More self-mockery is needed, less self-regard. [07 Apr 1995, p.90]

Gray's haunted, obsessional riffs are absorbing theater. Because Demme had the good sense to lay back and not beat them over the head with his cameras, they're equally compelling on film. [27 Mar 1987]

What the writer and director, Lance Daly, means as some kind of transporting urban adventure for them is a disenchanting slog for us.

Has John Sayles finally lost his mojo? How anyone could take a subject like the moment the Delta blues went electric and suck the joy and fury out of it is anybody's guess, but the talky, dull "Honeydripper" represents playwriting rather than filmmaking. And didactic playwriting at that.

This isn’t really for kids (I’d say it’s PG-13 level), and it’s so entrenched in its country’s myth-making that I wonder if sheer spectacle alone will be enough to entice American viewers.

With an aptness that may even be intentional, The Double feels both over-familiar and oddly new. It’s safe to call it a Kafka-esque tale, even though the Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel from which the movie is adapted was written in 1846.

A slow-burner — deadpan and mysterious, funny and sad — about a young Japanese woman obsessed with a pot of gold no one else knows is there. The fact that it doesn’t really exist has no bearing on the matter.

It's that gulf between earnest idealism and beaten-down realism that's the unexpected drama of Beauty Academy.

This is art paying homage to art.

Likable, go-with-the-flow comedy.

The movie doesn't trust that an illuminating comedy of pathetic people can be entertaining for long, so it sprinkles some hormones on the proceedings.

Although his (Jarmusch) films have moments of sly obliqueness, they leave us feeling stranded in underdevelopment. This is the case with Night on Earth, which is launched on a promising conceit - nocturnal taxi rides in five cities around the world during the same time slot. By the time the film ends, we can't help wondering just who has been taken for a ride. [15 May 1992, p.85]

As true-story dramas about innocent men on death row go, Just Mercy is just above average. I still hope it reaches the widest audience possible. To quote a statistic cited in the film, for every nine prisoners executed in this country, one is found to have been wrongfully convicted. That’s a number to shame a nation.

It’s very much a film about men, their yearnings and discontents, and about the way sins tumble down from one generation to the next. It’s a bank-robber movie, too, as well as a drama about the pressures teenagers face from parents and peers. You can feel Cianfrance biting off more and more until his mouth is too full to chew.

Ye bites off substantially more than he can chew.

As eye-opening as this movie is, the real story is outside the Times building, in the browser windows and iPads of me and you and everyone we know.

Unlike The Rescuers of 1977, which was flat and negligible, this sequel features full-bodied images and a number of distinctive, memorable characters. It also features an adventure plot that serves as a wry, environmentally conscious allegory while it entertains the kids. [06 Nov 1990, p.77p]

The skies are thick with whizzing bullets and strings being pulled by Shane Black's crude script and Richard Donner's cement-mixer direction. Predictably, the chicks-and-ammo stuff is punctuated by TV cop show repartee. [6 Mar 1987, p.36]

Best when it's playful, toying with the fact that the Mafia has in a single generation been transmogrified from myth to joke.

Beatriz at Dinner has been directed with subtle but damning chamber-comedy finesse by Miguel Arteta (“The Good Girl,” “Chuck & Buck”) and written by that great deadpan satirist Mike White (“Chuck & Buck,” “School of Rock,” TV’s “Freaks and Geeks”).

When you sit down to The Shining, you sit down with normal expectations of being diverted, perhaps even being gripped, but not being undermined. But the film undermines you in powerful, inchoate ways. It's a horror story even for people who don't like horror stories - maybe especially for them. [14 Jun 1980, p.1]

The real deal, an often awkward but nonetheless terrifically compelling high-stakes human drama.

The best armchair holiday going - the cast is lovely to behold and the plot dips in and out of the arrondissements with panache. You almost don’t mind that none of it adds up to terribly much.

Seeing Superman save, and work with, more than just white people is refreshing, but it really struck a nerve with fans who rely only on hearsay. Gunn doesn’t care if you’re offended; he’s too busy showing us a good time. “Superman” is a surprisingly entertaining reboot.

The movie dreamily conjures up the outlaw's last months, and it's gorgeous, but long, cumbersome, and slightly shallow.

You needn’t actually see Fracture to know that if the charge is acting that winks, these two are guilty.

This is the kind of tastefully poignant drama that asks its audience to confront taboos and then pats them on the back for doing so.

Over-stylized and overly re-enacted documentary.