The movie finds what solace it can in giving voice to those who escaped this church's grasp.

Though it's a sad, somber, deeply questioning work, it's done with a light, loving spirit.

It puts The Cockettes into social, political and popular cultural context and gives the documentary a moving resonance.

Some films are destined for nervous laughter, with enough of a pungent aftertaste to linger. This is one of them.

Some films aren't revelations, exactly, but they burrow so deeply into old truths about love and loss and the mess and thrill of life, they seem new anyway. A Single Man is one such film, one of the best of 2009

The problem may be that Scorsese, arguably America's most gifted and gritty director, is working from a script not written by one of his veteran collaborators, and so the grit is gone. All of the performances are fine. Newman is particularly effective, but he is forced to run a familiar treadmill. And so The Color of Money joins Heartburn as one of the biggest disappointments of 1986.

The Messenger is not itself grueling, which is practically a miracle. Rather, this pungent little chamber piece offers a full yet delicate range of emotions, and it humanizes its characters so that polemics are left in the background.

The cast is tremendous; these actors work with Resnais like a well-oiled stock company that knows every trick and can communicate almost telepathically.

In addition to the romantic music for the cuttlefish courtship, the several musical selections are a step above the usual IMAX fare.

Slick adaptation of Woody Allen's play.

With humor, honesty and awe, Feuerzeig's portrait may love Daniel Johnston, but it won't give his parents much hope.

Crushingly realistic one minute and melodramatically hokey the next.

Though Majidi draws from familiar Iranian sources, he's made something unique and moving: a sweet tale with a stirring finish.

With “The Babadook” and now The Nightingale, Kent joins the ranks of a few dozen precious filmmakers able to transport us somewhere awful and beautiful, challenging us every step of the way.

This largely non-verbal picture uses only as many words (spoken in Mandarin and Tibetan, with English subtitles) as necessary, and draws you in as surely as one of his characters, in an amazing sequence, is drawn into.

It's very slight, and very short (barely 75 minutes minus the end credits), but the material is just effective and affecting enough to make up for its own schematic quality. It's a matter of watching a series of actors, led by Tomlin, tag off on their respective scenes.

Two advantages of the British version: It's tauter and much faster. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

The movie operates with a nicely unpredictable rhythm, both short and longer shots ending abruptly, sometimes comically, popping us into the next one.

As for Janney: Hers is a performance of such astute, subtle and compulsively watchable hamming, it’s guaranteed to win a supporting actress Oscar nomination.

It's sensuality with a stinger, and Fat Girl is an adolescent sex drama that takes no prisoners.

A harsh, spellbinding tale.

Gives dumpster-divers a chance to slum in the antiseptic safety of a multiplex. (Planet Terror ** (out of four) / Death Proof ***1/2 (out of four).

Sometimes raunchy, but always well-acted. [25 Dec 1981]

It's a bit schematic and sweet-natured, perhaps to a fault, yet the faces linger. Smith and his mixture of actors and non-actors remind us that an act of generosity is all it takes to change a life.

Gripping documentary.

It doesn’t duck the messy, unresolved contradictions, the way so many movies about famous artists do.

A hip, funny, knowing romantic sports comedy that gets a little strained when it tries to expose its heart. [13 December 1996, Friday, p.A]

A brilliant, absurd collection of vignettes that, in their own idiosyncratic way, sum up the strange horror of life in the new millennium.

Executed with incredible craft and style and a whole lot of heart, Project Hail Mary verges on the edge of being too saccharinely sweet. But sci-fi can serve many different purposes for audiences, and maybe that sweetness, combined with a story of cooperation and collaboration for self-preservation, is just the kind of balm we need to take the edge off right now.

It’s worth seeing in any case, any format, if only to see a seriously skillful debut feature director breathe new life into a familiar Old Dark House scenario.

Like the recent "Searching for Sugar Man," A Band Called Death celebrates music born in Detroit that, with a turn of the wrist and a different roll of the dice, might've found the audience it deserved the first time.

Minor but irresistible MGM musical capturing '20s college life through the prism of the jivin' '40s era. [18 Jan 2008, p.C2]

What makes Victor Nunez's film so special is the modesty of its story and the power that Judd brings to the role. Very quickly, we get the feeling that this story is too familiar to young women. A special film. [03 Dec 1993, p.C]

If Chi-Raq disarms even a small percentage of those who see it, and provokes any reflection about a gun culture, the uses of satire and the plight of a sadly emblematic city, it was worth the effort. However mixed-up the results.

