I'm happy I saw Win Win. It would have been possible to be happier.

The most entertaining performance in the movie, consistently funny, is by Ustinov, who upstages everybody when he is onscreen (he won an Oscar).

The movie worked for me right up to the final scene, and then it caved in.

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

The movie has a real bittersweet charm. The baseball sequences, we've seen before. What's fresh are the personalities of the players, the gradual unfolding of their coach and the way this early chapter of women's liberation fit into the hidebound traditions of professional baseball.

Wah-Wah has a sequence, based on old newsreels, in which the flag is lowered and the sun sets on another bit of the empire. Odd how many critics have felt the whole movie should be about this. I don't see why. The story is about people who lived closed lives, and a film about them would necessarily give independence only a supporting role.

A scrappy indie movie that comes out of nowhere and blows up stuff real good. It also possibly represents the debut of a one-of-a-kind filmmaker, a natural driven by wild energy, like Tarantino.

Get Carter has the sure feel for the underbelly of society, like the good American detective novelists have always had.

Working from a sharp and unflinchingly honest screenplay by LaBeouf, director Alma Har’el delivers a smart and knowing inside slice of show business life that also serves as a harrowing cautionary tale about abuse and about encouraging your children to become professional entertainers when they’d most likely be better off having, you know, an actual childhood.

With echoes of “Back to the Future,” “The Terminator” and even a little of “Heaven Can Wait,” this is a consistently entertaining comedy-actioner with a lot of heart — and the perfect ending. Fine work, Adam(s).

And then there is Vincent D'Onofrio, as a university professor of the occult and mythological, who opens up a line of possibility that eventually saves the ending from being a red herring. Yes, the ending is horrifying, but I don't believe in that stuff. I'm pretty sure I don't.

There’s virtually nothing subtle or surprising about the story, and yet one can’t help but smile throughout watching five Academy Award-winning actors breezing their way through an obvious but lovely and funny adventure.

What we have here is basically two hours of inventive, colorfully imagined entertainment, with the Brinks job laid on top: A movie-movie, so to speak, and fun from beginning to end.

Hitman stands right on the threshold between video games and art. On the wrong side of the threshold, but still, give it credit.

Strangely enough, Ralph Nelson's Charly succeeds as a movie for reasons having little to do with the plot. As the story of a personality in crisis, it works. We care about Charly. But the whole scientific hocus-pocus, which causes his crisis, is irrelevant and weakens the movie by distracting us.

This is a solid albeit slow-building film with few dull moments.

A meandering movie that usually meanders in entertaining directions.

With most action thrillers based on graphic novels, we simply watch the sound and light show. V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue, almost always has something going on that is actually interesting, inviting us to decode the character and plot and apply the message where we will.

Amigo is not as tightly crafted as "Lone Star." It's a messier work whose dialogue is at times a tad too purple, its political allusions a little too obvious, and it has a one-note character that is uncharacteristic of its creator.

Although this is the antithesis of a fly-on-the-wall chronicle, what with Will Ferrell being WILL FERRELL, it’s still an emotionally honest and deeply moving look at two friends bonding after one of them has found the courage to be her true self.

More than in most animated films, the art design and color palette of Wreck-It Ralph permit unlimited sets, costumes and rules, giving the movie tireless originality and different behavior in every different cyber word.

The Phantom of the Open is about as deep and complex as a round of miniature golf, but it’s just as much fun as well.

I could go two ways. I could say that No Mercy is a dumb formula thriller, which we can all sort of figure out from the ads, or I could go the other way and talk about the movie's style and energy. I think I'll go the second way, because whatever this movie is, it's not boring. It doesn't take shortcuts and it delivers on its grimy, breathless action sequences.

An animated film both harrowing and heartwarming, about a story that will never, ever, be remade by Disney.

The best things about Brooklyn's Finest are the one-on-one scenes. These are fine actors.

Roll Bounce, a nostalgic memory of disco roller-dancing in the late 1970s, has warm starring performances from Bow Wow and Chi McBride, who are funny, lovable and sometimes touching.

7 Days to Vegas works as a broad and funny comedy about some truly bent but hilarious characters.

Historical dramas can be fun if you approach them in the right spirit, and I enjoyed Mary, Queen of Scots.

Some viewers may find the film confusing; I found it absorbing.

Taps works as an uncommonly engrossing story, primarily because the performances are so well done. All of the cadet roles are well acted, not only by seasoned actors like Hutton but even by the very young kids who struggle with guns and realities much too large for them.

The movie’s funniest touches are quiet flashes of character, expertly timed and nimbly played by a deft ensemble. It’s a Disaster is consistently funny, but you wince more often than you laugh out loud. It’s like a Christopher Guest improvisational farce with the volume turned down to 5.

The leading men are successful. Alan Bates, in a change of pace, is the loyal shepherd. Terence Stamp is a suitably vile Sgt. Troy, and Peter Finch makes Boldwood strong and honorable in his love for Bathsheba. Miss Christie, however, is too sweet and superficial, and so is the film.

