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

The film lacks the delirium, ambition and transcendence of Woo's "The Killer" and "Bullet in the Head," but nothing in the way of over-the-top action or audacity. [27 Sep 1992, p.8]

It’s sweet and lovely work, but at times lacking in the type of subtlety required for film acting, even in a musical role with as much comedy as drama. Still, Erivo and Grande have chemistry in abundance and make for a memorable duo.

An imperfect movie, but not a boring one and not lacking in intelligence.

While there are times when Cronenberg seems to be indulging in his trademark gross-out visuals for the sake of shock, Crimes of the Future is darkly funny and consistently thoughtful — and, for all its moments of extreme horror, offers legitimate commentary on issues such as body dysmorphia and the extreme measures taken by some real-world individuals in order to carve, sculpt and tattoo their bodies as evolving canvasses of expression.

Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver), who is of course British, aims to rectify that with The Sparks Brothers, a sprawling and comprehensive and cheeky film that documents the rise and fall and rise again and fall again and the leveling out and all the other peaks and valleys the group has experienced over the last 50 years.

The Missing Picture is a wrenching yet tender memoir by Rithy Panh about life and death in the time of Pol Pot.

This is the kind of movie where you can anticipate the next big shock and it usually arrives right on cue, and yet it still gets you right in the gut.

Depp accepts the character and all of its baggage, and works without a net.

The film's headlong momentum streamrolls over all our questions, and we're carried along by the expertly choreographed action. Even after everything seems over, it isn't, and the last minutes are particularly satisfying.

This isn't one of Burton's best, but it has zealous energy. It might have been too macabre for kids in past, but kids these days, they've seen it all, and the charm of a boy and his dog retains its appeal.

Philip is one of the most unlikable but also one of the most fascinating characters of the year.

By the time it's over, Penelope Cruz has slipped away with it, and transformed Kingsley's character in the process. It's nicely done.

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.

With a running time of just 92 minutes, “Last Breath” will keep you in its grip throughout. Just remember to inhale, and exhale. Slow, long, steady breaths.

It is whimsical, bittersweet, wise in a minor key.

It’s nice to see Hart in a role where the comedy is relatively low-key and dialogue-driven (though there are a few hilarious physical bits of humor).

As a movie, Today's Special is only just OK. What saves it, as it saves so very many things, is the garam masala.

It’s impossible not to think of military training camp staples such as “Full Metal Jacket” and “An Officer and a Gentlemen” when experiencing writer-director Elegance Bratton’s semi-autobiographical The Inspection. While Bratton’s film isn’t in the same league as those classics, it’s a strong and memorable if predictable boot-camp journey that features many of the same elements of the first half of “Jacket” and the entirety of “Gentleman” — most notably in that all three films feature an alpha male drill instructor who will either defeat his recruits and send them home, or turn them into lean mean fighting machines.

A lightweight charmer with a winning performance by Robin Tunney.

A remarkable documentary that's also one of the most beautiful nature films I've seen.

About two men who both wanted to be dominant, who both had all the answers, who were inseparably bound together in love and hate, and who created extraordinary work--while all the time each resented the other's contribution.

For such a sweet-natured, candy-colored, family-friendly animated adventure, Ralph Breaks the Internet serves up quite the mega-helping of meta material.

The Piano Lesson is occasionally overwrought, yet proves to be a worthy adaptation of a classic play.

A skillful action movie about a plot that exists only to support a skillful action movie. The entire story is a set-up for the martial arts and chases. Because they are done well, because the movie is well-crafted and acted, we give it a pass. Too bad it's not about something.

Bob Byington directs with an exact sense of what he wants; consider the perfect timing of his use of Harmony's mom (Margie Beegle). How she says "don't ask me" and "leave me out of it" is unreasonably funny.

Instead of venturing outside Outpost Restrepo, we hear what the soldiers feel about their 15-month deployment.

The story is a mess, but for long periods of time that hardly matters. It's beside the point, as we enter one of the most striking spaces I've ever seen in a film.

Paltrow is truly touching. And Black, in his first big-time starring role, struts through with the blissful confidence of a man who knows he was born for stardom.

It is pitch-perfect, telling the story through the enthusiastic and single-minded vision of its hero Ralphie, and finding in young Peter Billingsley a sly combination of innocence and calculation.

