25th Hour struck me as one of the best movies of 2002, but it's also a film that will strike some of its audience as ethically dubious or threatening.

The film is violent and a little gross in one or two scenes, but there is an intelligence in its writing by Bob Hunt and direction by Jack Sholder that makes everything worthwhile. [30 Oct 1987, p.41C]

Woodley is an ace at handling laughter through tears — "my favorite emotion," as a character in "Steel Magnolias" once said. She improves with each new film, even when the films themselves aren't much.

The movie is small, but the actors make it seem larger, like binoculars turned around the right way.

A bizarre, dreamlike, surrealistic thriller, Zentropa is one of those films that is easier to admire than like. Creatively crafted and finely tuned, it is also an extremely cold, nihilistic work - as starkly efficient as the imperious railroad company that forms the centerpiece. [03 Jul 1992, p.C]

The drug humor in 21 Jump Street carries its own distinction, in that it's actually humor.

Not everyone can act his material with ease. But Ejiofor, who brings a serene gravity to every exchange, was born to do Mamet.

Typical tough '40s Walsh noir. [08 Aug 1997, p.M]

It's arresting to behold, but it almost seems to run out of steam at a certain point. But for any of its story flaws, Selah and the Spades is so tonally and aesthetically indelible, it announces the arrival of an exciting new cinematic voice in Poe, and cements Lovie Simone as a bona fide movie star.

Liman's sensibility isn't sophisticated enough to tease out the nuances of what must be a pretty interesting marriage; the movie is more about texture and surfaces and surface tensions.

As a performance vehicle The Drop does the job. As a story, and an uncertainly padded script, the movie lurches and lets us get out ahead of its developments.

Morgen’s best achievement is the news footage, more detailed looks at events outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel and in Chicago parks than you typically see on TV rehashes.

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.

There's no question that Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking. What's questionable is whether it's more than that.

With braces on her teeth and preteen gawkiness, Eliza's a nerdy girl on the surface, but her backbone and chutzpah manage to save human and animal family alike. Move over Bond; this girl deserves a sequel.

Has the literary richness, depth of character and tone that such a morally difficult, powerful narrative requires.

Exceptional black dramatic comedy.

Wexler told his story in credible human terms. Writer-director Stone felt the need to jazz up his action with wacked-out characters who belong in a ''Saturday Night Live'' sketch.

At its best, Wright's film is raucous, impudent entertainment.

Works best when it works primal--which is not the same thing as working dumb.

Penny Marshall, the sitcom actress ("Laverne and Shirley") turned filmmaker ("Big," "Awakenings"), manages to make even such elementary material seem labored and phony. The film, which was shot in and around Chicago last summer, is a major disappointment.

An emotional and intellectual roller coaster. Moore swings for the fences, as he usually does. But the film, done in Moore's traditionalist maximalist style, is overblown and overstuffed with editorial indulgences. It's clear that stylistically and structurally, less should be more for Moore.

Happiest Season” isn’t full-on farce; it’s lower-key, and runs into trouble only when the script contends with confessional monologues right up against hiding-in-a-literal-closet routines or routine slapstick, as it does in the climax. But you know? It works.

An amazing film, still a shocker after all these years. [07 Sep 2001, p.C1]

Miniatures in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, created by Ray Harryhausen, may appear at first glance to be worlds away from the CGI creatures in The Phantom Menace and Jurassic Park. But it was Harryhausen's work that taught such filmmakers as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to dream of creating ever-more-perfect fantasy worlds. [22 Feb 2008, p.C2]

Raiff most likely wanted to make a movie about a well-intentioned guy in his early 20s who gradually finds his way to a better life. What undermines his efforts is a creeping smugness and self-regard, positioning every side character as an intern in the Andrew Improvement Program.

Pugach's selfishness, his inability to detach love from gratification, is the key to this crazy story.

Starter for 10 is cute and smart, just like its star triangle, and it's also well-written, acted and directed.

Streep is an actress known for her uncanny ability with accents, but her quiet performance in "Bridges" proves that she would have made a world-class silent-film star, too.