Now 94, Squibb takes care of business every minute in the enjoyable contrivance Thelma, which succeeds, sometimes in spite of itself, for reasons revealed in the first minute of writer-director Josh Margolin’s comedy.

Though relatively little-known, this ingenious romantic chase thriller, based on Josephine Tey's "A Shilling for Candles," is one of Hitchcock's most inventive and charming '30s films. [22 Jan 1999, p.F]

One minute into Saturday Night Fever you know this picture is onto something, that it knows what it's talking about. [15 Oct 1999, Siskel Years, p.6]

Pump Up the Volume, an exceedingly well-written teenager-full-of-angst melodrama about a high school student who operates a pirate radio broadcast that criticizes parents and teachers while revealing the turmoil of adolescence.

I wish the busting-loose part went further in “Love Lies Bleeding.” But Stewart, subtle and fierce, and O’Brian, sinewy and fiercer, prove exceptional at hitting two or three notes at once, and never obviously.

Gleeson carries the film with wonderful, natural authority. He's a little better than the movie itself, which is glib to a fault.

There is enough intelligence and craftsmanship in the execution of Hoosiers to make it seem, if not exactly fresh, at least respectably entertaining. [27 Feb 1987, Friday, p.A]

The Beguiled probably could've benefited from a little more energy in its telling. Still, Coppola offers some gorgeous images of the past made present.

The film’s impressive as far is it goes, and Schoenaerts is a fine actor with considerable emotional resources. But it’s exceedingly tidy in its beat-by-beat developments, and outside Roman and Marcus, the supporting character roster struggles to make an impression.

The first hit movie western of the new century - wins us with a wink. It leaves you in a bright, happily cross-cultural mood. Adios, amigos. And vaya con Jackie Chan.

Brilliant documentary.

It lays the groundwork for such collaborations by suggesting that all forms of music must come full circle before evolving into something new.

A British horror classic, filled with enough creepy imagery to keep "normal" children awake at night, and parents looking over their shoulders at the "little monsters" plotting away in the room down the hall. [29 Nov 2004, p.C4]

Takes a potentially explosive subject and does it subtly and perceptively.

This film, calm but full of feeling, relays an intriguing story brought to life by some beautiful actors.

Jones' film actually takes you somewhere you haven't visited in a million other movies. It has a wonderful sense of place, and space, and carries the bite and tang of a good short story.

Charming and gentle and steady-on, it contains few dramatic moments (except for one notable scene involving two children), even fewer surprises, and lacks the judgmental harshness and bite of Bergman's most celebrated creations. [14 Aug 1992, p.B]

A handful of films, from "The Battle of Algiers" to Paul Greengrass' splendid "Bloody Sunday," have met the challenge of dramatizing civil unrest and law enforcement outrages, memorably. Detroit comes close.

See it, and I dare you not to care about what happens to these kids, these Yankees of chess.

Logan is deadly serious, and while its gamer-style killing sprees are meant to be excitingly brutal, I found them numbing and, in the climax, borderline offensive.

A stark, painful drama about pregnancy--a subject rarely treated this fully, candidly or tragically.

The writer-director doesn't raise her voice, even as she firmly condemns the injustice. Water seduces us with its beauty and sorrow.

It’s absorbing. The world came perilously close to losing so many Rembrandts, so many Klimts. The cultural casualties, near and actual, may be dwarfed by the millions slaughtered in the same churn of history. But we are what we create, and when emblems of a civilization are reduced to pawns of wartime, there is no victor.

This is a movie that doesn't depend for its effects on star performers or stylized wish-fulfillment sexuality but on realism, sharp observation and honest humor.

Delighted me like few films I've seen recently. It's a sexy, sweet, sumptuously entertaining movie about the huge and wildly eventful wedding reception.

Raw and defining documentary about the man--and the myth.

Roemer's comic style draws brilliantly on the '60s vein of twitchy psychological realism first explored by Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and his humor is backed by a fine eye for sociological detail. [16 Feb 1990, p.C]

Strange and unsettling as it is, Noe's clarity of vision makes his film ignite. Like a slammed door or a scream of anger, it slaps you awake.

The film's strength is director Jim McBride's seemingly easy way of presenting us with a New Orleans that is more malevolent and intoxicating than the tourist trap that some think it to be.

