The Night They Raided Minsky's is being promoted as some sort of laff-a-minit, slapstick extravaganza, but it isn't. It has the courage to try for more than that and just about succeeds. It avoids the phony glamour and romanticism that the movies usually use to smother burlesque (as in "Gypsy") and it really seems to understand this most-American art form.

This is a warmhearted and borderline corny story we’ve seen hundreds of times before, but the backdrop for this tale is certainly unusual, and pretty special.

Pandora remains one of the most amazing worlds we’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Lee has a wealth of material here, and the film tumbles through it with exuberance.

Bob Byington directs with an exact sense of what he wants; consider the perfect timing of his use of Harmony's mom (Margie Beegle). How she says "don't ask me" and "leave me out of it" is unreasonably funny.

Hoogendijk is a guest with more tact than curiosity about why a three-year plan went so over schedule.

The three central performances (by Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman and -- wow! -- Goldie Hawn) are so engaging that we find ourselves, despite ourselves, involved in their story.

A valuable and unique rewind glimpse of what it was like to be a teenage celebrity in the pre-Instagram era.

With the ensemble cast doing superb work, The Blackening is a horror comedy that packs a serious punch.

Though Light of My Life is a well-filmed and occasionally brutally effective piece of work, Affleck dilutes the power of the story with too many self-indulgent, patience-testing scenes.

While I admired it in an abstract way, I felt repelled by the material on a visceral level.

If you appreciate dark, original and chilling gothic horror stories with a supernatural twist, if you like low-low-budget indies that somehow manage to look and feel like big-time major motion pictures, you gotta check out Dig Two Graves.

Dillon has the kind of acting intelligence that allows him to play each scene for no more than that particular scene is really about; he's not trying to summarize the message in every speech. That gives him an ease, an ability to play the teenage hero as if every day were a whole summer long.

Some movies swing for the fences — and either strike out in big-budget, spectacular fashion, or hit a home run. Others, such as the smart, lovely, funny, occasionally edgy, slightly cynical and ultimately heart-tugging Other People, are the equivalent of the singles hitter in baseball — content to accumulate one small and legitimate successful moment after another.

I call the movie a thriller, even though the outcome is known, because it plays like one: We may know that the world doesn't end, but the players in this drama don't, and it is easy to identify with them.

If Cameron wants to be a pioneer instead of a retro hobbyist, he should obviously use Maxivision 48, which provides a picture of such startling clarity that it appears to be 3-D in the sense that the screen seems to open a transparent window on reality. Ghosts of the Abyss would have been incomparably more powerful in the process.

Unlike any other film I have seen about the Holocaust.

Interiors becomes serious by intently observing complex adults as they fend and cope, blame and justify. Because it illuminates some of the ways we all act, it is serious but not depressing; when it's over, we may even find ourselves quietly cheered that Allen has seen so clearly how things can be.

The animation is elegant, the story is much more involving than in the original, and there's boundless energy.

A remarkable documentary that's also one of the most beautiful nature films I've seen.

This is a framework that could have benefitted from more irony and complexity, especially with the resources of Langella, but at the end, I felt the movie was too easily satisfied.

There are better movies opening this weekend. There are better movies opening every weekend. But Slither has a competence to it, an ability to manipulate obligatory horror scenes in a way that works.

Because this film is violent and cruel and very sad, why would you want to see it? For a couple of reasons, perhaps. One might be to watch two great actors, Penn and Walken, at the top of their forms in roles that give them a lot to work with. Another might be to witness some of the dynamics of a criminal society, some of the forces that push criminals further than they intend to go.

What I like about movies like this is the way they keep us involved until the end. There is no formula that we can project; “Thelma & Louise” was clearly heading for an act of self-destruction, but here we have no idea what to expect, except (inevitably) the birth of a child.

A giant pile of shiny gift-wrapped garbage.

There's an unlikelihood so large in Future Weather that it nearly derails the film. That was what I admired the most about it.

An endlessly surprising, very dark, human comedy, with a plot that cannot be foreseen but only relished.

There's some really fine stuff here, and Part Two isn't afraid to poke fun when it's appropriate.

"Brigsby” wins the day thanks in large part to the sharp and original screenplay, and the uniformly fine work from one of the more interesting casts of the year.

There are great performances in the central roles. Phoenix essentially carries the story; it's about him. Lahti and Hill have that shattering scene together. And Lahti and Hirsch, huddled together in bed, fearfully realizing that they may have come to a crossroads, are touching; we see how they've depended on each other. This is one of the best films of the year.

