Technically, the film is as sexy as art house sex gets, as the bold and precocious girl initiates the coupling in the "bachelor's room" the man rents in Saigon's teeming Chinese quarter. But the couplings lack heat and intimacy and spontaneity in ways that have nothing to do with the man's tentativeness. What you feel as these scenes unfold isn't passion, but a sense of how carefully the bodies are being arranged, how artfully they're being lit. What we're experiencing here isn't ardor; it's up-market craftsmanship. There's much more of a sexual charge in their first scene together, when he glimpses her on a ferry, is smitten, offers her a ride in his splendid chauffeured limo, tentatively moves his hand toward hers in the back seat, takes a deep breath, touches her hand, then exhales with relief when she doesn't push his hand away. [13 Nov 1992, p.32]

The experience of watching Crip Camp might inspire you to reexamine your attitudes about disabled people and how society treats them. Though occasionally sentimental and preachy, it is an essential reminder of a civil-rights struggle that many have forgotten and a cause that has yet to be fully achieved.

This Earth doesn't really have anything new to say, but it does present some newly entertaining ways of saying it.

The film bears a resemblance to such multicharacter dramas as Robert Altman's ''Short Cuts" and Paul Thomas Anderson's ''Magnolia" -- like them, it's a portrait of a society straining at the seams -- but it manages the neat trick of being both charming and bilious.

Jackman spends enough time compellingly playing stranger in a strange land that you’ll put up with a few unwanted doses of the old familiar.

The film would be just as powerful, if less likely to saturate suburban megaplexes and flatter its patrons, were its saviors -- I don't know - French.

As played by Fiennes, who has the aquiline face and piercing eyes of Max Van Sydow, Clavius is no pushover. You believe his disbelief, so when it wavers, yours might as well.

At its best, Up in the Air invents new realms for old Hollywood sophistication.

Plays a little like “Sex and the City” as reconceived by a Minimalist composer. That makes the movie sound like a threat, when actually it’s a dry, lightly sad, and very French comedy of romantic neurosis, brought to us by two great artists, director Claire Denis (“Chocolat,” “Beau Travail,” “White Material”) and star Juliette Binoche.

Stunning performances help make The Sleepy Time Gal a thoughtful, moving piece that faces difficult issues with honesty and beauty.

Watching these pint-size Astaires and Rogerses practice the fox trot, tango, rumba, and swing is the immediate hook to Mad Hot Ballroom.

The filmmakers clearly intended this to be a goofy rollercoaster ride, so M3GAN is a success.

Giuliani Time has an ax to grind and wields it with dull-edged force.

Alan Pakula's literal adaptation of William Styron's Sophie's Choice is an admirable, if reverential, movie that crams this triangle into a 2 1/2 -hour character study enriched by Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, and nearly destroyed by Peter MacNicol. [21 Jan 1983]

So few Hollywood movies go here that this one's oddly welcome, even in its most turgid moments, of which there are many.

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

Miss Piggy may not be Babe, but she sure packs a good oink. Her garish performance in the last third of "Muppet Treasure Island" is one of the highlights of this pleasant, cuddly addition to the world of Muppet fantasy. [16 Feb 1996, p.55]

A chick flick of a particularly intelligent, ruthless, and loving sort.

At some point we're flashed a junkyard billboard telling us that Collinwood is the ''Beirut of Cleveland'' - yes, but here, it's by way of Looney Tunes.

Structural shortcomings and all -- gives a neglected giant of African independence his due.

Puts the fun back into going to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. He said he'd be back, and he is.

[Verhoeven's] cold, slick, funny, high-powered movie is informed by a humanism this genre almost always abandons in its chase after vigilante splat. [17 Jul 1987]

Junior isn't brilliant. A lot of its moves are as patently synthetic as Schwarzenegger's prosthetic stomach. But it goes through its paces with directness and savvy, arranges its big, bold elements into a likable pop construct (if you tune out the music), and some of Schwarzenegger's moves into motherhood will surprise you. [23 Nov 1994, p.25]

You probably won't see a better directorial debut this year than David Michôd's Animal Kingdom.

A broader work than Baumbach's last movie, and it's funnier, too, even as you gasp at the misbehavior.

The Orphanage gets by on mood and a mournfulness that's not easily soothed. Sadness and loss, it says, are the threads connecting the spirit world and our own, and women, who bring life into the world, understand that far better than men ever will.

More than a predictable self-discovery yarn about the caterpillar that turns into a beautiful butterfly.

The Eamery, as some called it, was highly successful as a business - and, more important, as an exercise in tastemaking. "We wanted to make the best for the most for the least,'' the Eameses like to say.