The movie misses Henson's good-hearted inventiveness, but there's ample evidence that the second generation of Muppeteers are almost as good at pulling the strings as the first. [17 Feb 1996, p.8G]

David Goyer, who wrote the script for Man of Steel from a story he concocted with Christopher Nolan, found a new way to make us care: The title character is disturbed by everything in his adopted home.

Isn't quite smart enough to untangle one large, insoluble problem at the end.

His movies are thrilling and ridiculous in equal measure, and I often laughed with incredulous approval as he wreaked havoc.

I think the trilogy has come to its natural conclusion: However you interpret the ending, we’ve spent enough time with these two people.

Mitchell keeps the direction simple and well-behaved, usually just pointing the camera at the speaker, but you can see why this topic appealed to him.

The feel-good movie of a feel-blah movie year, with all the positive qualities and one negative trait that this description implies.

If you fell in love with the big-hearted sentimentality of Rent when you saw it onstage, the film version will remind you why. If you think Jonathan Larson's musical is ponderous agitprop, the movie won't change your view.

By the end, an end that has a little too much melodrama to it, we can only shake our heads in wonder.

Nothing too graphic, but it creates drama, as it’s only natural to root for the hunted in a film like this.

The film has such an expansive, likeable spirit.

From the first gentle meeting of its hero and heroine to the last line of dialogue, The Finest Hours executes all the traditional moves beautifully.

Is it too much to ask that he take a risk next time and kill somebody off, however much we’re used to having them in the “Trek” universe?

As you get into the flow of the narrative, and the strangeness of hearing no dialogue recedes, the movie becomes a rewarding experience.

It offers a grim view of prehistoric life: Carnivores slaughter herbivores, though we're spared most direct shots of this violence.

Why is The Emperor's New Groove Disney's funniest animated movie in years? Because it's the least like a Disney animated movie.

Even Wilder's most ardent admirers split on 1970's little-seen, much-edited adventure-comedy "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes", but all agree it is one of his most personally felt movies. [18 Jul 2003, p.11E]

The writing is haphazard at times, though the situations are funny enough in themselves to sustain our interest.

It's a satisfying experience, whatever kind of picture you label it.

Though this film doesn't have the novelty value of the first or the complex plotting of the second, it boasts the most spectacular single sequence.

The picture should satisfy both diehard fans, who liked the plotting and interaction of early Bond films, and "Die Hard" fans, who prefer Bond shaken and stirred by massive explosions, vehicular crashes and gunplay befitting a Central American revolution.

The script by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling gets relaxed, throwaway laughs, even if it doesn’t always hold together.

If you're fond of wigs, you may be in heaven. If you're more interested in Whigs, you may wish the movie had dug deeper under the lovely powdered surface of Lady Georgiana Spencer.

It's hard to fault a script that keeps finding new dilemmas for characters and rewards attentive viewers with in-jokes.

Qualifies as a solid double, maybe a triple.

Rampling carries the film, appearing in virtually every scene.

It's handsomely shot, acted with fervor and reasonably subtle in delivering its message:

It's the chemistry between the stars that makes the film stand out in a drab spring.

If we can’t believe these characters could really be friends, we can live for 101 minutes in a world where they do.

The mediocre original, hampered by a saccharine plot and unconvincing reversals of character, earned lots of money but few plaudits. Now comes Ice Age: The Meltdown, a sequel with more humor, topicality, intelligence and appeal.

When the movie becomes pure fantasy, it's impossible to swallow. (No landlord rents an apartment to a 12-year-old with no adult in sight.)

The rest of this well-intentioned picture never reaches (Washington's) level of subtlety and intensity.

A documentary that's as chaotic, rude and funny as the band could be.

Often powerful, though presented throughout with British understatement.

In an elemental way, though, the film always works. The acting can be basic, a cross between Bollywood directness and Western nuance, but it has weight.

