This faithful resurrection of the original "Willard," a twisted gem in its own right, also is funny.

There's so much emotion and so many ideas in this film that it's both angering and exhilarating. The acting is fine, the writing superb, the production crisp.

Broken Arrow is much better than the average big-time action movie because Woo has blazing style and a unique, even eccentric viewpoint. [9 Feb 1996, p.C]

Reign works better much better than "Upside" because of the cast and because Sandler and Cheadle together keep it lighter. It's an easy film to watch, but less easy to be moved by.

Wyler's return to the western form (where he specialized in the silent era) is a vast range-war saga full of majestic vistas and full-blooded characters brawling and firing away. [07 Jan 2011, p.C5]

Maybe if I liked the first "Anchorman" a little less, I'd like Anchorman 2 a little more. Still, I laughed.

The movie has no sense of temptation and no real taste for revolt-it's a good little film that knows its place. Van Peebles' direction has a by-the-numbers competence but no discernible personality.

The clever and nicely gory Sputnik comes from Russia with love, slime, and an impressive lesson in efficient, low-cost pulp filmmaking.

Loosely entwining a half-dozen major characters, though two or three get disappointingly short shrift, “Babylon” thins out all too quickly, settling for a strenuous ode to the dream factory and its victims and exploiters, who occasionally make wondrous things for the screen.

Playing a deranged, possibly homicidal babysitter going bonkers in a hotel, Monroe steals the show in this efficient, vaguely creepy little thriller--despite the presence of both Richard Widmark (as her airline pilot target) and Anne Bancroft (as the hotel's pert lounge singer). [09 Dec 2005, p.C6]

It's the kind of copycat movie that becomes original through its cast and treatment.

The world of his films may be violent, but Hill's vision is a delicate, subtle one-of individuals packing away the tiny bit of meaning and emotion life has granted them, and fighting to protect it at all costs. It's not a sentiment that can survive in cartoons; that it emerges at all in Red Heat is a tribute to Hill's still great talent. [17 Jun 1988, p.A]

Cassavetes, who wrote the script, proves her skill with actors in this woozy push-and-pull of slurred compliments and shaky hopes for whatever lies beyond the next day.

The director and co-writer David Lowery has made nothing but interesting features, six so far, and while his latest (co-written by Toby Halbrooks) turns into a bit of a Lost Boy here and there in its brooding investigation of why Captain Hook, played by a happily camp-averse Jude Law, got that way, it’s a stirring adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s fantasy.

This one's worth the ticket price only if you are a showbiz-aholic.

The whole film, in fact, seems too fast for its own good. It plays like a synopsis, jumping from scene to scene, grief to grief, and it doesn't let us relax into the various worlds it's creating.

This movie is a model of technique, beautifully crafted, often brilliantly acted by Cage and the others, but it's a bit hollow at the center.

Vincent Sherman's tangy 1950 gangster crime-romance. [19 Jun 2005, p.C3]

Uber-raunchy but pretty interesting as sex comedies go.

Director and co-writer Eytan Fox is going for a sexually democratic, politically aware variation on story themes familiar to "Sex and the City" viewers. (At one point Lulu is referred to as "Miss Israeli Carrie Bradshaw.") Surprisingly, it works, and the entire cast is excellent.

Filmmaker Dana Brown's major error is that he doesn't just shut up and get out of the way.

Davis and Garcia are both fine, and Hoffman gives an entertaining performance that still smells a little much of acting. But it's in the supporting roles that Frears makes his taste and talent felt, guiding such performers as Kevin J. O'Connor, Tom Arnold and Cady Huffman to quick, quietly efficient characterizations. [02 Oct 1992, p.B]

A pleasing but overlong version of the Rocky story told through the character of a put-upon young high school student who learns karate from an old Japanese master to vanquish the local school bullies. There is no reason this simple story should run 2 hours and 10 minutes. Such a running time strains the good will generated by a cast full of likable performances. [22 June 1984, p.12]

Typically, movies about dogs are unrelenting tear-jerkers, but Tatum and Reid resist sentimentality, resulting in a film that’s refreshingly frank and surprising when the emotional moments do hit (and do they ever).

Although Star Maps has some merit as a mood piece, Arteta's treatment of the audience has parallels to Pepe's treatment of Carlos, as he hammers home a message of no hope. [8 Aug 1997, p.K]

Patronizing and predictable where E.B. White's episodic 1945 book...is odd and open-ended.

Bravo!

This is one not to be missed.