A Hidden Life is one of the most metaphysical films ever set against the backdrop of World War II.

The great Bryan Cranston sinks his teeth into the title role and chews the scenery with such gusto I half-expected him to spit out a chunk of period-piece furniture before we were through. There’s a lot of ham and cheese in the performance, but it’s great fun to watch.

The real surprise of the movie is Eddie Murphy, who finds his character and stays with him.

There are times when Men comes across as being trippy and bizarre for the sake of easy scares, but thanks to Garland’s keen sense of pacing, the typically outstanding work from Jessie Buckley as our heroine and a staggeringly good, multi-character performance by Rory Kinnear, this is unlike any other film this year.

If a heartfelt summer comedy feels like something that the doctor ordered, then a healthy dose of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On will fill the bill.

Lighthearted fun.

A cheerfully energetically and very vulgar comedy.

There’s enough genuinely affecting footage of its troop of primate performers doing what comes naturally to make it memorable and moving.

We’ve known for a long time Elizabeth Banks is equally deft at handling comedy and drama, and in one of the most serious and important roles of her career, Banks comes through in powerfully effective fashion. Call Jane is a drama that carries the ring of historical truth.

The formula is obvious: Die Hard Goes to Sea. I walked into the screening in a cynical frame of mind, but then a funny thing happened. The movie started working for me.

Mockingjay — Part 2 is a grim, dark, trippy, violent and sometimes just plain bizarre journey, which makes for a fitting if uneven conclusion to a film series that’s always been weird.

This is an unapologetically over-the-top, blood-soaked, orgy of stylized violence filled with familiar action-movie characters going through familiar action-movie paces, with a whole lot of CGI, a bounty of epic set-pieces and a borderline exhausting number of kills.

Writer-director Fennell, who won an Oscar for her screenplay of her film “Promising Young Woman” (2020), once again proves to be a cinematic provocateur capable of creating memorable shock-value moments, though at times the candy-colored, exquisitely staged yet often brutally ugly histrionics are more about the fireworks than substance.

Unusual framing device aside, Halston is on balance a solid and affectionate tribute to an American original.

Payami has a visual style that is sometimes astonishing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes both.

Writer-director John Ridley and star Regina King get right to it in the Netflix original film “Shirley,” a no-frills, straightforward and inspirational biopic of the iconic and pioneering Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and the first Black candidate for a major party nomination for president.

In its quiet and murderous way, it is like the delayed final act of an old movie about drugs, guns and revenge.

This is a fresh and cheerful movie with a goofy sense of humor and a good ear for how teenagers talk.

I would like to see another movie in three or four years, about what has happened to these angry, gifted friends.

Catch That Kid respects all of the requirements of the genre, and the heist itself is worthy of "Ocean's Eleven" (either one; take your pick).

Please leave all logic and reality at the door as you settle in for a violent slice of Netflix original movie entertainment featuring an outstanding cast of first-rate actors clearly having a great time shooting up the joint.

Ferrari never quite achieves the greatness of previous Mann movies such as “Thief” and “Heat,” but it’s a solid and extremely well-filmed slice of one legendary life.

This is a movie that introduces you to a bold and original concept and asks you to just go with it, and if you’re willing to take the leap of faith (in more ways than one), you’ll find this to be a unique and special fable.

The Fury is a stylish entertainment, fast-paced, and acted with great energy.

The director, Peter Cattaneo, takes material that could would be at home in a sex comedy, and gives it gravity because of the desperation of the characters; we glimpse the home life of these men, who have literally been put on the shelf, and we see the wound to their pride.

While no reasonable person over the age of 12 would presumably be able to take it seriously, it nevertheless has a lighthearted joy, a cheerfulness, an insouciance, that recalls the days when movies were content to be fun.

The plot is completely confused, and kids, who are much better at these things than adults, will enjoy its twists and turns. Ustinov is fine as the rum swilling, yo-ho-hoing Blackbeard, and there are several good scenes as he invisibly meddles with the big track meet. Jones and Miss Pleshette are amusing without being insufferably sweet.

This is terrific family entertainment.

This is a good film, but it would not cheer people up much at a high school reunion.

It's a film filled with wicked satire and sex both joyful and pitiful.

The important thing about "The Importance" is that all depends on the style of the actors, and Oliver Parker's film is well cast.

The final few scenes of The Kill Room stretch the satiric premise to the breaking point, but by then we’re content to go along with the ride and enjoy the dark humor and the fine work of the entire cast, led by Jackson and Thurman in twin knockout performances.

The Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris is famous for its "erotic chic" revues, but I found nothing either erotic or chic in this reduction of body parts to geometrical displays.

This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it's smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it's smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect detail.

Dripping in fantasy sequences and popping with vibrantly rendered set pieces, this is a monumental ego trip as well as an admirably candid therapy session, and there’s even some amusing, self-deprecating stuff as well.

Clever in the way it avoids most of the cliches of the vampire movie by using cannibalism, and most of the cliches of the cannibal movie by using vampirism. It serves both dishes with new sauces.

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

They talk warmly and with enthusiasm about certain titles, but I have the eerie feeling that they must be at a movie whether they enjoy it or not.

