Big moves with polish and assurance. It's too soon to tell whether Marshall has anything of her own to say, but Big is proof that she can handle the Hollywood machine, and that is no small thing.

From A.I. Bezzerides' "The Long Haul," with George Raft and Bogie as tough trucking brothers and Ann Sheridan and Ida Lupino as the good woman and the bad.[06 Oct 2006, p.C8]

Keeps you off-balance as it establishes a world where every conversation is a flirtation, and trouble and heartbreak sneak in on little cat feet when no one's looking.

Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 romantic comedy by writer-director Billy Wilder that fondly re-created the atmosphere--the brio, wit, star personality and sardonic joie de vivre--of the great Hollywood-continental comic romances of the 1930s. And there's an obvious reason: It's a tribute from one movie comic master to the man who taught him how to do it. [15 Oct 1997, p.1]

One of the cinema's supreme, most outrageously eccentric and audacious technical experiments: the legendary single shot movie.

The performances of Holly Hunter and Ron Silver had something Stone’s and Carell’s lack: true drive and animal energy, a sense of athletic competitors who mean business even when they’re kidding, or saying they are.

Based on a true story, the movie has a hypnotic, documentary like appeal despite outlandish performances by Crispin Glover as the ringleader of the kids and Dennis Hopper as a wacked-out former hippie who offers them shelter. River's Edge is challenging to watch if only because it doesn't lecture. It simply presents these young people as wandering, stoned souls; shows a few of them grappling with moral responsibility, and allows the rest to fail. As we leave the theater, we can't help but wonder how common their behavior may be.

Bird has serious promise outside the animation realm; in "Ghost Protocol" he errs, I think, by shoving the camera too close to the bodies in the frame, so that the momentum and spatial relationships become awfully hard to parse.

Has the resonance, eloquence and formal rigor of a piece of great literature.

A funny valentine by an old master, woos us into the dance.

A fit tribute to an entertainer who, no matter what hate or hardship threw in his way or how many mistakes he made, we can't stop loving.

Don't let the fast-and-loose vibe fool you: Right up to its operatic finale, this is one tight one last job.

It's an old lesson, but one well told with fresh faces in Mask.

Classic low-budget '50s sci-fi thriller, brilliantly scripted by Richard Matheson from his novel. [01 Sep 2006, p.C7]

This one features the heartbreaking young Vivien Leigh with her flower-like face, flashing eyes and seductive fragility; Robert Taylor is a little stiff as the hero. (isn't he always?), but it's a nice lush MGM production. [31 Oct 1999, p.34]

Like Thompson's work itself, it sometimes feels like a smoke screen, a colorful but distracting, distracted set of pretenses hiding as much as they reveal.

Black's retro-noir reminds us why we love movies: because they can surprise us, even when we're ankle deep in bullet casings, bodies and enough twists to tie us in knots.

In "Crossing Delancey," veteran independent filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver returns to the Jewish milieu of her early hit "Hester Street." This time, however, she turns ethnic drama into romantic comedy. [16 Sep 1988, p.A]

Certain things in Three Monkeys can only be described as brilliant.

One of the best and funniest things that Martin, as writer and actor, has ever done.

Palmer delivers an on-the-fly masterclass in overlapping comic skills, sometimes heightened (I love her eyeblink-quick, frozen-statue reaction to the good-looking, possibly homicidal hunk named Maniac, played by Patrick Cage), sometimes subtle and heartfelt.

Malick's nature documentarian impulse has never been more flagrant than in The New World, yet it has never made more organic sense. The film, which is superb on every technical and design level, has both greatness and fuzzy-headedness in it.

Yes, Steve Carell can carry a movie. Yes, Judd Apatow can direct a movie. Yes, we'll all relate to a middle-aged virgin. And yes, when an aesthetician yells to her assistant "we're gonna need more wax," you best run.

Successfully avoids the grandiose mythmaking that has been the bane of the baseball movie from ''Pride of the Yankees'' to ''The Natural.'' Rather than a vapid national epic, it is a warm, droll, deftly cracked romantic comedy. [15 June 1988]

The Cats of Mirikitani seems all too short; it has enough meat to be turned into an excellent dramatic film.

