Though it`s a handsome film, carefully staged and courageously low-key, the transition to the screen only exaggerates the disposable nature of the material while depriving it of the novel`s one stylistic strength, its unreliable narrator.

Saoirse Ronan does subtly spectacular work in every phase of this character’s odyssey.

I found the first 30 minutes of Wreck-It Ralph a lot of fun, the second and third 30 minutes progressively more routine.

What works about ParaNorman is its subtle interweave of the stoical and the heroic. The voice work is inspired, without a lot of theatrical flourish. The low-key musical score by Jon Brion, one of the year's best, teases out the macabre humor in each new challenge faced by Norman.

The interview sessions are all disastrous in one way or another; Let It Rain is at its wittiest when Michel flails around, grousing about his own divorce and child custody troubles without ever quite asking his interview subject an actual question

Prince is an exciting entertainer, an equal opportunity employer-especially when it comes to talented women-and his act is a physical tour de force. It's the next best thing to attending one of his concerts and sitting near the stage. [20 Nov 1987, p.A]

See the movie, flaws and all, simply to see where you stand in this digital river that runs through all our lives, connecting and isolating us in ways we're barely able to comprehend.

It’s stark, unadorned drama, and it feels real, reminding us that these are fine actors, giving their all.

Chicago-bred Haskell is such an intense, contentious, prickly figure, he would tend to take over any film portrait, and he definitely dominates here.

Hellboy's adventures may take him to you-know-where and back, but the movie remains in limbo.

One of the great movie family sagas, a fascinating revelation of both the dark and bright sides of the American dream. [05 Mar 2000, p.24C]

The tone of "Hail, Caesar!" is even and assured, yet the comic inspiration is sporadic.

It’s nearly impossible not to respond to The Color Purple and Celie’s odyssey, in any version. But it’s also possible to wish for a movie that felt more like real life, and real lives, in all their emotional colors, without so much showbiz.

What a relief! John Hughes has decided to quit being the patron saint of sniveling teens and to turn his sympathetic gaze on sniveling adults.

Think of the Slocumbs as distant relatives of "The Royal Tenenbaums," only more dysfunctional and far from attractively "quirky."

Geyrhalter made, among others, “Our Daily Bread,” an equally arresting visual essay on industrial food production. We need filmmakers such as this one very badly these days. We need to know what we’re up to as a species, in the name of comfort, convenience, attractive home furnishings and hazardous disregard for the global house we live in.

You may buy the ending or not. The filmmakers certainly do, which helps. And the film is modest but skillful and heartfelt, spiced just so by Plaza and company.

Has everything but a personality. [15 July 1988, Friday, p.A]

The new film works. It's rousing.

The tone of Dope is very interesting — funny, but rarely stupid-funny.

Reginald Owen stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, the Christmas-hating curmudgeon who finally gets the spirit in this 1938 adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. [05 Dec 2014, p.C2]

Even though the film shows very little of the rough stuff, it's still fairly traumatizing. By the end you may feel like seeing a documentary about a more fair-minded and evenhanded treatment of a society's citizens.

For the majority of the run time, Bugonia is the kind of film you respect more than you enjoy, as the archness and absurdity of Stone’s character is too dissonant with the sincerity of Teddy’s sadness at the core of this story.

Nothing Altman made before or after Brewster McCloud is quite so heightened with enjoyably sophomoric and bizarre humor.

I took the film not as any sort of design for living, or facile explanation of anything, but as a design for communicating — honestly, humanely, painfully, sometimes — for the good of whatever relationships yours happen to be.

The final third of this grim, accomplished film felt sluggish to me; just when he might’ve profitably gone crazier with the scenario, and the storytelling rhythm, Cronenberg putters and lets the audience get out ahead of the developments.

A rewardingly twisted hybrid of low-fi mumblecore and stylized thriller.

Evil Dead 2 is, pardon the expression, consistently lively--a ghoulish splatter comedy that uses wildly excessive gore to provoke the kind of shock that lies between a laugh and a scream. [10 Apr 1987, Friday, p.M]

Some of it's schematic and on the nose. But the grace notes are what make 50/50 better than simply "good enough."

Abrams knits together the ordinary stories of the mill town's inhabitants in a way that feels dramatic without showing their contrivances too obviously. And his casting of Courtney and Fanning was fortuitous, though Abrams' banter for the supporting kids grows tiresome in that "Goonies" way.

Take the theatrical flourish away from this story, however, and the story's thinness becomes apparent.

But though you'll laugh your head off, the whole film kind of morphs into a blur, with one poop/sex/abuse joke after another. It's exhausting, really. And save for the very best tellings, you do start to wonder: What's so funny?

Self-absorption is the vice of all these characters. That, not sex, is their sin--and Michell, Kureishi and their fine cast show this with a lucidity that cuts to the bone, a candor that draws blood.

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

The fetching comedy Priceless”(“Hors de Prix”) weighs about as much as its star, Audrey Tautou, but like Tautou’s pleasingly craven heroine it knows exactly what it’s doing.