Russo has never been better than he is in this film. It is a quietly powerful, sometimes devastating and heartbreaking performance.

Mantegna gives us just enough detail, enough exterior shots, so that we feel we're on a ship. All the rest is conversation and idleness. The lake boat is a lot like life.

Happy Christmas expertly captures the rhythms of a young couple’s life and how it changes enormously when a baby arrives.

The fulcrum to the success of Goosebumps, it must be noted, is the perfect casting of Jack Black as Stine.

Even with all that success and a number of high-profile romances, Lopez has maintained a tight control over her image (like most stars on that level), and this is probably as close as her fans are going to get to a revealing filmed biography.

Thanks in large part to the beautiful work by Daisy Edgar-Jones and the consistently stunning visuals, Where the Crawdads Sing provides just enough marshland entertainment to carry the day.

This movie is a little treasure, a funny, sexy, appealing story of a Valley Girl's heartbreaking decision: Should she stick with her boring jock boyfriend, or take a chance on a punk from Hollywood?

On the surface, The Burial is about a contract dispute between a white small business owner and a white billionaire. Soon, though, it becomes about much more than that, and the result is a thoroughly entertaining, old-fashioned yet timely courtroom thriller.

It is a joy to look at frame by frame, and it would be worth getting the Blu-ray to do that. I am not quite so thrilled by the story, which at times threatens to make "Gormenghast" seem straightforward.

While the material at times veers close to exploitation, Knoll’s writing and Kunis’ performance ensure this is ultimately a tale of survival and perseverance — of a victim who refuses to let that label define her.

This film is a documentary about the young man's devilment. He seems perfectly happy — ecstatic, even — seated at a table in front of a three-sided mirror and practicing card moves over and over and over again. As a kid, he learned moves from his grandfather. He moved away from home in his early teens.

Told with the simplicity and beauty of a child's fairy tale, but with emotional undertones and a surrealistic style that adults are more likely to appreciate.

In the flourishing genre of faith-based movies, this is one of the better efforts we’ve seen.

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

Not a great film, but you know what? It achieves what it sets out to achieve, and it isn't boring, and it kept me intrigued and involved. As an actor, Eric Gores creates an engaging and convincing character that I liked and cared about -- and believed.

There is something in the nature of director Tran Anh Hung, however, that seems to resist happy endings. In the emotional arc of his art, the high point seems to be bittersweet. It's sweet all the way up, wavers in dread and slides down to doom.

Finding Steve McQueen is a combo platter of crazy-but-true history mixed with creative fiction. The result is an entertaining if sometimes overly self-conscious 1970s period piece, bursting with pop culture references.

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 movie is pieced together out of uneven footage, and the idea of a documentary seems to have occurred in the midst of filming.

It offers some valuable insights into Trump’s behavior, and offers a compelling counterargument to some widely accepted notions about whether or not psychiatrists should even be allowed to comment on the mental health of individuals they have not personally treated.

[Stern] comes across as a sincere presence who is almost too polite and doesn’t challenge some interviewees who make wildly inaccurate and sometimes racist assertions based on ignorant viewpoints. But it could be argued his gentle, respectful style of an effective tool to get his subjects to reveal their true selves.

Like The Flintstones and The Addams Family, Casper is an attempt to bring cartoons to life while incorporating them with real actors and sets. As a technical achievement, it's impressive, and entertaining.

A nice little gem of escapist entertainment that keeps us guessing until the very end, which is corny as all get-out and maybe I even got something in my eye.

Perhaps in the next generation a mutant will appear named Scribbler, who can write a better screenplay for them.

The Secret of Nimh is an artistic success. It looks good, moves well, and delights our eyes. It is not quite such a success on the emotional level, however, because it has so many characters and involves them in so many different problems that there's nobody for the kids in the audience to strongly identify with. I guess you could say that the Disney tradition lives, but that the Disney magic still remains elusive.

Thanks in large part to the vibrant, funny, sweet, endearing work by Reynolds and Comer, Free Guy delivers.

There’s no doubting Arquette’s sincere desire to learn the sport and craft of wrestling, to get into shape, to resuscitate his career, to make his family proud. We’re still rooting for the guy.

The plot to this point could be the stuff of soap opera, but there's always something askew in an Alan Rudolph film, unexpected notes and touches that maintain a certain ironic distance while permitting painful flashes of human nature to burst through.

[Benton's] memories provide the material for a wonderful movie, and he has made it, but unfortunately he hasn't stopped at that. He has gone on to include too much. He tells a central story of great power, and then keeps leaving it to catch us up with minor characters we never care about.

What makes Critters more than a ripoff are its humor and its sense of style. This is a movie made by people who must have had fun making it.

A perfectly cast film that depicts a moody world of jazz musicians, drugs and self-destruction.

Mighty Joe Young is not meek and harmless; it's a full-blooded action picture, all right, but with a certain warmth and humor instead of a scorched-earth approach. You feel good at the end, instead of merely relieved.

