The problem may be that Bill Melendez, who directed, and Charles M. Schultz, who wrote the movie based on his own comic characters, couldn't decide whether to aim for kids or their parents.

This is a bold and unique slice of storytelling that serves up some genuine scares and bone-chilling fright moments while pointing a finger at a culture that alternately glorifies, worships and sexualizes young women and revels in stereotyping them and tearing them down.

The actors are better than the material.

With a richly layered and resonant screenplay by Kata Wéber, surehanded direction from Mundruczó and a stunningly authentic performance by Vanessa Kirby (“The Crown”) sure to garner an Oscar nomination, Pieces of a Woman is a stark and unforgettable character study about love and loss, and what loss does to love, and how some tragedies are so devastating, so huge, the survivors will never be the same.

This is the first movie about virtual reality to deal in a challenging way with the implications of the technology. It's fascinating the way Bigelow is able to suggest so much of VR's impact (and dangers) within a movie - a form of VR that's a century old.

American Teen isn't as penetrating or obviously realistic as her "On the Ropes," but Burstein has achieved an engrossing film.

The acting here, by Sean Penn, is a virtuoso tour de force - one of those performances that takes on a life of its own.

It takes a while, but the old-fashioned pleasure of watching a well-told story unfold eventually becomes the chief satisfaction in Byzantium, though there are other things to enjoy as well.

The Edge is like a wilderness adventure movie written by David Mamet, which is not surprising, since it was written by Mamet. It's subtly funny in the way it toys with the cliches of the genre.

Talk Radio is based on a play Bogosian wrote and starred in, and it was the right decision to star him in the movie, too, instead of some famous film actor. He feels this material from the inside out, and makes the character convincing. That’s especially true during a virtuoso, unsettling closing monologue, in which we think the camera is circling Bogosian - until we realize the camera and the actor are still, and the backgrounds are circling.

Oddly enough, Crimson Tide develops into an actors' picture, not just an action movie. There are a lot of special effects, high-tech gadgets and violent standoffs, yes, but the movie is really a battle between two wills.

So it goes with the family in this movie. All of its members are engaged in a mutual process of shooting one another down. Watching Margot at the Wedding is like slowing for a gaper's block.

[A] slightly diverting documentary.

Writer-director Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale,” “Marriage Story”) delivers an effectively unsettling, carefully crafted, at times brilliant but uneven adaptation of Don DeLillo’s postmodern dystopian classic from 1985, with Baumbach regulars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig leading an outstanding cast in a three-pronged social satire.

One of the more completely entertaining movies I've seen in a while--a well-crafted character study that, like a Hollywood movie with a skillful script, manipulates us but makes us like it.

What did I think about this movie? As a film critic, I liked it. I liked the in-jokes and the self-aware characters. At the same time, I was aware of the incredible level of gore in this film. It is really violent.

Thanks to the brilliant, nuanced work by the great Mahershala Ali, our heart goes out to both Camerons.

Will I seem hopelessly square if I find Kick-Ass morally reprehensible and will I appear to have missed the point? Let’s say you’re a big fan of the original comic book, and you think the move does it justice. You know what? You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in.

Not often have I been more certain of the direction a movie is heading, or more wrong. Littlerock, a sensitive indie feature by Mike Ott, plays fair. I was misled only by my own cynicism.

The film is a chilling study of an evil, dominant personality and his victims. It works primarily through an astonishingly good performance by Daniel Henshall as Bunting.

Ferrara is a master at luring the viewer into his sinister underworld, where survival of the fittest is the only rule. It's refreshing to find an auteur whose storytelling isn't enslaved by plot conventions. Putting substance second to style isn't always a sin, and King of New York has a style that's a joy to behold through many viewings. [8 Aug 1993, p.5]

The film's appeal is in the details. This is one of [Merchant-Ivory's] best films.

Mean Girls dissects high school society with a lot of observant detail, which seems surprisingly well-informed. The screenplay by "Saturday Night Live's" Tina Fey is both a comic and a sociological achievement.

