Garcia's calm, steady guidance behind the camera, along with his nicely finessed faith in a very good cast, makes Mother and Child a fuller and more satisfying example of this storytelling style than we've seen lately.

It's such a knowledgeable work and so pleasantly obsessed with its subject that it will interest even audiences whose attraction to wine is only casual.

It's fun, but not obvious fun.

Lord and Miller are two of a small handful of Hollywood screenwriters whose style is instantly identifiable. They’re adept at flicking a dozen jokes in different directions in the same minute of screen time. If “Lego Movie 2” tries too much, and gets lost in its own messages about familial cooperation, that’s the price of their brand of invention.

By and large this is an admirably sober, responsible piece of work, one that covers much of the same ground as Dances With Wolves but with far less self-importance and New Age babbling. Kleiser's use of the Alaskan landscapes is stirring without dipping into postcard prettiness, and the animal action (which includes a guest appearance by Bart of The Bear) is smooth and expressive.

Like all good popular entertainments, the best of it sings.

In every design detail, the physical production and realization of You Won’t Be Alone really does take you somewhere. However unsettling, it’s a film that knows what it’s doing.

An offhanded, dizzy tale of uncompromising love in a wobbly world. Its main characters often can't see or stand up straight, but they never lose sight of that one person who occupies their hearts. [29 Aug 1997, p.A]

Smart and well-crafted, and it boasts complex characters, effective star turns and evocative photography of a small Alaskan town in summertime, when the sun never sets. It's a solid Hollywood thriller.

When applied properly, short-form animation can bring dreams and nightmares to life like no other medium.

Sorkin’s writing may be better served by a director who can bring a new set of perspectives and dynamics to the work, rather than simply presenting them head-on. Yet it works anyway. The actors win on appeal. And it’s always worth revisiting this particular chapter of Chicago unrest and injustice, because that chapter, tragically, is always up for another rewrite.

At its sharpest, The Heat actually moves and banters like a comedy, with sharply timed and edited dialogue sequences driven by a couple of pros ensuring a purposeful sense of momentum.

What is most impressive about Kurosawa's direction is how he uses the entire frame, complete with expository background action, to fill in the story blanks. His eagerness to suggest, rather than declare, marks him as a director with confidence to spare.

First-time feature director Wes Ball's version of The Maze Runner makes the cliches smell daisy-fresh.

The anecdotes weave an entrancing narrative, though the movie could have benefited from more vintage performance footage of Butterfield’s band at the height of its powers.

Fundamentally Blades of Glory works; it's full of laughs both subtle and ridiculous.

Behind the camera, Gordon-Levitt shows serious promise.

It's a sordid but expert shocker.

This film works so well simply because every moment of it is suffused with the joy a new baby brings into the world. Save for a needlessly mean comic shot at an Arab businessman, it couldn't be more appropriate for family viewing. [8 Dec 1995, p.D]

The Post has a lot going for it, alongside a certain amount of hokum.

By the end of Lake of Fire, you know full well you’re in the presence of a deeply conflicted filmmaker, bound to make all sides uneasy, even enraged.

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.

Though Day Watch seems less shocking and overwhelmingly strange than "Night Watch," it's another rocking mix of gritty thriller and glitzy sci-fi, once again in the vein of the director Bekmambetov's idols Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers.

Director Jeff Nichols lets the action unfold slowly following an impromptu insult, but the escalation of hatred and pain feels natural.

Call it a successful failure. Some movies worth seeing are like that.

One of the classic midnight movies of the Pink Flamingos -- Rocky Horror era, star-director Jodorowsky's metaphysical western about a violent wanderer plays like an especially gun-crazy Sergio Leone saga filtered through several layers of radical European/Latin American cinema and Christian and Buddhist mysticism. Zero cool in its day, it remains a striking film oddity. [16 Feb 2007, p.C4]

Doesn't revert to hairpin plot twists or other dramatic trickery to hook us in; Auerbach simply lets us live with her characters-which, it turns out, is reward enough.

A dreadlocks-wearing Moises Arias renders a career-best work, and his first in a Spanish-language feature, in the soiled shoes of Bigfoot, who appoints himself dictator when the chance arises to go rogue in the jungle. The Colombian American actor nails the demanding part procuring the larger-than-life persona of a deranged leader confident beyond his size: a toned Napoleon in briefs and black paint.

The movie's lovers and its haters can agree on one thing. The third section, set in Greece and dealing with another, less interesting magic spell cast on Hoffmann's soprano sweetie (Ann Ayars), ranks as the weakest. [10 Apr 2015, p.C4]

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

The movie doesn’t quite stick the landing, piling on while lingering at the gate for an extra 10 minutes or so. The gore level may not be a shock to fans of Alvarez’s previous features, but for the casual franchise fan, well, it’s gory. But the best of Alien: Romulus reminds us that some franchises are more open to a variety of directorial approaches than others.

