Declaration of War is a domestic comedy as much as it is a medical drama. This movie has been made by the couple it is about, Valerie Donzelli and Jeremie Elkaim. She directed, they wrote it together, and in real life, their relationship also fell apart. They approach their fraught story with a surprising freshness.

Isn't a slick documentary; some of it feels like Blaustein's home movie about being a wrestling fan. But it has a hypnotic quality.

The film's title is appropriate. A desperate Catholicism flavors the doomed city.

His story is simple, unadorned, direct. Only the margins are complicated.

The stuff in outer space is unexpected, the surprise waiting out there is genuine, and meanwhile, there's an abundance of charm and screen presence from the four veteran actors.

The ending is a cheap shot. An inconclusive ending would have been better, and perhaps more honest. The movie and the ending have so little in common that it's as if the last scene is spliced in from a different film.

An impassioned polemic, filled with information sure to break up any dinner-table conversation. Its fault is that of the dinner guest who tells you something fascinating, and then tells you again, and then a third time. At 145 minutes, it overstays its welcome.

The best thing about Spider-Man: Homecoming is Spidey is still more of a kid than a man. Even with his budding superpowers, he still has the impatience, the awkwardness, the passion, the uncertainty and sometimes the dangerous ambition of a teenager still trying to figure out this world.

Prince Avalance is frequently funny in a subdued sort of way, but it’s primarily contemplative and eventually intimate.

The Man in the Moon is a wonderful movie, but it is more than that, it is a victory of tone and mood. It is like a poem.

The elegant style of the fighting sequences does more than display camera and kung fu technique — this style also shows fighters living with honor.

Stars Eastwood as an American icon once again -- this time as a cantankerous, racist, beer-chugging retired Detroit autoworker who keeps his shotgun ready to lock and load. Dirty Harry on a pension, we're thinking, until we realize that only the autoworker retired; Dirty Harry is still on the job.

Working from a sharp and unflinchingly honest screenplay by LaBeouf, director Alma Har’el delivers a smart and knowing inside slice of show business life that also serves as a harrowing cautionary tale about abuse and about encouraging your children to become professional entertainers when they’d most likely be better off having, you know, an actual childhood.

David Fincher’s The Killer is a meticulously crafted and masterfully rendered film about a meticulous and masterful assassin, and with Michael Fassbender in the lead role, you just couldn’t have a better triangle of material, director and actor.

Wells is a talent as a storyteller and as a director with a nice visual touch, and as a screen presence. Emily is wonderful. We like spending time with them. (Noel and Emily, I mean.)

Bujalski’s script is smarter and much weirder (in a good way) than the standard romantic comedy. His characters are funny without ever trying to be funny.

I wouldn't have thought that even in animation a 1951 Hudson Hornet could look simultaneously like itself and like Paul Newman, but you will witness that feat, and others, in Cars.

A screenplay with the depth and insight of a cable-TV docudrama.

Who would have guessed such a funny movie as Zombieland could be made around zombies? No thanks to the zombies.

Ferrari never quite achieves the greatness of previous Mann movies such as “Thief” and “Heat,” but it’s a solid and extremely well-filmed slice of one legendary life.

It's sharp and funny--not a children's movie, but one of those hybrids that works on different levels for different ages.

News of the World works at the highest levels as a story of two lost souls who find one another, and as a crackling good, blood-spattered Western.

It's too involved in administering its reversion fantasy to acquisition-guilty yuppies to cast an eye on its own venture status. And the contradictions don't stop there. That this celebration of the Peter Pan syndrome was directed by a woman, Penny Marshall, adds another layer of dishonesty. [3 Jun 1988, p.31]

A funny movie, flat out, all the way through. Its setup is funny. Every situation is funny. Most of the dialogue is funny almost line by line.

The plot was probably inspired by an actual event, which I will not mention because you may be familiar with it. In any event, Chabrol's insidious style is more absorbing than the plot, as it should be.

There are some nice, amusing scenes, especially when one of the dozen (Donald Sutherland) pretends to be a general and inspects some troops. In fact, right up to the last scene the movie is amusing, well paced, intelligent.

Slam is a fable disguised as a slice of life, and cobbled together out of too many pieces that don't fit smoothly together. It's moving, but not as effective as it could have been.

Alfred Hitchcock called Rope an “experiment that didn’t work out,” and he was happy to see it kept out of release for most of three decades. He was correct that it didn’t work out, but Rope remains one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names.