A charming confection, set on an ocean liner. [13 Apr 2007, p.C5]

It's by far the best cast Burns has assembled -- so much so that, unlike his other films, he doesn't come near dominating it.

The director is Kevin Macdonald, a documentary filmmaker making his fiction film feature debut. (He won an Oscar for his Munich Olympics hostage chronicle, "One Day in September.")

I know of no documentary on a contemporary artist that conveys so much about the artist's work so lyrically and directly.

An ebullient toast to grande dames: part homage, part camp, all artifice and a thoroughly entertaining, if light, confection.

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.

It still had some juice a few years ago, when it was Hector Babenco's "Pixote," but "Salaam Bombay!" is a disturbingly professional, self-assured piece of work. [28 Oct 1988, p.A]

Melody Time delivers on its promise of rhythm and romance, reason and rhyme, something ridiculous, something sublime. [11 Jun 1998, p.10C]

The film is bright, busy, enjoyable, progressive without being insufferable.

That conscious absurdity is at the core of The Quick and the Dead. It's a rousingly grotesque, often wildly entertaining western horror-comedy, with co-producer and star Sharon Stone as a sexy lady gunslinger taking on all comers in the gunfight tournament from hell. [10 Feb 1995, p.C]

The acting is primo and the cinematography, on high-definition video by the gifted M. David Mullen, is striking.

The movie belongs to the women, and they perform with attitude and power.

Bright and engaging, and blessed with two superb non-verbal non-human sidekicks, Tangled certainly is more like it.

Piani did the right thing in casting Rutherford, whose physical embodiment of Agathe suggests a tall, gangly, striking woman trying not to be seen. The actress leans into the character’s unsettled, often sullen side, though not at the expense of the comic tropes.

One part smart, one part stupid and three parts jokes about body parts, the extremely raunchy Neighbors is a strange success story.

It becomes clear that Safdie is intentionally denying a big, flashy “win the game” kind of film, offering instead a cerebral examination of the quotidian, workmanlike drudgery of being a professional athlete who never became a superstar household name, still shouldering the work, the struggle, the bad days, quibbling over contracts and rules, taking every hit without complaint.

Lumet has retained a lifetime of technique and sharp instincts regarding how to make a courtroom full of people worth watching.

Frank's dialogue owes a little something to Elmore Leonard, but it's less comic and heavily brocaded.

There may be less than meets the eye here. But what meets the eye is pretty striking.

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]

A fascinating examination of the joyous, turbulent self-discovery made by a proper, middle-aged woman.

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

This sincerely felt and utterly effervescent coming-of-age tale expresses a universal truth about being alive: that hopefully, you'll have the chance, and the awareness, to make and remake yourself, again and again, dusting off the old bricks you've got and forming them into something familiar but new.

The film leaves a sense of entrapment and despair. Its characters are caught in a shrinking world that leaves no room for notions as grand as "good" and "evil," but only a sordid, creeping malignancy that levels everything in its path. [24 Apr 1987, p.AC]

A nostalgia movie that doesn't get sticky with false sentiment.

With a refreshing lack of fake glamour, the film captures what it's like to be an initially unpromising comedian on the road.

Ozon’s style as a filmmaker favors smooth technique and easy proficiency, and his resume is full of comedy. That would appear to put him at odds with this material. But his handling of difficult subject matter carries a welcome, borderline-dispassionate restraint and a respect for each character’s value.

The film has a compelling way about it. All five of the immediate Block family members emerge in full and affecting portraits.

Surprisingly restrained and undeniably entertaining.

It so often is a joy to look at and so often a pain to listen to.

Places come; places go. Every human being deals with loss differently. “Eephus” acknowledges that, but it’s a sweet, sidewinding paradox of a sports movie: sentimental in a quietly unsentimental and offhandedly comic fashion.

By Lithgow's standards this is pretty low-keyed acting, but he may have played one too many blowhards in his recent career. His performance works, but it lacks surprise and, as written, he's a bit much.

This is a good-hearted movie that unfortunately is wildly implausible and makes no sense.

Despite script collaboration by his friend William Faulkner, this is Hawks' hokiest movie, a stilted Egyptian period piece about pyramid-building and sexual intrigue with Jack Hawkins as the Pharaoh and Joan Collins a conniving temptress with a jeweled navel. Yet the director gives it real spectacle; it looks great. [13 Feb 1998, p.N]

The talk is witty, the twists are ingenious, the look and the mood are drop-dead.

