The movie reunites Pfeiffer with director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, who did Dangerous Liaisons (1988); this costume drama doesn't have nearly as much bite as that one, though the age reversal of its central romance gives it a certain topicality.

The jokes don't all work and the topical references can be irritably hipper-than-thou, but at least director and cowriter Will Gluck (Easy A) aims high: this is patterned on the Tracy and Hepburn comedies, albeit with a lot more skin.

Oscillating back and forth between insulting its two central characters (Muriel and her dad) and showing they have hidden depths, this movie only shows true tact and understanding when it comes to flattering the audience; everyone on screen is strictly up for grabs.

Patrick Fabian is charming as Marcus, and director Daniel Stamm delivers a series of surefooted scares as the staged possession turns real. But the movie is still unsatisfying; in its eagerness to deliver familiar genre pleasures, it somehow misplaces its soul.

Payne is just as guilty of using her (Ruth) as a figurehead for his ideas--most of them about the stupidity and futility of politics--as are the targets of his satirical abuse.

A fairly standard coming-of-age story, but the peripheral wackos keep it from feeling too pat. The film inhabits that elusive space between sanity and insanity, where most of life takes place.

It’s no masterpiece, but it’s certainly something to see.

The film is absorbing enough as an intimate family portrait, complete with friction.

The famously passive-aggressive musicians manage to keep any real drama offscreen; the overriding impression is of four people enduring each other long enough to get their retirement portfolios in order.

The result, though clearly flawed, is passionate and ambitious, celebrating that long-gone era when a book of verse could spark a revolution in consciousness.

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.