American Violet, it's true, is not blazingly original cinema. Tim Disney's direction and the screenplay by Bill Haney are meat and potatoes, making this story clear, direct and righteous.

What's interesting is that every single person in this film is seen as themselves, is allowed to speak and seems to have a good heart. I've rarely seen a documentary quite like it. It has a point to make but no ax to grind.

Here is a film that begins with merciless comic savagery and descends into merely merciless savagery. But wow, what an opening.

You may very well hate it, but at least you've been informed. Perhaps you could enjoy the material about other religions, and tune out when yours is being discussed. That's only human nature.

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

The movie generates little suspense and no relief. And yet it is worth seeing as a chamber piece, an exercise in which two great actors expand their range and work together in great sympathy. Both Nicholson and Streep have moments as good as anything they have done.

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’s a well-made film with strong performances, and it by no means shies away from some of the more shocking and tragic episodes from Jeannette’s upbringing. But when “The Glass Castle” reaches for late-movie moments of closure and self-revelations and forgiveness...it rings sour and false.

Even as I was rolling my eyes, I was digging just about every stylized visual flourish, every big performance, every overly dramatic confrontation featuring first-rate actors letting loose with unabashed gusto and veracity, even when they were bellowing lines stating the obvious.

A perfectly competent genre film in a genre that has exhausted its interest for me, the Zombie Film.

Iron Will is an Identikit plot, put together out of standard pieces. Even the scenery looks generic; there's none of the majesty of Disney's genuinely inspired dog movie, "White Fang."

Adam wraps up their story in too tidy a package, insisting on finding the upbeat in the murky, and missing the chance to be more thoughtful about this challenging situation.

It's a spellbinder with a lot of Hitchcock touches and an Ennio Morricone score to match. But does it play fair with us?

If a movie like this had a neat ending, the ending would be a lie. We do not want answers, but questions and observations.

The movie adds up to a few good ideas and a lot of bad ones, wandering around in search of an organizing principle.

Mike Hodges' gritty new film noir I'll Sleep When I'm Dead begins in enigma and snakes its way into stark clarity.

This is a movie with a deeply split personality, and despite some flashes of creativity from a talented director and cast, neither the straightforward biography nor the flights of creative fancy are particularly resonant.

There’s a memorable movie to be made about the amazing, inspiration and controversial life of Jesse Owens. This is not a bad film and it’s a decent history lesson for those that don’t know the story of Owens and the ’36 Games, but it’s a long, long way from greatness.

This is Webber's flawed but treasured document of his son, an attempt to share a portrait of their developing relationship, and — later on — a chance for Isaac to see his dad's parental reflections captured on-screen.

There’s simply too much going on here — too many subplots, too many symbols, too many expendable characters — and certain interesting threads aren’t able to develop fully.

Although Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been praised as a milestone in American literature, this film version brings into question how much of a story it really offers.

A movie about this subject matter is a tough sell, but Swank and Rossum are brilliant, and in its own unique way, You’re Not You is one of the best buddy movies of the year.

It's impressive, how thoughtfully Penn handles this material.

Nightbitch positions itself as an edgy, body-horror film with shock-value imagery, and there’s no denying the validity of its premise that even in 2024, the sacrifices of motherhood are taken for granted and underexamined.

It's a compelling visceral film -- sound, images and characters combined into a decidedly odd visual experience that evokes the feel of a graphic novel. It seems charged from within by its power as a fable; we sense it’s not interested in a plot so much as with the dilemma of functioning in a world losing hope.

The ghouls are a little too ridiculous to quite fulfill their function in the movie. They make all the wrong decisions, are incompetent and ill-coordinated.

Saints and Soldiers isn't a great film, but what it does, it does well.

Does it by the numbers, so efficiently this feels more like a Hollywood wannabe than a French film. Where's the quirkiness, the nuance, the deeper levels?

I’m not sure there’s ever been a film with more callbacks, more surprise cameos, more inside-showbiz references — even a couple of jokes about the personal lives of certain participants. It’s all great fun, and it’s just enough to overcome the uninspired direction, mid-level special effects and hit-and-miss humor.

Mermaids is not exactly good, but it is not boring. Winona Ryder, in another of her alienated outsider roles, generates real charisma. And what the movie is saying about Cher is as elusive as it is intriguing.