It’s a close call, but Grace is Gone is worth seeing for the way John Cusack works with Shelan O’Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, two of the least affected and most affecting young actors to hit the screen this year.

This fourth entry is still full of sophisticated charm and slick thrills. [01 Jul 2005, p.C7]

Unabashedly theatrical and richly cinematic, even when it's falling apart.

It's much to Schumacher's credit that Flatliners, for all of its crazy excess, does not turn into camp.

As with most Cameron blockbusters, “The Way of Water” has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits.

Enchanting film.

Those not well versed in the rap music world may be a little lost at times, but you don't need to know your Ice-T's from your Cool-J's to realize that as far as these shootings are concerned, something is rotten in the state of California.

Sheffer`s calm serves as an effective counterpoint to Estevez`s coiled energy, and Morgan Freeman is outstanding as Charlie, an older bar owner who mediates between the two boys as they clash over the importance of women and the rapidly changing nature of their lives.

Twenty or 30 minutes into Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium the urge to flee may rise within you like an oceanic tide. But stick with it. The film is very sweet--in fact it represents the dawn of a new sport, Extreme Whimsy.

So what is it? Primarily it's a showcase for Vincent Cassel, who dines out on the role and won a Cesar award (the Gallic Oscar) for his efforts.

Johnny Handsome does indeed put Hill back in the ballpark, close enough to his best work to make its imperfections seem that much more maddening. [29 Sep 1989, p.A]

A small but, in its way, daring picture.

The script’s quippy streak could’ve used better jokes. But this is one franchise that doesn’t feel fished out or exhausted or exhausting.The monsters, Toho studio classics redesigned but faithfully so, are pretty swell and monumentally destructive.

Brewer achieves near perfection in this tense, intimate meeting between two lifelong hustlers.

This "Ice Age" is still a good movie (especially for kids) with top-of-the-tech CGI.

Zeta-Jones can belt out her numbers, Zellweger can purr hers, and Gere-a musician who played his own cornet solos in "The Cotton Club"-can sell his songs and even dance a spiffy little tap dance. They're better than you'd expect-and so is the movie.

Director Guy Ferland, who has made one previous feature, handles this material smoothly and well, aided by the juke-box bright colors caught by cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos. And Eszterhas, who has never shown much flair for comedy - except for the mother lode of unintentional laughs in "Showgirls" - puts humor into this story of surprising warmth and bite. [24 Oct 1997]

There is something new here, and very fresh.

The film, a handsome nerve-jangler co-produced under the storied Hammer horror banner, amps up the scares without turning them into something completely stupid. Success!

Berge is a meticulous and intriguing host, though one gets the feeling he's relaying, very selectively, only so much of the messier side of his life with Saint Laurent. So be it.

Corny and far-fetched it may be, but Frequency works - except for some stretches when it doesn't.

Isn't all it could have been. But the filmmakers catch the right glittery look and paranoid intensity, and they make gutsy speculations about the story beneath the story.

A very flashy Hong Kong variation on Mean Streets. [19 Dec 1996, p.7]

Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds and Charles Bronson -- the '70s' three reigning American action movie superstars -- had their thunder stolen when top action director Siegel cast rumpled, baleful-eyed comic sourpuss Walter Matthau in this classic '70s thriller. [09 May 1999, p.C9]

The movie’s good even when it goes in too many directions at once, because it gets the kids right.

It's a corker of a story - a polished yarn full of desire, desperation and despair.

The movie is funny, but it's also touching and poetic -- and Bertin's scenes are devastating.

Extracting a meat-and-potato slickness from the screenplay by James Toback (a sucker for facile laughs), director Barry Levinson (Rain Man) provides a good chunk of entertainment if not much creative risk. Fast-paced in its first half, Bugsy eventually slips into a stall, especially in the clumsy scenes where the protagonist tries to handle domesticity with his long- suffering family.

Well, it's a masterpiece compared with 'Little Fockers,' the last movie featuring Barbra Streisand.

Nothing in the movie is quite up to Scofield's Danforth. But what a mighty performance that is.

Although the film in no way measures up to the features made under Disney's personal supervision, it does contain some far more imaginative and adept animation than the last several post-Walt titles.

I liked The Claim -- as much for its stark visual beauty and impassioned performances as its intelligent script and willingness to probe the tragic side of life.

