The characters in Girls Trip aren’t always three-dimensional and their actions aren’t always completely believable — but even in their worst moments, their humanity shines through and they are consistently likable.

What Burton has made is a film which celebrates Wood more than it mocks him, and which celebrates, too, the zany spirit of 1950s exploitation films - in which a great title, a has-been star and a lurid ad campaign were enough to get bookings for some of the oddest films ever made.

The movie's problem is that it loads the casting in a way that tilts the movie in the direction of a Harlequin romance.

Little Man Tate is the kind of movie you enjoy watching; it's about interesting people finding out about themselves.

What Happened Was... is in many ways an admirable movie, and Noonan and Sillas do a quiet, thorough job of representing these two people who seem on the edge of being walled up inside their own walls. There are many small moments of perfect observation. But I never really felt they were building to anything, or heading anywhere.

Whether you’re a diehard baseball fan (and, in particular, a White Sox fan) who recognizes everything from the aforementioned Andy the Clown to the welcome appearance of slugger Lamar Johnson to the references to the Bard’s Room to a poignant interview with Darryl Strawberry or just a casual baseball observer, The Saint of Second Chances has a universal appeal in its core story.

This is an intelligent, deeply moving film that is about so much more than a rich lady with delusional dreams about her own musical abilities. It is, in fact, quite an uplifting homage to the spirit of confidence in the face of enormous adversity.

There is a funny movie lurking at the edges of Splash, and sometimes it even sneaks on screen and makes us smile. It's too bad the relentlessly conventional minds that made this movie couldn't have made the leap from sitcom to comedy.

As Sokurov examines a pivotal point in the Louvre’s history and gives us a virtual tour of the magnificent museum, he makes larger points about the vital importance of art throughout human history. This is one of the most beautiful films of the year.

Writer-director-editor Swanberg should actually get first billing, as it’s his touch that makes Drinking Buddies something special.

This is a well-made, well-acted but unexceptional film about one of the most exceptional figures of the last half-century.

The movie is passable as a story but fascinating as a document. It gives a more complete visual picture of the borders, the Palestinian settlements and the streets of Jerusalem than we ever see on the news.

The film is entertaining in its own right, and thought-provoking. Why don't more people quickly see through their hoaxes?

This is a movie that surprises you. The setup is such familiar material that you think the story is going to be flat and fast. But the screenplay by John Lee Hancock goes deep. And the direction by Clint Eastwood finds strange, quiet moments of perfect truth in the story.

Dawn of the Dead is one of the best horror films ever made -- and, as an inescapable result, one of the most horrifying. It is gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling. It is also (excuse me for a second while I find my other list) brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society. Nobody ever said art had to be in good taste.

This is a movie of substance and thrilling historical sweep, and its three hours allow Szabo to show the family's destiny forming and shifting under pressure.

The acting is macho understatement. Mesrine is a character who might have been played years ago by Gerard Depardieu, who appears here as Guido, a bullet-headed impresario of larceny.

It’s the powerful, raw, energized performance by Chadwick Boseman that makes this film worth seeing.

In ways sometimes subtle and sometimes anything but, writer-director McQueen tells a story that on one level is a conventional tale of valor but is also a cutting commentary about how even as war-torn England was united in its staunch repudiation of Hitler, racism and classicism were all too commonplace in its own backyard.

Donnie Darko is the one that got away. But it was fun trying to land it.

Here is a movie that makes you want to do something. Cry, or write a check, or howl with rage.

I loved the spirit and the heart of this film.

Ghostbusters is one of those rare movies where the original, fragile comic vision has survived a multimillion-dollar production.

Certainly it is Lugosi's performance, and the cinematography of Karl Freund, that make Tod Browning's film such an influential Hollywood picture.

Mrs. Henderson Presents is not great cinema, and neither was the Windmill great theater, but they both put on a good show.

The bare story itself could be simplistic and silly: Cops chasing a couple of kids on a horse. But when relationships are involved, and social realities, and a certain level of magical realism, then the story grows and deepens until it really involves us. Kids will probably love this movie, but adults will get a lot more out of it.

Light Sleeper isn't about the help he can get from psychics, however; it's about desperation that makes him project healing qualities upon anyone who is halfway sympathetic. The movie is familiar with its life of night and need. It finds the real human qualities in a person like the Susan Sarandon character - who, in a crisis, reacts with loyalty and quick thinking.

By now, everyone knows who wins, but the scenes before the fight set us up for it so completely, so emotionally, that when it's over we've had it. We're drained.

The movie isn't in the same league as Disney's big four, and it doesn't have the same crossover appeal to adults, but as family entertainment it's bright and cheerful, and it has its moments.

Even with the stretched-out running time, Prisoners is one of the most intense moviegoing experiences of the year. You’ll never forget it.