Near the end, we hear Cobain reveal his disdain for adults who “can’t even pretend, or at least have enough courtesy for their children, to talk to one another civilly.” A painful and unexpected moment.

Vibrating with humanity, it's a potent portrait of love, ranging from the purely carnal to the impurely sublime.

It's an unabashed pacifist movie that really works, emotionally and dramatically.

Rogowski's transition from youth-culture poster boy to murderer demands deeper analysis.

A thrilling ride but also a thoughtful one, it's a movie that does manage to do more good than bad by the end of the day.

Most movingly, Monsieur Ibrahim takes a provocative subject -- friendship and love between a Jew and a Muslim -- and makes it seem natural and wondrous.

It has terrific moments, but whenever it starts to cruise along nicely, it hits a comedic pothole that forces it to sputter on down the road.

Infusion of comedy elements keeps the story light, without dragging it into the cartoonish.

You could also say The Harder They Fall consists on a diet of flourishes.

The very antonym of "fun," writer-director Craig Zobel's new film Compliance is one of the toughest sits of the movie year 2012. But it's an uncompromising and, in its way, honorable drama built upon a prank call that goes on and on.

This is filmmaking meant to engage the heart-and other visceral organs-more than the mind; its effects are simple, broad and directly put.

Though stylistically all over the place, it's not without interest.

The latest, produced by Abrams and directed by "Fast and Furious" alum Justin Lin, isn't quite up to the 2009 and 2013 movies. But it's still fun, you still care about the people and the effects manage to look a little more elegant and interesting than the usual blue blasts of generica.

A potentially great movie--with talent and plot points to spare--that settles for being just okay.

Schoenaerts is often affecting and just as often scarily intense. The film's intensity, by contrast, beams on and off.

It's entirely possible, maybe even inevitable, that Like Crazy will win over a good many moviegoers despite its bouts of semipreciousness. In the end, I was one of them.

The games have begun, and so far they're pretty gripping.

This is a film precisely constructed, brilliantly imagined.

Absorbing in places, but considering the large and diverse pool the filmmakers had to draw from, it's a surprisingly repetitive and predictable collection of big-city sagas.

These are some terrifically funny and gutsy guys who want to draw attention to what they see as the natural limit of WTO policy.

Dry and irreverent, Jump Tomorrow plays like a Hal Hartley ("Henry Fool") comedy with a lighter tone and more laughs.

Whatever the final message of The Housekeeper, its love story engages both the heart and the head.

As psychological drama, In My Skin falls short. But as pure horror, it's unforgettable.

The lightly carbonated fizz of I Used to Go Here has everything to do with Rey’s deftly chosen ensemble.

The filmmaker's access was impressive, the results moderately entertaining.

The documentary infers a good deal about Mulvihill’s underworld connections and political maneuvers without quite nailing them down.

Akira remains the work of a cartoonist, rather than a born animator: Too much of the movie is played out in the static frames of a comic strip, and when movement is used it isn't to define character (as in Disney) or establish a rhythm (as in the Warner cartoons) but simply for its physical impact. Pounding away, it becomes monotonous. [30 Mar 1990, p.D]

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."

At its best, it's an exhilaratingly grandiose Highland fling. [24 May 1995, Tempo, p.1]

This is the "Babel" or "Crash" of ensemble romantic comedies, with screenwriter Dan Fogelman mapping out several narrative surprises that throw you for little loops as they're delivered.

Berg sticks to the job at hand, imagining what it is was like to be there, and to be the victim of sloppy, deadly safety practices in the name of a good day on Wall Street.

At its worst, Limbo is ersatz Conrad. But at its best, the film makes us feel that uncertainty and darkness, casting us into the cul-de-sac of modern life and love. [04 Jun 1999, p.A]

In what is essentially a three-human story (they’re outnumbered by their animal co-stars), Rapace brings the heart and soul to every close-up.

In other words, nothing much held me back from enjoying writer-director Stephen Merchant’s engaging, charismatically acted underdog fable.

The drawback of the film's visual approach, however, is a considerable one. The relentless first-person shooting in End of Watch - figurative and literal - is less about YouTube factuality than it is about Xbox gaming reconfigured for the movies.

