Deep as a Canadian lake: Below the placid surface, menacing creatures swim around unseen.

An almost perfect example of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking at its most expensive, well-calculated and safe: opulent production values, solid acting from its name star, distinguished performances from people surrounding him, Big Themes concerning sacrifice and honor, and a ridiculous finale full of superhuman achievements.

A peaceful, unforced film, and it inspires a feeling of relief and joy that's hard to describe.

Finding Dory can be described in exactly the same way as its title character: good-natured, funny, optimistic, darting from place to place, ranging from anxious to frenzied in tone, and unable to sustain an idea for more than a few moments.

All are watchable, attractive people who haven't worn out their welcomes. But if they continue to go round and round like this, they may. Aren't more African -American actors waiting in the wings to play romantic leads?

Satrapi and Parronnaud give us clues but no solution. The fun, for those of us who like fairy tales, is in guessing.

I think Foy simply wants to deliver well-gauged terror and make a few points about personal responsibility and the need to overcome our fears. That he does quite well.

The three leads all played these characters over multiple seasons on the TV show; they're comfortable in these skins, and they show that. (Confusingly, all three appeared in "City of God" under other characters' names.)

The movie feels operatic at times. Tempestuous arias play on the soundtrack, and Puccini figures directly.

Treadaway gives a restrained performance that never begs for pity but earns plenty; he shows the day-to-day difficulty of living without simple necessities while retaining hope and dignity.

A summer action movie that has a brain and doesn't let it atrophy? Fan me, I'm fainting!

This is his (Kutcher) most relaxed and sensitive work on film.

Nobody puts the "angst" in "gangster" like a European director. When the director's a Dane, you can count on gloomy, chilly visuals and deliberate pacing. And when the director is Nicolas Winding Refn, who made the "Pusher" series in his native country and "Bronson" in England, you can expect intense, often brutal spurts of violence.

It's overwrought and overplotted, but it's plenty of fun.

When "Hedge" clicks on all cylinders, Chuck Jones smiles down from heaven.

Though all but two students look too old, their interpretations are unanimously fine.

Many critics will complain about emotional manipulation, but I share Roger Ebert’s view: “Some people like to be emotionally manipulated. I do, when it’s done well.” I think “Beauty” does it well.

Its sensibility stays true to Gaiman's style: heroic, wryly funny, but bloodthirsty as great fairy tales can often be.

What makes this film appealingly honest are its details, not its grand events.

The movie holds no clear answers. Every time you think you know where it’s going, it veers. And at the end, I’m pretty sure even Tommie and Lamb – who alternately thinks he’s enriching her life or ruining it – don’t quite know what they’ve been through. But the journey seems to have been worthwhile for them and us.

Fading Gigolo, a movie as slight and tender as its leading character, leaves you feeling you’ve just seen one of the few Woody Allen movies Allen didn’t write or direct.

Its crass good humor makes it an enjoyable, reasonably faithful but over-the-top successor to the original.

If the brothers Weitzes) don't yet have a defined style, they do seem at ease with this more sophisticated material.

City Hall is more Cusack's movie than Pacino's, and he gives a more interesting performance. Cusack never reveals himself right away: With his watchful eyes and tight lips, he seems to be deciding whether he can trust the audience with his deepest thoughts. He warms up thoroughly in this Jimmy Stewart-like role, though he never gets a handle on a Louisiana accent. (Calhoun couldn't have come from Chicago, like Cusack?)[16 Feb 1996, p.1E]

Auteuil does an excellent job. He's like Marcello Mastroianni, whose naturalness also deluded people into thinking for a while that he wasn't a versatile actor.

The best movie I've seen about the Revolutionary War.

In the end, Leatherheads recalls the gloriously dated sentiments of Grantland Rice, one of that era's beloved sportswriters, expressed 17 years earlier in the poem "Alumnus Football."

Like an impressionist painting. Scrutinize it closely, and the details don't make sense individually. Step back from it to study the big picture, and it will make a sweeping effect.