Appealing performances and a not always predictable storyline help elevate Pulling Strings above the run-of-the-mill rom-com.

This is a slice-of-life movie, the kind that director Jonathan (Melvin and Howard) Demme is good at.

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.

This is a high-concept and yes, meta, film that springs from a clever premise and delivers wholesome, energetic, positive-messaging entertainment — even if there are some plot developments straight out of “Interstellar” meets “Back to the Future” that will sail above the heads of the little ones.

I enjoyed the film's look and feel, the perfectly modulated performances, and the whole tawdry world of spy and counterspy, which must be among the world's most dispiriting occupations. But I became increasingly aware that I didn't always follow all the allusions and connections. On that level, "Tinker Tailor" didn't work for me.

[Del Toro] carries this sometimes convoluted and derivative thriller into three-star territory with an absolutely mesmerizing and authentic performance that conjures up memories of past anti-hero greats such as Bogart and Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Sterling Hayden. It’s authentic, grounded, stunning work.

The movie works. It is food at last for we who hunger for a screwball comedy utterly lacking in redeeming social importance.

The more it builds, the more it grows on you.

The flashback-laden story, which has the Joker romping through a decrepit old model for the space-age future, is pretty herky-jerky. But what counts most are the visuals, which in true comic book fashion are colorful and wittily stylized: Batman's cinderblock jaw and massive physique can't obscure his lunkhead nature and unimpressive voice. [27 Dec 1993, p.23]

Without Costner’s movie star equity, this thing could have fallen apart in the first 30 minutes. He keeps us involved, even as we’re thinking: Wait, WHAT just happened?

What sets this film above so many movies about animals is that it's about a dog who is realistic in every aspect.

The heart of the movie is in the Spacey performance, and in knowing that less is more, he plays Prot absolutely matter-of-factly.

Blinded by the Light is almost unspeakably corny at times as it shifts tones from realistic drama-comedy to flat-out musical — but it’s easy to forgive the bumpy moments in favor of sitting back and enjoying the simple pleasures of an old-fashioned, inspirational, coming-of-age tale … Especially if you’re a big Boss fan like yours truly.

The movie contains many of the usual ingredients of teenage suburban angst tragicomedies, but writer-director Mike Mills, who began with a novel by Walter Kirn, uses actors who can riff.

A lovely film, but maddeningly complacent.

It’s an uneven but memorable tale about a young man with impressive survival instincts and a conscience that shifts to fit the circumstances.

A big, slick melodrama that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and does so with great craft.

What's a little startling about this movie is that all of this works. The Blues Brothers cost untold millions of dollars and kept threatening to grow completely out of control. But director John Landis (of “Animal House”) has somehow pulled it together, with a good deal of help from the strongly defined personalities of the title characters. Belushi and Aykroyd come over as hard-boiled city guys, total cynics with a world-view of sublime simplicity, and that all fits perfectly with the movie's other parts. There's even room, in the midst of the carnage and mayhem, for a surprising amount of grace, humor, and whimsy.

It's a screwball comedy. It's also, I have to say, a feel-good movie that made me smile a lot.

Sayles has started with a domestic comedy, and led us unswervingly into the heart of darkness.

Throughout, the always likable Gillian Jacobs creates a memorable portrayal of a woman who’s a mess but still rather wonderful.

Nanjiani and Bautista are terrific together, but Stuber also benefits from a quartet of wonderful actresses who are all effective despite limited screen time.

We're swept up in the story's need to find a happy ending.

A sleeper that talks like a thriller and walks like a thriller, but has more brains than the average thriller.

Is this movie for the whole family to attend? No, it is a movie for small children and their parents or adult guardians, who will take them because they love them very much.

This is not a movie you forget about as you’re heading for the exit. I’m not sure it’s a movie you’ll ever forget.

The movie gets credit for not making the high life seem colorful or funny. It is not. It is boring, because when the drugs are there they simply clear the pain and allow the mind to focus on getting more drugs.

The way to enjoy this film is to put your logic on hold, along with any higher sensitivities that might be vulnerable and immerse yourself as if in a video game.

I’m giving Life of the Party three stars — a solid B, if you will — on the strength of at least a half-dozen laugh-out-loud moments, some truly sharp dialogue, a tremendously likable cast, and the sheer force of its cheerful goofiness.

I’m pleased to report that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire carries the same endearingly goofy, science-nerd spirit of the first film and delivers a delightful balance of slimy ghost stuff, sharp one-liners, terrific VFX and a steady stream of callbacks to various characters, human and otherwise, from the 1984 movie.

The Andromeda Strain is a splendid entertainment that will get you worried about whether they'll be able to contain that strange blob of alien green crystal.

Yes, it’s a raunchy, edgy, hard-R comedy about a trio of 12-year-old boys who drop the f-bomb every other sentence and get involved in all sorts of predicaments featuring sex toys and beer and molly — but even the most hardcore jokes have a good-natured and even sweet larger context.

