Somewhere inside the utterly unnecessary, bloated running time for John Wick IV, there’s a brilliant, stripped-down, 100-minute classic of a drive-in action film, where the admittedly breathtaking action sequences don’t grind on for so long that they actually become borderline tedious.

Winner of Sundance's grand jury prize for world cinema, Happy, Happy is a very strange film. Yet I was happy to be watching. It is short and intense enough that it always seems on track, even if the train goes nowhere.

A smart film with an edge to it.

Directed with action-movie aplomb by Tom Harper (“The Aeronauts,” “Peaky Blinders”) and featuring great-looking visuals from settings including London; Lisbon, Portugal; South Tyrol, Italy; Morocco, and Reykjavik, Iceland, “Heart of Stone” is clearly intended to jump-start an action franchise for Gadot, and it’s off to a promising start.

What makes the film work is the underlying validity of the story, the way the filmmakers don’t simply go for melodrama and laughs, but pay these characters their due. At the end of the film, I was a little surprised how much I cared for them.

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.

A perfectly sound biopic, well directed and acted, about an admirable woman. It confirmed for me Earhart's courage -- not only in flying, but in insisting on living her life outside the conventions of her time for well-behaved females. The next generation of American women grew up in her slipstream.

The humor comes from the contrast between Elling's prim value system, obviously reflecting his mother's, and Kjell's shambling, disorganized, good-natured assault on life. If Felix and Oscar had been Norwegian, they might have looked something like this.

Like an Astaire and Rogers musical, this is a movie you don't go to for the dialogue.

The real reason to see this movie, though, is because it makes a big yacht race seem so glorious, such grand adventure. Ballard is a former cinematographer with a knack for visualizing the outdoors.

The screenplay by Jim McGlynn, which plays a little like something Eastwood might have made, is subtle and observant; there aren't big plot points, but lots of little ones, and the plot allows us the delight of figuring out the scams. [25 Apr 1997]

Pee-wee's Big Adventure goes up and down the hills of Pee-wee shtick, without much concern for things like cohesiveness and consistency. What makes it wear so well is the balance achieved between Pee-wee's nitwit nervousness and his pathetic optimism. [12 Aug 1985, p.35]

On the basis of this film, Monty Lapica, at 24, has a career ahead of him as a director, an actor or both. He also has a life ahead of him, which the film does a great deal to make clear.

Would be a mindless action picture, except that it has a mind. It doesn't do a lot of deep thinking, but unlike many futuristic combos of sf and f/x, it does make a statement:

As pure movie, The X-Files more or less works. As a story, it needs a sequel, a prequel, and Cliff Notes.

The entrancing fifth feature of the Zellner brothers, Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, is like found art in the beguiling, haunting manner it combines the seemingly ridiculous and desperate with an ineffable and quiet sadness.

Maybe the movie has too much coherence, and the plot is too predictable; that's a weakness of films based on well-made Broadway plays. Still, that's hardly a serious complaint about something as funny as Play It Again, Sam.

With Powell and Arjona sizzling as the most electric romantic pairing of the year so far, “Hit Man” is pure escapist early summer fun.

First reactions while viewing Time Bandits: It's amazingly well-produced. The historic locations are jammed with character and detail. This is the only live-action movie I've seen that literally looks like pages out of Heavy Metal magazine, with kings and swordsmen and wide-eyed little boys and fearsome beasts.

But with a screenplay that developed the story more clearly, this might have been a superior movie, instead of just a good one with some fine performances.

Thanks in large part to the empathetic and layered performances by the terrific cast, we believe in these characters, and we’re hoping all will work out, even though we know that’s probably not going to be the case.

The third of the five planned prequels is a relatively lightweight but still consistently entertaining and magical journey that rights the ship after the utter convoluted disaster titled “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (2018) and feels more connected to the larger HPU (Harry Potter Universe).

Much of the plot feels like we’re retracing the footprints of the original, especially in the early going, and there are a few moments when the CGI looks like one of those slick but cheap AI demonstration videos you see posted on social media, but “Gladiator II” is a welcome slice of R-rated, popcorn movie fun in the middle of the generally super-serious awards season.

A startling documentary.

Cleaner is “Die Hard,” just with different people.

Writer-director-star Katie Holmes perfectly captures those early pandemic days in the occasionally heartbreaking and mostly sweet and lovely romantic drama Alone Together.

Hard-boiled, filled with action, held together by male camaraderie, directed with a lean economy of action. It's one of the most expensive B-pictures ever made, and I think that helps it fit the subject. "A" war movies are about War, but "B" war movies are about soldiers. (Review of Original Release)

It is also probably relevant that Spacey, in preparing the project, knew something we could not guess: He is a superb pop singer.

I was surprised to find myself seduced by the film’s simple, sweet story, and amused by the sly indications that the Cleavers don’t live in the 1950s anymore.

