The film is something to see, and when it addresses the mysterious bond connecting creative people, it has an urgent, ugly splendor.

What Don Jon is, surprisingly, is honest. R-rating aside, it should be required viewing for every 15-year-old boy on the planet.

“Shadows” has its share of lines that will be repeated by fans ad infinitum (a favorite: “Yes, now Google it”).

Technically outstanding and the performances are strong.

The movie balances nicely on the edge of meta-horror, with characters breaking free of their assigned roles (in more ways than one) and monkey-wrenching the very urban legend they're dying to get out of.

Disarmingly direct and charmingly directed; it’s a bona fide love story, if an exhausted and occasionally thin one.

Its attributes and achievements are modest, but its arias, duets, and ensembles are engaging all the same.

The movie bogs down only toward the finish, when it turns into a metahuman free-for-all.

The big difference between Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita" and this big, slick remake is that this new film has less visual edge and is more sentimental. It's more upfront with the idea that Maggie, as she's called here, has feelings. Still, Fonda's at her most compelling in the early scenes. [19 March 1993, p.50]

The ‘"unreasonable man" himself is interviewed, too, and he comes across as patient, articulate, and maddeningly uncompromising.

Much of the charm of this highly charming film is the window it affords on the offstage Beatles and their families.

Even with his glossy new look, Charlie Brown remains the Charlie Browniest.

If even half of Olivier Dahan's robust film about Piaf's life is true -- and let's face it, much remains shrouded in myth and mystery -- it's a wonder she could get dressed in the morning, let alone forge a legendary singing career.

The screen Grease seemed at the time a big, overblown version of the sassy, gritty stage musical. Now the differences seem less important. What the two versions share are sizzle and a refusal to ignore the sexual energy of an exuberant cast. Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago. [27 Mar 1998, p.D6]

His carnival-esque filmmaking style, which can leave some Spike Lee joints in tatters, helps this one expand in sorrowful heart and indomitable wit. Chi-Raq is a vibrant community mural of a movie, and it stretches to the horizon.

Is it horror? Drama? Love story? Allegory? Maybe best to think of it as a chilly Scandinavian bedtime tale, the type to unsettle bothersome children and leave them identifying with the ogre.

The movie's not even close to Pixar standards - the animation is slapdash and the story construction's a mess - but the vibe is loose-limbed and fluky, and the gags have an extra snap that's recognizably Seinfeldian.

It's as much a portrait of a kind of artist as it is a document of a city's evolving sense of style.

Alan Partridge is the cinematic equivalent of Marmite: a much-loved condiment in Britain and a puzzlement almost everywhere else. An acquired taste, certainly, but on the basis of this movie, well worth sampling at least once.

Succeeds at its main tasks. It re-creates new wave New York with Proustian force, from the Kiev (the diner) to Fiorucci (the clothing store).

It's raucous and loud as hell; the hyperactive editing could trigger grand mal seizures.

The film’s a character piece with a tightening noose of suspense, and while it has its artsy-indie-dawdly moments, it’s disturbing in ways that aren’t easy to shake. Is the movie necessary? Do we need a “John and Lee: Portrait of Two Serial Killers”? Because it shines a light, however hesitant, into the cramped, resentful mind-sets that fester in the corners of America, I’d have to say yes.

Even if some of the references are inscrutable, a lot of 8 Women is a riot. Here and there Ozon finds the key to a level of farce that would have amused Bunuel himself.

It’s a juggling act that Russell can’t sustain and doesn’t: The last 20 minutes feel aimless, and the movie doesn’t end so much as coast to a halt. And still you walk away giddy and full. American Hustle takes your money and makes you glad you were fleeced.

"I've seen the look on people's faces when I've brought them there," Whedon says of the convention. "It's the look I had on my face. 'My tribe, my tribe, I've found my tribe.' "

What makes Palindromes bearable is that Solondz has yet to come up with an answer.

While Crosby is painfully frank throughout this documentary about his knack for destroying friendships and driving people away (we learn in one brief aside that there’s a daughter who hasn’t spoken to him in years), one senses that it’s easier for him to say these things now than to have done the hard, human work of repair. David Crosby: Remember My Name is a testament of achievement and a portrait of ego, but it never quite gets past its subject’s illusions to properly consider his art.

This is a deeper film, delving into the twisted motives that rule lives, the lethal cycles that shackle progress, and, ultimately, the courage it takes to choose life.