The story tells a useful lesson, the jungle inhabitants are amusing, and although the movie is not a masterpiece it's pleasant to watch for its humor and sweetness.

[It's] like Tarantino crossed with the Marx Brothers, if Groucho had been into chopping off fingers...Fun, in a slapdash way; it has an exuberance, and in a time when movies follow formulas like zombies, it's alive.

Runaway Train is a reminder that the great adventures are great because they happen to people we care about.

It offers the rare pleasure of an author directing his own book, and doing it well. No one who loves the book will complain about the movie, and especially not about its near-ideal casting.

The Last Starfighter is a well-made movie. The special effects are competent. The acting is good, and I enjoyed Robert Preston's fast-talking The Music Man reprise (we've got trouble, right here in the galaxy) and the gentle wit of Dan O'Herlihy's extraterrestrial. But the final spark was missing, the final burst of inspiration that might have pulled all these concepts and inspirations and retreads together into a good movie.

The film has been criticized by some as too politically correct. Perhaps so. But the characters' reality rises above the film's ideas and makes it human.

For the most part, thanks in great part to Benson’s rich screenplay and Chastain’s nomination-worthy work, I was immersed in this story no matter who was telling the tale.

By its nature, “Adios” lacks the thrill of discovery of Wenders’ doc. But like the 1999 film, it pulls at the heartstrings and never lets up.

The cast is uniformly superb. But it is the palpable erotic tension between Solness and the mysterious, bewitchingly nubile Hilde (who he may have sexually abused or at least titillated a decade earlier) that drives the film.

Edmon Roch's Garbo the Spy is an engrossing documentary that is itself largely a work of the director's imagination.

This kind of casting can't help but give the movie an intimate, familiar feeling, and maybe that's why the comedy works as human comedy and not just manufactured laughs.

The Sapphires is clearly a labor of love for all involved. It's also a warm tribute to four women for whom success as performers was just the beginning.

A remarkable film.

This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it's smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it's smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect detail.

Bite the Bullet finds the traditional power and integrity of the Western intact after all.

What makes the film involving is that it doesn't depend on the mechanical resolution of the plot, but on the close observation of its effects on these distinctive characters.

Cut Throat City ends on a note that’s too clever by half, but that doesn’t undercut all the vibrant, rough-edged, impressive storytelling that led to that moment.

There’s a certain vulnerability and intelligence, and a respectful and self-deprecating aspect to Rogen’s on-screen persona that makes these male-fantasy romances seem at least semi-plausible.

Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva re-creates a youthful road trip with a head trip at the end in Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, more character sketch than psychedelic sojourn.

The writer and director, Michael Schorr, is making his first film, but has the confidence and simplicity of someone who has been making films forever.

The 1954 film version of Orwell's novel turned it into a cautionary, simplistic science-fiction tale. This version penetrates much more deeply into the novel's heart of darkness.

This is one of the most ridiculous thrillers I’ve ever seen, and yet even with a running time that stretched well beyond two hours, with so many repetitive moments I almost began to wonder if I had missed something and the movie had started again, I have to admit I was entertained by the sheer audacity of the car chases and battle sequences — and there were even some genuinely touching moments.

Movies like this can be insufferable if they lay it on too thick. The Boy Who Can Fly finds just about the right balance between its sunny message and the heartbreak that's always threatening to prevail.

Howard Stern has been accused of a lot of things, but he has never been accused of being dumb. With Private Parts, his surprisingly sweet new movie, he makes a canny career move: Here is radio's bad boy walking the finest of lines between enough and too much.

Macdonald is an absolute force as the twentysomething Patricia Dombrowski, who wakes up every morning determined and upbeat, even though her life path already looks to be a series of dead ends.

The movie is part farce (unplanned entrances and exits), part slapstick (misbehavior of corpses) and part just plain wacky eccentricity. I think the ideal way to see it would be to gather your most dour and disapproving relatives and treat them to a night at the cinema.

It is also a rarity, a patriotic film that has a liberal, rather than a conservative, heart. It made me feel good to be an American, and good that Vladimir Ivanoff was going to be one, too.

It's a feel-good film, warm and good-hearted, and as it was heading for its happy ending, I was still a little astonished how much I was enjoying it.

Like many a sequel to a slam-bang, much-liked mega-hit, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 isn’t quite as much fun, not quite as clever, not quite as fresh as the original — but it still packs a bright and shiny and sweet punch.

Benoit Jacquot's engrossing film tells a story we know well, seen from a point of view we may not have considered.

What sets Deep Cover apart is its sense of good and evil, the way it has the Fishburne character agonize over the moral decisions he has to make.

The performances are all just fine; I wish they'd been at the service of another movie.

A three-year labor of love from a mother for her daughter. It is a touching movie that, at first, might seem like a public service announcement, but eventually takes us into some touching personal struggles.

With Rosewater, Stewart proves he can pull back from the satirical comedy and become a thoughtful, incisive and questioning filmmaker.

