It’s best not to expect a life-changing experience from Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. But its tenderness, along with its best jokes, are most welcome right about now.

What are the odds that the year's most compelling mystery would end up hanging its hat on the year's richest love story

Most crime movies, even alleged indies, make it easy for the audience to take sides and establish clear rooting interests. Good Time is better than that: It’s not always easy to take, yet you can’t look away.

If Wal-Mart, the Lucifer of multinational corporations in many liberal eyes, sees the fiscal sense in stocking an increasingly wide array of organic foodstuffs, consumer habits truly are changing. Not fast enough, though, for documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner.

It's a film for specialized tastes, quiet, delicate. But it suits those tastes beautifully.

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

Disney TV star Bridgit Mendler brings an effective if limited friendliness to Arrietty; Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are relatively restrained as her parents; Carol Burnett runs through a career's worth of vocal flourishes and aural panic attacks as the housekeeper.

One of the best-loved '50s sci-fi movies, with a plot boldly cribbed from Shakespeare's The Tempest. [30 Jun 2006, p.C7]

First of the classic Fred and Ginger plots. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

If you don't believe film can change the world, you haven't seen the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till.

An indelible portrait of an American family at its most blithely macabre.

Incendies is no mere riff on a Greek mainstay. It is its own entity, delicate and fierce. Already I've risked making it sound like homework. It's not; it's an enthralling drama of survival.

The kind of well-crafted, character-driven work that wows regional film festival crowds and public television audiences but seldom gets seen outside those circles.

The simplicity and idealism of The Color of Paradise are part of what makes it so attractive to near-jaded palates here. There are no evil characters in the film.

Contains some gaspingly funny moments. [29 July 1988, Friday, p.A]

Two suggestions as you watch it: Never take anything for granted, and keep your hand on your wallet as you leave the theater.

Bird’s rather strenuous sequel lands more in the camp of “Cars 2” and “Monsters University,” mistaking calamity and mayhem for real excitement and wit.

Eleven years ago director Campbell made "GoldenEye," the first of the Brosnan Bond pictures. Casino Royale trumps it every which way.

Kenneth Branagh's earnest adaptation of Shakespeare's serious comedy about love is undone by, of all things, Branagh's enthusiasm for this material to be joyful. He practically busts through the screen in an effort to please. His wife, Oscar-winner Emma Thompson, is more restrained as his dueling lover and creates a more credible character. [21 May 1993, p.C]

May not have the size and grandeur of some of the biographical and political epics being released this fall, but I defy you to find a better written, more honest -- or yes, more satisfying and delicious -- movie this year. [27 September 1996, Friday, p.C]

Based on an Elmore Leonard story: the classic suspense western in which a desperate farmer (Van Heflin), trying to save his spread, hires on to transport a sardonic outlaw chief (Glenn Ford) to Yuma. [25 Jul 2008, p.C8]

A few moments of sly inspiration are not enough to carry an entire feature; along with the tears, it leaves behind an aftertaste of phoniness. [16 March 1990, Friday, p.H]

If it's not an actual masterpiece, it's at least the next best thing, a fully characteristic, fully alive work by a master of his art.

At heart, though, odd as it sounds, Gray has created a pocket-sized version of “Apocalypse Now.” Ad Astra bends the Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam-era extravagance, about the rogue commander, Kurtz, and the errand boy, Willard, into its own thing. Like Coppola’s film, and the Joseph Conrad novel “Heart of Darkness," the new film examines the limits of colonialist hubris. It’s also, and primarily, a father/son parable of betrayal, confrontation and forgiveness.

A socially conscious prison picture (written by Richard Brooks) that sometimes deliriously suggests a Brooklynesque mating of Jean Genet and Warner Bros. [20 Apr 2007, p.C8]

Stirred by the winds of nostalgia, lapped by its ocean of dreams, "The Secret of Roan Inish" is one of the loveliest surprises of the year. [03 Mar 1995, p.C]

The movie sticks with you, thanks to LaBute's observational powers and the three impressive lead performances. [15 August 1997, Friday, p.C]

A disturbingly frank look at people and relationships in contemporary Los Angeles and a thrilling dramatic showcase for a brilliant cast.