If Estes' future efforts can offer us such potent, character-centered Molotov cocktails, Mean Creek may well signal the rise of America's next auteur director.

The best Hirsch's film can do, in the end, is remind us that bullying means more than we admit, and its effects aren't always immediately clear, even to loved ones.

A grandly kitschy rendering of Genghis Khan's early years.

Whether Kundun is a perfect movie or not, it's an important and beautiful one. Scorsese's movie takes us into a world we've rarely seen with this kind of sympathy or detail: a magical-looking society built on Buddhism and centuries of art and tradition.

The movie has a sense of humor, but its sense of dread, micro and macro, overrules it.

It's when Spielberg stops trying to think so hard that Munich works best. Though some of the assassination scenes feel a little too choreographed, more "West Side Story" than "Bourne Identity."

An extraordinarily truthful and piercing drama.

The marriage on view here, a little ridiculous, a little galling but full of interesting sharp edges, presents Knightley and West with a full array of emotions to explore. The tone remains deceptively light, but it feels both true and in period.

One of the more delightful and satisfying family movies.

Disobedience sometimes wants for rougher edges, and a fuller characterization for Weisz to play. But there’s real satisfaction in watching her, McAdams and Nivola inhabit a fraught and complicated relationship.

Enjoy this rare chance to catch Chan on the big screen at his near-peak mastery.

Though the costumes are beautifully designed, the chateau locations carefully chosen and the dialogue full of curling locutions, something cloddish and naive still comes through in Frears' direction, and not only because he can seldom get his shots to match. [13 Jan 1989, Friday, p.A]

Beautiful little film.

He (Puri) is one of the most consistently excellent film actors that his country - or the world - has produced. And East is East, a grand cultural hybrid, is a real movie, too - raw, funny and wonderfully mixed up.

The documentary Love, Gilda works different ways for different viewers. For older fans, it’s a welcome excuse to reminisce. For newcomers it’s an entertaining primer on Radner’s life, times, demons and famous inventions.

A fairly entertaining gloss of a docudrama elevated by its cast.

Despite its unevenness, it's impossible to look away from The Infiltrators, due to the sheer audacity of the activists and their willingness to risk their safe but shadowy existence in the United States for this cause.

An engaging character study full of lyrical images and strong performances. It's an exceedingly well-made film.

Farmiga's film doesn't state things directly, but we sense what is happening to Corinne, and how some turn to fundamentalism for complex and interconnected reasons.

Called "Nuovomondo" in its native Italy, it's bittersweet, neither as comic and sentimental as Charlie Chaplin's 1917 great silent comedy "The Immigrant," nor as cynical and epic as Elia Kazan's 1963 "America, America," but close to both.

If Hitchcock had kept the book's annihilating original ending, though, "Suspicion" might have been one of his three or four best films. As it is, it's a model domestic thriller that manages to survive a ridiculous turnabout climax. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

I love Pete Postlethwaite as a rule, but here - as a murderous florist who pulls all the strings - he overacts his key scene so badly it's as if he did it on a dare. Also, Jon Hamm may rule on "Mad Men," but here he's stuck as a rather dimwitted FBI agent who's two beats behind the action, always.

Since he popped up and broke hearts in Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," Carradine has learned a wealth of practical acting knowledge about how much and how little need be done at any given moment. He provides the on-screen link to those earlier days and brings the natural authority a director craves in a performer.

Amuses and unnerves in equal measure.

The acting -- especially by Borrows, Ian Hart and Hackett -- is strong and transparent, utterly convincing. The whole movie has a seamless flow and an utterly convincing sense of time and place.

If this documentary were about a serious painter, it would be judged a travesty not unlike commercials that goose up the couple in "American Gothic" or show the Mona Lisa laughing.

It's a wonderful New York story, and Eastwood takes care to make it a story about the many different people who made it a miracle. That is the emotional core of the film, a celebration of the simple act of reaching out a helping hand without a second thought.

Ultimately is a fast-moving trip to nowhere. The buzz is enjoyable while it lasts, but don't be surprised by the sour aftertaste.

A stylish, violent thriller about a sexually frustrated woman (Angie Dickinson), whose fantasies lead to a murder mystery. Directed by Brian De Palma ("Carrie"). Effective, but not for the kids. [1 Aug 1980, p.4-10]

Engrossing and weirdly funny.

The film is a river of pain, weirdly funny in places, as are all of Herzog's filmic essays.

A knockout one minute, a punch-drunk crazy film the next, Interstellar is a highly stimulating mess. Emotionally it's also a mess, and that's what makes it worth its 165 minutes — minutes made possible by co-writer and director Christopher Nolan's prior global success with his brooding, increasingly nasty "Batman" films, and with the commercially viable head-trip that was "Inception."