One of the things I like about the movie is the wit of its dialogue, the way sentences and conversations coil with confidence up to a conclusion that is totally unexpected.

Finds a tone that remains more entertaining than depressing, more absorbing than alarming.

A delicious pastry of a movie -- You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile.

Both a distraction and a revelation.

This is the Batman movie I've been waiting for; more correctly, this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for, because I didn't realize that more emphasis on story and character and less emphasis on high-tech action was just what was needed. The movie works dramatically in addition to being an entertainment. There's something to it.

Well of course he wins the race and gets the girl. You know that to begin with when you go to a movie named Winning that stars Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and is about the Indy 500.

We learn all kinds of illuminating factoids.

It’s too much of the same material, spun out into a wearying series of sword fights and romances.

Born of a years-long collaboration by Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman (which included a proof-of-concept short film), with all four writing the screenplay and Gordon and Lieberman co-directing, Theater Camp is an affectionate and winning yet sometimes bittersweet satire created by a talented quartet who clearly know the territory quite well.

Disturbing, analytical and morose. This is not a "political" film nor yet another screed about the Bush administration or the war in Iraq. It is driven simply, powerfully, by the desire to understand those photographs.

Certainly the best in its technical credits, and among the best in the ingenuity of its plot.

Above all, just plain funny. It's funny with some dumb physical humor, yes, and some gross-out jokes apparently necessary to all buddy movies, but also funny in observations, dialogue, physical behavior and Sydney Fife's observations as a people-watcher.

With all we know about this chillingly amoral, blackhearted man, Where’s My Roy Cohn? still serves as a thorough and insightful history lesson that makes a convincing case that among other sins, Cohn was one of the early architects of bitterly divisive, take-no-prisoners, make-no-excuses, dirty-tricks politics.

As breathtakingly gorgeous and well acted as The Walk is, if you had to choose between the doc and this solid fictionalized version, I’d say go with the documentary.

Dying is not this cheerful, but we need to think it is. The Barbarian Invasions is a movie about a man who dies about as pleasantly as it's possible to imagine; the audience sheds happy tears.

Companion is darkly funny and has some great jump scares, but it’s also a meditation on how some men have a default switch that makes it far too easy for them to be manipulative and abusive.

Timothée Chalamet gives an Oscar-worthy performance in one of the best films of 2024.

It's very perceptive about the relationships among its characters - how they talk, how they compete, what their values are. And Howard has cast the movie with splendid veteran actors, who are able to convey all the little quirks and idiosyncrasies of real people.

The movie demonstrates the power of sports to involve us; we don't live in Odessa and are watching a game played 16 years ago, and we get all wound up.

It moves with a majestic pacing over the affairs of four generations, demonstrating that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.

Ordinary Love gets everything right, but there’s almost nothing in the way of a major plot revelation or insightful flashback explaining certain elements from the past.

Writer-director Nichols does a skillful job of paying homage to the glamour and bad-boy appeal of motorcycles and motorcycle movies, but also illustrating that while these guys are the stuff of feature films, in real life you’d most likely grow tired of their company after yet another day of drinking and petty crime.

A delightful demonstration of how spirituality can coexist quite happily with an intense desire for France to defeat Brazil.

The investigation itself must remain undescribed here. But its ending is a neat and ironic exercise in poetic justice.

The movie's humor works best when the illogic of the TV show gets in the way.

After it is over, you will want to go back and think things through again, and I can help you by suggesting there is one, and only one, interpretation that resolves all of the difficulties, but if I told you, you would have to kill me.

Sean Penn('s) performances are master classes in the art of character development.

Director Felix Van Groeningen takes a story that might be too much to bear in a straightforward, linear narrative and explodes it, then artfully reassembles the pieces by jumping back and forth in time.

Bertolucci can direct great set pieces, of course, and some of his biggest scenes (like the outdoor dances that are his favorites) are spectacular. But he needs well-defined characters to anchor his stories, and he seems more confident when he drills into their psyches instead of spreading himself all over the ideological map.

Nichols has done the same thing in Catch-22 that he did in The Graduate. He's given us a funny beginning, then switched tones and gone serious. And then tacked on a Great Escape ending which answers none of the questions he's so painfully raised.

There's a freedom in his structure. This isn't a formal documentary, but as I mentioned, a meander.

One of the best-looking films ever made, in its photography, in its use of locations, in its recreation of the America that Woody Guthrie discovered.

Writer-director Michael Lukk Litwak’s clever and sweet and funny Molli and Max in the Future comes down to this: It’s “When Harry Met Sally …” in outer space.

Starman contains the potential to be a very silly movie, but the two actors have so much sympathy for their characters that the movie, advertised as space fiction, turns into one of 1984's more touching love stories.

But if the movie were simply the story of this event, it would be no more than a sad record. What makes it more is the way it shows how racism breeds and feeds, and is taught by father to son.

