In a film about a magician, the most impressive trick in Sleight is how director and co-writer J.D. Dillard is able to spin such a memorable and unique tale on a micro-budget.

The damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.

Only a few sequels have been as good as the originals; the characters especially like "Aliens'' and "The Godfather, Part II.'' As for Scream 2, it's ... well, it's about as good as the original.

This movie is spellbinding storytelling. It begins with such a simple premise and creates such a genuinely intriguing situation that we're not just entertained, we're drawn into the argument.

I liked the movie for the quirky way it pursues humor through the drifts of greed, lust, booze, betrayal and spectacularly complicated ways to die. I liked it for Charlie's (Cusack) essential kindness, as when he pauses during a getaway to help a friend who has run out of gas.

On more than one occasion, this looks and feels like a parody.

Begley and Stevens add tone to the cast, and Hingle comes over like an especially earnest Karl Malden. The moral of the story is vaguely against capital punishment, and there's a lot of that thin, windblown guitar twanging for you thin, wind-blown guitar twanging fans.

There's plenty of good travelogue in moving among Africa, Spain and the French Riviera. But director Henry King plods again. [18 Feb 1999, p.31]

This is a dark and brutal cautionary tale that traffics in any number of familiar scary-movie touchstones, but does so in consistently clever and entertaining fashion.

Very funny in an insidious way.

What I admire most about the film is the way it enters the terms of this world -- of international politics, security procedures, shifting motives -- and observes the details of all-night stakeouts, shop talk, and interlocking motives and strategies.

Much of what transpires in “Cuckoo” depends on your willingness to just go with it, and your forgiveness for a couple of loose ends that remain untied throughout. The fun here is enjoying the screen-popping performances by Schafer and Dan Stevens as a snarling villain, not to mention the quality Jump Scares and the overall creepy vibe.

Everyone knows this is a gory B-movie where taste is not an issue, and they play their roles accordingly.

We suspect that the film will be about their various problems and that the hotel will not be as advertised. What we may not expect is what a charming, funny and heartwarming movie this is, a smoothly crafted entertainment that makes good use of seven superb veterans.

The talented writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour raises the crazy stakes with a well-made, sometimes darkly funny and at times bizarrely entertaining film that eventually falls apart due to directorial self-indulgence, excessive grotesquery, a bloated running time, too many half-baked messages—and let’s not forget the distractingly campy appearances by Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey.

A stronger plot engine might have drawn us more quickly to the end, but on a scene by scene basis, Interview with the Vampire is a skillful exercise in macabre imagination.

Kudos to writer-director Frizzell for demonstrating a sharp ear for comedic dialogue, a fine sense of storytelling as a director — and for incorporating Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” as well as Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” into the soundtrack.

A triumph of style over story, and of acting over characters.

Gibson, as director, doesn't give himself a soppy speech explaining why he doesn't say them. He lets us figure it out. That is the essence of the story and, we eventually realize, the essence of teaching, too.

Sagan's novel Contact provides the inspiration for Robert Zemeckis' new film, which tells the smartest and most absorbing story about extraterrestrial intelligence since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Besson has always demonstrated the ability to chuckle at the madness of his own material, and he provides some solid laughs from time to time. But these winks do nothing to erase the reality of a plot that becomes unintentionally hilarious.

Meryl Streep is indeed poised and imperious as Miranda, and Anne Hathaway is a great beauty who makes a convincing career girl. I liked Stanley Tucci, too, as Nigel... But I thought the movie should have reversed the roles played by Grenier and Baker. Grenier comes across not like the old boyfriend but like the slick New York writer, and Baker seems the embodiment of Midwestern sincerity.

I can imagine a broader comedy in which the situation might work. Remember Mrs. Robinson or Stifler's mom? But here there's a fugitive undercurrent of sincerity. Hello, I Must Be Going raises questions it doesn't have the answers for.

The performances have a gravity about them that is unusual in the movies. How you respond to Butterfly Kiss depends on what you bring to it, and how much empathy you are willing to extend to these sad and horrifying women.

Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in "Le Samourai," by Jean-Pierre Melville.

Essentially just a love story, and not sturdy enough to carry the burden of both radical politics and a bittersweet ending.

Perhaps Lumet was simply too ambitious in trying to work anti-bugging sentiment into the film. If he'd thrown out all the hidden mikes and stuck with the Heist, The Anderson Tapes would have moved with a more confident step in the direction of Rififi.

There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer Zoolander.

What impresses me more is that she (Delpy) has a lighthearted way about her and takes chances in comedies like this. It is hard enough to be good at all, but to be good in comedy speaks for your character.

For those curious about the brains behind the sitcom’s pop-culture savvy and the heart it wears on its sleeve, “Harmontown” makes for an eye-opening extra.

It is an enchanted folly suggesting that romance is a matter of chance, since love is blind; at the right moment we are likely to fall in love with the first person our eyes light upon.

An absolutely superb mounting of a hollow and disappointing production. It shows a technical mastery of filmmaking, and we are dazzled by the performances, the atmosphere, the mood of mounting violence. But by the second hour of the film we've lost our bearings: What is this movie saying about its characters? What does it feel and believe about them? Why was it necessary to tell their stories?

