In the end, it's a heartening, rewarding experience to watch this journey--and, especially, its end.

Few mainstream films portray the religiousness or ethnicity of characters with such detail, warmth and humor as Liberty Heights.

We may know exactly where we're going, but the journey is so much fun, all but the most peevish audience members will find it impossible to complain.

Shines whenever we see the performances of Phoenix and Caan.

But by the end, when Gandolfini and Sarandon sing their sweet, hesitant little duet, it’s clear Turturro knew where he was going all along.

What you’re left with, finally, is the pleasure of a wily director’s company. In much the same way John Huston defied convention and predictability in the third act of his directorial career, with films as odd and fresh as “Wise Blood” and “Prizzi’s Honor,” Lumet is doing the same, right now.

Yes, the Frenchman Carax’s first film in English isn’t life-affirming so much as it is art-affirming. But it’s a weirdly compelling experience in blunt, arguably misogynist, harshly beautiful cinema.

Director Jason Orley (”Big Time Adolescence”) handles it all well enough. It’s Day and Slate who make the very best of it.

Issues are raised and dismissed with dizzying, dismaying speed.

Howard, playing an inspirational and resourceful man up against long odds, really is an inspiration.

Hokum might start in a bleak place, and the entire experience might be profoundly, existentially bone-rattling, but McCarthy’s dark fable argues that opening yourself up to the forces beyond the veil might just shake something loose, and might heal something, opening up a space for hope — or at least a different kind of ending.

With that kind of financial imperative it's something of a miracle the Potter films have been, on the whole, good. One or two, very good. One or two (the first two), less good. This one's good.

It's a good film, sturdily and somberly made, but it never catches fire.

Stands as a successful cinematic experiment and a gripping -- though a little too long -- study of humanity's most primitive instincts.

Enjoy this rare chance to catch Chan on the big screen at his near-peak mastery.

This latest in the ever-broadening Marvel movie landscape is fun. For an effects-laden franchise launch it's light on its feet, pretty stylish, worth seeing in Imax 3-D (for once, the up-charge is worth it) and full of tasty, classy performers enlivening the dull bits.

A refreshing if obvious drama. [9 June 1989, Friday, p.A]

Executed with incredible craft and style and a whole lot of heart, Project Hail Mary verges on the edge of being too saccharinely sweet. But sci-fi can serve many different purposes for audiences, and maybe that sweetness, combined with a story of cooperation and collaboration for self-preservation, is just the kind of balm we need to take the edge off right now.

The movie's humor is engaging but odd. The script is pretentious but sweet. And the symbolic use of the flying machine-which pulls you back to "Brewster McCloud"-doesn't work very well. But a flawed film like "Arizona Dream," with its wistfulness and pain, is still twice as interesting as most of the bloated, slick, empty successes that tend to get released here, films that look as if they were dreamed up by used-car salesmen in a desert. [6 Jan 1995, p.L]

A searing documentary with an agenda.

A superbly crafted piece of humanistic cinema.

It's Hill who proves once again he's much more than his comedic origins, crafting a compelling portrayal of the elusive Donnie that just about steals the whole movie.

Eccentric, miscast (though stimulatingly so), not for all tastes but far from flavorless.

Philippe’s strongest work in 78/52 is the historical context, ranging from the images and roles of mothers in 1950s popular culture to a key handful of movies photographed in black and white (as was “Psycho,” partly to get the blood past the censors) released the previous year, 1959.

The Chinese locations ache with beauty. And when Watts and Norton focus, intently, on Maugham's often dazzlingly vindictive characters, The Painted Veil really does feel like a story worth filming a third time.

A classy supernatural lady-in-distress thriller.

Morgen’s best achievement is the news footage, more detailed looks at events outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel and in Chicago parks than you typically see on TV rehashes.

It seems carefully calibrated to shock viewers out of a familiar frame of reference, while leaving nothing behind to take its place.