Jason Schwartzman is a fine actor, but he has a knack for creating characters you want to punch in the face, and Philip, who has a second novel coming out and is intent on burning all his bridges, is almost marvelously obnoxious.

The Wonders evokes many other films, but is utterly unique. It is like being privy to a marvelous story that Rohrwacher is telling herself.

The first two hours run the gamut from interesting to delightful. The final 20 minutes are roaring, ridiculous business as usual. We should be thankful the tide of mediocrity is held back as long as it is.

Enormously enjoyable.

It's an "Annie Hall" for the iPod generation: über-designed, pleasing to the touch, making up in generic sweetness what it lacks in bite.

Remarkably, ''Me and You" doesn't shock so much as soothe.

About a third or so of Spencer doesn’t work: flashbacks to Diana’s childhood, hallucinations involving Anne Boleyn, a secret visit to her old house, a Boxing Day pheasant shoot that turns into a battle of wills between Diana and Charles (Jack Farthing). But Stewart’s performance makes those things immaterial and the rest of the movie seem all the finer.

Like much of Godard’s recent work, The Image Book is a rumination on art, politics, history, and mankind’s eternal folly disguised as a cinematic collage. It’s plotless but it has shape; random but with purpose. After initially fighting the movie, one might find oneself giving into its flow, the visuals scudding across one’s retina, the assemblage of quotes and mournful pensees on the soundtrack seducing one into following along in its wake.

May not be the best movie ever made about the perils of family life, but it is among the most ruthlessly comic.

Iñárritu has his eye so firmly on the myths of America that he loses sight of the men who made them. But he’s hardly the first person to do that.

Williams keeps the pace quick and tight, the wrestling scenes are fun, and the costumes are delightful. With its message of acceptance, “Cassandro” is preaching to the choir, but it’s a good sermon nonetheless.

The arrival of Raúl Ruiz’s final work, Night Across the Street, brings the total to four, an elegant, clear-eyed bridge game of artists playing their last trump cards.

Catchy and unobtrusively assured, it's both hip and innocent, stylized and natural, charming its way through a conventional hey-kids-let's-have-a-party plot with bright comedy, great dancing, and on-top-of-it rap. It even manages to send a few messages about responsibility without being boring. In short, it's the best teen genre movie in ages. [23 Mar 1990, p.43]

No Sudden Move is a terrific movie — an unflashy near-masterpiece of professionalism on both sides of the camera.

Gyllenhaal’s excellent, but, playing his girlfriend, Tatiana Maslany (star of TV’s “Orphan Black”) is something special.

Throughout the film, we know as much as ABC does and nothing more. Filled with scenes of process, it’s as suspenseful as any thriller.

Presents enough teasing glimpses into the dancer’s personal and inner life to demand a fuller picture.

Schnabel tries to re-create van Gogh’s inner workings during the intense last two years of his life — his point of view and his way of looking at the world that resulted in the masterpieces that have since become invaluable investment commodities.

Compared to his previous films, The Dance of Reality offers a nearly coherent narrative and a gentle, reconciliatory tone.

It’s as slickly enjoyable as anything you’d see on VH1.

It’s a warm, sympathetic, very sloppy, and often very funny little movie about a young woman who, among several other things, is not remotely ready to be a parent and knows it.

One hell of a party, and it doesn't let anything get in the way of that.

The deeper Tim’s Vermeer takes you, the peskier and more profound the questions get.

Is it an allegory for contemporary Greece? Beats me. Like the films of Buñuel, it’s about the human condition, regarded with bemusement and acuity.

Beyond its fresh twists on the cop and romance genres, Witness is, above all, an anti-consumption film. [08 Feb 1985]

The movie’s a funny, dark, increasingly razor-sharp inquiry into the metaphysics of modern fame — how the dream of “being seen” and thus validated on some primal level can completely unhinge the average schmo.

It's a mixed bag almost by definition. Yet the good is good indeed, making this show worth a look for devotees of the form.

The movie captures a kind of tragedy of self.