Capable of enthralling.

Elaborately mounted, expensively produced and filmed with style and empathy, it's an adaptation of Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning book that manages to expand the original vision, yet preserve much of its intense emotion.

If you or any kid over the age of 10 has even a half-interest in the definition of the word "teamwork," as well as the words "real-life suspense," this is the movie.

Consistency isn't the chief virtue of Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle, but at its best this ragged satire is bracingly, caustically funny. [27 Mar 1987, p.F-C]

The actors are more than fine. Demoustier is the key, making her character's shifts in astonishment and perplexity honest and plausible.

The kind of movie some audiences are starved for, a comedy with a human face, warmth and spirit.

Both the movie and Denzel Washington are knockouts.

A triumph that deserves a broad audience.

Though "Keys" is not Amelio's best, it has an emotional power almost equal to anything he's done.

Perfect for family viewing.

Withering study of white-collar alcoholics.

The on-screen talents, savvy and fine company all, have been ready for something like this far longer than the opportunity has been available.

Everything about Kung Fu Panda is a little better, a little sharper, a little funnier than the animated run of the mill.

I admire this film’s craft. And I would’ve appreciated a messier, inner-life impulse to go with it.

The Secret Garden is as much a movie for adults with keen memories of childhood as it is a children's movie.

The film is worth seeing, if you have any fondness for the writer who co-created "Beyond the Fringe" and who is second only to Stoppard in his sprightly but mellow wit.

Disney's smashing new mythological feature cartoon, is one of funniest and most purely entertaining of all the recent Disney animated efforts.

A worthy film on a great, tragic subject.

Among the finest hours of horror star Boris Karloff. [18 Oct 2005, p.C3]

Sir! No Sir! honors those who fought, then questioned the morality of that fight, then joined the national protest.

Like a dream, you’re left with thoughts and impressions to mull over for a long time. These sticky images and profound ideas lodge themselves in place, even if you’re not quite sure they all fit together.

They are all more capable performers than are usually found in horror films, and the script is not as stiffly self-conscious as the average, either, with the result that this does of devastation is a bit easier to take than some of its predecessors. [22 Jun 1954, p.27]

This is a quiet thriller and a middle-aged romance, and it's full of desperation and oozing anxiety.

Damon is becoming one of the truest, most reliable actors of his generation. And Eastwood has more films in development, proving, at 79, that 79 is just a number like any other.

Without making a big deal out of it, Big Hero 6 features a shrewdly balanced and engaging group of male and female characters of various ethnic backgrounds. It'd be nice to live in a world where this wasn't worth a mention, but it is. And yet the movie belongs to the big guy.

Strange, funny and powerfully moving… Burton has found a way to move through camp to emotional authenticity, to communicate-through a concentration of style and an innocence of regard-a depth and sincerity of feeling that his deliberately (and often, comically) flat characters could not summon on their own. [14 Dec 1990, Friday, p.C]

Earns its happy ending like few other contemporary dramas concerned with the fate of a child. It puts you through hell for that ending, in fact, hell being modern-day Russia.

See it; see those three performers go to town.

A model of conventional thriller suspense, the movie isn’t. A stimulating cry for “Black culture and artistic integrity,” in King’s words, and for the true value of a well-made commodity, whether it’s shoes or songs — that, the movie surely is.

The performances reveal precisely what Rivette wants to reveal, which is to say, in conventional psychological terms, not a great deal.

It's an odd film in some ways. The porn milieu is detailed in ways at once sparing, in terms of actual screen time, and bluntly explicit. The odd-couple relationship guiding the story has its familiarities. But where it counts, 'Starlet' ... allows its characters room to maneuver within the potential cliches.

It is a wonder, marked by a sense of wondrous skepticism that has nothing to do with cynicism.

A small, delicate concoction of moods and moments, far quieter than all the current Phoenix-related hoopla. But his heartbreaking performance may incline audiences to think of him in a new light, or at least return to thinking of him in the old one.

Sin City is an evil place, full of awful people, an obsessive movie full of monomaniacal tough guys. Yet when Miller and Rodriguez move it into gear, noir lives.

With its one-of-a-kind poetic lamentation, Young's voice sounds more peculiarly lovely than ever. A small picture, but good and true.

The subject of Iraq haunts and divides us so much these days that a film like Laura Poitras' documentary My Country My Country is valuable, no matter its level of achievement.