For most of the film, I sat in quiet amazement: I was witnessing a complex, well-crafted, clearly told story, in a screenplay that moved well and had dialogue that sounded colorful without resembling a Quentin Tarantino clone. [8 Oct 1997, p.47]

Close never steps wrong, never breaks reality. My heart went out to Albert Nobbs, the depth of whose fears are unimaginable. But it is Janet McTeer who brings the film such happiness and life as it has, because the tragedy of Albert Nobbs is that there can be no happiness in her life. The conditions she has chosen make it impossible.

[Kirby Dick's] new documentary enrages, yet makes its case in an even-tempered manner.

The movie has a wide appeal, with a gap in the middle. I think it will appeal to children young enough to be untutored in boredom, and to anyone old enough to be drawn in, or to appreciate the artistry.

The movie is long and slow. Either you will fall into its rhythm, or you will grow restless.

Although the movie is a wall-to-wall exercise in bad taste, it somehow retains a certain innocence; it challenges and sometimes shocks, but for me at least it didn't offend, because its motives were so obviously good-hearted.

[An] unabashedly derivative but nonetheless entertaining, pitch-black Norwegian crime comedy.

Fiennes and Richardson make this film work with the quiet strangeness of their performances; if they insist on their eccentricities, it's because they've paid them off and own them outright.

With all we know about this chillingly amoral, blackhearted man, Where’s My Roy Cohn? still serves as a thorough and insightful history lesson that makes a convincing case that among other sins, Cohn was one of the early architects of bitterly divisive, take-no-prisoners, make-no-excuses, dirty-tricks politics.

If the story is immensely satisfying in a traditional way, the style has its own delights.

It's a funny homage, a nod to the way that some movies are universal in their appeal.

The cast is uniformly capable and dead serious, and if you're buying what Luc Besson is selling, he's not short-changing you.

Intelligent and subtle.

It is light and pleasant and funny, the characterization is strong, and the voices of Phil Harris (O'Malley the Alley Cat) and Eva Gabor (Duchess, the mother cat) are charming in their absolute rightness.

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.

If holes in plots bother you, Marathon Man will be maddening. But as well-crafted escapist entertainment, as a diabolical thriller, the movie works with relentless skill.

The director Brad Anderson, working from a screenplay by Scott Kosar, wants to convey a state of mind, and he and Bale do that with disturbing effectiveness.

The Nice Guys has a little extra padding that isn’t necessary.... Ah, but Crowe and Gosling save the day.

For all its sharp barbs at Catholic school hypocrisy and its frank depictions of masturbation and teenage hook-ups, Yes, God, Yes somehow retains a breezy and upbeat and even sweet disposition, thanks to the light touch of writer-director Karen Maine and an absolutely winning performance by “Stranger Things” star Natalia Dyer.

The cast is large, well chosen and diverting. The ceremony is delightful.

The movie is wise, deep, and painful, and it is filled with words. Used to be, a "sex film" contained lots of nudity and steamy scenes. That kind of stuff would just slow this one down.

This is a moving and challenging movie, fascinated by the murky depths that separate what people want from what they say they want and what they think they should want.

I think it works like a nasty little machine to keep us involved and disturbed; my attention never strayed, and one of the elements I liked was the way Paltrow's character isn't sentimentalized.

Directed with creative style by Anders Walter (with a screenplay by Joe Kelly, adapting his own comic book), I Kill Giants is a good-looking adventure fable that makes great use of the Northeastern coastal locations.

It is a Kafkaesque story, in which ominous things follow one another with a certain internal logic but make no sense at all.

Declaration of War is a domestic comedy as much as it is a medical drama. This movie has been made by the couple it is about, Valerie Donzelli and Jeremie Elkaim. She directed, they wrote it together, and in real life, their relationship also fell apart. They approach their fraught story with a surprising freshness.

His film is more subtle and wide-reaching, the story of a man for whom everything is equally unreal, who distrusts his own substance so deeply that he must be somebody else to be anybody at all.

Southern Comfort is a film of drum-tight professionalism. It is also, unfortunately, so committed to its allegorical vision that it never really comes alive as a story about people.

A very angry film.

The Paperboy is great trash, and as Pauline Kael told us, the movies are so seldom great art that if we can't appreciate great trash, we might as well not go at all.

I enjoyed the movie for the sheer physical exuberance of its adventure. It is magnificently mounted and photographed.

Marcia Gay Harden finds a fine balance between madness and the temptations of overacting. Yes, she runs wild sometimes, but always as a human being, not as a caricature.

A polished, high-ozone sequel, not as good as the original but building once again on a quirky performance by Robert Downey Jr.

A fascinating study of behavior that violates the rules.