What Felicity Huffman brings to Bree is the newness of a Jane Austen heroine. She has been waiting a long time to be an ingenue, and what an irony that she must begin as a mother.

A real movie, rich and atmospheric, savoring its disreputable characters and their human weaknesses.

The movie is all color and music, sound and motion, kinetic energy, broad strokes, operatic excess.

And yet Philadelphia is quite a good film, on its own terms. And for moviegoers with an antipathy to AIDS but an enthusiasm for stars like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, it may help to broaden understanding of the disease.

Sidewalk Stories weaves a spell as powerful as it is entertaining.

The movie plays out like a thrift-store version of Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” in that it takes us through the looking glass into a world so complex and nebulous, even the major players sometimes seem utterly befuddled — but does so as if we’re taking a thrill ride in a Financial Theme Park.

The Good Dinosaur is wildly uneven, but you have to give it points for trying to be something different.

Did this movie have to be so lockstep, so trapped by its mechanical plot, so limited by a murder mystery? What the movie has to say is so pale and limited that, ironically, the most interesting character in the movie is the victim.

Williams delivers another in a series of great performances in a supporting role, but the weight of the film rests on the shoulders of John Boyega, who alternates between moments of heartbreakingly quiet introspection, and startling fits of anger and rage as Brian Brown-Easley, who in January of 2017 walked into a Wells Fargo Bank in Marietta, Georgia, withdrew $25 from his sparse bank account and then handed the teller a note saying, “I have a bomb.”

Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose, one of the best biopics I've seen, tells Piaf's life story through the extraordinary performance of Marion Cotillard, who looks like the singer.

Even though “Smaug” moves at a faster pace than the first part of the journey, it feels overlong. I still feel this whole Hobbit tale could have been told in one great, three-hour movie.

What's impressive is how well this film joins its parts into a whole.

For most of the ride, Mid90s feels like an accurate time capsule — and a relatable journey even if you’ve never been on a skateboard in your life.

Swimming With Sharks was written and directed by George Huang, who was himself a personal assistant in Hollywood, and whose networking must have paid off, since he got a movie out of it. His plot may be overwritten and the ending may be less than satisfying, but his eye and ear are right.

This is a more thoughtful film, and its action scenes are easier to follow in space and time. If we didn't really need to be told Spidey's origin story again, at least it's done with more detail and provides better reasons for why Peter Parker throws himself into his superhero role.

It takes on the resonance of classic tragedy. Tragedy requires the fall of a hero, and one of the achievements of Nixon is to show that greatness was within his reach.

You're looking for depth and profundity, this is the wrong movie. But under the direction of David Koepp ("Secret Window," the screenplays for "Mission: Impossible" and "Spider-Man"), this is an expert and spellbinding adventure.

Director Jim Mickle, who co-wrote the film with his star Nick Damici, has crafted a good-looking, well-played and atmospheric apocalyptic vision.

Tommaso has an appealing, casually messy, docu-style approach, as if we’re eavesdropping on these lives.

This good movie is buried beneath millions of dollars that were spent on "production values" that wreck the show.

You won’t find much subtlety in the solid period-piece drama Marshall, but you will find plenty of crowd-pleasing courtroom theatrics, some wonderful performances from the main players — and yes, all sorts of reminders of how far we’ve come in terms of race relations since the early 1940s, and how very, very far we still have to go.

Disappointing then, that the movie introduces such an extraordinary living being and focuses mostly on those around her. All the same, it’s well done, and intriguing.

Ron Howard’s claustrophobically intense and captivating “Thirteen Lives” is one of those movies where you find yourself marveling at the daunting logistics involved in re-creating one of the most famed and complex rescue efforts in recent history—but with an excessive running time of 147 minutes, by the time the story wraps up, we’re almost too exhausted to fully appreciate what we’ve just experienced.

Made against all odds into a funny and charming movie that understands the charm of the original, and preserves it.

There is a kind of music to their conversations, now a lullaby, now a march, now a requiem, now hip-hop, and they play with one another like members of an orchestra. The movie's so good to listen to, it would even work as an audio book.