The actors are attractive, the city is magnificent, the love scenes don't get all sweaty, and everybody finishes the summer a little wiser and with a lifetime of memories. What more could you ask?

This is a very good film, with Depp and Bale performances of brutal clarity. I'm trying to understand why it is not quite a great film. I think it may be because it deprives me of some stubborn need for closure.

What a simple and yet profound story this is.

Final Portrait has the feel of a work that might be quite effective on a modest stage in a small theater. As a film, it’s well-made and the performances are fine, but it feels slight and thin and inconsequential — quite the opposite of the work Alberto Giacometti left behind.

Stretched over 135 minutes and overloaded with shout-to-the-rafters confrontations, Her Smell has too much talking and squawking, and not enough rocking and rolling.

The Nice Guys has a little extra padding that isn’t necessary.... Ah, but Crowe and Gosling save the day.

I like Bob Roberts - I like its audacity, its freedom to say the obvious things about how our political process has been debased - but if it had been only about campaign tactics and techniques, I would have liked it more.

We’ve yet to get a masterpiece-level film adaptation of the classic novella “The Little Prince,” but if and until that day comes, this will do just nicely, thank you very much.

Stephen Fry brings a depth and gentleness to the role that says what can be said about Oscar Wilde: that he was a funny and gifted idealist in a society that valued hypocrisy above honesty.

The movie finds countless opportunities for humorous scenes, most of them with a quiet little bite, a way of causing us to look at our society.

Directed by Mervin LeRoy, the film is epic in scale, with special effects that were quite advanced for their day, and a glorious film score. Some historical facts might not be quite accurate, but it won't make a difference in the end. [10 Apr 2009, p.NC18]

The movie's premise devalues any relationship, makes futile any friendship or romance, and spits, not into the face of destiny, but backward into the maw of time. It even undermines the charm of compound interest.

It's always about more than boxing.

There have been many good movies about gambling, but never one that so single-mindedly shows the gambler at his task.

A beguiling film about words, secrets and tobacco.

Unstrung Heroes has been directed by Diane Keaton with an unusual combination of sentiment and quirky eccentricity.

From its weird little prologue to a nearly perfect ending, Colossal is a trip in multiple meanings of that word.

It is not a "dirty movie," and in fact takes spirituality and morality more seriously than most films do. And in the bad lieutenant, Keitel has given us one of the great screen performances in recent years.

The result is one of the jollier comedies of the year, a movie so mainstream that you can almost watch it backing away from confrontation, a film aimed primarily at a middle-American heterosexual audience.

With explorations of themes ranging from identity to forgiveness to corruption and fear and self-love, “Emelia Pérez” is one of the most creative and striking films of the year.

Some of the developments seem a bit rushed and forced, but then Shelton wraps up the story with the perfect grace note, and we find ourselves thinking about the lives of these characters beyond the closing credits and hoping they’re all going to be just fine.

Dev Patel comes out swinging in the monumentally entertaining and bare-knuckled revenge flick “Monkey Man,” serving up a series of extended and elaborate fight sequences so bruising and hyper-violent they make the action in the “Road House” reboot seem like a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

About Last Night... is a warmhearted and intelligent love story, and one of the year's best movies.

The Muppets are a wonderful creation, but they lose their special quality in "The Great Muppet Caper." They behave like clones of other popular kiddie superstars -- like the basic cartoon heroes they once seemed destined to replace.

One of the more thought-provoking sports movies I've seen.

We’re hardly in original territory when a movie relies not once, but twice, on truth-serum humor — but even when things get ultra-corny, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” keeps merrily buzzing along.

No revival, however joyously promoted, can conceal the fact that this is just an average musical, pleasant and upbeat and plastic.

The biggest reason to see the Italian dramedy “Mia Madre” can be summed up in two words: John Turturro.

A truly original American movie, a film like no other, a period of time spent in the company of the kinds of characters Saroyan and O'Neill would have understood, the kinds of people we try not to see, and yet might enjoy more than some of our more visible friends.

Directed by Alex Lehmann with a deft and indie-casual touch from a script by Lehmann and Mark Duplass, Paddleton is a low-key, sweet and heart-tugging buddy movie.

Co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo and the team of screenwriters have fashioned a story with just the right balance of superhero fun, nods to the greater Marvel Universe and genuine dramatic tension.

Gremlins was hailed as another "E.T." It's not. It's in a different tradition. At the level of Serious Film Criticism, it's a meditation on the myths in our movies: Christmas, families, monsters, retail stores, movies, boogeymen. At the level of Pop Movie-going, it's a sophisticated, witty B movie, in which the monsters are devouring not only the defenseless town, but decades of defenseless clichés. But don't go if you still believe in Santa Claus.

It's a superb film -- funny, insightful and very wise about the realities of political life.