Cantet does something that educated, upscale audiences may find exasperating in the extreme: He takes a tinderbox of racial and sexual exploitation, pours gasoline all over it, and refuses to light the match.

This intriguing story, like many tales of mid-20th-century American art, is fueled by testosterone.

Unfortunately, I didn’t laugh very much, and the story didn’t work as well as the movies that inspired it.

Three quarters of Cold Mountain consist of some of the most masterful and absorbing filmmaking of the year. The final quarter is Hollywood business as usual.

Cross Fame and Spinal Tap, color it Irish, and you've got The Commitments, the summer's most irresistible movie. [30 Aug 1991, p.79]

Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the masters of world cinema, and Flowers of Shanghai represents a shift for him. Stunning and hypnotic, it's his first period piece. [07 Apr 2000]

The British actor Christian McKay resurrects the young Welles as a magnificent mountain of talent, ego, and unsliced ham. He, and he alone, is reason enough to see this movie. The problem is the “Me’’ - Zac Efron.

When it's not opting for whimsy, Rocket Science makes you cringe, which is what's good about it.

American Sniper may be the hardest, truest movie ever made about the experience of men in war. Why? Because there’s no glory in it.

The movie could also teach something to the makers of "Pirates of the Caribbean" about delivering a story quirky enough to actually stick with you.

Offers yet another example of how a lot of what we consume is produced at somebody else's expense. In this case, it's sugar.

For a few years, Veit Harlan must have felt he was the right filmmaker at the right place at the right time. Did he ever stop to think that his luck also meant the doom of millions? Moeller’s documentary can’t supply an answer. It does, however, make the rest of us wonder.

A poignant, all-too-common tale of casual abuse in a workplace that is candidly labeled "better than most."

Channeling Nye’s own gift for making complex ideas simple and clear, the filmmakers edit together these various aspects of Nye’s life with deceptive ease, drawing on interviews and archival material and following him throughout his hectic schedule. This is not hagiography, however; they don’t back off from examining some of his more controversial endeavors and characteristics. That includes his fondness for the spotlight and his ambition, which in a couple of instances has backfired on him.

Marston's a miniaturist even when The Forgiveness of Blood calls out for larger gestures, and you occasionally sense a more bruising, compelling movie lurking behind this one.

As ponderous and overwrought as a film hogged by a couple of young hipsters named Roméo and Juliette can be.

Lively and loving documentary.

It’s a mordant if unwieldy thriller examining how evil not only becomes the norm, but a virtue.

Superior and original filmmaking. You won't be able to take your eyes off it.

Plays like a dislocated version of ''Death in Venice,'' but in a dryer, higher climate that features exponentially more firepower.

Wrestling gets in America's face and Blaustein gets in wrestling's face. It's a fascinating tango.

At its most effective, the movie is a chastening, sobering, and thorough work of film journalism, however shortsighted.

In style and story line, the film is daring in its simplicity.

Space Cowboys does achieve liftoff.

Mother's peace crusade ennobles Irish Town.

Spider-Man: Homecoming, a superhero movie is adolescent in all the right ways: limber, reckless, full of youthful brio and uncertainty. Trying on new identities, overreaching, doubting, starting over again.

It’s a surprisingly humorous and humane film — a lyrical little oddity that stands as a welcome return to form.

There's nothing seriously wrong with Man in the Moon. It's sincere, heartfelt and handsomely crafted - but within limits, and ultimately it's the limits you feel most strongly. [04 Oct 1991, p.43]