Although Catherine Hardwicke, the director of Lords of Dogtown, has a good sense for the period and does what she can with her actors, we've seen the originals, and these aren't the originals.

It's nimble, bright and funny. It doesn't dumb down. It doesn't patronize. It knows something about human nature.

This is just sheer, escapist entertainment from start to finish.

Some of the bits work and others don't, but no one seems to be keeping score, and that's part of the movie's charm.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky concerns a love affair between two irresistible forces who have never met an immovable object before.

The nice thing about Paper Towns is it’s as much about the friendship between Quentin, Radar and Ben as it is about Quentin’s love for Margo, and his quest to find her after she disappears yet again.

Spinster isn’t a particularly visually arresting film, nor is it bursting with memorable and colorful supporting players. It’s simply an effective vehicle for Chelsea Peretti to expand upon her smart/cynical persona to include some genuine heart and likability as well.

Sharp-edged, perfectly timed, funny and thoughtful.

A story like Five Senses sounds like a gimmick, but Podeswa has a light touch when dealing with the senses and a sure one when telling his stories.

It crash-lands with an ending of soppy moralizing, but until the end, it's smart and merciless in the tradition of the original story.

I understood the general outlines of the story, I liked the bold strokes he uses to create the characters, and I was amused by the camera work, which includes a lot of shots that are about themselves.

Still, this is an involving and inspirational tale, highlighted by a Christopher Walken performance that is remarkably free of any showy tics or mannerisms and is a reminder Walken is a great actor first, a lovable caricature second.

The problem this time around is the plot is particularly idiotic, the supposedly snappy quips are lame and come at some weirdly inappropriate moments — and it’s all delivered in an extremely bloated package.

The downward arc of the first two acts of the movie is made harrowing and yet perversely amusing by the performance of Paul Kaye.

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.

There’s a good measure of comedic relief doled out between the action sequences, e.g., Neeson coming up with an ingenious plan to placate the passengers when they’re on the verge of a rebellion. This is a movie that knows it’s not to be taken too seriously.

I found myself debating the film's moral questions on the way out of the theater.

Support Your Local Sheriff is a textbook example of the evil influence TV has on the movies. It's essentially a lousy TV situation comedy dragged out to feature length for no good reason.

Clint Eastwood's film is a determined attempt to be faithful to the book's spirit, but something ineffable is lost just by turning on the camera: Nothing we see can be as amazing as what we've imagined.

Oh, God! is lighthearted, satirical, and humorous and (that rarest of qualities) in good taste.

Tom Cruise is perfectly satisfactory, if not electrifying, in the leading role.

This is a very good haunted house film. It milks our frustration deliciously.

In many ways this feels like an update on the exploitation movies of the 1970s and '80s that played on drive-in theater screens before eventually making their way to VHS and late-night TV cult viewings. It’s Sharp Cheddar Cheese on Wry (sorry) and it’s a cool and breezy 84 minutes of fun.

All the time Phil and Claire seem like the kind of people who don't belong in a screwball comedy. That's why it's funny. They're bewildered.

This is a well-intentioned and sometimes quite sharp high school movie that falls just short of the mark due to a few way-off-the-mark scenes and too much heavy-handed preaching.

Pfeiffer is delivering one of the best performances of her career as the complex and formidable and deeply sad Frances, but she’s like a world-class basketball player stuck on the court with a bunch of weekend amateurs. There’s no one to give her a decent game.

Foster, I believe, sees right through this material and out the other side, and doesn't believe in a bit of it.

For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds.

A splendid movie while its hero is preparing for his flight and actually experiencing it, but it's not nearly as interesting once he descends to earth.

The new version is just as satisfying, if not as dry and cynical, as the original.

The Arrival fulfills one of the classic functions of science fiction, which is to take a current trend and extend it to a possible (and preferably alarming) future. The Arrival gives its aliens credit for reasoning that we might almost be tempted to agree with. We're just finishing what you started, one of the aliens tells Zane, referring to the smokestacks, auto exhausts, rain forests and so on. What would have taken you 100 years will only take us 10. He, or it, has a point.

This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. plays a like a lower key, vintage edition of a “Mission: Impossible” movie. It’s a good movie with a great look.