Bowie, slender, elegant, remote, evokes this alien so successfully that one could say, without irony, this was a role he was born to play.

I admired this movie. It kept me at arm's length, but that is where I am supposed to be; the characters are after all at arm's length from each other, and the tragedy of the story is implied but never spoken aloud.

To laugh at parts of this film would indicate one has a streak of Woodcockism in oneself. But to gaze in stupefied fascination is perfectly understandable. That's what makes Thornton such a complex actor.

I get letters from people who would like to make a movie. My advice could be, find a subject like Speed Levitch and follow him around with a video camera. That's what Bennett Miller did--directing, producing and photographing The Cruise.

The story itself doesn't matter much. We go to a classic John Wayne Western not to see anything new, but to see the old done again, done well, so that we can sink into the genre and feel confident we won't be betrayed.

Honest, observant, and subtle.

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.

In its best moments it travels into the heart of darkness with “Richard III” and brings to life the unique, all-involving heartbeat of theater performed before a live audience.

The chief delight in “Wicked Little Letters” is watching Colman and Buckley in action.

Snappy graphics channel the info flow like a sugar rush. Scary music cues are overused. Narrator Katie Couric wisely stays offscreen. That keeps Fed Up from feeling like an Oprah special.

Pleasence, in a role that requires him to run sideways most of the time with his head at a crooked angle, is hilarious and frightening as a man going mad, and the film has an eerie appeal.

What is best in the film is its depiction of the warrior's epic journey, photographed with breathtaking beauty and simplicity by Roman Osin.

This is a film situated precisely on the dividing line between traditional family entertainment and the newer action-oriented family films. It is charming and scary in about equal measure, and confident for the first two acts that it can be wonderful without having to hammer us into enjoying it, or else. Then it starts hammering.

I liked the movie. I smiled a lot. It maintained its tone in the face of bountiful temptations to get easy laughs.

The effect of this scene is so powerful that I leaned forward like a jury member, wanting her to get away with it so I could find her innocent.

An ingenious thriller that doesn't make much sense but doesn't need to, because it moves at breakneck speed through a story of a man's desperation to save his pregnant wife after she has been kidnapped. This is the kind of movie where you get involved first and ask questions later.

From the opening frame right up to the whirlwind finale, you will be treated to non-stop action, clever dialogue and quite a bit of zany energy. If I’d fault anything about this fun romp, it’s that the filmmakers tried to jam-pack too much into one movie.

I was expecting Doc Hollywood to be a comedy. And it is a comedy. But it surprised me by also being a love story, and a pretty good one - the kind where the lovers are smart enough to know all the reasons why they shouldn't get together, but too much in love to care.

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.

Sean Hayes is a droll delight as Susan, who uses cynicism and snappy put-downs as a defense mechanism but has a real heart.

What attracts audiences is not sex and not really violence, either, but a Pop Art fantasy image of powerful women, filmed with high energy and exaggerated in a way that seems bizarre and unnatural, until you realize Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal play more or less the same characters. Without the bras, of course.

Clocking in at a bloated 2 hours and 20 minutes and featuring a VERY slow build before we get to the good stuff, the gorgeous and weird and ludicrous horror film “Midsommar” tests our patience more than once before delivering some seriously grisly and wonderfully twisted material in the final act.

The stuff in outer space is unexpected, the surprise waiting out there is genuine, and meanwhile, there's an abundance of charm and screen presence from the four veteran actors.

So Paine's 2006 doc has a happy sequel. His film is just as polished and good-looking as his first one, gives us a good look at automakers we like, and is entertaining. But the first film was charged with drama. "Revenge" is somewhat anticlimactically charged with a wall plug.

What elevates “Dirty Angels” to the status of a solid slice of R-rated action entertainment is the stellar cast led by Eva Green and the surehanded direction from 81-year-old veteran Martin Campbell, director of the Bond films “GoldenEye” and “Casino Royale” (which co-starred Green as Vesper Lynd) and most recently, the Liam Neeson-starring “Memory.”

Corny? Absolutely. Sincere and spiritual? Yes.

Schumer is doing another slightly tweaked but virtually indistinguishable variation on the same wisecracking, self-deprecating, insecure, if-only-she-could-see-her-wonderfulness underdog she’s played before. She’s clearly in her comfort zone and she eventually wins us over in this uneven, hit-and-miss, broad comedy — but here’s hoping the next time around, she tries something new.

The mood is somber, ominous and increasingly suspenseful throughout (despite an awkwardly handled final showdown), goosed along by an intense John Carpenter-esque electronic music score.

Spaceman is a wonderfully weird journey that ends on just the right and quite satisfying notes.

Hill doesn't really try to avoid the cliches in a story like this. He simply turns up the juice. Like his "Southern Comfort," "48 Hrs.," and "The Warriors," this is a movie that depends on style, not surprises. He doesn't want to make a different kind of movie; he wants to make a familiar story look better than we've seen it look recently. And yet there is a big surprise in Extreme Prejudice in the appearance and character of Nick Nolte.