Over the Edge is a funeral service held at the graveside of the suburban dream. It tells a ragged story that ends with an improbable climax, but it's acted so well and truly by its mostly teen-age cast that we somehow feel we're eavesdropping.

This is a bloodless, cold, self-congratulatory exercise in style for style’s sake.

The Well Digger's Daughter is such a success that Auteuil has already been signed to direct three more Pagnol classics, and I eagerly want to see them.

T2 Trainspotting has one foot firmly planted in nostalgia and the other rooted in the present, and thanks in great part to Boyle’s unique, world-class talent, everything old feels new again, and everything new has the blazing look of an original and blazing piece of art.

In its own sloppy, raunchy, sophomoric, occasionally self-pleased and consistently energetic way, This Is the End is just about perfect at executing its mission, which is to poke fun at its stars, exhaust every R-rated possibility to get a laugh, and even sneak in a few insights into Hollywood, the celebrity culture and the nature of faith.

Williams handles the main line of the story, the war between Ted and Marion, clearly and strongly; you may not always hurt the one you love, but you certainly know how to.

The Sound of My Voice never precisely declares whether her story is true. Without going into detail, I can say that the film never precisely declares anything to be true.

Fatal Attraction is a spellbinding psychological thriller that could have been a great movie if the filmmakers had not thrown character and plausibility to the winds in the last minutes to give us their version of a grown-up "Friday the 13th."

A disorganized, rambling and eccentric movie that contains some moments of truth, some moments of humor, and many moments of digression.

As a source of information about his life and work, this interview is almost worthless, but as an insight into his style, it is priceless.

Kevin Bacon stars in one of his best performances.

A compelling, persuasive film, at odds with the White House effort to present Bush as a strong leader.

The two leading men, Northam and Everett, are smooth and charming.

Despite its visual restlessness and its dogs, Mondovino is a fascinating film.

Because Die Hard 2 is so skillfully constructed and well-directed, it develops a momentum that carries it past several credibility gaps that might have capsized a lesser film.

Hellaware doesn’t really have anything new to say about its art world subject... But Bilandic does perfectly capture the laid-back style of the twentysomethings (the lead actors all do fine work) and manages to present a fresh story of callow youth caught up in their own American odyssey.

Although Newman is a delight, the best surprise in the movie is the performance of a new actress named Lolita Davidovich, who plays Blaze Starr. She has a comfortableness in the role that is just right.

A sublime meditation on solitude.

Director Green isn’t trying to reinvent the squeal. Halloween, the 2018 version, is the B-movie sequel “Halloween,” the 1978 version, has always deserved.

I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to.

Maggie, Eric's mother, and Angie the manager are the most fully realized characters in the movie, which doesn't offer a single positively drawn male homosexual.

This film is joyous, but more than that: It's lovely in its construction. The director, Prashant Bhargava, born and raised on Chicago's South Side, knows what his basic story line is, but reveals it subtly.

You might think Tom Hanks is miscast as the lovable sinner. Dennis Quaid, maybe, or Woody Harrelson. But Hanks brings something unique to the role.

Marcia Gay Harden finds a fine balance between madness and the temptations of overacting. Yes, she runs wild sometimes, but always as a human being, not as a caricature.

A reminder of the pleasure of classic martial-arts films in which skilled athletes performed many of their own stunts.

The description sounds like a real-life fish-out-of-water tale crossed with a sports movie. But the film wants to be more than that, and I'm on the fence about how well it succeeds.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is the kind of movie that raises as many questions as it answers. It’s also the kind of film where you want to budget some time for discussion afterward. You won’t be able to shake this one off easily.

At times The Little Stranger is frustratingly vague, and some of the developments don’t add up … Until they do. Quite nicely and quite eerily.

When we speak of "American health care," we should in fact be calling it "American sickness care." There's more money to be made in making people sick and healing them than in keeping them well in the first place. The documentary Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare makes this argument with stunning clarity.

You’d have to start looking into ancient Greek tragedy to top it as a showcase for pure, unadulterated hubris. That’s one of the things that makes The Armstrong Lie, which has more on its mind than the mere debunking of a tarnished hero, so worthwhile.

Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run has some very funny moments, and you'll laugh a lot, but in the last analysis it isn't a very funny movie. It isn't really a movie at all. I suspect it's a list of a lot of things Woody Allen wanted to do in a movie someday, and the sad thing is he did them all at once.

At what point did I realize The Ambassador was an actual documentary, and not a fraud? Perhaps when I realized that everyone in the film was just as dishonest, venal and corrupt as they seemed - including the director.

The filmmaking is sure-handed, the performances authentic.