In a sense, the deception he practices on his followers is contemptible, but in another sense, they're all in it together. The film's implication seems to be: It doesn't matter if a religion's teachings are true. What matters is if you think they are.

It's sometimes distracting to tell a story in flashbacks and memories; the story line gets sidetracked. The director, Taylor Hackford, is successful, however, in making the present seem to flow into and out of the past.

The special effects are convincing, the performances are forthright, and the direction, by Stephen Sommers, recalls his energetic, lighthearted The Adventures of Huck Finn.

What impressed me is how effective the movie was, even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion. That's a tribute to the director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, and the actors, who have been chosen with the same kind of typecasting that perhaps occurs in life.

It is piffle, yes, but superior piffle.

The details of the film and of the performances are meticulously realized; there is a reward in seeing artists working so well. But the story has no entry or exit, and is cold, sad and hopeless. Afterward, I feel more admiration than gratitude.

Director Chris Columbus has fun with this goofy premise, but as always I am distracted by the practical aspects of the story. Does it bother the Greek gods that no one any longer knows or cares that they rule the world? What are the genetic implications of human/god interbreeding?

This is Matt Dillon's first film since Drugstore Cowboy, and demonstrates again that he is one of the best actors working in movies. He possesses the secret of not giving too much, of not trying so hard that we're distracted by his performance.

The most ingenious device in the story is the way Chow and Su play-act imaginary scenes between their cheating spouses.

The elegant style of the fighting sequences does more than display camera and kung fu technique — this style also shows fighters living with honor.

This is an urban-based Batman saga, and though the citizens of Gotham City have yet to fully appreciate it, they are lucky to have him patrolling their streets, their sewers and their skyline.

Everything's laid out for us and made clear, we understand the situation we can see where events are leading... and then, in the last 30 minutes, he springs one concealed trap after another, allowing his story to fold in upon itself, to twist and turn, and scare and amuse us with its clockwork irony.

In writer-director Cord Jefferson’s timely and sharp and subversively funny “American Fiction,” Wright is accorded the relatively rare opportunity to take the lead, and he delivers a richly layered performance that reminds us he’s one of the best actors of his generation. It’s a joy to watch.

That the director, Paul Greengrass, treats the material with gravity and uses good actors in well-written supporting roles elevates the movie above its genre, but not quite out of it.

What he asks of the actors (those who are “soloists,” anyway) is not realism but the same kind of playful show-off performances he's getting from the musicians. And to understand the acting, it's helpful to begin with the music.

Silly at times, leaning toward the screwball tradition of everyone racing around the house at the same time in a panic fueled by serial misunderstandings. There is also a thoughtful side.

It is encouraging that well-crafted thrillers are still being made about characters who have dialogue, identities, motives and clean shirts.

A movie like this falls outside ordinary critical language. Is it good or bad? Is there too much melodrama? I don't have any idea. It triggered too many thoughts of my own for me to have much attention left over for footnotes.

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.

I admired the movie. It is made with quiet competence, and will remind some viewers of the Hitchcock who made “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and “Foreign Correspondent.”

The Parallax View will no doubt remind some reviewers of Executive Action, another movie released at about the same time that advanced a conspiracy theory of assassination. It's a better use of similar material, however, because it tries to entertain instead of staying behind to argue.

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.

While these folks aren’t always the most pleasant to be around, we understand them and can relate to them, and at times feel empathy for their predicaments.

Though it would have been lovely to take in the lavish set pieces and the cool CGI creations and the whiz-bang action sequences on the big screen, Artemis Fowl still plays well as a warm and funny and entertaining at-home family viewing experience.

On its own terms, it's funny at times and finally sad and sweet.

Adapted from Damien Lewis’ book “Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of World War II” and featuring stunning visuals from the location shooting in the beautiful city of Antalya, Turkey, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a fantastic blending of some basic facts and a whole lot of fictionalization, including shuffling of the timeline.

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

Sometimes you are either open to a movie, or closed. If you're convinced that An Unfinished Life is damaged goods, how can it begin its work on you?

Serenity is made of dubious but energetic special effects, breathless velocity, much imagination, some sly verbal wit and a little political satire.

Not an extraordinary movie. In its workmanship it aspires not to be remarkable but to be well made, dependable, moving us because of the hurt in the hero's eyes.

Although sometimes convoluted and occasionally implausible, this is a well-filmed and ambitiously creative first effort from writer-producer-director Ravin Gandhi.

This is quite possibly the most self-referential, inside-jokey, look-at-how-clever-we-are, off-the-charts Meta Movie I’ve ever seen. Sometimes that’s pretty great. At other times, it detracts from the core story at hand.

While the pace is occasionally glacial and the screenplay indulges in any number of journalism-movie tropes, and She Said is not in the same league as those aforementioned classics, it is nonetheless a solid and straightforward telling, with Carey Mulligan (as Twohey) and Zoe Kazan (as Kantor) doing authentic and finely calibrated work.

In this movie the war is not quite over. For those who survived it, maybe it will never be.