Helped enormously by Rachel McAdams, whose performance is convincing because she keeps it at ground level; thrillers are invitations to overact, but she remains plausible even when the action ratchets up around her.

Smulders gives one of the most natural performances of her career, and Bean’s subtle, strong work announces her as a young actress to watch.

Has a freshness and charm, a winning way with its not terrifically original material.

What I liked most was its unforced, genuine affection for its characters.

Hacksaw Ridge is faithful to the story of Desmond Doss in every sense of the word.

While Extraction 2 doesn’t match the original action thriller from 2020 as it embraces so many clichés I lost count, it’s still a rousing international adventure with some incredible battles that will leave you feeling exhausted FOR the actors (and their stunt doubles). This is the kind of movie that leaves it all out there on the field.

There are few reasons you must see this movie, but absolutely none that you should not.

All of this is just plain enjoyable. I liked it, but please don't make me say it's deeply moving or redemptive and uplifting. It's a genre piece for character actors is what it is, and that's an honorable thing for it to be.

Although the movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene, it has a sweetness that is impossible to discount, and it is often very funny.

I like the way the personalities are allowed to upstage the plot in Fighting, a routine three-act fight story that creates uncommonly interesting characters.

It has elements of sweet romance and elements of macabre humor, and divides its characters between the two.

Thanks to Villeneuve’s masterful direction, the aforementioned brilliant technical elements and a star-studded cast of actors who pour themselves into the material — you can practically see them shaking the sand out of their boots after a long day’s filming — “Dune Part 2” makes for a wondrous viewing experience.

There’s wit, rudeness, satire, lust and pathos, all effortlessly rolled up together. "Skin Deep" is sort of a filmmaker’s triathalon, and if Edwards doesn’t set any new records, he enters every event.

One thing I like about the film is the way it teasingly introduces elements that, in other films, would lead to big dramatic formulas, and then sidesteps them.

The movie is above all entertaining, if you enjoy human grotesquerie and flamboyant acting. Let's face it: Many of us do. There's a reason Hannibal Lecter remains the most popular villain in the movies.

Lost in La Mancha, which started life as one of those documentaries you get free on a DVD, ended as the record of swift and devastating disaster.

Populaire has no interest in rewriting the rules of romantic comedy, but it does run through the expected paces with admirable style.

Branagh sets the pace just this side of a Marx Brothers movie.

Has the outer form of a brave statement about the races in America, but the soul of a sports movie in which everything is settled by the obligatory last play in the last seconds of the championship game.

This is an uneven film with a couple of glaring inconsistencies, but director Slattery has a fine sense of framing and pacing, and the top-notch cast handles the clever dialogue with aplomb.

True Confessions contains scenes that are just about as good as scenes can be. Then why does the movie leave us disoriented and disappointed, and why does the ending fail dismally? Perhaps because the attentions of the filmmakers were concentrated so fiercely on individual moments that nobody ever stood back to ask what the story was about.

Planet of the Apes is much better than I expected it to be. It is quickly paced, completely entertaining, and its philosophical pretensions don't get in the way. If you only condescend to see an adventure thriller on rare occasions, condescend this time. You have nothing to lower but your brow.

All of this is actually a lot of fun, if you like special effects and gore.

An absorbing experience.

Throughout, Bill Nighy carries the film effortlessly on his slender shoulders, reminding us of why he’s an international treasure.

Hannah Arendt takes seriously the life of the mind.

Now here's this rich and textured film.

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.

While the documentary doesn’t provide conclusive proof of a link between any covert government operations and Manson, it’s at least fodder for lively debate (not to mention a Netflix documentary).

A surprisingly funny movie, the best of the 1970s recycling jobs, with one laugh ("Are you OK, little pony?") almost as funny as the moment in "Dumb and Dumber" when the kid figured out his parakeet's head was Scotch-taped on.

Filled with unexpected facts.

Firth plays George superbly, as a man who prepares a face to meet the faces that he meets.

Despite its predictable philosophy, however, Nell is an effective film, and a moving one. That is largely because of the strange beauty of Jodie Foster's performance as Nell, and the warmth of the performance by Liam Neeson, as a doctor who finds himself somehow responsible for her.

It is an impressively staged and appropriately rain-soaked, mud-splattered, bone-crunching tale, more violent and filled with rougher language than its predecessor, if not quite as powerful or moving.

This movie by its nature is not thrilling, but it is very genuinely interesting, and that is rare.

This Apple TV+ original film, directed by Jon S. Baird, doesn’t attempt to replicate the entertainingly addictive block-stacking puzzle game because I don’t know how you’d make a movie out of that; it’s a fictionalized and creatively stylized origins story that plays like a Cold War thriller version of “The Social Network.”