What finally makes Miss Firecracker special is that it is not about who wins the contest, but about how all beauty contests are about the need to be loved and about how silly a beauty contest can seem if somebody really loves you.

The skill of the actors, who invest their characters with small touches of humanity, is useful in distracting us from the emotional manipulations, but it's like they're brightening separate rooms of a haunted house.

In Thunderheart we get a real visual sense of the reservation, of the beauty of the rolling prairie and the way it is interrupted by deep gorges, but also of the omnipresent rusting automobiles and the subsistence level of some of the housing. We feel that we're really there, and that the people in the story really occupy land they stand on.

Walter Hill's "Geronimo," a film of great beauty and considerable intelligence, covers the same ground as many other movies about Indians, but in a new way.

There are some one-liners that zing not only with humor but truth. On the whole I was satisfied.

A first-rate, slam-bang action thriller with a lot of style and no little humor.

This movie rocks.

There are far more laugh-out-loud moments in the first half of Jumanji: The Next Level than in the second hour, but I liked the unexpected (if kinda trippy) spiritual element that comes into play late in the story.

For a time, “Moana 2” seems more fixated with creating memorably weird imagery than telling a story, but it regains its footing in a third act filled with genuine emotion and a spiritually rousing finale.

Has moments of great imagination.

The movie is cast so well that the actors bring life to their predictable destinies, and Elizondo casts a kind of magical warm spell over them all.

Ask the Dust requires an audience with a special love for film noir, with a feeling for the loneliness and misery of the writer.

On the basis of this second performance as Bond, Dalton can have the role as long as he enjoys it. He makes an effective Bond - lacking Sean Connery's grace and humor, and Roger Moore's suave self-mockery, but with a lean tension and a toughness that is possibly more contemporary.

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.

It will keep reminding you of better movies in the same genre.

Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk veer close to “Godfather” territory with an extended sequence that cuts between a somber religious ceremony and extreme carnage, but this is not Important Cinema — it’s well-filmed, well-acted, high-class B-movie pulp, and we get a neat little twist to wrap it all up at the end.

To Annette Bening’s credit, she finds just the right notes to illustrate Grace’s capacity for love, as well as her special gift for never letting up and driving you a little bit crazy.

Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, Southbound serves up another deliciously bloody twist.

A damped-down return to the Kingdom of Far Far Away, lacking the comic energy of the first brilliant film and not measuring up to the second.

The Finest Hours feels stitched together. None of the three main plot lines is particularly powerful or moving.

Perhaps the whole business is too cerebral and circumspect to stir up emotional involvement, or perhaps there’s a tinge of wine snobbery that has a slightly distancing effect. Then again, maybe it’s wrong to expect much in the way of excitement from a quiet art best suited to the sedate setting of a fine restaurant.

It's fun, it's slick and it's carefully put together, but it's more of an exercise than an accomplishment. Everyone does their schtick, the plot complications unfold like clockwork, but we find ourselves not really caring.

Wood and Cage have a terrific dynamic together.

Sharky’s Machine contains all of the ingredients of a tough, violent, cynical big-city cop movie, but what makes it intriguing is the way the Burt Reynolds character plays against those conventions.

Weir is good with his actors and good, too, at putting a slight spin on some of the obligatory scenes.

Writer-director Nguyen cleverly unspools the story like a heist film, with Vincent wheeling and dealing every step of the way.

It's innocent and sometimes kind of charming. The sets are entertaining. There are parallels in appearance and theme to a low-rent "Dark City."

At times, it’s really funny. More often, it’s “shocking” for the sake of shock value, gross for the sake of being gross, and stupid-goofy without much of a payoff.