Noisy, unsubtle, but it gets the job done.

Though one can question the movie's quality as a documentary -- Broomfield is a dogged but often annoying interviewer, and Churchill's photography is sometimes slapdash -- Aileen raises such troubling issues that it stays, hellishly, in your mind.

Director Charles Martin Smith, an accomplished actor, gets some very good performances from his cast, notably from Mark Price as Eddie and Lisa Orgolini as his girl. (Gene Simmons, of the rock group KISS, has a small part as a radio deejay). In his directorial debut, he shows an attractive visual style and a sure hand for both humor and horror. [27 Oct 1986, p.5C]

The story lines don't intersect in that schematic, "Crash"-y way, which is refreshing. Less refreshing is the neat-and-tidiness of the individual exchanges in Sam Catlin's script.

A hit and miss proposition, with an abundance of laughs and emotional highlights to help brighten the dimly lit corners of cliche-mongering.

With an uneven and overstuffed script you appreciate the corner-of-the-mouth comments as delivered by Steve Buscemi.

The superfast running effects, with Edward dashing up mountains, or rival, evil vampires swooping here and there at amazing speed, look genuinely cheesy, like the guy running the race in the smart-phone ad. I'm surprised Hardwicke and her colleagues couldn't solve this one more effectively. Set pieces such as a vampire baseball game fall flat as well.

Vardalos and Collette have mighty pipes, but it's Collette who moves with the confidence and flair of a musical theater veteran. Watching this film, I found myself caring less and less about the fairly predictable and safe story and waiting impatiently for the next number.

Meadows clearly has a flair for working with actors and for depicting the rough-and-tumble of ordinary provincial lives. If he could go just a bit deeper, the truly great Midlands movie just might surface.

Entertaining and even affecting, Where the Truth Lies is a failure primarily because it doesn't do justice to its originator, Rupert Holmes' dishy 2003 novel, which shared both of the aforementioned characteristics but also was extremely funny. The film, directed by Atom Egoyan, is not.

A movie best suited for a lazy afternoon or a languorous night, particularly if you're a Francophile. Charming, glamorous, emotionally suggestive but slight, it's full of beautiful and colorful people.

I enjoyed seeing Joss Ackland as well. The veteran character actor with the world’s lowest voice plays the diamond company chairman, and when he rumbles out orders, it’s like Sensurround never left us.

For an hour or so, aided by the autumnal glow of Ben Seresin's cinematography, director Hughes maintains a firm handle on the story's turnabouts. Then the script goes a little nuts with coincidence and improbability.

Extracting three generously proportioned films from Tolkien's books made sense. But turning the relatively slim 1937 volume 'The Hobbit' into a trilogy, peddling seven or eight hours of cine-mythology, suggests a better deal for the producers than for audiences.

The film version stars a wonderful Swedish-Icelandic actress named Noomi Rapace as the hacker and Michael Nyqvist as the reporter. They are excellent and subtle and honest.

While sci-fi conceits still permeate the plot (alien DNA, rogue scientists), attention to personal detail float world-weary, superbly-drawn protagonists in a rare movie-a character-driven animated film.

Wildly uneven but nonetheless intriguing and funny.

The Wall may be fictional, but at its occasional, patient best it feels truthfully scary.

Masterminds still has its riotously funny moments, thanks to the fearless, uninhibited actors and a director who lets them play.

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.

At its most frantic the cutting and staging here veers perilously close to Baz Luhrmann "Moulin Rouge!" territory for comfort. ... I'd rather have seen Wright's carefully elaborated production on a stage, instead of in a movie partly on a stage.

The music's the best thing ... But it isn't enough to lift this middlebrow, middleweight and middling project ... above its misjudgments and limitations.

Director Marc Webb moves it along, with a rock-solid lead, very well sung, courtesy of Rachel Zegler.

Veber's early stage training serves him well both as an adapter (he wrote the "La Cage aux Folles" screenplay) and as a maker of originals though, truth be told, The Valet isn't especially original.

An uneven special effects extravaganza about a little boy who winds up traveling through world history along with five midgets. Together they meet and frustrate the great and the near-great. Including Napoleon, Robin Hood, and the devil. Unfortunately, there are just too many visits to famous people. The film was created by some of the people responsible for the Monty Python comedies. [25 Dec 1981, p.12]

Mary Reilly is a thinking person's horror movie, done with such obvious intelligence and artistry that it feels strange to watch it and be so unmoved. [23 Feb 1996]

The easiest thing you can say about Silence is that it's a labor of love, made by a valiant soldier for his chosen storytelling medium.

While Stop-Loss doesn’t pack anything like the emotional wallop of her previous film, the movies do share Peirce’s clear-eyed refusal to answer difficult questions with simplistic answers.