Any film about the folk tradition is required to have a stellar soundtrack, and Songcatcher does not disappoint.

Monsters is a sharp little low-fi monster movie operating from a tantalizing premise.

Even with its story hiccups — and by the end, they’re practically contagious — The Creator creates images of the future you have not seen before, at least not quite this way. The movie is messy and knotty but co-writer and director Gareth Edwards has yet to make an uninteresting piece of science fiction.

Once "Backbeat" catches the beat, it keeps it up, drives right through to the last soul-shattering coda and fadeout. [22 Apr 1994, p.01]

There's something too slickly contrived and hollow about this film. It's a yuppified wish-fulfillment piece dangling between real world and fairy tale, and it's mostly the actors --especially Lindsay and Elaine Hendrix (as the conniving publicist who is trying to marry Hallie and Annie's dad) -- who manage to bring it off. [29 July 1998]

But by not "saying" ANYTHING about the lives behind all the lovely, easygoing footage of infants making their way to their first steps and beyond, Babies feels a tad dodgy (and repetitive) by the hour mark.

One super non-stop thrill show, it is also a dishearteningly detached and grim piece of work. [20 Aug 1993, p.C]

A thoroughly enjoyable Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired adventure film, set in the present and starring Michael Douglas as an American hustler in Columbia who helps uptight romance novelist Kathleen Turner search for buried treasure. [22 June 1984, p.12]

The movie’s a rom-com at heart, but there is no other one like it.

Though I would agree it's original -- it's the first aboveground romance movie I've seen in which the heroine is repeatedly spanked, verbally tormented and tied to a chair by her lover--- it's not an experience I much enjoyed.

That it's got a positive message may strike some as decidedly not "edgy" -- but they should be too busy stomping their feet to notice.

Though I wouldn't call He Loves Me a total success, it's smart, intriguing and quite ambitious, a first film by a talented young filmmaker that displays superstar Tautou's gifts in an eerie new light.

Fessenden cooks up a likably offbeat horror movie. But somehow, it never jells, never really scares us.

It's a twisty, hell-for-leather crime thriller, and director Carl Franklin gives it all the slick, modern trimmings.

As a whole, though, the movie is much less magnetic or believable than its star.

When the story’s twist arrives, you half-expect Twohy to throw in a couple of reels from "Dead Again," plus outtakes from "The Usual Suspects." It’s a lulu; I'm just not sure if it's the sort of lulu that will lead to great word-of-mouth.

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.

The tunes are so good, you can’t believe the film itself doesn’t amount to more, especially with the rightness of the casting. Still, a few laughs are better than none.

Even when it's stiff and staid in moviemaking terms, Peyton Place has every kind of performance working for it, or against it. Over here, there's Turner's gliding charisma; over there, you get the powerful skill of Oscar nominees Varsi and Hope Lange. Through it all, Lloyd Nolan anchors the frothy seas as the sensible, seen-it-all town doctor, the one who knows all and tells some, depending on the needs of the story. [31 Mar 2020, p.C1]

A lavish and sometimes lusty version of the French hit musical, minus the songs but with lots of Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. [17 Jan 2000, p.Q]

Weisz and the sharpest supporting players lift My Cousin Rachel to a higher plane. Holliday Granger as Philip's smitten family friend; Simon Russell Beale, a truly great actor, as the skeptical family solicitor; Tim Barlow, tottering around as the sublimely crusty servant: These are choice turns.

An at-times deliriously entertaining biopic.

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

A gargantuan epic, a historical adventure-drama of overwhelming visual grandeur.

Pairing monumental insensitivity with a bright-eyed delivery, Silverman is the current valedictorian of the nothing-is-sacred school of comedy, a modern-day Lenny Bruce spared her forefather's legal woes by time, breasts and porcelain skin.

This is an all-Latino film--a rarity and a pleasure--but what's most curious and refreshing is that Cordero allows the Latinos to naturally embrace their nationalities, accents and cultural peculiarities.

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.

Some of the action (and violence) in A Cat in Paris borders on the jarring, and the slam-bang finale - set atop Notre Dame Cathedral - favors bombast over wit. But getting there is a lot of fun, in part because the animators take time to make Dino a truly charismatic animal.