An enjoyable road movie that feels both comfortable and completely fresh.

One funny movie - for at least half the time.

A beautiful, almost defiant film on an unusual subject: love among the elderly.

Quite entertaining.

Sam Dunn's unabashed wet kiss to his favorite genre of music, heavy metal, a.k.a. devil's music.

This is a movie for all cultures and all people, for families and especially for those who have lost them.

Rivets and amazes, even if it falls just frustratingly short of the mind-expanding grandeur it could have had.

Much of this strikingly human, rapidly paced and laudably well-rounded film is fascinating.

The biggest missteps come toward the end, when Prince-Bythewood's storybook instincts get the best of her and force a wrap-up that doesn't feel earned.

Be warned: Thirst is one of those pictures that tacks on another chapter just when you think it’s wrapping up.

Leave it to the first-class actors dining out on those roles to make the cat and the mouse interesting and unpredictable.

Clueless is no "Fast Times" when it comes to character development or the merging of comedy and drama, and it might have worked better if it had been more story-oriented and plot-centered. But thanks to Heckerling's spirited direction and cutting-edge script, it is, "like . . . majorly and furiously golden." [19 July 1995]

This remarkable movie is really one-of-a-kind. [15 Dec 1995]

Hollywood legends introduce a collection of moments from the finest MGM musicals, ranging from the first all-sound musical -- Broadway Melody of 1930 -- to the climactic ballet from An American in Paris. [02 Dec 2011, p.3]

What’s missing are unexpected beats, some rougher edges, a few plot-undependent moments that bring us closer to the way these characters live, breathe and feel.

Eichner makes Bros easy company, even when the character isn’t easy, because he knows there is more than one side to even the most rabid pop culture fiend. And more than one way to score a laugh.

It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood.

So troubling and unflinchingly honest that watching it becomes a test of empathy and compassion.

Viveka Seldahl and Sven Wollter will touch you to the core in a film you will never forget -- that you should never forget.

A Christmas perennial: a witty, polished, lushly sentimental and amusingly sexless romantic comedy in which suave angel Cary Grant mixes in the affairs of troubled bishop David Niven and his lovely wife Loretta Young. [24 Dec 2004, p.C10]

What’s missing is the vital emotional turbulence of Sciamma’s modern classic, or of any three-dimensional story of passion and feeling. The compensations here are smaller, but they’re welcome, too; they’re more about two fine actresses digging for what’s underneath the obvious contours.

The beauty of the Turkish film Climates, a small but indelible masterpiece, is more than skin-deep. No 2006 film meant more to me. It's as sharp and lovely as the best Chekhov short stories.

The film is reasonably effective all the same, though Affleck has yet to learn how to conduct each scene like a musical score, paying attention to matters of tempo and dynamics.

One of the pleasures of Magic Mike is its egalitarian spirit and dedication to the ensemble.

When the songs themselves take center stage the movie works. What remains in the wings constitutes another, fuller story.

It’s one of his good ones. Small, modest, a little stodgy. But good, and even a little brave in its courtroom-drama willingness to dunk the audience in the main character’s soup of anxiety almost immediately.

A sprightly fairy tale full of darkness and delight from seemingly unlikely movie collaborators: author Roald Dahl and director-star Danny DeVito.

Yang powerfully evokes a world of pervasive greed and brutality, where conventional moral values have gone dangerously awry and life is cheap. [21 Nov 1997, p.M]

Scott’s production works on the level of classy, confident yarn-spinning.

Diop is a reactive wonder as well as an exceptional scene partner as she strategizes, subtly, how to work with or around or deflect the microaggressions coming from her “new family” and, more happily, her few friends in this strange new land.

The Cabin in the Woods is pure mechanics, as if the shadowy Dharma Initiative of "Lost" switched agents and found itself at the center of a brain-bending ensemble drama.

A brilliant comeback by a filmmaker, George Armitage, who never should have been away.

The teaming of Robinson and Rudd periodically gets Friendship in gear. But the film’s primary comic impulse equates to the sound of gears grinding, in an attempt to shift from second to third.