Where did Hollywood get the conviction that audiences demand an ending that lets them off the hook? Foster doesn't let herself off the hook in The Brave One, and we should be as brave as she is.

There is a line and this movie crosses it. I don't know where the line is, but it's way north of Wolf Creek. There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty?

Feels uncomfortably stage-managed, and raises fundamental questions that it simply ignores.

Stone's most impressive achievement in this film is to allow all the financial wheeling and dealing to seem complicated and convincing, and yet always have it make sense.

Real Steel is a real movie. It has characters, it matters who they are, it makes sense of its action, it has a compelling plot. This is the sort of movie, I suspect, young viewers went to the "Transformers" movies looking for.

It’s deliberately over the top, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some observers say Pitt made huge miscalculations in his acting choices with the result being the worst performance of his career — but I found it to be a brazenly effective piece of work, well-suited to the material.

Now here's this rich and textured film.

Lovingly detailed with animated and archival imagery, For No Good Reason shares the fine-grain layered style of its subject.

I confess I felt involved in Unknown until it pulled one too many rabbits out of its hat. At some point, a thriller has to play fair.

We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success.

This is a featherweight G-rated comedy of no consequence, except undoubtedly to kids about Ramona's age.

There will be holiday pictures that are more high-tech than this one, more sensational, with bigger stars and higher budgets and indeed greater artistry. But there may not be many with such good cheer.

Spike Lee misjudged his material and audience. He doesn't find a successful way to express his feelings, angers and satirical points.

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.

This is a film for intelligent people who are naturally curious about what happens when the shutters close.

As Hollywood experiments go, the new black comedy by Robert Zemeckis has more than its share of witty lines, sight gags and special effects. But even while you're appreciating its better moments, the cast is numbing them with their Arctic charm. [31 July 1992, p.43]

Low-key, understated style. The suspense beats away underneath.

It evokes the atmosphere of a Sergio Leone Western, sneaking up under the movie's human comedy and adding a smile.

What makes The Anniversary Party intriguing is how close it cuts to the bone of reality--how we're teased to draw parallels between some of the characters and the actors who play them.

The movie is essentially a morality play, and it's not a surprise to learn that Larry Cohen, the writer, came up with the idea 20 years ago--when there were still phone booths and morality plays.

The Coens' Ladykillers, on the other hand, is always wildly signaling for us to notice it. Not content to be funny, it wants to be FUNNY! Have you ever noticed that the more a comedian wears funny hats, the less funny he is?

The movie sidesteps the existence of the Greek gods, turns its heroes into action movie cliches and demonstrates that we're getting tired of computer-generated armies.

It isn't about thrills and explosions, but about tenacity, and most of it takes place within our own imaginations.

Everyone slips comfortably into their roles and does what they can with the goofy dialogue and the death-defying, logic-defeating stunt sequences.

Maleficent is an admittedly great-looking, sometimes creepy, often plodding and utterly unconvincing re-imagining of a famous romantic fairy tale as a female empowerment metaphor.

The plot in Throw Mama from the Train is top-heavy, but the movie doesn't make as much as it could from its weird characters.

Pfeiffer looks, acts and sounds wonderful throughout all of this, and George Clooney is perfectly serviceable as a romantic lead, sort of a Mel Gibson lite. I liked them. I wanted them to get together. I wanted them to live happily ever after. The sooner the better.

The plot of Touch sounds like a comedy. But the experience of seeing the film is subduing; the movie plays in a muted key.

Bottle Shock is more than the story. It is also about people who love their work, care about it with passion and talk about it with knowledge.

It has a charm based on its innocence, its conviction, its pre-Beatles soundtrack and the big 1950s cars the kids drive around in.

Although it is not a great movie, it contains some moments when the audience is likely to think, yes, being 16 was exactly like that.

This is Grillo’s film to carry, and he pulls it off with a combination of brute force and light charm.

There seem to be two movies going on here at the same time, and December Boys would have been better off going all the way with one of them.

Even when writer-director Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s acclaimed novel takes some insanely big dramatic swings and doesn’t always connect, Bale is immersed in his performance — equally powerful when he’s quietly revealing a painful moment from his past or exploding with the earth-shattering rage.

The film is built around two relationships, both touching, both emotionally true.