Perhaps Crowley was trying to deconstruct the clichés we’ve become accustomed to in romantic movies since the old studio system started churning them out. But even that explanation fails to hold water as “We Live in Time” repeatedly falls back on those dated, tired tropes.

Aided by Simon Beaufils’s luxuriant wide-screen photography and Laurent Sénéchal’s alternately swooning and plinking suspense music, “Sibyl” is a vacation for the senses and a gathering headache for the brain. The screenplay, by Triet and Arthur Harari (David H. Pickering supplied the English-language dialogue spoken on the island’s film set), piles a lot on the unstable heroine’s plate and then adds even more.

A solid two-bagger, not a home run.

The movie is the product of his (Friedman) big, shiny love of forgotten soul legends whom superstardom (and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I might add) has eluded.

It's a refreshing alternative to hipper-than-thou moviemaking.

Comes on like a runaway Humvee.

'Titanic'' was a case of a cheeseball story riding terrific effects. The Perfect Storm is in every important way deeper.

Not all of it works - and not all of it works the way the target audience of jacked-up young males might want it to - but the movie is hugely provocative fun, and I'm pretty sure that's on purpose.

So the big surprise about White Boy Rick is how well the movie works. It’s one thing to know a story is based on nonfiction. Being made to believe its plausibility is something else. White Boy Rick you believe.

For smart kids between the ages of 8 and 12, the movie hits the sweet spot with a satisfying cosmic bang. It's a cross between "A Wrinkle in Time" and a middle-school version of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Ambles along nicely, but feels as if it's never going to end.

Raimi, who shares script credit with his brother Ivan and Alvin Sargent, strikes an exquisite balance between pop and woe, drama and whooshing adventure.

Hard-driving and propulsive as it is, the film is unable to hide the fact that Woo seems not only to be repeating himself, but parodying his earlier films on a much bigger scale, more crudely and coarsely.

Unbroken stirs a moviegoer by default; it’s an astounding story of human endurance that has been brought a little too safely to the screen.

The endearing and cheeky ensemble works hard, and Ken Scott's script finds ways of wringing irreverence from the apparent good nature of the situation.

If there’s one popcorn movie so far this summer that actually makes us fear for — and care for — its protagonist, this is it.

This cacophonous ending may serve to reinforce the filmmakers' cynical themes, but it leaves viewers trying desperately to remember the part of the film that had brains, wit, and so much promise.

As a suspenseful true crime story, 24 Days succeeds. As a warning against the ever present dangers of anti-Semitism, it is eloquent and disturbing. It’s in combining the two that Arcady mishandles the case.

It's too fragmented and diffuse to ever bring its parts together in any really satisfying manner.

Bobby marks a turning point for Colin Farrell, whose vulgarities and inelegance tend to get the better of his range.

All in all, maybe the best 90 minutes of romantic comedy in theaters this fall. Unfortunately, the film is 122 minutes long.

Like an old college wrestler, Harris saunters through this toasty little piece of biographical fiction in love with the part's fixins'.

With Dosunmu, African culture thrives in a demographically shifting but historically African-American part of town. If the idea is that Nollywood could work in Manhattan, this is the director who can show us how.

The particulars are often fascinating, but all the solemnity does work against a more rousing finish. The Netflix-distributed feature might equal “Braveheart” (1995) in its gritty authenticity, but that standard-setter’s memorably transportive quality was ultimately a far battle cry from this.

In the end, what makes Inside Hana's Suitcase so powerful is the most traditional technique of all: authentic and eloquent storytelling by memorable characters.

A semisweet nugget, an insinuating, low-budget little charmer. [27 Aug 1999, p.E4]

Sarah Silverman is far and away the best part of I Smile Back, a strained entry in the Mad Housewife genre.

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