What a thoughtful film this is, and how thought-stirring. Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction comes advertised as a romance, a comedy, a fantasy, and it is a little of all three, but it's really a fable, a "moral tale."

This is the kind of movie where you squirm out of enjoyment, not terror, and it's probably going to be popular with younger audiences - it doesn't pound you over the head with violence. Like the spider itself, it has a certain respect for structure.

Stillman writes his own dialogue, and is a master of clever double-reverse wit.

Selena succeeds, through Lopez's performance, in evoking the magic of a sweet and talented young woman.

It doesn’t break any new ground and I’m not convinced it required a 2 hour and 41 minute running time, but despite a few overlong interludes midway through the story and a couple of battle sequences that pretty much look like the fight scenes in a dozen or two previous MCU movies, this is a rousing adventure and a most welcome return to one of the most visually arresting and culturally rich settings in the superhero universe: the kingdom of Wakanda.

We learn that the emotional roller coaster of his formative years probably contributed to the complexity of his lyrics.

I might have enjoyed Desert Hearts more if it had been more subtle and observant about the two women. It might have been a better movie if it had been about discovery instead of seduction.

It works gloriously as space opera.

In the autobiographical documentary McEnroe... we’re reminded of McEnroe’s dominance on the court — as well as the antics that earned him a reputation as a brat who polarized the tennis world.

Anderson is like Dave Brubeck, who I'm listening to right now. He knows every note of the original song, but the fun and genius come in the way he noodles around. And in his movie's cast, especially with Owen Wilson, Anderson takes advantage of champion noodlers.

This is a sweet, funny, smart, genuine all-ages movie with simple, timeless messages.

I enjoyed the film on two levels: for its skill and its silliness.

Giamatti's performance is one of those achievements. He is making a career of playing unremarkable but memorable men.

Director Carl Hunter infuses Sometimes Always Never with creative visual touches, whether he’s using graphics to illustrate certain Scrabble words, or shooting a poignant scene through a patterned glass door, so we feel the emotions of the character in question just through the movement of his silhouette.

Not at the level of "Finding Nemo" or "Shrek," but is a lot of fun, awfully nice to look at, and filled with energy and smiles.

Rich and droll, and yet slight--a film of modest virtues, content to be small, achieving what it intends.

As for myself, I think he made it all up and never killed anybody. Having been involved in a weekly television show myself, I know for a melancholy fact that there is just not enough time between tapings to fly off to Helsinki and kill for my government.

Has a bracing truth that's refreshing after the phoniness of female-bonding pictures like "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."

They talk warmly and with enthusiasm about certain titles, but I have the eerie feeling that they must be at a movie whether they enjoy it or not.

The Way I See It tells Souza’s remarkable story in straightforward and effective fashion, as even Souza himself seems surprised at the turn his life has taken.

It takes a lot of patience to watch The Russia House, but it takes even more patience to be a character in the movie. To judge by this film, the life of a Cold War spy consists of sitting for endless hours in soundproof rooms with people you do not particularly like, waiting for something to happen. Sort of like being a movie critic.

The Soderbergh version is like the same story freed from the weight of Tarkovsky's solemnity. And it evokes one of the rarest of movie emotions, ironic regret.

There's so much good here, in the dialogue, the performances and the observation, that the movie succeeds at many moments even while pursuing its doomed grand design.

Run is stopped dead in its tracks by a howler of a screenplay that regularly calls for various characters to behave as stupidly as the dumbest victim in a splatter movie.

With much of the dialogue based on the actual conversations between killer and profiler, and Wood and Kirby turning in stellar work, No Man of God feels memorably, sometimes chillingly, real.

This is not a deep movie, but it's a broad one. It reunites three talents who had an enormous hit with "Y Tu Mama Tambien": actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and Carlos Cuaron, who wrote that film and writes and directs this one. Instead of trying to top themselves with life and poignancy, they wisely do something for fun.

Score is a straightforward film told in relatively broad strokes.

Hal Hartley is on his way to creating a distinctive film world, and although Trust is not a successful film, you can see his vision at work, and it's intriguing.

But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get.

It is also a film of controlled visual style; Kitano's compositions are like arrangements of bodies in space and time. That said, and with all due respect, I expected a better time.

Even the ordinary moments in True Stories seem a little odd, as if the actors are trying to humor the weirdo they're working for.

[An] extraordinary documentary, nothing at all like what I was expecting to see. Here is not a sick and drugged man forcing himself through grueling rehearsals, but a spirit embodied by music. Michael Jackson was something else.

Coppola is a fascinating director. She sees, and we see exactly what she sees. There is little attempt here to observe a plot. All the attention is on the handful of characters, on Johnny.

Likely to appeal to the fans of "The Sixth Sense," "Ghost" and other movies where the characters find a loophole in reality. What it also has in common with those two movies is warmth and emotion.

The five subjects of Home Movie at least know exactly why they live where they do and as they do, and they do not require our permission or approval.

