Although we find out a lot about this virtual hermit and develop an admiration for his cantankerous principles, the movie leaves some questions unanswered.

The characters deserve a better movie, but they get a pretty good one.

A preposterous plot, but it's not about a plot, it's about acting.

As for disappointments ... Judd Nelson wasn’t available for the documentary, while Molly Ringwald declined to participate. Perhaps she’s learned to let it go. One hopes McCarthy will be able to do the same after making this film, but we get the distinct impression the best he can hope for is to learn to live with it and realize it doesn’t define him.

As for the murder mystery, some of the supporting players barely get enough screen time or enough of a backstory to be considered serious suspects, but even when “Death on the Nile” skirts the edge of camp, the fastidious and melancholy Poirot is always there to guide us through the rough spots and solve the case in the nick of time.

The reality depicted is sometimes too emotional to watch, because it’s such a personal story for all involved.

Considering how tidy and self-aware most such Hollywood projects are, any movie that can give Phillips' Mexican-Indian a monologue in which he painfully recounts the massacre only he survived and then blithely rejoices in idiot gunfire is a movie you have to respect. [12 Aug 1988, p.35]

The movie works well on its chosen level. The big action scenes are cleverly staged and Eddie Murphy is back on his game again, with a high-energy performance and crisp dialogue.

Geraldine Viswanathan, fresh off her scene-stealing turn as the intrepid high school newspaper reporter in “Bad Education,” gives a knockout performance.

The Great Raid is perhaps more timely now than it would have been a few years ago, when "smart bombs" and a couple of weeks of warfare were supposed to solve the Iraq situation. Now that we are involved in a lengthy and bloody ground war there, it is good to have a film that is not about entertainment for action fans, but about how wars are won with great difficulty, risk, and cost.

A valuable, heartbreaking film about the way those resources are plugged into a system, drained of their usefulness and discarded.

Of all the ridiculous and overblown albeit entertainingly grisly “Scream” finales, this might be the most outlandish and spectacularly brutal ending of all.

Kimi is filled with the kind of sparkling cameos and supporting work we’ve come to expect from a Soderbergh cast — but always and throughout, this is Zoë Kravitz’s vehicle, and she delivers a smart, empathetic and badass performance in this nifty gem about a woman who has to step outside in more ways than one.

De Niro is so good at playing a man who has essentially emasculated himself because of fear of his anger, so that sex and anger may be leashed in precisely the opposite way, as in "Raging Bull." And Norton, the puppetmaster - it may not even be freedom he requires, but simply the pleasure of controlling others to obtain it.

A demonstration of the way time can sometimes give us a break.

This is Agnes’ story, and this is Kelly Macdonald’s movie.

As you’d expect from this cast, the performances are uniformly excellent, with the standout being Jayne Houdyshell, the only holdover from the Broadway production, who reprises her Tony-winning role and is mesmerizing as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary capacity to get through the night, the week, the year, the life, she’s been given.

It’s a beautiful film, finely written and well acted.

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.

The film's anti-Semitism is articulate but wrong, and the conflict between what the hero says and what he believes (or does not want to believe) is at the very center of the story.

Last Chance Harvey is a tremendously appealing love story surrounded by a movie not worthy of it.

The Sapphires is clearly a labor of love for all involved. It's also a warm tribute to four women for whom success as performers was just the beginning.

Still, this is a breathtakingly gorgeous, sometimes thrilling, well-acted and suitably profound sendoff to Daniel Craig in all his ice-blue-eyed, tightly wound, gritty gravitas —a Bond who seemed much more of this world than, say Roger Moore’s 007, a Bond who bled when he was cut and bruised when he was beaten, a Bond who grieved deeply for those he lost, a Bond who will be a very, very tough act to follow.

A small and warmhearted gem starring one of our finest veteran actors in a well-crafted and emotionally involving remake of a film about a widowed curmudgeon who begins to grow and change after experiencing some major life setbacks.

One of the movie's intriguing qualities is that its horrors take place within a world that is not as cruel and painful as we know it could be.

Now this is strange. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory succeeds in spite of Johnny Depp's performance, which should have been the high point of the movie.

The reason to see it is for Jones. This man who can stride fearlessly through roles requiring strong, determined men, this actor who can seem in complete control, finds a character here who seems unlike any other he has played and plays it bravely.

Christian Bale is heroic in the way he allows the character to leap joyfully into despicability.