While Bad Hair is more humorously incisive than truly terrifying, Lorraine, in the leading role, sells it, while Simien creates space to discuss the ways in which women enforce unfair standards of beauty on each other in a white patriarchal society, using the horror genre as a blunt but effective tool to clear the path.

A clever, amiably low-key mix of family drama and romantic comedy.[18 August 1995, Friday, p.C]

Even if Talk to Me feels at times as if some crucial, characters-just-hanging-out material failed to make the final cut, the movie gets under your skin.

A smart, spectacular and rousing piece of work, one that strains against but can't quite escape the natural limitations imposed by a sequel. [4 July 1990, p.C1]

Preparation for the Next Life is a powerful assertion of dreams, humanity and hard work — arguing that every person has a past, a future and a story to tell.

The best of Prometheus is nonverbal and purely atmospheric: Fassbender's "Lawrence of Arabia"-loving character bouncing a basketball as he patrols the spaceship while his human cohorts finish up their two-year nap.

The ideas aren’t exactly new here, and one need only look at the entire career of Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg (a producer here) to realize the difficulty of shaping living, breathing, vital art out of gormless improv techniques. Here, clearly, the actors have been well and truly guided along the way, and Howard is a serious find.

What makes Synchronic sing is the two together, zinging each other with sardonic one-liners, their conversations meandering to the cosmic and the macabre after a few whiskeys.

Zellweger’s film — and it is hers — creates an intimate illusion that feels authentic, witty and affecting.

While it's effects-heavy, the movie itself does not feel heavy. Consider it a fanciful extension of the recent and very fine documentary "Project Nim."

Time to Leave may not have made me cry, but it's affecting nonetheless.

A simple, eloquent drama.

For about an hour Looper really cooks. Its second half is more of a medium boil, and less fun. But watching it, I realized how few commercial entertainments hold up straight through to the end-point.

It's entertaining, and following an old Disney tradition Frozen works some old-school magic in its nonhuman characters.

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]

Laurel Canyon itself feels musical: languid, rich in color and light, and deliciously sensual.

An elegant miniature, Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void labors under a narrative inevitability, but it's artful work nonetheless.

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.

The movie’s a little sketchy and underwritten, and it feels sometimes as if scenes have been pared away or cut altogether to concentrate on Ahmed. But Ahmed really is terrific. Director Marder has a knack for both observing and igniting human behavior, through character. And supervising sound editor Nicolas Baker’s work astounds, period.

A relaxed-looking expert piece that immerses us in another world. At the end, Hanson has a bonus. He and his producers hired Bob Dylan for the Oscar-winning "Things Have Changed" in "Wonder Boys," and Hanson brings Dylan back here, for a folky, bluesy number called "Huck's Tune."

A visual delight and a dramatic letdown. [10 Jun 1990, p.4C]

There is a great deal of value in Branagh's version, not least in his own lead performance as a soft, indefinite Henry who defines himself over the course of the play. [15 Dec 1989]

From its opening shot-of little girls with huge hairdos-Hairspray is a relentlessly silly, crude and hilarious lampoon of modes and mores in teenage America, 1962. But it's also more than that. By closing credits, it has made some provocative observations about the influence of rock music on race relations in America, about how the '50s became the '60s and about the volatility of fashion and politics. [26b Feb 1988, p.F]

The Spider-Man saga is a classic for a reason, and the filmmakers don't squander the material's strengths.

In Top Five, you sense Rock trying to load all these disparate talents onto a conventional romantic-comedy structure. It's a close call, but it holds.

A "Chekhovian" movie that's closer to the master's mood than many, it's also a jazzy, rainy day film that makes serious and amusing points about life and people in the midst of its downpour.

Even if “Inside Out 2” sometimes favors speed over, well, everything else, it’s gratifying to see an ordinary and, yes, anxious 13-year-old’s life, like millions and millions of lives right now, treated as plenty for a good, solid sequel, and without the dubious dramatics of the first movie’s climax.

It's surprising how much of the old mood Leconte manages to recapture, how sumptuous he makes the black-and-white cinematography and timeless Parisian and Mediterranean settings look.

Soderbergh and Burns remain exceptionally well-matched collaborators. They’re after just enough human interest to make us care, and just enough socioeconomic outrage to make us seethe — some of us, anyway.

The movie is a journey into a land of wonders beneath the surface of consciousness -- but it's also a sexual ride of unabated heat. You may be confused by Sex and Lucia, but you won't be unmoved.

An operatic rarity worth catching even if you don't happen to be an opera fan.