What's so funny about Down and Out In Beverly Hills is not its moral imperative to appreciate life's simple, enduring pleasures. True, we get that message, and we appreciate it, but we already know that motto even if we don't live by it. No, what's funny is director Mazursky's extraordinarily fine eye and ear for capturing the way the wealthy residents of Beverly Hills walk, talk, dress and think.

The sheer outrageousness of its attitude is enough to make Heathers a very welcome relief in a field dominated by sanctimonious and second-hand virtue. [31 March 1989]

Many will find DaCosta’s take on the story didactic, I suppose, or low on genre payoffs. I’m eager to see it a second time, flaws and all. It’s alive and awake to where we are now.

If you're looking for a rock star to carry a movie mostly by himself, though, Iggy (aka James Osterberg), now 69, is a good candidate.

Director Barry Poltermann’s sweet little evocation of a show business career captures Reilly at “the twilight of an extraordinary life,” in Reilly’s words.

The mordant wit and paradoxical melancholic bounce you find in a great many Eastern European filmmakers informs every joke and rosy sexual encounter in the work of Czech writer-director Jiri Menzel.

A magnificent throwback to an almost vanished era of epic filmmaking by great filmmakers in thrall to their own passions, rather than to the studio bookkeepers.

The Rookie may be pushing buttons, but at least they're the right buttons.

A rare example of a literary film that preserves the best of its source while creatively filling up on it.

The beauty of The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack lies in its ability to transform itself into a sad tale of loss, regret and missed opportunities while it also remains a solid documentary about a once-influential artist seeking his place in the sun.

It's a simple story with complex reverberations and undercurrents, as secrets keep being revealed.

A lovely film with a deeply humane perspective.

Though the role might seem a real stretch for an actor who just won an Oscar for his Charlton Heston turn as Maximus in "Gladiator," he and the movie ace the test.

What’s effective and touching in A Compassionate Spy relates directly to the satisfaction of getting to know Joan Hall, a terrifically vital and reflective presence. We get, among other things, a glimpse of a long-lived marriage hounded by secrets and surveillance, but an abiding mutual trust.

It's pleasant as far as it goes. For all the blithe interaction among the central three performers, however, the material's conventional and predictable.

Pugh excels throughout. The movie works best, I think, as a black-comic treatise on what can befall a garden-variety passive-aggressive mixed blessing of a boyfriend if he’s not careful.

The Crow imbues its comic brutalism with emotion and satire. Too raw and pulpy, it probably shouldn't be regarded as a memorial to Brandon Lee. But as an obsessive rock 'n' roll comic book movie shocker of loony intensity, it stands, or flies, by itself.

The Stepfather is a nearly perfect work of popular entertainment. A thriller about a psychopathic killer, it is absolutely terrifying. At the same time it is a highly personal work, the expression of a gifted individual. [27 Feb 1987, p.A]

Melodrama triumphs. But here's at least some muted applause for a fine cast and filmmakers trying to confront the real world and its shadows.

This film is not an easy watch, provoking anxiety, discomfort and even judgment about parenting and motherhood. Her love for her son is never in question, but Grace is a wild animal, and it is at times terrifying to be asked to dive into the cracked psyche of a brilliant but troubled mind with such immediacy and presence.

Other scenes work better, like a joyous birthday party, and a school concert, and there’s an affability layered throughout Is This Thing On? that makes it more of a hangout movie about a tepid midlife crisis than forward-moving drama.

There is a good movie to be made about someone like Brandon, especially with someone like Fassbender, a performer of exceptional technical facility and a fascinating sense of reserve. McQueen's isn't quite it.

Predictable, corny and formulaic...Yet this latest triumph of the spelling-bee spirit, like last year's earnest, flawed film version of "Bee Season," features a film-saving performance where it counts most: from the kid playing the kid with big brain and even bigger heart.

The late U.S. Rep. Sonny Bono and his widow and successor Mary Bono have spent a good deal of time trying to save it. It's a hard task, but the film does suggest there's more to the sea than meets the eye.

One Crazy Horse staffer, also female, is asked on camera by a visiting journalist to define the cabaret's notion of eroticism. To "suggest," she says. To "seduce."

Challenging to follow, at best.

This latest in the ever-broadening Marvel movie landscape is fun. For an effects-laden franchise launch it's light on its feet, pretty stylish, worth seeing in Imax 3-D (for once, the up-charge is worth it) and full of tasty, classy performers enlivening the dull bits.

This one’s good! Also supergory, merrily heartless in its body count and its methods of slaughter. And funny.

A welcome surprise: a supernatural romantic comedy that works, graced with a cast just off-center enough to make it distinctive.

The movie is full, assured and extremely wry.

Blazes up constantly with a stunning, off-kilter brilliance, an incandescent force that sometimes explodes the space between us and the screen.

What you might not expect is how moving this whole story actually is. It’s not just the fun of figuring things out among this cast of colorful characters, rendered with a storybook look, it’s actually a tale about the importance of finding, and tending to, a flock.