I hoped for a movie relatively free of Hollywood hogwash and melodramatics, and got it. What I didn’t expect was the calm brilliance of scenes such as Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton, playing two of Weinstein’s 1990s targets, telling their stories so truthfully, with such economical emotional punch, that it’s both heartbreaking and enough to make you seethe.

A cinematic treat, thanks to the well-defined supporting characters, the flawless attention to detail and a performance by the great Roshan Seth - one of the most underrated actors of his generation - which is just about perfect.

The beauties of Shower lie in its human observation, in its funny interplay, candor, lusty acting and hearty simplicity - and also in its warm imagery and the fascinating symbolic use it makes of water.

A counterintuitive, riveting documentary so honest that it will either become a rock movie classic or a severe embarrassment for the heavy metal band.

Source Code is a contraption, no doubt. But it works.

This 1955 Todd-AO blockbuster, made from the landmark American stage musical, faithfully preserves the play's robust spirit and extroverted charm, while resetting it among vast golden and green outdoor vistas. [15 Nov 2005, p.C3]

Amid so many earnest, forgettable COVID-era and COVID-acknowledging movies around the world, here’s one that truly goes for it.

It's a glorious film, in large part because it is a reminder of in what low regard we often hold those of "a certain age." You'll come out of the theater full of respect and admiration for these people.

These girls can cook, and Yamashita captures them with an austere, unhurried visual style that has been rightly compared to rock aficionado/filmmakers Aki Kaurismaki ("Ariel") and Jim Jarmusch ("Mystery Train"). [8 Dec 2006, p.2]

Gavras’ ending makes it clear where her sympathies lie. In the process of building to that conclusion, she overplays her metaphor a bit, but still, political tracts rarely come this sweet and sympathetic.

So it’s uneven, but the good stuff’s unusually lively and buoyant.

First-time director Timothy Bjorklund, who also shepherded Teacher's Pet on television, conducts some inventive, devilish sequences.

Superb, vibrantly emotional drama. [27 Apr 2001, p.C1]

Whipsawing between hope and devastation, Queen & Slim speaks to this specific cultural moment. It's not with a grounded realism, but with an almost operatic sense of melodrama, in the writing, performances and with Matsouka's daring cinematic style, where beauty and politics are inextricably intertwined.

Cooper is the reason to see the film, which was photographed by Tak Fujimoto in the dour tones he brought to a more flagrant realm of evil, and FBI detective work, in "The Silence of the Lambs."

The kind of movie that can get you simultaneously laughing and shaking your head at its audacity.

Boyle's new movie is mostly a zombie fiasco, closer to the vacuities of "The Beach" than the scintillating social satire of "Trainspotting."

A movie with surprises, some of which you should discover for yourself. But its main surprises may be the power of Collette's performance and the beautifully controlled mood and atmosphere Brooks creates.

John Sayles has directed an authentic looking and sounding film, featuring cinematography by the great Haskell Wexler. [02 Oct 1987, p.A]

A romantic comedy of grace, buoyancy and surprising emotional depth, filled with civilized pleasures.

Seeing what may be Coppola’s least compelling film has a way of reminding you of all her better ones, especially in the seriocomic vein. Those include the aforementioned “Lost in Translation,” along with “The Bling Ring,” “Somewhere,” even the playfully anachronistic “Marie Antoinette.” If they’re new to you, have at them.

Arnold reminds us that the best thrillers don't settle for taking the audience away from their everyday experience; rather, they burrow inward and, by sheer power of cinematic observation, make it hard for us to look away lest we miss something--on a screen or off.

Between the funky Alain Goraguer soundtrack, the sexy outfits, the surreal landscapes and the heavily metaphorical plot, the film still looks and sounds unlike anything else, either in animation or in sci-fi. [21 Jun 2016, p.C3]

Besides being super-duper gory, of course, the new movie is jaunty, good-looking and full of what you might call esprit de corpses.

It’s half-crock and half-sublime, which seems about right for its subject.

Beharie is a tremendous actress, and Miss Juneteenth offers her a complex and nuanced role to prove her range. Peoples visually creates a rich tapestry of place, offering a peek into this world and filling it with believable characters, while carefully threading the historical and cultural significance of Juneteenth throughout. Daniel Patterson's cinematography is remarkable: beautiful, and with an easy, authentic groove.

It's one of the most faithful movie adaptations of any Dick story to date, and it comes from the scariest of all his books, as well as the truest.

One of the quintessential Hollywood shipboard romances, with William Powell and Kay Francis as the seemingly doomed lovers who meet on the high seas. [26 Mar 2000, p.35]

The Dinner Game works thanks to some exceptionally strong acting, impeccable timing and rapid-fire delivery of many funny lines.

It is a fine little old-school thriller.