An unusually good adaptation of an unusually good novel.

Looks, feels and flows like a real movie. It's better than the last few Pixar features, among other things, and from where I sit that includes "Toy Story 3."

So intense and warm are Leigh's feelings for his characters, that we may remember Hannah and Annie long afterward as old friends -- imperfect yet lovable, pals with whom we've suffered and laughed a lot.

Fans of “The Room” — they’re everywhere — will get something out of it, though I’d argue not enough; director Franco’s camera sense is neither quite in synch with Wiseau’s (thank God) or quite distinct enough in its own style.

The theater building is a four-story monster, and by the end of the picture we know it very well, in all its broken-down glory.

Anton, because after watching your tantrums, abuse and addiction in DIG! I went straight to the record store to buy your music. And that's something.

If Kneecap has a somewhat pushy sense of broad comedy or, in the final third, some predictable dramatic beats, its visual invention wins the day, because it’s so comfortably allied with the songs of protest and release.

The movie putters near the end, but it's a film lover's delight.

Watching this film wakes you up; it is a window on an Iran and an Afghanistan we should have taken account of long ago -- seen though a master's eye, felt through a poet's touch.

The style and acting of Laundrette is triumphant, and its substance a true but altogether pedestrian cliche.

In the past few years, we've seen or heard every teenage joke at least twice. What we haven't seen much of is a little teenage tenderness, the kind that we find in the concluding scenes of The Sure Thing. [1 Mar 1985, p.FN]

A sweet, sharp coming-of-age romance, Adventureland is a little warmer, a little funnier and a lot more truthful than the last 20 or 30 of its ilk. Especially its Hollywood ilk.

It's a big ice cream sundae, this one -- not great documentary filmmaking but tasty all the way.

Vera, as written and as acted, remains a sympathetic and watchful conduit, a peg, rather than a vividly realized engine. We see everything she endures, and all she sacrifices. Yet we are not left with lingering impressions beyond the facts of a fascinating life.

It's also gorgeously acted by all, and while this may not be one of Kiarostami's finest, the craftsmanship nonetheless is so high, it makes everything else currently in theaters look slovenly.

The best material, however, keeps returning to the unstable power dynamic between Q-Tip and Dawg.

Sid & Nancy is a movie that features head-bashings, drug overdoses, stabbings and a more-or-less constant round of pointless, stupid violence, and yet its most prominent quality is its sweetness. This is a love story--an unlikely, perverse, disturbing love story, but a genuine one.

Throughout Lady Macbeth we see Pugh's eyes, full of possibility and optimism at the outset, gradually darken. Even her breathing changes. It's a wonderful performance in a very fine film.

The best scene in Inside Man is one of the simplest, a cat-and-mouser, wherein the hostage negotiator played by Washington pays a visit to Foster's wily manipulator. These two play it so cool, yet so clearly enjoy each other's onscreen company, it's a ticklish reminder of the simple pleasures of screen acting.

Something in the Air, is the latest screen portrait of an artist as a young man. It's a good one too, rich and assured, even if writer-director Olivier Assayas is more successful at creating atmosphere than at making his romanticized younger self a three-dimensional being.

At its best, director Brewer’s film lounges alongside such movies about moviemaking as “Ed Wood” (written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote this picture, too) and the more recent but very thin “The Disaster Artist,” about the making of the less interestingly terrible cult item “The Room."

The film owes its relative buoyancy above all to Chris Pratt as the wisecracking space rogue at the helm.

A story of faith and redemption, as viewed through the blurry and bloodshot eyes of a young man.

From his long experience in television, [Reiner] has learned how to create characters with just enough depth to hold together but not so much that they become too individualized, too stubbornly complex. [12 July 1989, Tempo, p.1]

Family life rarely is portrayed with such warmth, clarity and vibrancy as in In America.

Not all the anachronisms work, but Corsage works anyway because Krieps makes Elisabeth a dimensional woman for all seasons.

Grosse Pointe Blank is covering the same kind of territory as that elephantine, if exciting, 1994 family man-killer thriller, "True Lies." But this time, the joke stings. [11 April 1997, Friday, p.A]

A fine, exciting film that makes a bloody historical event live all over again by showing it through the eyes of children on the edges of the conflict.

Boys N the Hood wants to be “The Learning Tree'' and “Super Fly'' at once, an ambition that doesn't seem quite honest. [12 July 1991]