Wexler emerges from all this with the commonplace wisdom that laughter and a positive outlook both prolong life and make it worth living, though his vocal concern with his own aging keeps the film from growing pat.

I was beguiled by both the eerie moods and the striking compositions, which incorporate large stretches of empty space.

Despite his advancing years, Chan delivers some fleet slapstick; like his hero Buster Keaton he works intuitively with levers, pulleys, ladders, and umbrellas.

This effective, well-paced antimilitary thriller has more conflicting flashbacks than you can shake a stick at.

Engrossing and timely, this crackles with ideas about art, politics, religion, and the terrible costs of war.

None of the characters ever rises beyond the level of his or her generic functions, and by the end the overall emptiness of the conception becomes fully apparent.

A slyly subversive adventure tale that should appeal to children and adults alike.

The suspicion and contempt the band encounters along the way symbolize the Kurds' historical sufferings, but the movie has many comic moments courtesy of the eager bus driver, who keeps putting his foot in his mouth. The nonprofessional cast is highly persuasive under the sure hand of director Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses).

Any movie that name-checks Ford Maddox Ford's novel "The Good Soldier" is OK by me, and clearly writer-director Julio DePietro has made a careful study of Ford's crafty, illusory narrative.

Perhaps the most formally ravishing-as well as the most morally and ideologically problematic-film ever directed by Martin Scorsese.

Heightened emotion and nagging banal reality fight each other for screen space, doing final battle in a daringly ambiguous ending.

Milos Forman's "Amadeus" (1984) is so ingrained in the popular imagination that its portrait of Mozart may never be dispelled, but this thorough and insightful 2006 documentary presents a more rounded and compelling view of the high-spirited genius.

Jun, a downstate native, has an ear for plainspoken dialogue and neither glamorizes nor patronizes his characters.

Provocative documentary.

In the end, his deadliest weapon turns out to be other people’s trust, something with grimmer philosophical implications than all his acts of violence combined.

This 1981 film drips with a sense of anger and betrayal that seems wildly out of scale to its cause—the discovery (less than original) that musicals don't reproduce social reality. The point is made endlessly, though it's in the film's favor that it's made with seriousness, consideration, and a certain amount of imagination.

The film is best when it takes itself seriously, worst when it takes the easy way out into giggly camp--as it does, finally and fatally, when Lex Luthor enters the action; Gene Hackman plays the arch-villain like a hairdresser left over from a TV skit.

As the substantially faithful movie version demonstrates, the story of Thank You for Smoking resides in that libertarian netherworld where the far left and the far right march shoulder to shoulder.

The effects are done with playfulness, zest, and some imagination (they range from a barker batting paddleballs in your face to a murderer leaping from the row in front of you), making this the most entertaining of the gimmick 3-Ds.

Solidly engaging.

If you ever suspected that assholes are running the world, this documentary adapting producer and former actor Robert Evans's autobiography, narrated with relish by Evans himself--the cinematic equivalent of a Vanity Fair article, complete with tuxes and swimming pools--offers all the confirmation you'll ever need.

Scenes that should have been uproarious are weaker than many of the movie's smaller moments.

There are fewer jokes this time around, and Moore makes a point of not even appearing on-screen for a good 40 minutes, putting more emphasis on his arguments and less on his comic persona.

Indeed Lightning Strikes Twice sometimes feels like Vidor’s attempt to make a 1926 film in 1951, as dialogue takes a distant second place to imagery in conveying the psychological conflicts.

If you're up for good nihilist entertainment, look no further.

Simpler and cruder than Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of story and technique, this is still a great deal of fun, confirming that Jordan is every bit as mythological a creature as Daffy Duck or Yosemite Sam.

The children are not exactly reporters -- they bring back no shattering images of sexual servitude -- but their photography, like much children's art, is fresh and sometimes startling.

As the temptingly pure and fragile Englishwoman, Grace Kelly was closer to Ford’s sympathy and understanding, but Gardner walks off with the movie and the man.