The whole film has a lively Mexican-American tilt, from the Hispanic backgrounds of the young actors to the surprise appearance of none other than Ricardo Montalban, as Grandpa, in a wheelchair with helicopter capabilities.

The kind of caper movie that was made before special effects replaced wit, construction and intelligence. This movie is made out of fresh ingredients, not cake mix. Despite the twists of its plot, it is about its characters.

This is one of those rare Christmas comedies that has a heart, a brain and a wicked sense of humor, and it charms the socks right off the mantelpiece. Even the unexpected casting is on the money.

There is an irony here. The film exhibits an admirable determination to do justice to a real story, but the story's not real.

The deeper Shadow in the Cloud dives into sci-fi fantasy territory, the more we’re asked to just go with it and enjoy the spectacularly choreographed action sequences — but thanks in large part to Moretz’s ferociously effective work, we’re all too happy to take that zany ride.

The brief but informative (and kid-friendly whimsical) Island of Lemurs: Madagascar is basically a status report on the creatures, who exist nowhere else on Earth.

Always sweet and sometimes surprisingly touching.

Working from Justin Lader’s smart script, Moss and Duplass expertly portray a very typical couple going through a rocky time — and they’re just as effective when the weirdness kicks in during their getaway weekend.

Husbands has all the confidence of Cassavetes' masterpiece, Faces, but few of the other qualities of the film that preceded it. It has good intentions, I suppose, but it is an artistic disaster and only fitfully interesting on less ambitious levels.

Harriet certainly doesn’t shy away from reminding us of the horrors of slavery, but it’s mostly about the quest for freedom, and a remarkable woman who found her own freedom wasn’t nearly enough.

There are times when “Kingdom” is thuddingly heavy-handed with its particular brand of messaging, and the dialogue is cornier than a 1950s action epic, but there’s always another exhilarating action sequence around the corner, and the visuals are never less than stunning.

Ty Cobb was by many accounts a mean-tempered, vicious, drunken, wife- beating, racist SOB who was impossible to spend any length of time with, and the movie Cobb faithfully represents those qualities, especially the last one.

The special effects are of course top level (though again, I wouldn’t say they’re breathtakingly special); the sets are amazingly rich in detail; the cinematography is fluid and vibrant. The result is an effective if not everlasting magical spell.

For every sobering note, Becoming has a dozen uplifting moments.

This isn’t a breakthrough movie, but for what it is, it’s charming, and not any more innocuous than it has to be.

A lighthearted and goofy musical comedy about a love affair between an extraterrestrial and a manicurist.

This is a slick-looking film with a gorgeous cast and a sprinkling of funny one-liners, but the dark comedy often falls flat, nearly every character is a one-dimensional cliché and the redemption story defies credibility, even in a well-dressed social satire.

The real objective of all the "M:I" movies is to provide a clothesline for sensational action scenes. Nothing else matters, and explanatory dialogue would only slow things down. This formula worked satisfactorily in "M:I," directed by Brian De Palma, and "M:I II," directed by John Woo, and I suppose it works up to a point in M:I III, directed by J.J. Abrams, if what you want is endless, nonstop high-tech action.

This remake was a bad idea that only got worse.

It's a long, shapeless, undisciplined mess, and every once in awhile it generates a big laugh.

A good, solid science-fiction movie, and a little more.

Return is a movie with some nice, droll opening scenes and the obligatory horrible climax. It doesn't make the mistake of Day Of The Dead - talking too much. It's kind of a sensation-machine, made out of the usual ingredients, and the real question is whether it's done with style. It is.

The fantastically nostalgic, consistently funny, mischief-laden and genuinely touching 8-Bit Christmas (now on HBO Max) reminds me of A Christmas Story — with a touch of the storytelling device employed in A Princess Bride.

The great achievement of Alan Rudolph's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is that it allows us to empathize with Dorothy Parker on her long descent.

The Reivers is a pleasant, wholesome, straightforward movie of the sort (as they say) they don't make anymore.