The bottom line is, all these people chase the same money around with the success of doggie tail-biting, and it's a lot of fun, and it's not often in these con films that everybody is conning everybody, and they're all scared to death, and nobody knows which cup the pea is under.

The film's buried message is that there is a reservoir of admiration and affection for America, at least among the educated classes in the Arab world, and they do not equate the current administration with America.

Prelude to a Kiss is the kind of movie that can inspire long conversations about the only subject really worth talking about, the Meaning of It All.

I cannot stress enough how truly stunning the brilliant visuals are in this movie. Laika has again crafted a world that is such an original vision, one that will live on as a new classic in the world of animation.

Sacha Baron Cohen remains a fearless and funny comedic force, and Maria Bakalova is hilarious and endearing as Tutar. We also get a clever twist ending and I’ll say no more than that. Borat is an idiot, but “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” ends on a pretty smart note.

Here is a strong and simple story surrounded by needless complications, and flawed by a last act that first disappoints us and then ends on a note of forced whimsy.

Speak No Evil eventually goes full-on with the familiar horror movie blood-spattering, but the social satire in that well-executed build-up is the real strength of the film.

Like so many cautionary tales we’ve seen come out of Hollywood since there was a Hollywood, “You Don’t Know Me” is one long reminder to be careful what you wish for—because dreams that come true often arrive with tentacles attached.

So extreme is his mad dog behavior, indeed, that it shades over into humor: Washington seems to enjoy a performance that's over the top and down the other side.

Luckily, there's enough of the domestic comedy to make the movie work despite its crasser instincts. One of the big surprises in the movie is Selleck's wonderful performance as the bachelor architect. After playing action heroes on TV and in the movies, he now reveals himself to be a light comedian in the Cary Grant tradition - a big, handsome guy with tenderness and vulnerability

A documentary that is beyond strange, follows two arch-enemies in their grim, long-term rivalry, which involves way more time than any human lifetime should devote to Donkey Kong.

A cheerfully energetic horror film of the slam-bang school, but slicker and more clever than most, about an evil doll named Charles Lee Ray, or Chucky.

Bright, lively and entertaining, but it's no "Shrek." Maybe it's too much to expect lightning to strike twice.

By telling the whole story from Hurt's point of view, the movie makes the woman into the stubborn object, the challenge, the problem, which is the very process it wants to object to...This objection aside, Children of a Lesser God is a good but not a great movie. The subject matter is new and challenging, and I was interested in everything the movie had to tell me about deafness.

This is a jolly, slapstick comedy, lacking the almost eerie humanity that infused the earlier “Toy Story” sagas, and happier with action and jokes than with characters and emotions.

I can’t tell you I bought every last twist and turn in the final act, but thanks to Niccol’s creative direction and the offbeat but effective chemistry between Owen’s emotionally damaged Sal and Seyfried’s is-she-hero-or-villain mystery woman, Anon kept me in its grips throughout.

[An] insightful and occasionally revealing look at the 88-year-old Manhattan institution where the rich and famous enjoy being rich and famous.

Superfly succeeds at it what it wants to be: an action-packed, sexy, violent, 21st century blaxploitation crime thriller with a stylish look, a downloadable soundtrack, a great-looking and talented cast, a few slick twists and even some genuinely funny moments.

Where it succeeds is as the story of a chapter in history, the story of how one coach at one school arrived at an obvious conclusion and acted on it, and helped open college sports in the South to generations of African Americans.

Always nice to enjoy a little comfort-food movie in which almost nothing surprising or particularly fresh happens, but we’re happy to spend time with the characters and we wish them the best as the credits roll.

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties is actually funnier and more charming than the first film.

What I did appreciate is that City of Angels is one of the few angel movies that knows one essential fact about angels: They are not former people. ”Angels aren't human. We were never human,” observes Seth. This is quite true. Angels are purely spiritual beings.

Cadillac Records is an account of the Chess story that depends more on music than history, which is perhaps as it should be. The film is a fascinating record of the evolution of a black musical style, and the tangled motives of the white men who had an instinct for it.

Disobedience comes across as a challenging but also deeply respectful and thoughtful meditation on traditions and mores that date back thousands of years.

"Dead Men” works well enough as a stand-alone, swashbuckling comedic spectacle, thanks to the terrific performances, some ingenious practical effects, impressive CGI and a steady diet of PG-13 dialogue peppered with not particularly sophisticated but (I have to admit) fairly funny sexual innuendo.

It's a reminder of the days before films got so cynical and unrelentingly violent. A Knight's Tale is whimsical, silly and romantic.

What's funny in cartoons is not always funny in live action, and some of the dunkings in unsavory substances left me less than amused.

[A] remarkably tepid sequel to the surprise 2010 hit.

Not Okay isn’t exactly a swing and a miss. But it doesn’t quite connect in solid fashion.

Do these films reflect actual aspects of modern Tokyo? The hikikomori epidemic is apparently real enough, but the other two segments seem more deliberately fantastical. The entertainment value? Medium to high: "Merde." Tokyo? Still standing.