Vertical Limit is like riding a roller coaster for two hours. First it's frighteningly exciting. Then it's mind-numbing

Greene's words haunt us like a prophecy from half a century and half a world away.

This is one of the increasingly rare Hollywood films that treat people in middle age as though their feelings were just as intense and their needs just as valid as those of people half their age.

Gripping but gap-filled Seven Pounds will have half your brain asking "How could this be?" and the other half saying, "Shut up and go along for the ride!" Listen to the latter voice.

Depp gives yet another introspective, slightly mopey performance -- Graham never begins to act (and never has begun, as far as I know). But they're surrounded by an authentic, first-rate English cast.

If your senses haven't been dulled by slasher films and gorefests, if you're a connoisseur of psychological horror, this is your ticket.

One dazzling (if overlong) bridge: technologically advanced, brilliantly designed, spectacularly executed, solid as steel in its unspectacular elements. But unlike its 1999 predecessor, this is a movie that nobody but avid video gamers and motorcyclists needs to see more than once.

Its main pleasure lies in watching Bush thaw under gentle emotional heat applied by the few people who haven't given up on him.

Except for moments of labored symbolism and a too cozy ending, the movie stays sharply focused on its well-chosen targets.

If you've never heard his voice, this is your chance, and you should take it.

The result is an odd mix of honesty and hokum that pilots a course toward greatness before settling into a somewhat lower orbit.

The film takes place half in English, half in French. The chilly, responsibility-laden world of British society contrasts with the sunny, relaxed quality of life in fare-thee-well France. If these seem like cliches, Ozon and Bernheim exploit them so adroitly that they never become stale.

The film’s well-paced and well-acted, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it most of the way. I faltered as projectile followed projectile and explosion topped explosion, yet even then the excitement held up.

It offers razor-sharp editing, first-rate performances, direction that yields maximum emotional effect and a flabby, unconvincing screenplay.

Exactly the right length. That sounds like faint praise, but isn't it rare? Many movies drag past the points where they should stop; others end abruptly, leaving you to wonder at things unexplained or unconcluded.

Wheeler and director Lasse Hallstrom don't want us to take anything too seriously.

The honesty of the performances more than makes up for slight amounts of hokiness in the telling.

Hanna's a memorable creation, a girl who carries danger with her like a plague.

Cash made some untamed, exhilarating sounds in its formative days. Walk the Line is strongest when it shows him in love with either his music or his muse.

It plucks ceaselessly at our heartstrings to play a sad song indeed.

People talk non-stop at lightning speed, often while walking. The action sequences, underpinned by a loud and soppy symphonic score, actually provide a sense of respite, as Gojira methodically levels buildings and patiently releases streams of fire from his crimson throat.

Blanchett is riveting.

The two leads don't have sexual chemistry together, but that's part of the point.

What could have been an all-occasion Hallmark card turns out to be an emotionally genuine love letter to a young man who transformed the town of Anderson, S.C., in the 1970s.

This combination of tightly controlled farce and gross-out comedy works unexpectedly well, until the filmmakers lose their nerve at last and settle for cozy homilies. Still, four-fifths of a rarity is about twice as much as studios deliver nowadays.

The results have the Coens' usual tartness most of the way, before turning soft and gooey at the center.

It really gets gloomy.

I never thought I'd crack up watching a family mourn the death of a beloved daughter. But I've never seen a film quite like The Host, and that's far from the most bizarre thing in it.

Carrey rolls his eyes and waggles his arms, and Leoni keeps up with him while pushing less hard. He externalizes, she internalizes, and the balance works as it might in a good marriage.

As usual, Almodovar finds unusual camera angles to break up the straightforward storytelling. But for the first time I recall, not a single male character is crucial to his story, and no actor has a leading role. You won't miss them.

The movie indicts exclusion and racial hierarchy without finding villains inside that system.

The energy never lets up, and two committed, unfussy leading actors are an improvement over other summer flicks.

This good-humored bonding story emphasizes the actresses’ gifts, rather than their gender.