Deadpool 2 is wicked, dark fun from start to finish, with some twisted and very funny special effects, cool production elements, terrific ensemble work — and for dessert, perhaps the best end-credits “cookie” scene ever.

I guess I sort of liked the film. although I wonder why it couldn't have spent more time on natural history and the sense of discovery.

This is Agnes’ story, and this is Kelly Macdonald’s movie.

A vicious and cheerfully twisted psychological thriller dripping in deception and dread, bathed in pop-art colors and infused with a wickedly dark sense of humor.

The Infiltrator is a great-looking, well-paced, wickedly funny and seriously tense thriller, bolstered by an ensemble cast as good as I’ve seen in any film this year.

The Higgins performance owes more than a little to Fred Willard's unforgettable dog show commentary in "Best in Show," but it was clear that Willard was part of a telecast.

Sea of Love tells an ingeniously constructed story that depends for its suspense on the same question posed by Jagged Edge and Fatal Attraction: What happens when you fall in love with a person who may be quite prepared to murder you?

This is a wall-to-wall smile of a movie: big of heart and large in scale, lavishly staged, beautifully photographed and brimming with show-stopping musical numbers.

Through it all, the Latino-influenced ballads, dance numbers and hip-hop numbers infuse the story with great life, and how can anybody possibly resist Lin-Manuel Miranda as a kinkajou with a tiny hat?

You’re Next benefits from skilled script-keepers.

The reason to see it is for Jones. This man who can stride fearlessly through roles requiring strong, determined men, this actor who can seem in complete control, finds a character here who seems unlike any other he has played and plays it bravely.

The facts in the film are slippery, but the revelation of a human personality is surprisingly moving.

If it is true that mankind has 100 years to live before we destroy our planet, it provides an enlightening vision of how Manhattan will look when it lives on without us. The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds.

It doesn't have the little in-jokes that make "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc." fun for grown-ups. But adults who appreciate the art of animation may enjoy the look of the picture.

Sometimes movies tire us by trying too relentlessly to pound us with their brilliance and energy. Here is a movie pitched at about the energy level of a coffee break. That the people are oddly assorted and sometimes very strange is not so very unusual, considering some of the conversations you overhear in Starbucks.

BS High directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe do a splendid job of alternating between present-day interviews with Johnson as well as a number of former Bishop Sycamore players, who will break your heart as they talk about the realization the dream Johnson was selling to them was almost all illusion.

Les Miserables is like a perfectly respectable Classics Illustrated version of the Victor Hugo novel. It contains the moments of high drama, clearly outlines all the motivations, is easy to follow and lacks only passion. A story filled with outrage and idealism becomes somehow merely picturesque.

The New York art world quickly makes Basquiat a star. His work is good (when you see it in the movie, you can feel why people liked it so much), but his story is better: from a cardboard box to a gallery opening!

This is a very “Star Wars”-y “Star Wars” movie. It’s not quite on the level of the original or “The Empire Strikes Back” (the best of ’em all, of course), but it’s on a par with last year’s “The Force Awakens” and it’s light years above “Attack of the Clones” and “The Phantom Menace.”

Thanks in large part to the genuine movie-star charisma of David Oyelowo and to the breathtakingly beautiful on-location cinematography in Botswana, here we are with the arrow pointing up.

For some men, the movie will reveal a truth that most women already know. It is that verbal sexual harassment, whether crudely in a saloon back room or subtly in an everyday situation, is a form of violence - one that leaves no visible marks but can make its victims feel unable to move freely and casually in society. It is a form of imprisonment.

It’s a crazy kaleidoscope of bright colors, dark corners, David Lynch-style set pieces and shock moments designed to keep you up at night — and it features a quintet of memorable performances from two of the best young actors around and three iconic Brits.

Here is a comedy of great high spirits, with an undercurrent of sadness and sweetness that makes it a lot better than the plot itself could possibly suggest.

The use of 2:35 wide screen paradoxically increases the effect of claustrophobia. I would not like to be buried alive.

Saylor has created a character who will haunt you for some time after you leave the theater.