A great measure of Abe’s success is that it made me hungry. More than that, it’s the first movie in quite some time to make me smile.

It’s an earnest and compassionate treatment of a story that is, by necessity, grueling as hell. It’s graced with sincere performances by Steve Carell (as David) and Timothée Chalamet (as Nic) that strive to steer clear of Actorly Moments. And there are mysteries here — of parenting, of human experience — that director Felix Van Groeningen looks at sharply before looking away.

Since this is a Tim Burton movie, you can safely assume the love story is the most twisted subplot of all. Still, the actors hold our interest and make the movie believable.

Big Eyes may not be Tim Burton’s absolute worst movie — we’ll always have “Planet of the Apes” — but it’s pretty close to the bottom. It’s also the film that reveals his weaknesses as a director and, by their absence, his strengths. Gaudy, shallow, shrill, smug, the movie proves beyond a whisker of doubt that Burton has little interest in human beings unless they can be reduced to cartoons.

An arch espionage comedy that's never as amusing as it thinks it is.

A solidly crafted, suspensefully written, powerfully acted little juggernaut.

Red, White & Royal Blue is sweet and funny, and it doesn’t scrimp on the sex scenes. Horny and corny is a good combination for a rom-com, if you ask me.

Genuine, artful simplicity may be an impossible quality in a modern children's movie, so Curious George opts instead for mayhem under a blanket of sweetness. The little ones understand.

It can seem sometimes that Hollywood has a monopoly on stupid, obnoxious comedy. Anyone who sees Klown will learn otherwise. Comedy can be just as stupid and obnoxious in Danish.

Henry & June is a gorgeous film, one aimed at the intelligent and discriminating. As iconography, it's a stunner. But it would be better off as a silent. It's an example of talent and intelligence determined to do everything right, only to have almost everything come out wrong. [05 Oct 1990, p.53p]

The Children Act isn’t all that interesting a movie, despite the many talented people involved and the generally high level of work they do. The most interesting thing about it is how it presents a case study in the very different way style can determine what works on the screen vs. what works on the page.

Kong: Skull Island isn’t a remake or a reboot or a re-anything. It’s just a Saturday matinee creature feature with a smart, unpretentious script, a handful of solid supporting players, and a digital Kong who feels big enough and real enough to provoke the necessary awe. This is all to the movie’s credit.

Predictable and not terribly clever, but among the slim pickings of movies geared to the pre-school and grade-school set, it could be much worse.

The most consistently funny of the ''Austin Powers'' films.

Corny. But it's corny in a way that a Hollywood movie about a boy who just wants to go home ought to be corny. Plus when it's done with this much care, corny works for me.

They’re calling it a movie, but no matter how you squint at it it’s a TV show.

Stone's film rolls off the screen with affection and authority, even when Morrison's life enters its sodden, bummed-out finale, and Val Kilmer does an uncanny job of identifying with Morrison. [01 Mar 1991]

The charm of Conversations With Other Women, a gimmicky but oddly moving two-character drama that flies in from who knows where, is its intelligentknowingness.

A fond, uncomplicated love letter to two irrepressible good-time Charlottes.

The performances are what put it over -- that and the observant camera of director Udayan Prasad.

Pleasantly inspirational on its own terms, "Clear" is no one's idea of fresh goods.

The movie has a jolly, half-remembered quality, as though it were adapted from a particularly rose-colored memoir.

Something to Talk About is one of the summer's very few adult movies, and while it's flawed and meanders into slackness, it also offers kinds of rewards few studio movies do. [4 Aug 1995, p.49]

Keep your big-budget horror movie expectations locked away in a separate crawl space, because this grainy feature debut from writer-director Ti West demands that you buy into the silliness, and the cheese.

Teller is cornering a market on recklessness in the roles he chooses -- the energy from that demonic drum solo at the end of “Whiplash” seems to carry over into the ferocity with which Vinny pounds at life. He’s not very smart, he’s kind of a jerk, but he never, ever stops, and Bleed for This earns your respect for him.

Off the Black is a small, dry, emotionally loaded short story that has been carried to film like baked fish to a platter.

lluminating and exceptional docu-portrait.

Confusing storytelling and bad dialogue.