With "Braveheart," "Passion" and now Apocalypto, Gibson clearly has established his priorities as a director. History is gore, plus a few hearthside family interludes. The trick is instilling the audience with enough rageful bloodlust to make the story work.

A character comedy requires some notion of respect and integrity. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has none. [14 Dec 1988, p.1]

Potiche is very "Touch of Class" and "House Calls" in its comic vibe and trappings, and if you're old enough to remember those Glenda Jackson rom-coms, you'll probably respond favorably to Potiche.

It's a lovely, terrifying sight.

Despite its shortcomings, Girls Can't Swim represents an engaging and intimate first feature by a talented director to watch, and it's a worthy entry in the French coming-of-age genre.

This Universal sci-fi saga has little of the style or atmosphere of the studio's '30s horror classics; its stars are amiable Richard Carlson and Julia Adams. But it does have a unique monster: the Amazonian gill man, a lovelorn amphibian who spots Adams underwater and doesn't stop swimming after her until the very last minute. [30 Oct 1998, p.I]

I laughed at a good deal of the movie, but a good deal more of it left me with (Cohen’s intention, probably) the taste of ashes in the mouth.

A point is being made about how a criminal creates his own myth, but the ways Read twists and embellishes the truth become progressively less interesting.

I fear Spielberg and Jackson hitched their wagon to the wrong technological star here.

Becket, now richly restored, is one of those '60s British theatrical spectaculars that we always imagine as a bit better than they were.

The movie belongs to the women, for once, and The Conjuring doesn't exploit or mangle the female characters in the usual ways. Farmiga, playing a true believer, makes every spectral sighting and human response matter; Taylor is equally fine, and when she's playing a "hide-and-clap" blindfold game with her girls, she's like a kid herself, about to get the jolt of her life.

Bopha!, a movie about emotional and political turbulence tearing apart the family of a black South African police officer, is good, but a little disheartening. Not because of the injustice and misery it reveals-but because you want it to be better.

The smooth, cozy charm of writer-director Lorene Scafaria's "The Meddler" offers considerable seriocomic satisfaction.

Fast, funny, big-hearted.

Like "Blade Runner," it's dense enough to be rewarding on multiple viewings, the hallmark of a classic.

This one's a margin Western. Frustratingly uneven, rarely dull.

Movies about literary lives don't always catch fire, but Henry Fool is a glorious exception: an austerely funny, brilliantly written and acted serio-comic tale of two writers. [17 Jul 1998]

All the movie has, really, is Tilda Swinton acting up a storm, which is more than enough for some. For me, given what's up with the rest of the picture, it's not quite.

It works, even when the material’s routine, because Pugh’s forceful yet subtle characterization of a heavy-hearted killing machine with an awful childhood feels like something’s at stake. She and the reliably witty Harbour work well together.

I'm Your Man has at its spiritual center a troubadour with a distinctive, cagey mellowness about him.

This is an effective genre piece. And Marling's quiet way of anchoring a scene is subtle enough to escape detection in almost any narrative circumstance.

Our rooting interest is not for any macho act by Batman to save the city but for each character to achive some sort of emotional peace. That makes for a strange but refreshing action story.

Set around Halloween, Monster House manages to cull bits and pieces from Hammer, Hitchcock and the old-dark-house genre of 19th Century literature and early 20th Century stage and film.

If anything, director Cooper is so intent on portraying Bulger as a man, not a monster, the man comes off a little softer than he was, probably.

There's nothing more uplifting than a documentary that celebrates a man's capacity to dream, and nothing more depressing than one that mocks those dreams. Stephen Earnhart's Mule Skinner Blues walks the razor's edge between these approaches.

The movie overflows with action, slapstick and cliches, but the cliches never impede the action, and the slapstick is so expertly performed, it doesn't annoy you -- much.

It's a tasty but evasive treat, no matter what your taste in politics or movies.

For a film that points out so much wrong with German society and shows such dubious, dangerous behavior, it leaves the audience with high spirits and a sense of crazy exhilaration.