It is a shock and a pleasure to see an American film that doesn't wallow in complacency, but instead suggests—however fleetingly—that disappointment is also a part of life. Curtis is particularly impressive in the strength and maturity she brings to a role written as pure fantasy.

The Davis-Spacey-Leary triangle and their unmanageable contempt is something to see and hear. Which is another way of saying this is the funniest comedy so far this year.

John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath seems like the obvious inspiration here, in both its proletarian sentiment and its primal arrangement of characters against the harsh landscape.

More enjoyable for its unending string of outrages than for its capacity to make coherent sense.

This film contains one of Hitchcock's most famous set pieces—an assassination in the rain—but otherwise remains a second-rate effort, as immensely enjoyable as it is.

Director Robert Zemeckis confronts the oedipal heart of the time-travel genre with this zestfully tasteless 1985 tale.

Smart and consistently funny, with sharp performances.

At its best when it’s least overtly allegorical--and fortunately that’s most of the time.

Unlike the many youth movies that can't overcome their makers' hindsight, this one may actually put you in an adolescent frame of mind.

Like most of Lee’s work, this movie bites off a lot more than it can possibly chew, and it bristles with the worst kind of New York provincialism.

Koshashvili effectively captures turn-of-the-century ennui, but, more impressively, some of the feel of literary prose by intercutting characters in different locales, pausing the narrative for thoughtful close-ups that evoke interiority. The excellent excellent acting conveys the principals' emotional ambiguities.

Poirer and director Noam Murro have trouble bringing this to a satisfying climax, but the characters are credible and sharply observed and all four actors go to town.

In this heady documentary, TV footage of left-wing social critic Paul Goodman being interviewed by conservative host William F. Buckley Jr. in 1966 makes one realize how low public discourse in America has sunk since then: despite the men's political differences, their freewheeling discussion, touching on topics from education to pornography, is playful instead of rancorous.

The only problem I was faced with was trying to understand what exactly it was that I enjoyed, and how this movie differed from the play I'd read.

Actually I quite enjoyed the film -- but how do I get rid of this awful discharge?

Thrilling rehearsal and performance footage of Idina Menzel in "Wicked," Tonya Pinkins in "Caroline," and Euan Morton in "Taboo" is juxtaposed with thoughtful, funny, and revealing interviews with writers, directors, producers, publicists, and critics.

Ousmane Sembene’s 1977 Senegalese film was attacked for daring to depict life in precolonial Africa as something less than paradisiacal.

The film runs for 134 minutes, but Lumet keeps things moving with his sharp eye (and ear) for New York detail and his escalating sense of liberal outrage.

Andrzej Wajda has spent much of his long career dramatizing major events in Polish history, and this poignant feature depicts the circumstances surrounding the Soviet Union's massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the spring of 1940.

The comedy divides cleanly into dark, violent slapstick (much of it hilarious) and more routine gags highlighting the fanatical characters' foolishness and incompetence.

Shani and Copti (who costars as a hipster druggie) elicit moving performances from their nonprofessional actors, who ground the somewhat breathless action in a streetwise realism.

A mixed success, but an exhilarating try.

Everything seems to fall into place according to earlier Egoyan films, which suggests that you're likelier to enjoy this one if you haven't seen the others.

Studded with terrorist attacks... Yet Malkovich never exploits these for action-movie thrills: in each instance the loss of life is terrible and the morality of the act is left treacherously ambiguous.

Jack Starrett's 1973 entry in the violent inner-city drug-bust genre is talkier and more subdued than the usual fare, with a surer technical polish.

Lou's mobile camera captures the flushed energy of the faces and bodies of beautiful youths in love with all the verve and commitment of the early French New Wave.

Part of Morton's achievement is to present all four people through the viewpoints of the other three; Wagner can't do that, but the performances are so nuanced that the characters remain multilayered, and they're not the sort of people we're accustomed to finding in commercial films.

The consequent pain, anger, and confusion on all sides disrupts the standard martyrology of the genre and exposes the ordinary human wreckage that can follow even the most extraordinary acts of heroism.