Though the final journey drags at times, the early expository scenes in the shadows of Saint Sophia and assorted mosques are impressive and quite moving.

By the end we are left with a mildly amusing comedy and the lingering memory of a sterling cast that deserved better material.

Thanks to Echer, Nettelbeck and this delicious movie, I was able to hear "Country" and the other Jarrett tunes in scene after scene - heightening moods, lyricizing action and making Hamburg seem like a wintry love song. Predictable or not, that's often as good as it gets.

It doesn't matter much that Phoenix and Witherspoon sound more like Phoenix and Witherspoon than Cash and Carter. The chemistry is there. The actors walk their own line, successfully.

Six Degrees is the next best thing to a great play; a fantastically clever, verbally scintillating, consistently amusing one.

A highly exciting, visually alive thriller.

Wysocki is a genuine talent, as is Jacobs, but the subject of Terri remains a pleasant blur.

Match Point is fantastic to look at, sharply dramatic and Allen is--who knew?--a master of suspense.

Truly, Madly, Deeply, which takes on bereavement and regeneration, uneasily straddles the delicate line between the charming and the cloying. [24 May 1991, p.L]

One fears, however, that not every uncomfortable scene was scripted, and that we have just been privy to some awfully private moments. It makes for uneasy viewing, sure, but it's one of the most compelling rides around.

The film is a restrained, straightforward report about an iconoclastic family whose pain and dysfunction play out against a backdrop of tumbling ocean waves, muscular surfers and golden sunsets.

In a time when American TV is full of stories of missing loved ones, Abduction keenly explores the reactions of an altogether different society and also examines the universal, excruciating pain suffered by such victims and their families everywhere.

As a bonus, "Liquid" also includes eye-popping footage of the top surfers in the world (Taj Burrow, Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama) -- wave riders who make the impossible look easy.

Is the movie itself good? Half-good, I'd say - the second, more openly sentimental half.

Robust safari movie, partly remade from "Red Dust," co-starring Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. [23 Jun 2006, p.C2]

This movie might be better-maybe even a classic-if it were less urbane, if the New York tiger that Nicolas Cage and Richard Price unleashed could bare all his fangs, and not just fill the theater with his magnetic growl. Then Kiss of Death might really be a killer. [21 Apr 1995, p.C]

I've seen the fabulously acted Italian thriller The Double Hour twice now, and for all its intricate manipulations, it stays with me for a very simple reason: The love story at its bittersweet heart is played for keeps.

The latest film version loosely adapting the Wells story exploits it both ways, subtly and crassly. It works, thanks largely to a riveting and fearsomely committed Elisabeth Moss mining writer-director Leigh Whannell’s stalker scenario for all sorts of psychological nuance.

There’s real filmmaking here in The Batman. Matt Reeves, the director and co-writer, has a serious interest in the tantalizing Batman/Catwoman dynamic. His script, in collaboration with co-writer Peter Craig, parcels out the action sequences carefully, and when they arrive, they’re both visually lucid and excitingly reckless.

The film is a fine reminder of how cinematic language can and should transcend the spoken word.

Real Genius is packed with characters and jokes, easily containing three times as many attempts at humor as other summer comedies this year. Frequent moviegoers will appreciate the extra effort. [9 Aug 1985, p.A]

It is a fine and plaintive experience, more modern-day folklore than ethnographic study, and a wonderfully assured piece of cinema.

Destined to be remembered as the one that handed the screen Harry his first kiss. Like much of the film, the smooch comes and goes briskly, without a lot of fuss.

Feels different from most recovering-train-wreck stories. The movie is a tidy relaying of a messy situation involving two reasonably functional middle-class LA alcoholics, one of whom gets serious about cleaning up a lot sooner than the other.

It's an intricate, sometimes implausible ideological thriller that might be better as a smaller-scaled, less% preachy psychological drama. Still, "Paradise" catches and keeps your attention because of its daring subject, real-life backdrops and the intensity of its actors.

The overriding sense one gets from this short but powerful film is awe.

The film recalls Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and the minimalism of films such as Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots." Eason and cinematographer Didier Gertsch keep the cameras tight on the actors' bodies and faces, creating palpable unease.

A town where tourists and hapless visitors are murdered, and the dead are revived by a big band-loving mortician, descends into gore and madness. [16 Mar 2007, p.C5]

F/X turns into a dazzling series of deceptions that border on being so topsy-turvy that one almost becomes frustrated with being fooled. But the script of Robert T. Megginson and Gregory Fleeman managed to stay on the right side of credibility and good humor enough of the time so that some rather obvious plot holes can be forgiven.

Romero's newest is a horror movie for hard-core fans of the gory and the gruesome and a classic genre film for genre aficionados.

Chabrol's final picture was designed with Depardieu in mind. It's a small work. Yet it's so pleasurably well-made, so obviously the work of major talents in a comfortable groove, why carp about the scale or ambition of the project?