Words on Bathroom Walls has its moments and its heart is in the right place, but the missteps are too many and too big for the story to carry the day.

A lot of Trollhunter - but not enough - is funny. I imagine the best way to see the movie would be the way it was presented at Sundance, at a "secret" midnight screening at which the capacity audience allegedly has no idea what it is about to see.

Tougher, less sentimental mirror version of "Save the Last Dance."

9/11 was a savage and heartless crime, and after the symbolism and the history and the imagery and the analysis, that is a point that must be made.

The movie hums along with a kind of sublime craftsmanship, fueled by the consistent performances of Hackman and Hoffman (in their first film together), the remarkable ease of John Cusack (the most relaxed and natural of actors since Robert Mitchum), and the juicy typecasting in the supporting roles.

Dhoom:3 entertains as a spectacle of chases, bank capers, magic acts and song-and-dance numbers.

The young actors shine revealing lights on their characters.

The film is not perfect; its message at times gets lost in its “pearls of wisdom” approach. But overall, there is a soothing quality to it, with Gibran’s words resonating on some level to those who are willing to listen.

Boxcar Bertha is a weirdly interesting movie and not really the sleazy exploitation film the ads promise.

The movie finally becomes just an exercise, then: a brilliant one at times, and with a wealth of sharp-edged performances, but without people for its things to happen to.

Stylistically, this saga of survival never aims for urban neo-realism. Yet, as sentimental humanism, it shows laudable taste in dodging the usual indulgent touches and turns when lost kids find their way.

What makes Vice Versa so wonderful is the way Reinhold and Savage are able to convince us that each body is inhabited by the other character.

Kindergarten Cop was directed by Ivan Reitman, whose best work shows an ability to mix the absurd with the dramatic, so we're laughing as the suspense reaches its peak.

Until the last twenty or thirty minutes, however, First Blood is a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone (who invests an unlikely character with great authority) but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy, as the police chief.

A pleasure to look at and scarcely less fun as a story. I came to scoff and stayed to smile.

The Boxtrolls has a rich, edgy texture that makes it stand out from other animated films.

Despite that not-intriguing title and some late developments that come precariously close to piling on the sentimentality, this is ultimately a breathtakingly beautiful, stark and deeply human story about love and loss, and the extreme measures some will take to numb their pain.

The material might have promise as a black comedy, but its attempt to put on a smiling face is unconvincing.

Compellingly watchable.

A movie for more than one season; it will become a perennial, shared by the generations. It has a haunting, magical quality because it has imagined its world freshly and played true to it,

This is basically the first sitcom in drag, and the comic turns in the plot are achieved with such clockwork timing that sometimes we're laughing at what's funny and sometimes we're just laughing at the movie's sheer comic invention. This is a great time at the movies.

Why didn't they make a baseball picture? Why did The Natural have to be turned into idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford? Why did a perfectly good story, filled with interesting people, have to be made into one man's ascension to the godlike, especially when no effort is made to give that ascension meaning?

I've seen so many thrillers that, frankly, I don't always care how they turn out — unless they're really well-crafted. What I like about Eyewitness is that, although it does care how it turns out, it cares even more about the texture of the scenes leading to the denouement.

There comes a time in some movies when sheer spectacle overwhelms any consideration of plot, and Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction is a movie like that. It has a plot so unlikely and confused that we can't believe it for much more than 15 seconds at a time, but its action sequences are so absorbing and its mountaintop photography so compelling that we don't care.

What saves this movie, which won this year's audience award at Sundance, from being boring are performances by two actors who see a chance to go over the top and aren't worried about the fall on the other side.

This is a documentary about what happens to you when you appear in "Troll 2."

Brie’s performance is open and honest and disturbing and funny and lovely and resonant. The work is so good and so convincing that even when Sarah is spouting the craziest of her mad theories, there’s a small part of us that wonders if Sarah’s truth is the real truth. We certainly believe SHE believes.

This is a weird, psychological sexual thriller clearly designed to get a rise out of audiences. It’s also pretty damn engrossing.

A clever, funny and very skillful thriller about how a kid builds his own atomic bomb. This isn't really a teenage movie at all, it's a thriller. And it's one of those thrillers that stays as close as possible to the everyday lives of convincing people, so that the movie's frightening aspects are convincing.

Thanks in large part to Elliott (and Offerman and Prepon and Ritter, among others), The Hero survives some bumpy, well-worn clichés.

It’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but it’s still heartbreaking to see small farmers telling their individual stories about the financial and emotional stress they’ve experienced.

The Jessica Lange character is wrong because she isn't selfish enough. In the original, the character was a tough dame who had married the fat spider for money, and was looking out only for herself. Here the character's motivations are marred by soft bourgeois values like affection and career dreams. The original film had a good girl and a bad girl; the Lange character wants to be both.

This is the most gruesome and quease-inducing film you are likely to have seen. You may not even want to read the descriptions in this review. Yet it is also beautiful, angry and sad, with a curious sick poetry, as if the Marquis de Sade had gone in for pastel landscapes.

