It is an enchanted folly suggesting that romance is a matter of chance, since love is blind; at the right moment we are likely to fall in love with the first person our eyes light upon.

An absolutely superb mounting of a hollow and disappointing production. It shows a technical mastery of filmmaking, and we are dazzled by the performances, the atmosphere, the mood of mounting violence. But by the second hour of the film we've lost our bearings: What is this movie saying about its characters? What does it feel and believe about them? Why was it necessary to tell their stories?

Words on Bathroom Walls has its moments and its heart is in the right place, but the missteps are too many and too big for the story to carry the day.

A lot of Trollhunter - but not enough - is funny. I imagine the best way to see the movie would be the way it was presented at Sundance, at a "secret" midnight screening at which the capacity audience allegedly has no idea what it is about to see.

Tougher, less sentimental mirror version of "Save the Last Dance."

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.

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.

Dhoom:3 entertains as a spectacle of chases, bank capers, magic acts and song-and-dance numbers.

The young actors shine revealing lights on their characters.

The film is not perfect; its message at times gets lost in its “pearls of wisdom” approach. But overall, there is a soothing quality to it, with Gibran’s words resonating on some level to those who are willing to listen.

Boxcar Bertha is a weirdly interesting movie and not really the sleazy exploitation film the ads promise.

The movie finally becomes just an exercise, then: a brilliant one at times, and with a wealth of sharp-edged performances, but without people for its things to happen to.

Stylistically, this saga of survival never aims for urban neo-realism. Yet, as sentimental humanism, it shows laudable taste in dodging the usual indulgent touches and turns when lost kids find their way.

What makes Vice Versa so wonderful is the way Reinhold and Savage are able to convince us that each body is inhabited by the other character.

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.

Until the last twenty or thirty minutes, however, First Blood is a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone (who invests an unlikely character with great authority) but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy, as the police chief.

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

The Boxtrolls has a rich, edgy texture that makes it stand out from other animated films.

Despite that not-intriguing title and some late developments that come precariously close to piling on the sentimentality, this is ultimately a breathtakingly beautiful, stark and deeply human story about love and loss, and the extreme measures some will take to numb their pain.

The material might have promise as a black comedy, but its attempt to put on a smiling face is unconvincing.

Compellingly watchable.

A movie for more than one season; it will become a perennial, shared by the generations. It has a haunting, magical quality because it has imagined its world freshly and played true to it,

This is basically the first sitcom in drag, and the comic turns in the plot are achieved with such clockwork timing that sometimes we're laughing at what's funny and sometimes we're just laughing at the movie's sheer comic invention. This is a great time at the movies.

Why didn't they make a baseball picture? Why did The Natural have to be turned into idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford? Why did a perfectly good story, filled with interesting people, have to be made into one man's ascension to the godlike, especially when no effort is made to give that ascension meaning?

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 comes a time in some movies when sheer spectacle overwhelms any consideration of plot, and Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction is a movie like that. It has a plot so unlikely and confused that we can't believe it for much more than 15 seconds at a time, but its action sequences are so absorbing and its mountaintop photography so compelling that we don't care.

What saves this movie, which won this year's audience award at Sundance, from being boring are performances by two actors who see a chance to go over the top and aren't worried about the fall on the other side.

This is a documentary about what happens to you when you appear in "Troll 2."