A lunatic cast energizes this comic fantasy.

The screenplay is by Norman Krasna, a hack of the lowest degree, but Hitchcock shapes it smoothly to his personal ends.

Garson Kanin directed this late, trivial screwball comedy (1940), and while it’s pleasant enough, the freshness is definitely off the bloom.

Goldfinger touch on many grand issues (theater rivalry, anti-Semitism, child labor, the generation gap, Israelis' hostility toward the Yiddish tongue) but stop short of exploring them, focusing instead on a family that personifies a dying tradition.

Reasonably entertaining spy-versus-spy shenanigans were for me partially undercut by the hypocritical pretense that the CIA and its various forms of mischief were somehow being ridiculed.

The result is that virtual oxymoron, an intelligent family film.

The voice-over narration by Bill Kurtis is a stroke of genius.

Just about everyone in this sharp, passionate feature is chillingly good.

This incredible but true story marks the first time Eastwood's signature themes have found expression in a woman's experience, and the absence of any distracting machismo only heightens his sense of helpless rage at the perpetual anguish of victims' families.

Nothing convinces, but the film is fitfully appealing.

Routine war adventure, imitating the callousness of Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen but without Aldrich's nihilist zeal. Still, you have to admire any film that casts Clint Eastwood opposite Richard Burton; the real violence is in the clash of acting styles.

Not entirely a pale shadow, but definitely fading. [12 Jan 2012, p.36]

Interviewees are too busy excusing themselves to offer much illumination into their desires, and Devor's moody style (silhouettes, reenactments, an ominously throbbing score) only heightens the sleazy Dateline NBC feel.

Kaplan's decision to violate documentary principles by using songs to "narrate" some sections is simply irritating.

As usual with Stallone's Rocky sequels, the schmaltz is unbearable, but the fight is plausibly handled, and Stallone's sincere sadness at growing older makes this an unexpectedly satisfying conclusion to the series.

This typically bloated production from Jerry Bruckheimer is good swashbuckling fun for the first few reels but eventually slows to a halt under the weight of too many doubloons.

Weird anachronisms (cars, telephones, home computers) contribute to the craziness, but despite the copious imagination on display, this is a fairly long haul.

A wily and dogged inquisitor, Broomfield cajoles and confronts a variety of witnesses, charting a web of intrigue that also involved the LAPD, the FBI, and assorted gangbangers and rogue cops.

An enjoyable though distinctly second-degree comedy by writer-director Andrew Bergman. Full of fun around the edges, it's rather flat and unfelt at the center.

Director Paul Greengrass has applied his jumpy, tumbling visual style to action blockbusters with Matt Damon and serious dramatizations of political events. This Iraq war drama makes a game attempt to meld the two, though manufacturing thrills takes precedence over any kind of journalistic insight.

Powerful, haunting, but ultimately disappointing. Few American movies address abject failure as forcefully as this one, and Sean Penn delivers an intense performance as Bicke.

After a 40-year career playing jut-jawed a__holes, Michael Douglas must relish the occasional oddball role: he gave a winning performance as the pot-addled professor in "Wonder Boys," and he seems to be having a ball in this funny debut feature by Mike Cahill.

Thomas is a couch potato as well as a recluse, and a terminal bore to boot. The women, real and simulated, are only slightly more interesting, and then only when they talk back.

A fascinating and entertaining piece of work.

Columbus beautifully realizes many of Rowling's fantastic conceits -- but for the last hour I was searching for a spell to make the credits appear.

The film's elliptical structure seems little more than a device to compensate for the thin dramatic material, but it's saved by a fine ensemble cast and Akhavan's convincing transformation from a naive romantic to a disturbing reactionary.

Though the filmmaking isn't everything it might have been (the opening montage is especially clumsy), their argument is compelling, absorbing, and urgent.

Curtis Hanson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) directed this 1994 thriller effectively from a fairly routine script by Denis O'Neill; what really makes this movie worth seeing are the stunning Oregon and Montana locations (filmed in 'Scope), as well as Streep's sexy pluck in playing the most capable and resourceful character around.

Glen's willingness to give the action sequences a certain weight and seriousness produces some genuinely exciting moments, yet his work is everywhere undermined by the flatness of the characterizations and the uncertain architecture of the plot. Still, Maud Adams makes a nice impression and Roger Moore has shed some of his smarminess.

This was shot at the legendary Ealing Studios, but I hesitate to call it a British comedy: its two stars are American, it currently has no UK release date, and its innocuous naughtiness seems pitched at grandmothers who watch BBC America.

An engaged and knowing look at the underground world of improvised rap, concentrating on artists less interested in commercial success and cutting records than in the "spontaneous right now" of "nonconceptual rhyme."

Despite a few narrative confusions, I found it pure magic.

