Keeps you interested in its characters and isn’t afraid of complicating your sympathies a little. In these dog-day months for romantic comedy, that means a lot.

It's the simple pleasures that endure, so it would be curmudgeonly not to share Alice's happiness as she innocently sighs, "That Sam is so thoughtful. He promised to slip me a special tube steak."

Deadpool 2 is just like “Deadpool” only more so. It’s actually a fair bit better — funnier, more inventive than the 2016 smash...and more consistent in its chosen tone and style: ultraviolent screwball comedy.

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

He's the anti-Michael Bay, the un-Roland Emmerich. No fake-documentary "realism" here; Soderbergh values the silence before the storm, or a hushed two-person encounter in which one or both parties are concealing something.

As interesting, certainly, as “American Gangster,” and operating with a truer street sense of the characters involved.

By the end of Forbes' brisk, economical portrait, Atwater has been revealed as a repugnant and pathetic soul--and a political visionary, among the first to fully understand and harness the raw power of voters’ fears.

Souza comes off as a genuine and genuinely humble talent. There is, however, an element of intentional or inadvertent image-packaging that goes with any White House photographer’s beat. One wishes Souza were heard on the subject of the fine, tricky line between reportorial authenticity and visual flattery.

A delicately crafted, gently inflected, lovely little movie about the need for love, directed and co-written by Singapore's Eric Khoo ("Mee Pok Man").

Entertaining, surprisingly well-written and often rowdily amusing picture. It is predictable in many ways but also full of heart, humor and personality.

The movie has something of treasure to offer us: two great screen actors, connecting magically. Why show an unconvincing world of crime, incest and violence when, with Deneuve and Auteuil, you can open up a richer world of intellect and thwarted desire? [27 Dec 1996, p.C]

The revelation here is Vaughn, who in his 6-foot-5-inch frame, physically channels the body language and gestures of an otherwise petite, cowering teen.

Few sports films catch their time, place and sport so well. For skateboard fans, this is a must. But it's also a great ride if you know nothing about the sport or what it meant. At the end of this movie, you will.

Clever and funny, with a dense surface of ideas and moods.

Lafosse's frustrating, yet beautifully elegiac coda emphasizes the point that his production and storytelling style have been making throughout: Private Property is about processes, not conclusions.

Director Peter Markle, whose credits include TV documentaries and commercials as well as "Young Blood," has taken pains to make this a craftsmanlike production, shot in Malaysia, full of laborious attention to detail and enterprising stunt flying. Regrettably, the script doesn`t fly quite as smoothly.

Doesn't win any points for originality. It does succeed by following a feel-good formula with a winning style, and by offering its target audience of urban kids some welcome role models and optimism.

This movie is either in your wheelhouse or it's not, but for those looking forward to Book Club, it delivers. For what it is — a breezy bit of Nancy Meyers-like fantasy, featuring four beloved actresses talking about sex, baby — it's exceedingly enjoyable.

I found most of what's actually put forth in the film interpretively ridiculous. But I'm just one theorist among millions, and the film worked for me anyway.

Linklater`s creation is delightfully daffy-far better, as one of the slackers puts it, than a sharp stick in the eye.

Wallace Ford co-stars, but make no mistake, it's the actual sideshow talents whose unusual traits have kept this film singular and unforgettable. [19 Oct 2007, p.C5]

Whole sections of “Godzilla X Kong” shove the humans off-screen for many minutes at a time. Few will complain.

Perhaps the most typical of all the "Road" pictures: melodic, low-pressure, funny. [02 Apr 2000, p.C38]

The kind of smart, realistic indie family drama the movies should give us more often, just as they should more often offer performances as full-blooded and rich as Aiello's and Curtin's here.

The events are complicated, though not complicated by cheap thrills or easy politics. It's a film of interest rather than throttling suspense. By the end, however, when Bachmann's future depends on a very simple nonviolent series of events, Corbijn's methodical approach pays off. And we care. We care about the protagonist's outcome.

Director John Carroll Lynch’s quietly assured directorial feature debut works from a simple, homey script by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja, and Lucky feels like the work of Stanton’s friends, which it is.

Guaranteed to make you think twice about what you're paying for what you're drinking.

The characters need more exploration, especially the killers. Yet this look at teen life and death chills you anyway.

It wisely lets us hear Pinero's words for ourselves, and in the end, they echo louder than the images that accompany them.

He could dance brilliantly right up to the end, it’s clear.This Is It may be a court documentary, but as a heavily lawyered portrait of an artist, it’s still pretty compelling.

Frankie & Johnny manages to work as a sudsy romantic picture about big city loneliness despite an awkward performance by Al Pacino in the role of a hash-house dispenser of wisdom.

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]

How does it all end? Don’t go looking to Save Yourselves! for answers. It lands in an ambiguous middle that’s not too bleak or too hopeful and just falls flat; an exaggerated shrug.