Postcards From the Edge is alive only when it's being as mean and vicious as its little heart can be, which is more than often enough. [12 Sep 1990, p.1]

It's a strength of this carefully composed, almost obsessively controlled picture that it has no interest in the conventional biographical focus on a subject.

Fred meets Ginger in this goofy South American romance; they were secondary leads who stole the show. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

The stars, it must be said, are slightly more interesting than the characters, which is another way of saying Rogowski and Huller amplify what’s there on the page.

An important, timeless and sometimes troublesome classic has been filmed successfully and at long last.

The results? More evocative than provocative. But evocative is not nothing.

Wildly inventive, sweetly subversive.

It's hard to focus on the travails when the music is so lively and good.

Nanny McPhee maintains a satisfying, all-ages balance between broad comedy and human warmth.

Doesn't really add up to much -- except a good time. But it's smart, funny and cute. With all that going for you, who needs to be money? [25 October 1996, Friday, p.H]

The biggest surprise may be what the filmmaker doesn't show; he withholds a big dramatic payoff, so the audience must fill in the blanks.

Never quite transcends its movie-of-the-week trappings. But either you're glad to have spent time with these three generations or you aren't. Bottom line: I was.

Starts out like a salacious, rump-centric and blithely bare-breasted hip-hop video and ends up in the realm of scary and inspired trash. That's not meant negatively.

It's true that this sugarcoated romp doesn't take itself, or its source material, particularly seriously, but if you're confident your grasp of European history can withstand the assault of two hours of bubbly entertainment, Marie Antoinette guarantees you a good time.

Not everything in “Mockingjay” is dynamic or remarkable. Director Lawrence, working from Peter Craig and Danny Strong's screenplay, occasionally mistakes somnambulance for solemnity.

As in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” The Orphanage relies on a risky blend of clinically realistic horrors and poetic suggestions of an alternate world, one that can be visited, but at a price.

A daring, entertaining, but somewhat disappointing affair, something of an overreacher despite Lee's usual pyrotechnics and a brilliant cast.

The film has many strengths, but one of its major assets is its solid sight line. Though we might expect it to go sentimental - with its cute cat, torn families and sympathetic, pretty protagonists - it doesn't.

Estrada can be faulted for not fully developing these supporting characters, or for not weaving them seamlessly into his story. His eye all along is so clearly and surely on The Point that at times plot details and peripheral performances are washed over.

It's meticulous, fastidiously controlled and a tiny bit enervated. I've seen it twice; it's successful enough in what it's attempting to merit at least one viewing. But even after two, you may struggle with what's not there, and should be, or could be.

Fast and frenetic and so unvarnished that it can make you feel unclean watching it. The film rubs your face in glamour and filth. But in the midst of the blood and hysteria, Kilmer plays Holmes with the dirty-angelic looks and wheedling charm of a seedy golden boy on the brink of doom.

Hinges on humiliation and vengeance, which makes it like most other modern horror titles. Its focus on sexual assault, however, puts it in a different, more primal league.

The Infiltrator works best in its unglamorous scenes of everyday deception.

If you’re at all interested in what a reliably compelling, stubbornly solemn commercial filmmaker can do with money, imagination and no little nerve, Dune is epic enough — even if there’s a wee hole in the middle, where a more compelling protagonist belongs.

The sort of movie that both rewards and tries your patience.

McAdams, who resembles a more compact and subtle Geena Davis, captures both the strength and the insecurity beneath her sharp-witted heroine's aim-to-please facade.

Watt's direction is stylish, and her choices feel sure-handed.

Visually sumptuous and playfully creepy.

Though critical of the director's selfish character, the story does make a case for the macho man as someone who won't tolerate phonies. [14 Sep 1990, p.C]

Throughout the film, cinematographer Arthur Jafa brings in lovely, imaginative photography, showing a remarkable eye for light and composition, while Dash provides crisp, sensitive direction in putting together a moving work about a simple but proud people immersed in a distinct culture and ritual as they try to "touch their own spirits."

The movie has a nasty, creepy edge that never lets up, and the characters are deliberately grating and alienating. This is a thriller that, like some classic noirs, glories in its own mean aura, its casual profanity and grotesque violence.

It is an actors' showcase, without being showy, and Moreau and Tukur reveal radically different personalities with just enough in common to make things interesting.