As a psychological case study this is intelligent and adept, with fine performances by both of the lead actresses, and none of the Hitchcockian implications are lost on Schroeder. But there's something dehumanizing about 90s horror thrillers that all but defeats the film's impulses toward seriousness; no matter how much the filmmakers work to make the characters real, the genre contrives to turn them into functions and props.

Basically, the film is a throwback to the 60s anti-Bond spy thriller (a la The Ipcress File), except here the genre's annihilating irony has been replaced by Pollack's liberal piousness.

The tension is intriguing and expressive (perhaps this is what Beineix had in mind for The Moon in the Gutter), though the unstable mixture is clearly limited as a sustainable style. 

Instead of a credible main character this 1999 button pusher has lots of showy cinematography and generic dread.

If it speaks with a quieter voice than many of Bogdanovich's early pictures, what it has to say seems substantially more personal and thoughtful.

Superlative chiller.

The facts of their grim treatment, often exacerbated by their estrangement from their countries of origin, sometimes recall the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

A suitable mainstream vehicle for Malkovich's bruised aloofness.

I'd have preferred less personality stuff and more hard information about the current technical and commercial challenges, but if polishing these guys' egos is the only way to make them do the right thing, then so be it.

Martin Scorsese's first feature (1968), set in New York's Little Italy and starring Harvey Keitel in his first role, can be read as a rather rough draft of Mean Streets, down to the use of rock music and Catholic guilt.

Bier is one of the cinema's most acute observers of intimate relations, her Scandinavian reserve muting the inherent melodrama of her material, and she draws piercing, modestly scaled performances from Duchovny, Del Toro, Alison Lohman, and John Carroll Lynch.

The story might have been lifted from an old Warner Brothers melodrama, though it's smartly paced, sincerely delivered, and consistently absorbing.

Despite a likable and varied cast—Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, Susan Tyrrell, Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake, Traci Lords, and Polly Bergen, with cameos by many others—Waters's feeling for the mid-50s doesn't really match his sense of the early 60s (the problems start with the old-fashioned Universal logo at the beginning, which belongs to the 40s and earlier rather than to the 50s), and his plot moves seem increasingly formulaic. Otherwise, this is agreeable enough as a minor effort.

It plays exactly like a Will Ferrell comedy, but better, because Ferrell's not in it.

Absorbing thriller.

Shiva's voice-over narration and the commentary from academics (all in English) are spiked with gender-studies jargon but illuminate the history of this peculiar underclass, over 1.3 million strong, which is beginning to gather political power.

I can't remember when I last hated an art-house movie as much as this one...Other reviewers have praised the film's alleged quirky humor, but I was repelled by the two heartless creeps who set the story in motion and baffled by the protagonist's fascination with them.

An overloaded script by Heidi Thomas... defeats a fine cast

The details of Saint-Laurent's creative process are fairly scant compared to the endless display of material possessions; when the movie is over, it seems more like a catalog than a life story.

This loses focus and begins to get a little soggy and moralistic toward the end, but on the whole it's a sensitive and well-observed comedy that's especially adept at handling the characters' rage.

Watchable if far-fetched movie is seriously marred by its three leads; only Garrel manages to suggest a person rather than a fashion model dutifully following instructions.

Despite a few flashes of talent in the 40s, Edward Dmytryk had descended to hack status by the time he filmed this 1954 version of Herman Wouk's novel, and his ham-fisted direction does little to alleviate the obviousness of the drama and the thinness of the characterizations.

A crime wave gives the heroine a mystery to solve and provides most of the comedy, but the film is stronger in its dramatic stretches.

This carefully observed film has lots of heart.

This 1939 release is still watchable, though the spirit is now sitcom.

There is enough stylish sex and amusing character work (the supporting cast includes Ed Lauter, Mickey Rourke, Joe Pesci, and Helen Kallianiotis) to carry the day.

The comedy is extremely broad (with Curtis eliciting almost as many laughs as Schwarzenegger), the action sequences are as well crafted as one can expect from Cameron, and the meaning is as root basic as anyone would wish.

Nevertheless, the cast of mainly unknowns is so good, and Linklater is so adept at playing them off one another, that the two-hour running time never seems overextended.

Handsome and generally amusing adventure.

Cagey low-budget horror flick.

After the portentous "No Country for Old Men," Joel and Ethan Coen return to their trademark brand of cruel, misanthropic farce, and for dark laughs and hurtling narrative momentum this spy caper is their best work since "Fargo."

The genre shows serious signs of wear in this needlessly fictionalized feature about Vince Papale.

Fast-paced editing doesn't compensate for unconvincing dialogue.

This is both melodramatic and overly tidy in its plotting, but its odd personal relationships are utterly believable.