Most of the movie feels like a loose, sometimes improvised lark among friends.

One of the rare action films that needed to be longer. Then changes in mood wouldn't be so abrupt, and director Peter Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan would've had more time to reveal things we want to know.

Ang Lee adds to the mythology with the sweet, gentle Taking Woodstock.

So wild an approach demands straightforward performances that don't draw attention to themselves, and that's what the actors supply.

Watching them, you realize how far computers still have to go in accurately depicting the play of muscles as beasts run, crouch and leap. Though Annaud doesn't cut to them for cute reaction shots, as weak directors do, the tigers show near-human fears and affections.

The 23-year-old Evans has been acting just four years, and his near-anonymity makes him well-cast: He's an Everyslacker breezing through life in Santa Monica, the kind of guy who could turn into a hero under the right circumstances or remain a zero the rest of his life.

The Son's Room refers to every room this family will inhabit for a long time -- he's an unseen, ubiquitous presence -- but they may learn to lead ordinary, even joyful lives again.

Muschietti does an excellent job of revealing just enough about Mama as we go along (and just enough of Mama herself) to show he's in control of this genre.

The real surprise is not that the high-strung Key and grounded Peele have rapport – their sketches demonstrate that – but that it can be used to anchor a full-length comedy.

The film isn't quite as striking as its star, but it's just as honest.

The whole movie has a matter-of-factness that extends not just to the final photographic montage but the last line of dialogue. We can’t ask for more from this genre, and we often get much less.

A thriller that's frequently implausible but almost always thoughtful. It asks us to rethink the way we see Muslims

The big names in the cast add atmosphere in small doses, especially when Haysbert and Glover combine.

This fairy-tale quality gives director Clooney, who's making his debut behind the camera, his stylistic clue. He's in perfect sync with writer Kaufman; they treat even the most "serious" scenes like Monty Python routines.

Without Essel, this might have been a run-of-the-mill dark comedy. With the 86-year-old British thespian, it's a wickedly funny and audacious movie in which she puts her capable co-stars in the shade.

This is one of the few recent westerns that requires you to keep your eyes open and memory engaged.

Most of Meet the Robinsons plays like a movie made by ADD adults for ADD children.

Soderbergh and writer Ted Griffin added plot twists that will catch you off-guard, dumped the clever ending and worked in a love story that's as superfluous as elevator shoes on Shaquille O'Neal.

The picture's consistently entertaining and, though it has few brilliant comic peaks, it never plunges into boring valleys.

Whedon has made a superb template of an action film.

The lack of attacks lets us concentrate on emotions rather than explosions.

Jackson imposes a sense of grandeur but mostly loses Tolkien's sense of fun.

Plusses and minuses work out about evenly, if you compare the sequel to "Sorcerer's Stone." The three young leads act with more assurance; Radcliffe emerges as a leader, rather than one leg of a triangle. (Too bad he no longer expects to make all seven of the proposed pictures.)

Gilbert sets up a rhythm, telling the story in short scenes that proceed at a relaxed pace. The film never hurries, but it moves forward constantly. [26 Jun 1998, p.10E]

Bay's movie couldn't be more timely; whatever you think about this subject, you might admire his attempt to come to grips with it in a summer blockbuster.

Mottola also wrote the screenplay, which is most fresh and honest when dealing with supporting characters.

Only in the last half-hour do the usual Emmerich absurdities pile up: I laughed outright at the character who, past 65 and diagnosed with a massive brain tumor that will kill him within months, cannot be stopped by a ferocious beating, being stabbed in the neck with a sharp implement, then being crushed against a wall by an SUV moving at a minimum of 30 mph.

Would you feel anxiety or remorse if you pulled the trigger on Osama bin Laden, however satisfying or even necessary it might be? Munich argues that finding him in our rifle sights would leave any of us a different person.

A Kafkaesque series of interwoven stories that depict the hopeless lives half the populace there (Iran) must lead.

A smooth, often funny, occasionally thoughtful romantic comedy.