The underlying secret of the four comedians is the way they find humor in daily life, and in their families. In this they're a lot like the Kings of Comedy.

His film is pro-Kerry, yes, but the focus is on history, not polemics, and provides a record of the crucial role of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Brian De Palma’s Sisters was made more or less consciously as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock, but it has a life of its own and it’s a neat little mystery picture.

Lethal Weapon 2 is that rarity - a sequel with most of the same qualities as the original. I walked into the movie with a certain dread. But this is a film with the same off-center invention and wild energy as the original.

The original Studio 54 lasted for only 33 months. In 98 minutes, Studio 54 captures the club on its best nights and on its worst mornings.

What she hasn't done is make a terrifically entertaining film. Although this version dumps many of the novel's passages, particularly from the later chapters, it's dreary and slow-paced, heavy on atmosphere, introverted. I suppose life on an isolated moor was like that at the time, but do we need this much atmosphere?

21 Grams tells such a tormenting story that it just about survives its style. It would have been more powerful in chronological order, and even as a puzzle, it has a deep effect.

The Lady in the Van is about a talented young writer still wrestling with how to draw upon his own experiences without exploiting others — and it’s about the boundless talents of Maggie Smith, sometimes chewing up the screen, sometimes saying volumes simply by sitting very, very still, with a perfectly perfect expression on her face.

What I enjoyed was the way the film summons up the pure obsessive passion that chess stirs in some people.

Harrelson is an ideal actor for the role. Especially in tensely wound-up movies like this, he implies that he's looking at everything and then watching himself looking.

This is a wonderful formula. I love it. The Poseidon Adventure is the kind of movie you know is going to be awful, and yet somehow you gotta see it, right?

LaBute's "Your Friends and Neighbors'' is to "In the Company of Men'' as Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction'' was to "Reservoir Dogs.'' In both cases, the second film reveals the full scope of the talent, and the director, given greater resources, paints what he earlier sketched.

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.

Weird has the ingredients of a brilliant half-hour special stretched too thin.

Even though Eilish has been a ubiquitous presence on the pop culture landscape for the last few years, this movie serves as an intimate and revealing filmed document.

City Slickers comes packaged as one kind of movie - a slapstick comedy about white-collar guys on a dude ranch - and it delivers on that level while surprising me by being much more ambitious, and successful, than I expected. This is the proverbial comedy with the heart of truth, the tear in the eye along with the belly laugh. It's funny, and it adds up to something.

Within the limitations of his bare-bones production, Smith shows great invention, a natural feel for human comedy, and a knack for writing weird, sometimes brilliant, dialogue.

Robocop is a thriller with a difference.

Stephen King seems to be working his way through the reference books of human phobias, and Cat's Eye is one of his most effective films.

More than a half-century after first taking the stage, “The Boys in the Band” still leaves us with so much to think about, so much to feel, so much to consider.

Lady in White tells a classic ghost story in such an everyday way that the ghost is almost believable, and the story is actually scarier than it might have been with a more gruesome approach.

Told with the simplicity and beauty of a child's fairy tale, but with emotional undertones and a surrealistic style that adults are more likely to appreciate.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who has consistently delivered good work in countless genres on TV and in the movies, delivers one of her most memorable performances as the title character, who is smart and cool and infuriating and sympathetic and odious and entertaining and so much more.

I enjoyed this film so much I'm sorry to report it was finally too much of a muchness. You can only eat so much cake.

The movie belongs to Finney, but mention must be made of Jacqueline Bisset as his wife and Anthony Andrews as his half-brother. Their treatment of the consul is interesting. They understand him well.

This is a rousing and satisfying actioner that occasionally gets bogged down in complicated exposition but presents some intriguing twists on time-honored themes about the double-edged sword of immortality.

Antoon injects an occasional note of rancor, but the more radical point here is showing how freely Baghdad residents now speak in public on politics and how widely their views range. [12 Nov 2005, p.35]

One aspect of the film is befuddling. Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) is a popular blogger with conspiracy theories about the government's ties with drug companies. His concerns are ominous but unfocused. Does he think drug companies encourage viruses? The blogger subplot doesn't interact clearly with the main story lines and functions mostly as an alarming but vague distraction.