What Scorsese brings to the table, having created more than his share of rascally villains, is a renewed sense of horror and despair at the power of evil.

This 2009 feature is as precious as it sounds but also irresistibly charming. If you’re a newcomer to the oeuvre of New Wave hero Jacques Rivette, this is a highly accessible port of entry.

The cruel imperialism of the war is just the sort of thing that stokes Sayles's liberal ire, which is one reason the movie so often recalls his proletarian masterpiece Matewan (1987).

Dismal Stanley Kramer morality play about a middle-class couple facing the prospect of their daughter's marriage to a black man (Sidney Poitier). A disaster on all counts.

This isn't as snappily directed or as caustically conceived as the subsequent Risky Business, which has a similar theme, but it's arguably just as sexy and almost as funny.

An inept cheapo by any standard, only marginally more sophisticated than an Edward Wood Jr. production—yet it carries a certain demented charm, and there’s reason to suspect that Tobe Hooper checked it out before making The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Siegel manages to keep the action wound pretty tight, though he doesn’t seem to sympathize much with Rose’s bleeding-heart liberalism.

Starting off as a low-key psychological drama, this suddenly turns into a murder mystery that's resolved awkwardly and ambiguously, but the fascination of the characters and milieu remains.

The movie's first half hour is a barrage of lazy narrative pointers--endless expository voice-over, freeze frames and captions to identify the numerous characters--and by the time screenwriter Tina Gordon Chism decides to write an extended scene, the story is already dead in the water.

Another early youth ensemble pic from St. Elmo's Fire director Joel Schumacher, with an aspiring-to-hipness cast.

Mildly diverting rather than uproarious, the film still stands out among teen sex comedies for its low-key approach to antic material. The best bits are supplied by Justin Long as Doubleday's stoner brother and Adhir Kalyan as the hero's plummy-accented coconspirator.

This 1950 Hitchcock film came between Under Capricorn and Strangers on a Train, and if it isn’t the equal of those two sterling achievements, it’s still an intriguing experiment.

Despite a good deal of witty, bantering dialogue and clever plotting, some interesting moral ambiguity about the relative corruption of a cop (Russell) and a drug dealer (Gibson), and a likable performance by Raul Julia, this film seems overinfected by the kind of southern California narcissism that makes all of the male characters a little too pleased with themselves, with Pfeiffer little more than a beanbag in the little-boy macho games.

For horror fans who crave a few laughs along with their ritual decapitations and limb severings.

Persuasive stylized drama.

Its charm and humor will be overshadowed for some by the exploitation of gay stereotypes--which is ironic, since their arch usage ultimately allows the movie to be progressive, if only slightly.

The swashbuckling first hour is superior to the second, which bursts at the seams with backstory, but a rousing climax makes this the most potent piece of agitpop in years.

Meticulously rendered CGI creatures--from Arthur Rackham-esque flower sprites to a troll that could have sprung from "Jurassic Park"--spike this dark adventure, shot marvelously by Caleb Deschanel.

Moss has an acute feeling for structure and juxtaposition and for the quality and sensibility of his friends.

This fusty sequel lacks the narrative complexity of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and squanders both its first-rate computer graphics and its sturdy international cast.

Antonio Banderas signs up for charisma lessons from Anthony Hopkins -- but they just don't take.

It illustrates the truism that the biggest difference between European and American directors using America as a site for fantasies is that the Europeans are likelier to know what they're doing.

Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen") bend over so far backward to make Weaver's and Ryder's roles beefy that they end up mocking the characters' bravura.

The period details and performances are uniformly superb (Bob Hoskins is especially good as MGM executive Eddie Mannix), and the major characters are even more complex than those in "Chinatown."

If you're an 11-year-old boy at heart, this is undoubtedly even better than the pile of dinosaur shit in Jurassic Park.

The movie illuminates how the moral, economic, and spiritual concerns of its characters converge in situations that defy ethical platitudes. In less capable hands the brasher metaphors might have come across as trite, but director F. Gary Gray (Friday) generally manages to ensure that the line where technique meets meaning is marvelously blurred.

Ella Ramangwane gives a fine performance as the young Sandra.

If you're happy to watch a thriller about a tenth as good as Alfred Hitchcock's, director D.J. Caruso and screenwriters Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth hold up their end of the deal, at least until the proceedings devolve into standard horror-movie effects and minimal motivations.

Tarantino puts together a fairly intricate and relatively uninvolving money-smuggling plot, but his cast is so good that you probably won’t feel cheated unless you’re hoping for something as show-offy as "Reservoir Dogs" or "Pulp Fiction."

Smug, uninsightful light drama.

Indifferently scripted and shoddily animated feature.

An honorable, squeaky-clean children's drama, this is notable for its relatively penetrating morality and for Scott Wilson's fine performance as the meanest man in town.