There is something powerful and elemental in the appeal of gold, especially somebody else's buried treasure, and it plugs holes in the plot that no base metal could possibly cover.

There’s always been something a bit ridiculous about the whole Tarzan premise, and while the talented cast and a solid director make for a serviceable and intermittently entertaining adventure, there’s very little about this film that screams, YOU GOTTA SEE THIS.

While Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain, an earnest account of the world’s worst industrial accident, certainly has its heart in the right place, it’s not good that the closing titles about the cold, brutal facts of the aftermath stir more outrage than the preceding docudrama.

If the movie were not so downbeat and its literary pedigree so distinguished, the resolution would be soap opera.

Although there are some scary moments here, and a lot of gruesome ones, this isn't a horror film so much as a faux eco-documentary.

There’s nothing offensive in the relentlessly upbeat Tio Papi. It’s just all so polite and saccharine. Life lessons are learned every few minutes, and the ending is telegraphed from the beginning.

A pure thriller, all blood, no frills, in which a lot of people get shot, mostly in the head.

When you’re balancing ridiculous slapstick right out of a live-action cartoon with well-written, well-acted scenes that feel completely of this world, that’s a tough balancing act, and “Tammy” isn’t quite up to the task on a consistent basis.

This movie could obviously go on fooling us forever, but we are good sports only up to a point, and then our attention drifts. Shame, since there's so much good stuff in it, like how effortlessly Rachel Griffiths keeps two tough guys completely at her mercy.

Watching the film, I enjoyed a lot of it, especially Keaton's permutations on the theme of himself. But I wondered why the possibilities weren't taken to greater comic extremes.

Of course it's completely ridiculous, but at the same time it has a certain disarming charm.

My Cousin Vinny is a movie that meanders along going nowhere in particular, and then lightning strikes. I didn't get much involved in it, and yet individual moments and some of the performances were very funny. It's the kind of movie home video was invented for: Not worth the trip to the theater, but slam it into the VCR and you get your rental's worth.

There are scenes that don't even pretend to work. And others that have a sweetness and visual beauty that stops time and simply invites you to share.

Force Ten honors all the obligatory clichés, and then there's a nice twist involving the explosion inside the dam, and then we get the special effects, and then it's over. It doesn't leave much of an impression; a director like Guy Hamilton, a graduate of four of the Bond pictures, can turn out action movies like this in his sleep. This time, alas, that's apparently what he did.

The movie isn't laugh out loud funny, under the circumstances, but it is bittersweet and wistfully amusing; the actors enjoy lachrymosity. We witness the birth of a new genre, the Post-Slasher Movie.

There’s just not enough gristle and gore on the bone of this story to make for a memorably haunting viewer experience.

It’s not that “The Boys in the Boat” doesn’t have an inspirational impact; it’s that we’re so aware of being pushed in that direction.

Somehow the movie fails to connect with the amazing energy of Hawking's ideas. We're left wanting to know more about either his theories or his life, but what we get is a little of each.

It is not a serious film about its subject, nor is it quite a dark comedy, despite some of Pacino's good lines. The epilogue, indeed, cheats in a way I thought had been left behind in grade school. And yet there are splendid moments.

Since it is by Wong Kar Wai, 2046 is visually stunning. He uses three cinematographers but one style, that tries to evoke mood more than meaning. The movie as a whole, unfortunately, never seems sure of itself. It's like a sketchbook. These are images, tones, dialogue and characters that Wong is sure of, and he practices them, but he does not seem very sure why he is making the movie, or where it should end.

The movie has been produced by Nickelodeon, and will no doubt satisfy its intended audience enormously. It does not cross over into the post-Nickelodeon universe.

You can enjoy the way they create little flashes of wit in the dialogue, which enlivens what is, after all, a formula disaster movie.

The architecture of The Debt has an unfortunate flaw. The younger versions of the characters have scenes that are intrinsically more exciting, but the actors playing the older versions are more interesting. Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds bring along the weight of their many earlier roles. To be sure, the older actors get some excitement of their own, but by then, the plot has lost its way.

The movie isn't set up to tell a story about a boy who was young in the summer of 1942; it insists on presenting itself, instead, as an adult memory of that long-ago summer. We don't learn very much about the boy because the movie's adult point of view refuses to come to terms with him.

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.

Baratz doesn't ask any of the obvious questions, preferring to observe uncritically, and if you can do the same, you may find Unmistaken Child worth seeing. I could not, and grew restless.

The movie is almost always good to look at, thanks to Richard MacDonald's sets (he linked together two giant sound stages) and Sven Nykvist's photography. And Nolte and Winger are almost able to make their relationship work, if only it didn't seem scripted out of old country songs and lonely hearts columns.

The Split is the first Hollywood film to deliberately, overtly exploit black-white tensions in American society. On another level, it's a first-rate piece of entertainment.

The performances are often good, including Reno's; he has an interesting, poker-faced way of underplaying scenes that keeps him from being a stereotyped kid.

This put-on-a-happy-face plotline is not nearly as annoying as it sounds. In fact, Swift wisely heads off audience rebellion by having his characters make fun of "Pollyanna" before the viewer can. [24 May 2002, p.13]