A determinedly easygoing comedy about the Israeli-Palestinian divide, Tel Aviv on Fire gets by on the low-keyed assurance of its cast and its medium-grade amusements.

Even if this new version of "Hitchhiker" doesn't quite capture it all, you'll still want to stick your thumb out and catch a ride.

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.

A beautifully tooled action thriller about love and terrorism.

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).

Despite the movie's limitations, it's very satisfying to watch Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini enjoy each other's company on screen, as characters, because it's satisfying to watch them enjoy each other's company as performers.

Beside its major virtues, it contains a vice: that one flat lead performance. Who would have thought Kevin Spacey would ever go dull on us?

The movie won't be for everyone -- it's a little rough for preteens, and it doesn't throw many laughs the audience's way -- but along with "Sweeney Todd," this is Burton's most interesting project in a decade

Sweeps us back into a terrifying and desperate string of events and makes us feel them - and, more crucially, understand them as well.

While the film's strength lies in an ensemble effort, it's really Sarah and Jannik who provide the film with its most compelling characters, its momentum and, ultimately, its heart.

The beautifully told but predictable story of two athletes who competed in the 100-meter dash for England in the 1924 Olympics...The film has received choruses of praise prior to its nationwide opening this week. Although it is extremely well made, I frankly don't understand what the shouting is about. Good, yes; great, no. [25 Dec 1981, p.56]

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

In the end, grips us precisely because its actors are so utterly absorbed in their roles, so unfettered and nakedly expressive. This is the kind of acting we always look for, but rarely see.

A shapely film, considered and concise. And if its rhetorical slickness eventually covers up its emotional core, that slickness has a pleasure all its own. [21 August 1987]

It's refreshing that a family movie dares to be as emotionally charged as this one, but you wish Miller had paused before he piled everything on and said to himself, "That'll do."

Johnson-McGoldrick’s facility with both the tropes of the "Conjuring" films, and the Warren’s relationship, keeps the film swift and emotionally resonant, while Chaves pushes the cinematic aesthetic to the max.

When a loving son makes a documentary about his father, you can forgive him for laying it on a bit thick - especially when his love for his subject, Ron Santo, is shared by an entire city.

The actors make it work. Greg Kinnear's Coach Vermeil exudes Southern California good vibrations without a lot of fuss or attitude.

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.

Catfish is fascinating. At the same time, it emits a condescending, pitying odor.

A lean, mean tension machine, setting up its premise, executing it with smarts, throwing in enough twists to keep things interesting, and wrapping it up before anyone can get fatigued or reflective. It's on the money.

It plays as a comedy in its structure, and a drama in the margins, on the sidelines. Minor, clever, wonderfully acted, Non-Fiction makes room for jokes about “Star Wars,” Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” and, at one point, Binoche herself. It’s funny that way.

A nerve-racking noir from Australia.

It's a moving tale of love and destruction in unexpected places, unexamined lives.

Corny as it may sound though, it's all true-except, of course, for that mythical movie last-second championship bit.

Younger viewers might be annoyed with Saving Face for not being more in-your-face progressive and edgy. Older audiences will be happy that it's not.

Even with its drawbacks, I found “The Watchers” worth watching, even with its odd (and perhaps too faithful to the book) final 15 minutes. The director works well with cinematographer Eli Arenson to envelop the chamber-sized ensemble in various shades of dread, or comfort.

Easygoing but surprisingly likable comedy.

The Departed exists in a movie-place about as far from personal statements as a storied director can get. Maybe those days for Scorsese are long gone. But Scorsese's sense of craft remains sure.

Dans Paris is a cohesive, albeit sometimes creepy, fabric of disparate modes and colors.

Catching Fire has the bonus of a genuinely charismatic performer at its center. Jennifer Lawrence, now an Oscar winner thanks to "Silver Linings Playbook," emotes like crazy throughout "Catching Fire," but you never catch her acting.

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.

On one level, Late August, Early September is a story of how Adrien's illness and death affects those who respect and love him, but the film also finds the time and energy to suggest how the inevitable twists and delays that oftentimes comprise our early years can begin to feel like indulgences in the face of our own mortality. [17 Sep 1999, p.F]

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is a visual splendor, from the fun way the creatures are portrayed to the pacing. Keeping Tartakovsky as director of all three films creates a fluid sense of comedy and look.

With its modest, no-nonsense approach, Hamburger Hill seems, curiously, more like the first film in a cycle than a late entry. After the baroque extravagance of the Vietnam films that have come before it, the movie runs a good chance of being overlooked. But it's an intelligent, craftsmanlike job, with a power of its own; it merits recognition. [28 Aug 1987, p.AC]