The Arrival fulfills one of the classic functions of science fiction, which is to take a current trend and extend it to a possible (and preferably alarming) future. The Arrival gives its aliens credit for reasoning that we might almost be tempted to agree with. We're just finishing what you started, one of the aliens tells Zane, referring to the smokestacks, auto exhausts, rain forests and so on. What would have taken you 100 years will only take us 10. He, or it, has a point.

This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. plays a like a lower key, vintage edition of a “Mission: Impossible” movie. It’s a good movie with a great look.

Where did Hollywood get the conviction that audiences demand an ending that lets them off the hook? Foster doesn't let herself off the hook in The Brave One, and we should be as brave as she is.

There is a line and this movie crosses it. I don't know where the line is, but it's way north of Wolf Creek. There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty?

Feels uncomfortably stage-managed, and raises fundamental questions that it simply ignores.

Stone's most impressive achievement in this film is to allow all the financial wheeling and dealing to seem complicated and convincing, and yet always have it make sense.

Real Steel is a real movie. It has characters, it matters who they are, it makes sense of its action, it has a compelling plot. This is the sort of movie, I suspect, young viewers went to the "Transformers" movies looking for.

It’s deliberately over the top, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some observers say Pitt made huge miscalculations in his acting choices with the result being the worst performance of his career — but I found it to be a brazenly effective piece of work, well-suited to the material.

Now here's this rich and textured film.

Lovingly detailed with animated and archival imagery, For No Good Reason shares the fine-grain layered style of its subject.

I confess I felt involved in Unknown until it pulled one too many rabbits out of its hat. At some point, a thriller has to play fair.

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.

This is a featherweight G-rated comedy of no consequence, except undoubtedly to kids about Ramona's age.

There will be holiday pictures that are more high-tech than this one, more sensational, with bigger stars and higher budgets and indeed greater artistry. But there may not be many with such good cheer.

Spike Lee misjudged his material and audience. He doesn't find a successful way to express his feelings, angers and satirical points.

I was expecting Doc Hollywood to be a comedy. And it is a comedy. But it surprised me by also being a love story, and a pretty good one - the kind where the lovers are smart enough to know all the reasons why they shouldn't get together, but too much in love to care.

This is a film for intelligent people who are naturally curious about what happens when the shutters close.

As Hollywood experiments go, the new black comedy by Robert Zemeckis has more than its share of witty lines, sight gags and special effects. But even while you're appreciating its better moments, the cast is numbing them with their Arctic charm. [31 July 1992, p.43]

Low-key, understated style. The suspense beats away underneath.

It evokes the atmosphere of a Sergio Leone Western, sneaking up under the movie's human comedy and adding a smile.

What makes The Anniversary Party intriguing is how close it cuts to the bone of reality--how we're teased to draw parallels between some of the characters and the actors who play them.

The movie is essentially a morality play, and it's not a surprise to learn that Larry Cohen, the writer, came up with the idea 20 years ago--when there were still phone booths and morality plays.

The Coens' Ladykillers, on the other hand, is always wildly signaling for us to notice it. Not content to be funny, it wants to be FUNNY! Have you ever noticed that the more a comedian wears funny hats, the less funny he is?

The movie sidesteps the existence of the Greek gods, turns its heroes into action movie cliches and demonstrates that we're getting tired of computer-generated armies.

It isn't about thrills and explosions, but about tenacity, and most of it takes place within our own imaginations.

Everyone slips comfortably into their roles and does what they can with the goofy dialogue and the death-defying, logic-defeating stunt sequences.

Maleficent is an admittedly great-looking, sometimes creepy, often plodding and utterly unconvincing re-imagining of a famous romantic fairy tale as a female empowerment metaphor.