This is a pure comfort-viewing experience, filled with authentic characters who talk the way real people talk, even when the situations stretch credulity.

Would a Republican enjoy this movie as much as a Democrat? Possibly. Party affiliations mean nothing to the characters, nor does the plot approach them. Then why are Huggins and Brady both Republicans? I'll save you the trouble. It's because Hollywood is run by a lot of rich liberals, right?

If I didn't feel the same degree of involvement with Point of No Return that I did with "La Femme Nikita," it may be because the two movies are so similar in plot, look and feel. I had deja vu all through the movie.

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.

Despite the rather washed-out color photography it's very much worth seeing.

So, if we’re in the mood for an R-rated, sometimes cartoonishly violent, occasionally salacious comedy where you know some jokes will score and others will land with a thud and we’ll just move on to the next scene, here’s your ticket.

A diverting tutorial with this takeaway: “Let’s be puzzled about what seems obvious.”

The film looks and feels good, and Washington's performance is the more uncanny the more we think back over it. The ending is "flawed," as we critics like to say, but it's so magnificently, shamelessly, implausibly flawed that (a) it breaks apart from the movie and has a life of its own, or (b) at least it avoids being predictable.

It is a skillful, well-made film, although, since Ellsberg is the narrator, it doesn't probe him very deeply.

Director Green isn’t trying to reinvent the squeal. Halloween, the 2018 version, is the B-movie sequel “Halloween,” the 1978 version, has always deserved.

Works as Gothic melodrama because it understands the genre so well.

Quick Change is a funny but not an inspired comedy. It has two directors - Howard Franklin and Bill Murray - and I wonder if that has anything to do with its inability to be more than just efficiently entertaining.

The director of the film is Tim Hunter, whose feature career goes back to such 1980s gems as “Tex” and “River’s Edge,” and whose TV credits include everything from episodes of the original “Twin Peaks” to “Mad Men.” That explains why it’s such a good-looking film. Nicolas Cage’s starring presence explains why it’s such a compelling and offbeat little thriller.

This delightful, silly animated romp makes for a really fun time in the theater.

The dynamic between Dern and O’Connell is powerful and palpable, even though their bond develops solely through written correspondence and prison conversations in which they’re talking on the telephone and separated by thick glass.

Antonio Banderas is reason enough to see the movie.

The result is not a formal doc but an extended chat between two professionals who, as Pollack puts it, search for "a sliver of space in the commercial world where you can make a difference."

Watts is such a chameleon of an actress, such a pro at slipping into a vast array of roles without drawing attention to the mechanics of her work, that we almost take for granted how damn good she is — and she delivers beautiful and resonant work as Sam.

It's the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective.

The movie is a thriller, with all the usual trappings of a thriller, but the director, Jonathan Kaplan, is able to place the story in a plausible world. The performances go for unstrained realism, the settings are slice-of-life, and until the final scenes even the sicko cop seems somewhere within the realm of possibility.

This is not a particularly memorable film, but Polanski brings a great deal of skill to its staging, and it looks as if the actors enjoy themselves.

Slocombe may not carve up his kin for Cold Turkey, but he serves a wry repast.

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.

A film that unfolds like a court case in which all of the testimony sounds like the simple truth, and none of it agrees.

The movie is bright, the dialogue has wit and intelligence, and Roberts and Grant are very easy to like. By the end, as much as we're aware of the ancient story machinery groaning away below deck, we're smiling.

I wouldn't go so far as to claim Manderlay is fun to watch. Von Trier, who can made compulsively watchable films ("Breaking the Waves"), has found a style that will alienate most audiences. Maybe it's necessary.

I haven't been exactly a fan of the "Nightmare" series, but I found this movie, with its unsettling questions about the effect of horror on those who create it, strangely intriguing.

To describe the plot is to miss the point. Fallen Angels takes the materials of the plot -- the characters and what they do -- and assembles them like a photo montage. At the end, you have impressions, not conclusions.

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 is one surprise in the movie, a decision having nothing to do with the reactor, that depends entirely on the ability of the characters to act convincingly under enormous pressure; casting stars of roughly equal weight helps it to work.

Working Girls is not a slick and dramatic movie. There are moments that seem forced and amateurish, and the over-all structure of the story is fairly predictable. What the movie does have, though, is the feeling of real life being observed accurately.

Logan's Run is a vast, silly extravaganza that delivers a certain amount of fun, once it stops taking itself seriously.

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.

The chaos in Kika is so brilliantly orchestrated, and so gamely acted, you can't help being drawn into it. There is, truly, never a dull moment. And, in patented Almodovar fashion, the bold, kitschy colors of the costumes and settings, provide their own charm. [27 May 1994, p.43]

This is a sentimental, utterly predictable and thoroughly charming confection from Jack C. Newell (head of TV, film & digital for Second City), featuring a myriad of gifted local actors delivering warm and witty performances against the backdrop of wintry locales that look like the inside of a snow globe.