The original was a very good thriller. The new one is simply a good one.

Robust, delicate, sublimely acted and a close cinematic cousin to the theatrical original, director Denzel Washington's film version of Fences makes up for a lot of overeager or undercooked stage-to-screen adaptations over the decades.

Sleek, confident and peppered with delicious portraits in pursuit, deceit and evasion, the carnival of papal intrigue known as “Conclave” works like gangbusters.

The easy comparison here is to Hitchcock, but Bong moves at a slower pace, more like Claude Chabrol.

An elegant miniature, Rama Burshtein's Fill the Void labors under a narrative inevitability, but it's artful work nonetheless.

While Another Round inspects the varying effects of alcohol on daily life, it’s far from clinical. Waves of ebullience, love, humor and sorrow crash on top of each other, as anyone who’s ever been overserved can attest to. It isn’t prescriptive about drinking, and doesn’t seek to impart any message other than that life is hard, and sometimes dark, and sometimes ecstatically beautiful.

Its moving narrative requires little in the way of embellishment, but Temple’s documentary sometimes becomes too clever for its own good.

At 85 minutes, it's a tight, sharp achievement, yet one of the things I love about it is simple: It moves to a relaxed rhythm, in sync with its slightly otherworldly subject.

The first 10 minutes of Lodge Kerrigan's Keane have a raw, hurtling reality that's as painfully engrossing as anything you'll see in a recent non-fiction movie, a searing portrait of one man's hell, from inside and outside.

Plays more like a gritty, episodic British independent film powered by a soundtrack of Who songs that illuminate the main character's turbulent emotions.

It may be the most serene and optimistic film Rivette has made in France. Yet even the art-house audience may undervalue it, miss the beauty, style and wit.

Feels constrained and rather dutiful, no matter how passionate these people are about what they're observing.

It's fascinating and unexpected both in its simple, looming images and its storytelling priorities, which may not intersect with the priorities of audiences who couldn't get enough of "Se7en."

It is an intriguing subject, though so far all that Morris has brought to it is a combination of the morbid and the cruel; he needs to develop some sympathy, too. [16 Sept 1988]

The film is a singular achievement.

Priscilla, the movie, exists in a state of hushed wonderment, magical one minute, bittersweet the next.

Is Black Swan high-minded? I'm happy to say: No. It is extremely high-grade hokum, which is to say it offers several different and combustible varieties.

It is an almost startlingly intimate film, following this strange relationship between these two, as they go through the challenges of life.

It places a modern lens on complicated questions of art, love and perspective in storytelling, in an entertaining and intelligent thriller of intimate proportions.

After "Ninotchka," this is the best Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script filmed by somebody else: a terrific romantic swindle comedy set in Paris, starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and John Barrymore. [26 Sep 2003, p.C5]

Gripping in purely cinematic terms as an imaginatively told tale of sibling rivalry and the pressures of great expectations.

It’s frustrating, although I’m grateful Kaufman didn’t simply film the book as written. The actors couldn’t be better attuned to the nervous system of this universe.

The quintessential American love story --the one between the spoiled heiress and the spontaneous, fun-loving guy from the wrong side of the tracks--has seldom been more elegantly and entertainingly told.

Lerman's excellent as Marcus, capturing his principles as well as his bullheadedness. Sarah Gadon's Olivia is no less fine.

Fine ensemble performances and a tight balance of the supernatural against the historical make The Devil's Backbone a well-crafted, white-knuckled cinematic journey.

Slickly executed and dramatically engaging.

Despite the movie's limitations, it's very satisfying to watch Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini enjoy each other's company on screen, as characters, because it's satisfying to watch them enjoy each other's company as performers.

Fox’s resolve, his ever-sharp wit and acuity, more than mitigates what’s not entirely useful in Guggenheim’s filmmaking approach.