Like Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused," Outside Providence reminisces vividly, recalling the era fondly but not with too much sugar.

A fine, taut, tough example of the realistic police drama.

Gripping in purely cinematic terms as an imaginatively told tale of sibling rivalry and the pressures of great expectations.

It is good. Not great. But far better than "not bad." Solidly, confidently good.

What the film has is visual authority and an eye for composition.

Parsons has some sharp, truthful moments, but his demeanor lacks the world-weary authority as written. (His zingers have lost a lot of their zing, it must be said.) Everyone else is wonderful, and the limitations of Parsons and Quinto, in the end, are just that — limitations of often effective work.

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.

[Cameron's] anti-colonialist, pro-Indigenous cri de coeur is inspiring, if a bit on the nose, but we can forgive that, because the visual spectacle is just so breathtakingly beautiful, the emotional stakes palpable, and the intention is so earnest. It’s good to be back on Pandora.

Hilary Swank gives a powerhouse performance as a maverick high school teacher in Freedom Writers, an often gripping and sometimes even inspiring film drama taken from the real-life story of Erin Gruwell.

An emotionally daring, subtly written, richly acted and very clever little movie. [09 Dec 1994, p.H]

While I wish van Heijningen's Thing weren't quite so in lust with the '82 model, it works because it respects that basic premise. And it exhibits a little patience, doling out its ickiest, nastiest moments in ways that make them stick.

A near-classic, "Woman" is let down only by Bacon's sluggish helming. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

There is a good deal of honest charm in this story, and in the three principal performances.

Director Reginald Hudlin’s Sidney was made with the full and keenly interested cooperation of the Poitier family, following a template of access many documentaries favor or, in some cases, settle for. This is one of the good ones.

The result is a feeling of quiet heroism--people doing things because it's right to do them, even if it's not easy.

The title of Robb Moss' documentary, The Same River Twice, draws directly from Greek philosopher Heraclitus' claim that "It is impossible to step in the same river twice."

A satisfying and movingly acted story.

Directed by Julian Jarrold and co-written by Tim Firth ("Calendar Girls"), the movie is quite enjoyable, effortlessly well-done on every level, even moving at times, but relatively light weight.

Feig stylishly waltzes us through this steamy, twisty mystery with ease, but not necessarily sophistication — this is the kind of frothy entertainment that you can still enjoyably comprehend after a glass or two, which in fact might enhance the experience.

It may not work for everyone, but those for whom it works will find much to savor and puzzle over in The Turning.

This is one of those films that can accurately be described as small. Mostly, you just appreciate the time spent with these particular people in this particular place.

Magnetic, beautiful stuff.

The result is both a success and a disappointment. It's Kind of a Funny Story, divided into neat little daylong chapters in Craig's stay, lacks the staying power and bittersweet layering of "Half Nelson" and "Sugar."

Some of the dialogue is on the clunky side; much of it comes straight (or nearly) from Lord’s memoir; and Hammer has yet to find a fully easy-breathing way of behaving naturally on screen. Rush, by contrast, has so much fun with Giacometti’s tetchy, restless qualities, you don’t always buy the “tortured” part.Yet Rush is such a formidable technician, he creates a Giacometti of substance both real and theatrical.

What Kasdan's "Earp" needed was more humor and better villains. "Wild Bill" has the humor and villains, the flash and energy, the fire and style. And when, at the end, Hill seems to throw it all away, it almost hurts. But you can say one thing about "Wild Bill": Unlike most movies, it has a lot to throw away. [01 Dec 1995, p.C]

The action is brilliant, the combat sharp and rattling, and the film follows the historical record more closely than most Hollywood films.

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

The Abyss is at its best during such moments of reverie-when the abstract metaphors and the unique physicality of the deep sea setting come together to produce powerful, unvoiced meanings. The film does have its beckoning depths; what it needs is a more polished surface. [9 Aug 1989, Tempo, p.1]

A surprisingly insightful, non-judgmental meditation on a troubled marriage-with-kids.

This is a very strong midlife-crisis movie about women. [28 Sep 1990, p.C]

Slick, ice-cold and enjoyable, The Bank Job is a bit of all right.

Enough talk; enough flashbacks. Sometimes the best thing a mystery can do is give its protagonist a reason to run like hell.

Swayze is persuasive in his role as an Appalachian boy sufficiently assimilated to big-city life to have married a classical violinist, and Baldwin makes a slick, icy villain. But it is Neeson as Briar Gates who steals this movie. Wily, saturnine, exuding a bitter familiarity with failure, he paints a portrait of a man whose actions are simple but whose feelings are complex. The part offers few lines to play with, but Neeson inhabits the role physically, the twang and the scruffiness never betraying his classical training at Dublin's vaunted Abbey Theatre. It's an enduringly poignant performance. [24 Oct 1989, p.3]

Breaks through as a delightful, surprisingly fresh comedy.

