It doesn’t break any new ground and I’m not convinced it required a 2 hour and 41 minute running time, but despite a few overlong interludes midway through the story and a couple of battle sequences that pretty much look like the fight scenes in a dozen or two previous MCU movies, this is a rousing adventure and a most welcome return to one of the most visually arresting and culturally rich settings in the superhero universe: the kingdom of Wakanda.

The comedy here isn't all on the surface, and Viterelli [the bodyguard Jelly] is one reason why.

Ghostlight becomes a love letter to the power of theater, to the power of the timeless written word, to move us, to make us feel, to change us.

Bullock brings a kind of ground-level vulnerability to 28 Days that doesn't make her into a victim but simply into one more suitable case for treatment.

As Fyre makes painfully clear, just about everyone involved with the project — including the co-founders — had to have known they were tumbling down a mountain at rapid speed and headed for almost guaranteed scandal and disaster, yet everyone kept on working, as if the denial would somehow soften the blow.

It's Mamet in a lighthearted mood, playing with dialogue, repeating phrases just because he likes them, and supplying us with a closing line that achieves, I think, a kind of greatness.

The characters involve us, we sympathize with their dreams and despair of their matrimonial tunnel vision, and at the end we are relieved that we listened to Miss Watson and became the wonderful people who we are today.

An imperfect movie with so many moments of truth that you forgive its stumbles. You also note that it's probably of historical value, because it centers on the first performance of an actress who is going to be a big star.

All classic and airtight, and handled by Richet with economy and a sturdy clarity of action; he doesn't go overboard with manic action scenes.

So likable, we go with it on its chosen level.

This feature film debut by Williams is an ambitious, gritty and at times downright scary urban drama with a message of hope and redemption. [04 Nov 1998, p.44]

It's an old-fashioned romantic triangle, told with schmaltzy music on the sound track and a heroine with a smoky singing voice, and then the Nazis turn up and it gets very complicated and heartbreaking.

So what has happened is that this uptight, ferocious, little gamin Lisbeth has won our hearts, and we care about these stories and think there had better be more.

Little Ashes is absorbing but not compelling. Most of its action is inward.

Before Sunrise is so much like real life - like a documentary with an invisible camera - that I found myself remembering real conversations I had experienced with more or less the same words.

In the hands of the Danish director Tobias Lindholm and screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917,” “Last Night in Soho”) and thanks in large part to the towering twin performances of the equally chameleon-like Chastain and Redmayne, The Good Nurse is a solid albeit conventional medical thriller that overcomes a few plodding stretches and ends in bittersweet fashion.

The joy of Dirty Work is in Macdonald's observational writing and sardonic delivery. Because he and director Bob Saget never take the film too seriously, nearly every scene transcends the ordinariness of the movie's plot line by giving way to Macdonald's charisma. [15 Jun 1998, p.32]

Sometimes overwrought excess can be its own reward. If Obsession had been even a little more subtle, had made even a little more sense on some boring logical plane, it wouldn't have worked at all.

A movie like this lives or dies with its performances, and the actors in My Beautiful Laundrette are a fascinating group of unknowns.

A warm human comedy.

The portrait of everyday Japan in The Eel is intriguing; the quiet area where the story is set is filled with people who take a lively interest in one another's business, while all the time seeming to keep their distance. [11 Sep 1998, p.32]

Dogtooth is like a car crash. You cannot look away. The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos tells his story with complete command of visuals and performances. His cinematography is like a series of family photographs of a family with something wrong with it.

Not that this film (or for that matter, any other Western made in the last 30 years) can stack up to “Unforgiven,” but it is a lean and brutally authentic tale bolstered by outstanding performances from Mortensen, the versatile Vicky Krieps and a terrific supporting cast.

This is a B-movie through and through, but thanks in large part to a deep cast of familiar faces and reliable character actors, it’s a solid crime thriller that respects the true-life blueprint of the story.

This movie leaves me looking forward to the director's next film; we can say of Rian Johnson, as somebody once said about a dame named Brigid O'Shaughnessy, "You're good. You're very good."

The last act of A Brilliant Young Mind is undeniably moving but not entirely believable and a little too neat and clean. Still, long after you’ve seen the film, you’ll remember the wonderfully nuanced work of the cast.

Culkin plays Alig as clueless to the end, living so firmly in his fantasy world that nothing can penetrate his chirpy persona. Whether this is accurate--whether indeed any of the facts in the film are accurate--is not for me to say, but it works.

The documentary is at its best when we observe Fox in quiet, warm and funny moments with his wife and their four children, and when it’s just Fox facing the camera, talking with his typical candor and humor about his condition and refusing to be painted as some kind of martyr.