Heartbreaking stories of patients suffering life-shattering illness make Under Our Skin compelling. It would have been an even better movie if the filmmakers had been more diligent in following the money.

Monsters is a genuine curio: a moody, low-budget road-movie romance that takes place against a background of alien invasion.

It's a terrific musical biofilm filled with drive, solid characterizations and - biggest surprise of all - musical performances that jump off the screen. [22 Apr 1994, p.33]

Good Kill is by necessity a grim piece of work, one that fields a powerful and unexpectedly terse performance from Ethan Hawke while stumbling over plot developments that seem increasingly forced. Niccol can be forgiven his outrage even as it leads him to create drama out of agenda instead of the other way around.

I don’t think the movie is looking for answers; it isn’t asking any questions. But by its very nature, this is both an experiment in ontology (do babies know they’re babies?) and existentialism (are they thinking about who to be?).

A triumph of romantic impulse over stylistic indulgence. [21 Oct 1983]

A playful French meta-mystery that's occasionally too proud of its own cleverness.

You may not recognize the Vignelli name, but you certainly recognize their designs.

The movie Bonifacio and Famiglietti have made is much better as a bittersweet family portrait. But those in search of a mirror for their own weight issues will find a deluxe one here.

It's a spectacular ballet of death, lavishing upon us the highest body count of any action movie since "Total Recall," and its cynical panache marks a return to form for kickboxer Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose recent vehicles have sputtered. Not "Hard Target," though, which floors it from start to finish as it sends Van Damme after a vicious gang that rounds up homeless vets to serve as sacrificial victims for rich hunters in New Orleans. [20 Aug 1993, p.43]

The film will resonate with today's alienated workers, whose every brain cell and nerve ending hates the soul-crushing jobs they're told they should be grateful to have.

Ultimately, this film is only scary if you're afraid of artfully self-conscious, grainy cinematography.

An overly constructed little thriller that squeezes a fair amount of suspense out of its far-fetched plot.

Settles for the cliches of American suspense films, right down to an ending that leaves the door open to a possible sequel.

Love hurts in Secretary -- but not too much. It's not impossible to imagine adventurous young couples seeing this movie and rushing home to try out the handcuffs and paddles.

For every line of dialogue that's truly, glitteringly acid, though, there are five that are merely clever, and Lee, likable as he is, never really taps into the misery of the teen misfit.

A bonanza of pop uplift. It wraps the up-from-nothing drama of ''Flashdance'' in the sassy, interracial pep rallying of ''Bring It On'' and the military romance of ''An Officer and a Gentleman.''

It's often corny, but it's never boring, and it'll sweep you up in its momentum if you give it a chance.

A Perfect Getaway may not play fair by the audience but at least it cheats honestly. These days that's something.

This is a ridiculous movie - a thriller so indifferent to suspense, so above mystery that one character literally stabs another in the front.

The first 30 or so minutes of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story condense the entire Hollywood biopic genre into a sweet chewable tablet. It's the Flintstones vitamin of spoofs.

It looks great and the dancing is the kind of stuff that would upstage the average pop star.

Hegedus and Pennebaker do solid work presenting Wise’s arguments. It’s a tricky narrative challenge to shift from inherently compelling wildlife scenes to abstract courtroom debate, but the film manages it capably, even spicing things up with one justice’s admonition that Wise needs to cut his slavery analogies.

The Guilty gets less and less plausible, not least of all in how neatly it ties together various plot elements. For its first 40 minutes or so, the movie shows how much Gyllenhaal and Fuqua can do with little. Confinement becomes a dramatic launching pad. Then melodrama kicks in, and what had been a gripping offbeat thriller becomes a morality tale (including a truly shameless plot twist).

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget isn’t a bad movie; it’s just an unnecessary one. Whoever thought audiences would be clamoring for the sequel to a 23-year-old film with such a satisfying ending to its story must have been out of their clucking mind.

My Cousin Rachel is a well-turned, well-acted literary adaptation that suffers from a built-in problem: The hero is a twit.

Formulaic enough to suggest that franchise would be B level at best, a TV series at worst. But it's also just good enough to make you want to watch it, anyway.

The lack of a deeper dive into its subject’s trials and tribulations is the biggest flaw of “Piece by Piece.” While the concept of making a documentary with Legos is an intriguing one, and it’s well executed, the film itself is a very shallow look at its subject.