While liberally dosing the action with humor, Underwood is able to preserve an undertone of genuine menace and substantial suspense. His shooting style is clean and classical, distinguished by camera movements that emphasize the line of the action without becoming conspicuous in themselves.

This film would be an excellent companion piece to Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire," which deals with angels looking down on this scarred city. Berlin Babylon isn't nearly as lush, but in its own curious way, it's every bit as spiritual.

Unabashedly designed to blow its audience away.

Scott Thomas can play these sorts of ice queens in her sleep, but I've long thought she's a more effective and nuanced performer in French-language projects than in English-language ones. The performance is laced with just enough wit to make it sting.

Species is an Alien ripoff, but that doesn't make it a bad movie--not when it contains a plausible premise, a great-looking female villain, a wonderful supporting cast of good guys, and genuine tension. Only a routine chase sequence in sewer tunnels limits the excitement at the end. In other words, we're talking about a solid, surprisingly intelligent action picture here.

Skates over depravity when, like Crane, it should have dug down deeper.

It is the aviation scenes that make the movie memorable. The story around which they are built is just another story, similar to, but not so gripping as "The Rough Riders." But any lack here is made up for in the airship maneuvers. They are magnificent. [01 Nov 1927, p.37]

A bomb? Not quite. Anyone who gets a kick of train thrillers should get knocked off the tracks by this one. [17 July 1995, p.N2]

It's an odd film in some ways. The porn milieu is detailed in ways at once sparing, in terms of actual screen time, and bluntly explicit. The odd-couple relationship guiding the story has its familiarities. But where it counts, 'Starlet' ... allows its characters room to maneuver within the potential cliches.

Genuinely odd in its mixture of bluntness and indirection, screenwriter Angus MacLachlan's study in biblical temptation is saved from its own heavy-handedness by a fine quartet of actors.

One can’t help but wonder if Ephron would’ve been better off focusing exclusively on Child: She’s simply more interesting screen company.

There are moments of genuine charm and solid invention, but it's a film that doesn't believe enough in itself. [28 Aug 1990, p.4C]

This is not a raucous family takedown; nor is Karam’s tale a matter of artificial family conflicts, tidily resolved. The Humans gets a lot done in a short amount of time, in a single, two-level setting, plus a few fraught intimations of what’s down the hall or around the corner.

Hart and Horowitz map this hero’s journey onto her growth as a mother, her empowerment proving to be a source not just of strength, but love — a rare commodity in a crime flick.

So who’s up for a strange, disarming musical? As much as I hated the first one, this one works for me.

One of the movie's most moving elements is the duo's famous prison correspondence, as eloquently read by Tony Shalhoub as Sacco and John Turturro as Vanzetti. But Miller's obvious passion and dedication shine throughout.

If the movie has a weakness, it's an over-reliance on Bond-style car chases and mass action scenes, which take away from the much richer and more original character comedy. But Mankiewicz's basic instincts seem admirable. He knows that a movie begins with people, and that`s a very good start.

For material that started out for the stage, Finley’s directorial debut really does feel like a movie. It’s elegant and well-plotted but not at the expense of the performances.

I enjoyed it as much as any Allen film of the last 20 years.

In this very funny Rodney Dangerfield comedy, there has been an important shift in Rodney`s entertainment persona, a shift that has made this small film a monster hit.

Has no pretensions about sneaking up on you -- it simply charges, motor humming and blades flying, carving the spot where masochism and entertainment meet.

Contains ample dry humor and its share of surprising turns, but they operate on a human level rather than with the kind of empty flash we've come to expect from the post-Tarantino crime flicks.

Double Team is loony but likable, a would-be triple double that ends up eking out a victory over its own script. And while Tsui is the man who makes it work, Rodman, on his best bad behavior, does his bit, defers to his teammates. At the end, Rourke and Van Damme pull off their shirts, while Rodman keeps his on. And, wisely, The Worm leaves most of the kicking to his co-star.

The way Diary of the Dead chooses to deliver its gore, you know you’re in the hands of a grown-up uninterested in the excesses of the “Saw” or “Hostel” pictures. I mean, there’s gore, sure, and flesh gets eaten. But the way Romero shoots and cuts the shot of a girl’s reunion with her parents, one dead, one undead, it’s played for keeps--the right kind of gross, with a touch of mournful gravity.

Everything about the film is aggressively provocative, in both senses of the word.

This movie comes at you with an idea or two, as well as every available gun blazing.

Opulence almost interferes with the movie, weighing it down when it should seem lighter than air, surrounding the inarguably brilliant Carrey with too much frosting and frou-frou.

Even though the actors are good, their characters stay stock.

Most sports films are also fish-out-of-water stories, and this one qualifies as both.

Using a style heavily indebted to music videos - lots of fast cutting, odd angles and gratuitous camera movements - Hopkins keeps the energy level up, though his manner is a bit too choppy to keep all of the diverse elements together. [11 Aug 1989, p.B]

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