What an elegantly seen Dracula this is, all shadows and blood and vapors and Frank Langella stalking through with the grace of a cat. The film is a triumph of performance, art direction and mood over materials that can lend themselves so easily to self-satire

It’s impressive how well director Malcolm D. Lee (working from a script by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver) balances the serious material with the bawdy, freewheeling comedy pieces.

The Book of Life is a delight. In an animated universe cluttered with kung-fu pandas, ice princesses and video-game heroes, Gutierrez and del Toro have conjured up an original vision.

Even the smaller touches in Save Yourselves! ring true.

This film has few tangible pleasures, such as some somber shots of Demester walking far away in a field. Its achievement is theoretical. It wants to depict lives that are without curiosity, introspection and hope.

What makes the film fun is the deadpan, tongue-in-cheek humor that undermines the seemingly sincere dramatic scenes.

On the surface, this film is an enchanting meditation. At its core is the hard steel of individuality.

These fears explain why in its scenes on the Eiger itself, North Face starts strongly and ends as unbearably riveting. They also explain why it was a strategic error to believe this story needed romantic and political subplots.

It was probably the right time to say goodbye to “Ray Donovan,” as the series had begun spinning its wheels in recent seasons, after the action moved from California to the East Coast, but with this movie, Ray gets the send-off he deserves.

The world didn’t need yet another Cinderella story, but the one we got is one of the best versions ever put on film.

It's a strange, magical film, in which Allen uses the arts of the ancient Chinese healer as a shortcut to psychoanalysis; at the end of the film, which covers only a few days, Alice has learned truths about her husband, her parents, her marriage, her family and herself, and has undergone a profound conversion in values. Because this is a Woody Allen film, a lot of that metaphysical process is very funny.

McKellen is brilliant throughout, his piercing blue eyes revealing the gallantry of youth and the sadness of a life’s worth of memories slipping further away. His understated and charming approach to the role makes it all the more potent and engaging.

Worth falls just short of having enough strength in the screenplay to warrant a recommendation.

The movie's intriguing in its fanciful way, and there are times when both Calvin and Ruby seem uncannily like they're undergoing revision at the hands of some uber-writer above them both.

Green's approach certainly opens up opportunities for his students, and is a refreshing change from the lockstep public school approach, which punishes individualism.

By the end of the movie, I frankly didn't give a damn. There's an ironic twist, but the movie hadn't paid for it and didn't deserve it. And I was struck by the complete lack of morality in Demonlover.

Thanks to the stylish direction by Paul Feig, a whip-smart screenplay by Jessica Sharzer (adapting Darcey Bells’ novel) and performances that pop from the screen, A Simple Favor is a sharp-edged delight.

There are some moments in The Witches of Eastwick that stretch uncomfortably for effects - the movie's climax is overdone, for example - and yet a lot of the time this movie plays like a plausible story about implausible people. The performances sell it. And the eyebrows.

Would it be heresy on my part to suggest that Fiddler isn't much as a musical, and that director Norman Jewison has made as good a film as can be made from a story that is quite simply boring?

The Eclipse is needlessly confusing. Is it a ghost story or not? Perhaps this is my problem.

The movie may leave you scratching your head way too much when it's over. Yet it proves Ben Wheatley not only knows how to make a movie, but he knows how to make three at the same time.

Zoë Kravitz’s “Blink Twice” is a radical blend of trippy and unnerving social satire and blood-spattered horror, with Kravitz taking a big swing in her feature directorial debut and connecting with bone-rattling impact. It is a film that takes one big leap after another and sticks the landing far more often than not.

As you listen to his uncanny narration of Tupac: Resurrection, which is stitched together from interviews, you realize you're not listening to the usual self-important vacancies from celebrity Q&As, but to spoken prose of a high order, in which analysis, memory and poetry come together seamlessly in sentences and paragraphs that sound as if they were written.

The movie is essentially a filmed stage play, one of those idea-plays like Shaw liked to write, in which men and women ponder their differences and complexities.

I think the secret to the appeal of the entire “Kung Fu Panda” franchise is the enormous affection we feel for Po, that seemingly bumbling good guy who also can rise to the occasion and showcase true heroism and mystical power.

Speak No Evil eventually goes full-on with the familiar horror movie blood-spattering, but the social satire in that well-executed build-up is the real strength of the film.

What elevates Stephen Chbosky’s adaptation of the bestselling novel of the same name by R.J. Palacio is the myriad ways in which Wonder catches us just a little off-guard and puts lumps in our throats even when Auggie is off-screen, and we’re learning about supporting characters who rarely get their own sections in movies such as this.

At times Jimi: All Is By My Side feels pure authentic. More often, though, it’s meandering and melodramatic, with far too many scenes of Hendrix jabbering and squabbling with two key female figures in his life, and not enough of the music.

To Be Takei is a celebration of a man of great resilience, infectious humor, a voracious appetite for the richness of the human experience, and the best laugh in the history of laughing.