.

Has a novelist's human touch. Were it a book, it would go somewhere on the shelf with Jonathan Safran Foer and early Philip Roth.

An earnest, alarmist new docu-plea for nuclear disarmament, concludes with an orgy of such destruction. Mushroom clouds. Infernal white light. Obliterating energy blasts. It's all here, and mostly beyond the pale.

Tucci can be so focused on Giacometti’s artistic process that he gives short shrift to the art itself.

For a movie predicated on slapstick forward momentum, we spend an awful lot of time driving backward.

Bob Roberts not only invigorates a climate polluted by the usual presidential campaign bombast; it quickens the hearts of the disillusioned by reminding us that the left needn't always forfeit the bare-knuckled approach. [14 Sep 1992, p.47]

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]

At its most profound, Benjamin Button isn't about anything more important than Pitt's very handsomeness, which, for a surprising stretch of time, is a wonderful subject for study.

Hoffman confessed he was drawn to the role because ''this was a guy who didn't know how to feel, and I found that fascinating.'' His challenge is our frustration

A terrific little uppercut of a boxing movie and close to a perfect one.

Though overloaded with narration, “Honey” triumphs visually, with stunning shots of bees in flight, tracked in slow motion, “Winged Migration”-style, by who-knows-what technical wizardry.

Unstrung Heroes, with its small, detailed brush strokes and its eye for specifics, marks Diane Keaton's directorial breakthrough. [15 Sep 1995]

About halfway into Colossal you may experience the novel vertigo that comes when you genuinely have no idea where a movie is taking you but understand you’re in competent creative hands. That sensation holds until you’re deposited, happy and a little worse for wear, at the end.

A bit more internal tussle would have both better honored her spirit and made for a better documentary.

In short, Roger & Me is a breath of new life blowing through the Rust Belt. So depressed has this country's underclass been that any sign of life from it makes you want to cheer, and the funny and furious Roger & Me makes you want to cheer a lot. [12 Jan 1990, p.38P]

Assayas and his engaged, responsive cast finally beat the odds, subtly and beautifully enabling the film to genuinely seem to be about a handful of friends approaching - not always easily or even gracefully but ultimately very touchingly - the September of their shared and individual lives. [13 Aug 1999, p.D4]

Though I’ve had weeks to roll “Emilia Pérez” over in my head, I still haven’t reached a conclusion about it. If nothing else, this movie will lodge itself in some corner of your brain that you’ll return to now and again.

Sword of Trust has a dogged weirdness all its own, a singularity that extends to Maron having written the excellently jangly score. When was the last time you saw — or heard — a movie where the star composed the music? It’s just part of the its-own-world quality of Sword of Trust.

A date movie “Monkey Man” is not.

Certainly none of Olivier's other contemporary film characters matches Archie's resonances. We're lucky to still have The Entertainer. [04 Aug 1989, p.41]

Beneath its relentlessly decorous surface, "There's Always Tomorrow" is an Eisenhower-era horror story, starring America as a void with sharp teeth. [25 May 1990, p.50p]

A bleakly funny character study of a very particular species of urban fauna - the sports radio call-in fanatic - Big Fan’ is compulsively watchable.

The film is especially clear-eyed about the ways the state bureaucracy designed to help women like Sandra can sometimes stymie their best efforts.

It’s fast, it’s funny, it’s superficial, it’s full of likable stars and scientific mumbo-jumbo, and, above all, it taps into the human urge to see big things become little and little things get big. It’s as close to lizard-brain entertainment as superhero blockbusters get, and as the mercury pushes toward 100, I’ll take it.

It's a grand outdoor spectacle (the only real interiors are within tents, and those are hard to come by) and a perfectly juicy melodrama.

The screen Grease seemed at the time a big, overblown version of the sassy, gritty stage musical. Now the differences seem less important. What the two versions share are sizzle and a refusal to ignore the sexual energy of an exuberant cast. Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago. [27 Mar 1998, p.D6]

John Lewis: Good Trouble isn’t a great film, but it has a great subject — and excellent timing.

What's refreshing about the Danish movie is how direct the girls are.

The new film isn’t nearly as bleak as Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman (in general, Marvel seems more risk-averse when it comes to fiddling with the crown jewels), but it still creates an action-movie landscape torn between patriotic ideals and harsh post-9/11 realpolitik.

This isn't a movie -- it's an author in love with the sound of her own voice.

The movie's narrative can be taxingly ornate, but there's something beautiful about its metaphorical conflation of politics and glamour, the real and the fictional.

A lively, invigorating comedy: a near-perfect mix of fresh characters, well-cast voices, superb visuals, and a fast-paced, fantasy-adventure plot.

While Prisoners of Paradise gives us but an impression of Gerron's state of mind, the film does a powerful job of showing us how deflated, small, and desperate this boisterous man had become.

Freaky Friday version 2003 is a shinier, snappier animal, partly because young girls now dress like Avril Lavigne, and partly because Jamie Lee Curtis has her best role in years and knows it.

Would it be rude to suggest that your time might be better spent with your own children?

Starting with a premise that a smart-aleck high school sophomore might take pride in, the film rallies late to make some points about patriarchy and female empowerment, but not before a barrage of clichés, tweeness, and inanity.

It's a heart-warmer, a well-meaning movie that sets out to wring a modern message (and preferably some tears) from a famous but largely forgotten moment in history.

The Krays is one of the artiest, eeriest gangster movies ever made. [15 Sep 1990, p.14p]

The idea behind Eugene Jarecki’s nonfiction film The King — you can’t really call it a documentary — is crazy-good inspired.

Together Together sounds like a really bad idea on paper, and for the first half-hour or so, it’s a really bad idea on screen. Yet a funny thing happens to this surrogate-pregnancy romantic comedy (I told you it was a bad idea) as it bumps along: It develops curious and unexpected pockets of feeling.

The good news is that the movie advertises Dolan's delirious visual talent.

Brisk and deeply engrossing.