In Hilary Swank, the film finds the right actress to embody gritty tenacity.

It is a well-crafted movie that works, that entertains, and that pulls us through its pretty standard material with the magnetism of the Ray Sharkey performance.

Tells a story we think we already know, but we're wrong: It has new things to say within an old formula.

This is the kind of adventure picture the studios churned out in the Golden Age -- so traditional it almost feels new.

There is real wit in Glover's performance. And wit, too, in R. Lee Ermey's performance as the boss, which draws heavily on Ermey's real-life experience as a drill sergeant.

The material never really takes hold. It seems awkward. It lacks fire and passion. Watching it was like having a pale memory of a vivid experience.

One fundamental problem with the movie is that John Travolta is seriously miscast as a nuclear terrorist. Say what you will about the guy, he doesn't come across as a heavy.

The climactic scenes when all hell breaks loose are gripping and enthralling, and in the midst of all the blood, sweat and tears, Joel Kinnaman is kicking ass and taking names in true action movie-star fashion.

From the direction to the script to the production elements to the performances, Triple Frontier is a first-class ride.

Beyond the often hilarious dialogue and some slapstick humor, when Somewhere in Queens gets into serious territory, including Leo possibly having a fling with an attractive widow (Jennifer Esposito), the material is handled deftly and with intelligence and care.

I guess it's a tribute to The Man With Two Brains that I found myself laughing a fair amount of the time, despite my feelings about Martin.

This is a two-star movie with moments of sheer exuberance and clever good fun — but just as many scenes that had me tilting my head like a dog trying to figure out what the WHAT is taking place before his very eyes.

Ferrell and his longtime collaborator Adam McKay have a unique gift for creating characters that are human car wrecks yet somehow win our affection.

The movie isn't a comic book that's been assembled out of the spare parts from other crime movies; it's an original, in-depth look at this world, written and directed with concern—apparently after a lot of research and inside information.

I didn't find “The Jerk” very funny...There's a smarmy undercurrent in this movie that seems to imply that Steve Martin may be playing a jerk, but that we all know what a cool guy he is. Well, if you're going to play a jerk, play one as if you think you are one, or you might wind up looking like a jerk.

This well-crafted picture is a lovely work of true art, enhanced by terrific animated sequences illustrating Jerry Lee’s love of drawing cartoons and Frank’s ability to concoct tales of the brothers as heroic figures.

Despite some admittedly impressive production design and the star-power presence of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, Babylon comes across as a hard-R cartoon that will have you feeling like you need to take a shower once it finally collapses at the finish line with a faux-sentimental, movie-within-the-movie ending that rings hollow.

Skincare is like a quick trip to the local spa. It’s not going to change your life, but it provides instant gratification and helps you escape for an hour and a half.

With the cinematography by Bruce Francis Cole capturing the mid-2000s Florida setting and the score from Este Haim and Christopher Stracey helping to set the right mood, “Suncoast” eschews heavy-handed messaging about whether one is really and truly alive when one cannot survive on their own in favor of a quietly moving, occasionally surprising and ultimately lovely and thought-provoking work.

Lightweight and made out of familiar elements, but they're handled with humor and invention.

The film is punctuated by violence, a great deal of violence, although most of it is exaggerated comic-book style instead of being truly gruesome. Walking that fine line is a speciality of Hill, who once simulated the sound of a fist on a chin by making tape recordings of Ping-Pong paddles slapping leather sofas.

Oculus is one of the more elegant scary movies in recent memory.

Wise, touching, and often wildly funny,

To Be or Not To "Be works as well as a story as any Brooks film since "Young Frankenstein," and darned if there isn't a little sentiment involved as the impresario and his wife, after years of marriage, surprise each other by actually falling in love.

There is a very good movie named "Before Sunset" that begins more or less where this one ends. Which tells you something right there.

The versatile and talented director David Lowery (“A Ghost Story,” “The Old Man & the Gun,” “The Green Knight”) and the requisite army of technical wizards have delivered one of the most visually stunning trips to Neverland ever recorded on film, featuring a cast of gifted young actors and reliable veterans who seem born to the roles.

Not an easy film to watch. Yet there is a certain fascination which develops. [10 Sep 1993, p.40]

Exactly the kind of documentary we all want to have made about ourselves, in which it is revealed that we are funny, smart, beloved, the trusted confidant of famous people.

The story is determined to be colorful and melodramatic, like a soap opera where the characters suffer in ways that look intriguing.

Lohman in particular is effective; I learn to my astonishment that she's 24, but here she plays a 15-year-old with all the tentative love and sudden vulnerability that the role requires, when your dad is a whacko confidence man.

We forgive Elephant its conceits because it’s such a joy to observe the rituals of these incredible, amazing creatures.

Writer/director Carey clearly has some talent, and she and Plaza deserve credit for never pulling their comedic punches. They’re all in. Problem is, it’s mostly a bluff.

Apart from the other good things in Tightrope, I admire it for taking chances; Clint Eastwood can get rich making Dirty Harry movies, but he continues to change and experiment, and that makes him the most interesting of the box-office megastars.