This buddy/road film builds tension with its missing person quest in a border-crossing underworld.

Alda gives the film's strongest performance. Kinnear, often a player of light comedy, does a convincing job of making this quiet, resolute man into a giant slayer.

The director's cut adds footage that enriches and extends the material but doesn't alter its tone. It adds footnotes that count down to a deadline, but without explaining the nature of the deadline or the usefulness of the countdown.

As you might expect, this is not exactly a hard-hitting expose (I’m not sure what that would even be), but it’s a most welcome change of gear from all the documentaries out there tackling deadly serious subjects. Sometimes we just need to cleanse the palate.

Evolution aside, there are some wonderful images in Aliens of the Deep, even if the crew members say how much they love their jobs about six times too often.

From the start, Koepp sets out to get under the viewer's skin, which he does with relentless ease. [30 Aug 1996, p.32]

Trippy and entertaining mind-bender.

Pitt is at the top of his game, playing a man who has forgotten whatever he used to be and has wholly embraced his role in this war.

[An] uneven but timely and quite funny feminist satire.

The Interview sticks to the anything-for-a-laugh plan for nearly the entire journey, with far too many jokes about things going in and coming out of rear ends.

The De-Dee character subverts those expectations; she shoots the legs out from under the movie with perfectly timed zingers.

The blood-soaked potboiler First Kill is Generous Pour through and through, from Bruce Willis playing a cop for the umpteenth time in his career to the old switcheroo we can see coming a mile away to the pounding and overwrought score to some genuinely effective detours and subplots.

What I like about the movie is its combination of suspense and intelligence. If it does not quite explain exactly how decryption works (how could it?), it at least gives us a good idea of how decrypters work, and we understand how crucial Bletchley was -- so crucial its existence was kept a secret for 30 years.

The Island runs 136 minutes, but that's not long for a double feature. The first half of Michael Bay's new film is a spare, creepy science fiction parable, and then it shifts into a high-tech action picture. Both halves work.

We know we’ll be fed something we’ve consumed many times before, and there’s not a single development that comes as even a mild surprise, and it makes for a comforting, enjoyable and satisfying experience.

The movie, written and directed by Dylan Kidd, depends on its dialogue, and like a film by David Mamet or Neil LaBute has characters who use speech like an instrument. The screenplay would be entertaining just to read, as so very few are.

While this worshipful documentary breaks no new ground and often seems like little more than a glorified IMDB bio accompanied by video, it serves as a lovely and valuable reminder of Hepburn’s unique star power and grace in front of the camera — and her kindness and tireless work for the less fortunate long after she had kissed the cinema a fond farewell.

Watching it, you feel like an eyewitness to injustice.

Such a brilliant, spine-tingling buildup — and such a thudding disappointment of an ending. Watching the creatively creepy and starkly haunting Come True is like going to see a great new band in concert and seeing them kill it for the first 90 minutes, only to end the night dressed in wacky costumes and playing bagpipes.

A modest, cheerful little movie like Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is so refreshing. Here is a movie that wants nothing more than to allow some high-spirited kids to sing and dance their way through a silly plot just long enough to make us grin.

The movie gets a little confused toward the end, I think, as its writer and director, Lea Pool, tries to settle things that could have been left unresolved.

Sparkle isn't blindingly original but it delivers solid entertainment, and despite the clichés I was never for a moment bored.

As you can image, there are scenes that elicit shock and outrage, even after all these decades. However, it does make for a Familiar Viewing experience, as virtually every sequence in this impressively mounted and well-photographed docudrama is straight out of the standard-issue biopic playbook.

Kevin Kline's performance shows a deep understanding of the character, who is, after all, better than most teachers, and most men. We care for him, not because he is perfect, but because he regrets so sincerely that he is not.

A lovingly compiled tribute to a groundbreaking comedian and actor who was adored by his colleagues and loved by the fans — but wrestled with alcoholism for decades, eventually succumbing to symptoms brought on by the disease.

Unlike any other film I have seen about the Holocaust.

I know Letters to Juliet is a soppy melodrama, and I don’t mind in the least. I know the ending is preordained from the setup. I know the characters are broad and comforting stereotypes. In this case, I simply don’t care. Sometimes we have personal reasons for responding to a film.

Movies like this renew my faith that the future of the cinema lies not in the compromises of digital projection, but by leaping over the limitations of digital into the next generation of film technology.

This is an old-fashioned and borderline corny biopic that looks like it could have been made 40 years ago — but it’s also a true-life story about a man who denounced his racist lineage and dedicated himself to the cause, a man who is still with us today, and it’s a story well worth telling.

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.

The Ice Road is what we used to call a B-movie, but there’s no shame in a B-movie that carries out its mission with such competence and star power.

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.

42 is competent, occasionally rousing and historically respectful — but it rarely rises above standard, old-fashioned biography fare. It’s a mostly unexceptional film about an exceptional man.

It is straightforward, heartfelt and genuine.