Even though “The Idea of You” adheres to many of the time-tested elements of the Rom-Com Playbook, the premise is a bit tricky and could have turned cringey in the wrong hands. Instead, the potential “ick” factor is played for just the right combination of cringe humor and legit insights about how even in 2024, we tend to be more shocked and judgmental about age-gap romances when it’s the woman who is older.

Even when The Family Fang stretches credulity, we stay with it. Bateman knows how to tell a story.

For people who love London and yet are thoughtful about it, this film is indispensable.

Nothing about The Last Duel is subtle. Just about everything about The Last Duel is brutally effective.

There is a terrifying moment in adolescence when suddenly some of the kids are twice as big as the rest of the kids. It is terrifying for everybody: For the kids who are suddenly tall and gangling, and for the kids who are still small and are getting beat up all the time. My Bodyguard places that moment in a Chicago high school and gives us a kid who tries to think his way out of it.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. Willy Wonka is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself.

Reflections is a better film than we had any right to expect. It follows the McCullers story faithfully and without compromise. The performances are superb.

A smart film with an edge to it.

In going revoltingly over the top, Belvaux and company are out to shake up people's cozy, passive, detached relationship with violence - on and off the screen. By indulging in sensational footage, the real-life filmmakers can't help being part of the problem themselves - particularly since they wouldn't know a consistent viewpoint if it bit them. [14 May 1993, p.38]

Last Days is a definitive record of death by gradual drug exhaustion. After the chills and thrills of "Sid & Nancy" and "The Doors," here is a movie that sees how addicts usually die, not with a bang but a whimper. If the dead had it to do again, they might wish that, this time, they'd at least been conscious enough to realize what was happening.

If you're curious about why the demonstrators are so angry, this is why they're so angry.

Not just a thriller, not just a social commentary, not just a comedy or a romance, but all of those in a clearly seen, brilliantly made film.

This is an almost Dostoyevskian study of a man brooding upon evil until it paralyzes him.

Surprisingly moving.

It's a good movie, and Channing and Stiles are the right choices for these roles. They zero in on each other like heat-seeking missiles.

A film like Haywire has no lasting significance, but it's a pleasure to see an A-list director taking the care to make a first-rate genre thriller.

The shots are beautifully composed, the editing paces the process of self-discovery, the dialogue is spare and heartfelt, the performances are deeply human -- especially by Efron.

The famous faces make it difficult, at first, to sink into the story, but eventually we do; the characters become so convincing that even if we're aware of Keaton and Streep, it's as if these events are happening to them.

A movie out of the ordinary -- especially if you like science fiction.

These stories have as their justification that fact that they are intrinsically interesting. I think that's enough.

Sparks and writer-director Leos Carax have teamed up to deliver a bold, original, avant-garde House of Broken Mirrors take on A Star Is Born that at times soars with creative energy and on other occasions is so consumed with being eccentric and garishly jarring, it’s as if the filmmakers have turned the Pretentious Meter to 11.

Chappaquiddick does a remarkably economical job of encapsulating the madness of that week without overwhelming us with historical detail. The story moves from moment to moment, day to day, with clarity and great dramatic effect — and (rightfully) condemns Kennedy’s actions without turning him into a monster.

A Late Quartet does one of the most interesting things any film can do. It shows how skilled professionals work.

Good Morning, Vietnam works as straight comedy and as a Vietnam-era MASH, and even the movie’s love story has its own bittersweet integrity.

The movie is a delight, in ways both expected and rare.

Instead of venturing outside Outpost Restrepo, we hear what the soldiers feel about their 15-month deployment.

Although Sanctuary is stylish and initially intriguing, it’s eventually a real chore to spend an entire feature-length film (even with a relatively brief running time of 96 minutes) with two boors who are also kind of boring, despite all the histrionics and fang-baring and manipulative mind games. They find themselves and each other a lot more interesting than we do.

Assuming that few members of SpongeBob's primary audience are reading this (or can read), all I can tell you is, the movie is likely to be more fun than you expect.

It is about the desiring itself, not about what they desire. That makes it more intriguing than if we knew their secret--and sexier.

An imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western.

I feel such an affection for Chabrol and his work that I probably can't see The Flower of Evil as it would be experienced by a first-time viewer. Would that newcomer note the elegance, the confidence, the sheer joy in the way he treasures the banalities of bourgeois life on his way to the bloodshed?

This understated documentary, though, has no agenda to shame any one family or agency.

Davidson delivers a fully realized, nuanced performance, tackling dark comedy and raw drama with equal aplomb.

The movie's strength is in the acting, with Gosling once again playing a character with an insistent presence.

The movie's heart is in the right place.