Will kids like the movie? The kids around me in the theater seemed to, although more for the Muppets than for the cautionary tale of Scrooge.

This isn't a great movie, but it sure is a nice one.

Isn't a slick documentary; some of it feels like Blaustein's home movie about being a wrestling fan. But it has a hypnotic quality.

I was fascinated by the face of Emmanuelle Devos, and her face is specifically why I recommend the movie.

It lands just this side of camp, with a perfectly cast Kevin Kline hamming it up as the aging bounder Flynn, and Susan Sarandon really hamming it up.

In its own cheesy and entertaining way, Hangman kept me guessing throughout

The movie is told almost entirely from Nolte's point of view, and he makes an immensely likable character right from the top.

Flash Gordon is played for laughs, and wisely so. It is no more sophisticated than the comic strip it's based on, and that takes the curse off of material that was old before it was born. Is all of this ridiculous? Of course. Is it fun? Yeah, sort of, it is.

The film is a soapy melodrama set from about 1936 to 1946 and done with style.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is gorgeous to behold and up to its jugular vein in quirky/spooky atmosphere.

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

Casting can be the reason that one movie works and another doesn't. It is the first reason for the success of The Girl From Monaco, the kind of romantic comedy with a twist that used to star Jack Lemmon.

A poet imprisoned during the Islamic Revolution is released 27 years later. Camera focus, reflections and water droplets are sublimely designed to articulate what his liberty will let him see. [04 Oct 2012, p.4]

The film is extremely rich in visual inventiveness and depth of feeling — with numerous sequences that could almost pass muster as individual shorts.

The movie is worth seeing, for the good stuff. I'm recommending it because of the performances and the details in the air-traffic control center.

It has been criticized for switching tone in midstream, but maybe it's only heading for deeper, swifter waters.

Bujalski’s script is smarter and much weirder (in a good way) than the standard romantic comedy. His characters are funny without ever trying to be funny.

Instead of staying on that safe, predictable level, it begins to dig into the awkwardness and hypocrisy of our commonly shared, attitudes about race.

The movie wants to be a laffaminit extravaganza like the Zucker & Abrahams productions, but with slyer humor, more inside jokes, throwaway references and just plain goofiness, as when the characters occasionally break into their own language.

The Serpent and the Rainbow is uncanny in the way it takes the most lurid images and makes them plausible.

Monsters, Inc. is cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups.

In its own way and up to a certain point, 1492 is a satisfactory film. Depardieu lends it gravity, the supporting performances are convincing, the locations are realistic, and we are inspired to reflect that it did indeed take a certain nerve to sail off into nowhere just because an orange was round.

At what point did I realize The Ambassador was an actual documentary, and not a fraud? Perhaps when I realized that everyone in the film was just as dishonest, venal and corrupt as they seemed - including the director.

As for Madchen Amick, a stunning beauty with an edgy intelligence, Kazan has given her a role that grows more interesting as it deepens.

Would it be heresy on my part to suggest that Fiddler isn't much as a musical, and that director Norman Jewison has made as good a film as can be made from a story that is quite simply boring?

This is a deceptive film. It starts in one direction and discovers a better one. Cheshire is a dry, almost dispassionate narrator, and that is good; preaching about his discoveries would sound wrong.

An eccentric period melodrama with horror-flick overtones. Occasionally incoherent but never dull, the movie brims with weird imagery.

The film is a visual pleasure, using elegant techniques that don't call flashy attention to themselves. The camera is intended to be as omniscient as the narrator, and can occupy the film's space as it pleases and move as it desires. Here is a young man's film made with a lifetime of experience.

Yes. The movie works, and so we accept everything.

Clocking in a relatively breezy 125 minutes and featuring a dazzling array of VFX and CGI, “Quantumania” manages to tell an intimate family story against an enormously expansive yet subatomic background.

Bitter Moon is wretched excess. But Polanski directs it without compromise or apology, and it's a funny thing how critics may condescend to it, but while they're watching it you could hear a pin drop.

The film only wants to amuse. It's a reminder that Dogma films need not involve pathetic characters tormented by the misuse of their genitalia, but can simply want to have a little fun.

Writer-director Paul Solet serves up some intricately choreographed and creative action sequences and some gruesomely realistic violence.... Mostly, though, Bullet Head is about the characters and the crackling dialogue, and the first-rate actors giving just the right spin to their lines.

Thanks to the subtle brilliance of Reilly and Coogan, even someone who’s never heard of Laurel and Hardy would likely see how magical these two were together.