A peach of a story delightfully imagined by Dahl and lushly realized by Burton. It's full of witty or awesome scenes, flights of fancy and characters either totally, lovably sweet or outrageously, humorously rotten.

The 1979 crime melodrama boasts a literate John Sayles screenplay and breezy direction by Lewis Teague. Robert Conrad and Robert Forster epitomize the enduring '30s tough-guy mystique in supporting roles. [09 Jan 1992, p.6C]

Swift, amoral and nicely unpredictable.

Quinceanera took both the dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and it's easy to see why.

Moore's best movie, and one of the most blisteringly effective polemics and documentaries ever.

While the filmmaking is standard documentary fare and the approach overtly biased, the narration, with tales of intelligence intrigue and ruthless foreign policy, is compelling and convincing.

Moskowitz may soon find himself in the same boat as many of the artists he is analyzing, because Stone Reader is going to be one tough act to follow.

The acting in All or Nothing is superb. Everyone creates a character we can immediately register and recognize as true.

The movie is very hard on its protagonist, and not all the obstacles, humiliations and setbacks escape the realm of cheap pathos. Bell and company keep it honest, though.

Does JFK capture the truth? Possibly, in a poetic sense. Is it a compelling film? Most assuredly. [20 Dec 1991]

Anything made well in advance of the pandemic feels like a weird period piece these days, of course, yet Jury’s small, affecting picture fits snugly within the pandemic realities of 2020.

It's a good film, sturdily and somberly made, but it never catches fire.

Exotica may be a gloomy journey up river, but it's a trip worth taking. See it with a friend. One who has something to say. [03 Mar 1995, p.J]

Too expensive for its own good, too chic for comfort.

It's a tasty primer on the man, the eater, the critic and the city.

A pleasantly nutty thriller about a crafty, high-end toy, M3GAN exploits a child’s grief for the greater good of the killer-doll genre. That may be enough for 100 minutes of your early January.

Cutler’s documentary skip-walks a fine line between a great, unstable talent’s rise and fall, and between the un-tender trap of addiction and the joyous energy of a Chicago-bred giant.

A year into their new lives, all three men experience profound isolation. How, they wonder, can Americans live such anti-social lives, so unconcerned with the idea of societal interdependence? This is the chief unexamined question raised by a worthy picture. What is there holds you all the same.

Delivers that rare combination of winning traits. It's a low-key comedy with a risque hook -- a seemingly straight woman dabbles in lesbianism -- yet it maintains an old-fashioned faith in literate dialogue, believable behavior and themes that reach beyond the plot points.

When Aimee and Jaguar gets on one of its frequent rolls, it can evoke memories of Bertolucci or even De Sica.

A grand ride. Sleek, beautiful and packed with emotion, not too flashy but full of heart, this is a movie worthy of its unlikely yet glorious subject: Depression-era America's best-loved racehorse and the two races that made him a legend.

The acting is exceptional. If parts of A Secret veer toward soap opera, the ensemble work reduces the suds to a minimum.

Even a first-rate director can get a little lost in the tone management and narrative streamlining process.

It’s an efficient, well-acted thriller from the writing-directing team — relative newcomers to features — of Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole.

The performances by Pinnick and Spence are clean, vivid and honestly felt, with a lot of the best work emerging nonverbally in the spaces between characters closing a gap.

The movie at hand is small, I suppose, and it may not be enough for some audiences. It’s enough for me.

You wait for months, sometimes, for a movie to show you something new. "7 Boxes" does exactly that, and while it's no more than a briskly managed bit of escapism, it's a really good example of same.

The movie proceeds in quiet, reflective tones, subtly energized by a fully realized visual environment and a clever variety of editing rhythms. Nine Days transcends the potential limitation and occasional strain of its premise.

Superman Returns has everything going for it except surprise.

A smart, funny and hip adventure film in a summer of car wrecks and explosions. [4 July 1997]

Cronenberg knows what he’s doing, and this is his most assured act of science-fiction effrontery to date.

A three-hour delight… The movie generates much of its power by being so life-affirming at a time when people feel nervous about the future. [9 Nov 1990, Friday, p.C]

A small but droll big-box comedy.