A simple, eloquent drama.

Carrera's style is hard-hitting, lucid and technically superior (if unimaginative). El Crimen del Padre Amaro eventually moves and stirs you, even if it often resembles those steamy Mexican TV dramas/soap operas called telenovelas.

Overnight's only narrative hole is an inability to pinpoint why Miramax stonewalled him.

Fans of true-life crime stories should gain special pleasure from Jagged Edge, because the film does succeed in making its ending unpredictable--even though an unresolved ending would have been better.

Directed by Tom George from a screenplay by Mark Chappell, “See How They Run” is a throwback with a smirk. Or put more diplomatically: An old school whodunit reconceived as a farce. It’s self-referential (the characters end up snowed in at a country estate, just like in “The Mousetrap”) and simultaneously poking fun at the murder mystery form while also paying homage. If only it were actually funny!

In her first feature film, Masterson creates a slice of life that is very believable (especially if you've ever seen "The Jerry Springer Show") and often endearing.

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]

Does it matter that Wolfs is about literally nothing except itself and its star packaging? Maybe not. On the other hand, Watts hasn’t written a single fleshed-out character. It’s about genre tropes, distilled to minimalist quipping amid maximalist mayhem.

It’s a colorful, cuckoo-crazy, sometimes funny, often bewildering experience, to which you slowly become numb with every incongruous shot of Leonard the pig’s round, green butt. Come to think of it, it’s the kind of entertainment that could only be enhanced with a little green.

It's a perfectly competent film, but the title quantity is the one thing this dry and earnest movie hasn't got.

It's hard to watch and listen to Together without, in some sense, having your heart lifted by its music.

Just an OK thriller, full of standard scenarios and cookie-cutter characters.

Likable comedy about ordinary people stumbling badly and then triumphing.

Resonates and inspires rapid-fire bouts of laughter, perhaps even a few giggles from the author himself, whom posterity has rewarded the last laugh.

As with the series, the best scenes here remain slightly off-plot yet wholly on-target and devoted to the characters as well as matters of corrupted, corrosive character.

A small, shrewd movie about large, messy emotions and regrets. It is a grown-up work about people who grow up the hard way, leaving one heart in disrepair and the other in reckless forward motion. It's a sad piece, but not maudlin.

If all you do is look at their performances, the historical drama is worthy of praise. Step back, and the overall production stumbles through writing mistakes, has a drab look and a storytelling structure that puts the main event so deep into the tale it's almost an afterthought.

In a movie built around two characters, Pitt does not hold up his 50 percent.

The performances are often more compelling than the movie's sometimes static storytelling.

Calling Dredd 3D a movie is sort of a lie. It's a premise, and there are levels to reach, and always there's another grimy hallway to stalk, and then you turn right or left, and then kill some more.

What's striking about the picture, I think, is its lack of violent threat.

I wish this movie offered a little less running commentary and a little more running — anything, really, to get itself off the treadmill of self-critique and self-congratulation and actually going somewhere new.

Modest and good-looking, the film starts as dark comedy and ends in pathos. Director Alvarez makes the Oregon scenery a character unto itself.

It's a very classy, finely made film, and, as one watches it -- particularly those last sweeping scenes of political turbulence and escape -- one feels both pain at their (Merchant-Ivory) parting and grateful for what, together, they achieved.

Lightyear’s dazzling first half showcases the wittiest comic action from the Pixar folks in many years.

Director Stupnitsky lacks finesse and an eye for framing at this stage of his directorial career. He is, however, well-attuned to catching moments on the fly.

Li’s story is lean and economical, but deeply harrowing, as Xuemei--sympathetically played by debuting performer Huang Lu, the only classically trained actor in a cast of non-professionals--clings to her courage and tries again and again to escape.

This is a solid and enjoyable mystery flick, but through all the twists, turns, tics and twitches Motherless Brooklyn works hard to impart its message. And what ultimately comes out is somewhat hollow.