A hugely enjoyable shambles. It’s a comic deconstruction of that most useless of Hollywood artifacts — the blockbuster sequel — that refuses to take itself seriously on any level, which, face it, is just what we need as the summer boom-boom season shifts into high gear.

Exit 8 is based on a best-selling video game released in 2023. I have not played it, but if it’s anything like director Genki Kawamura’s adaptation, I’d say it’s enough to drive a person crazy.

The final questions in Pervert’s Guide to Ideology nag at us, and in a culture so built upon and so profiting by fantasies of Hollywood apocalypse, they deserve to.

A grade A, meat-and-potatoes genre flick.

Diablo Cody wrote Young Adult, and it's an improvement over "Juno," her first script.

With its wry take on the manic triviality of the industry, it's not only the most sparklingly jaundiced showbiz entertainment since "All About Eve." It's also the gutsiest mother-daughter story since "Terms of Endearment." Call it "Terms of Endurement," plan on laughing a lot, and you won't be far off. [13 Sep 1990, p.97]

The only real tension the documentary has, once Steinbauer has his first meeting with Rebney, is whether the filmmaker is celebrating him more than exploiting him.

In Brad’s Status, Stiller becomes the face of white male privilege — and its comeuppance.

In its dark, relentless, devastatingly ironic way, The Pledge is an exhilarating movie, partly because it isn't afraid to be genuinely challenging.

A rambunctious joy.

I have seen the future of Hollywood movie stardom, and its name is America Ferrera.

Aileen is Broomfield working compassionately. Perhaps it's only because he knows he can't save Wuornos that he can offer her as she might have been: part wounded animal, part self-destructive martyr, and all tragedy.

Nobody's going to think of The Score as trail-blazing, but there's nothing small-time about its dramatic and acting payoff.

As luminous as the star presence at its center. It's at once a touching teacher movie and an even more touching love story.

The family snapshots are more revealing. The sight of Colby wearing a tie at family picnics really says something about the sort of man he was. But they're not that much more revealing.

Each one of these performers uses the same adjective to describe the songwriter: “relentless.” Many more interviewees will testify that Warren earned the bracelet she wears — the one that says “relentless as [BLEEP].”

[Krasinski's] direction is so efficient and assured that the three or four rather ridiculous plot elements go unnoticed until well after the movie’s over. That’s how absorbing Part II can be.

Reichardt's satire is directed just as devastatingly at present-day mindlessness and its inability to reinvent pop myth as against the cliches people inhabit as a substitute for living. And yet there's an affection for the cultural and spiritual meltdown her film's world embraces. River of Grass is incisive and funny. What's even rarer, it's simultaneously subversive and compassionate. Reichardt is a filmmaker to watch. [15 Dec 1995, p.70]

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

Slowly it emerges that Gaga is Naharin’s “dance language,” a way of expressing one’s inner being through external movement. Gaga is dada — for dancers.

Bronson isn’t a story in the traditional sense at all. It’s a meditation on the art of rage - an action painting passing itself off as an action movie.

I don't think I've seen an actor do more with deadpan expressions than Mara does in this movie. Her face doesn't move but, whether she's tasing a man or standing in front of a mirror watching a cigarette dangle from her mouth, we respond to her.

Von Trotta comes closest to the object of her search when she looks at images from his movies. Especially images of the seashore.

It's a treat to encounter the deadpan light-handedness with which Mamet goes about his business.

Most franchises use a cookie-cutter approach to their entries, so it’s refreshing when a sequel tells its story in a different tenor than its predecessors. On that note, “Predator: Badlands” is a rousing success.

Will print books ultimately disappear, replaced by digital versions? The ever-entertaining and insightful Fran Lebowitz offers anecdotal evidence to the contrary. She notes that on the subway she sees many people in their 20s reading actual books. So perhaps there is hope a new generation will revive the bound medium.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World has a visual sumptuousness and a fluid agility that make it worth experiencing even if you’re not paying attention to the story. It moves the way you imagine a flying dragon might.

It's a tough balancing act and probably a futile one. As greedily as Hollywood looks upon these books as a franchise to strip-mine, the hard fact remains that what's good about them - Ted Geisel's untrendy gentleness, humor, and intelligence - resists translation to the big screen.