This is a general-interest documentary, not one for the wonks or jazzbos. But the music, as we keep hearing from the cited experts, friends and admirers, covered so many different styles, Chasing Trane rides right past its own prescribed length of track.

A charming confection, set on an ocean liner. [13 Apr 2007, p.C5]

It's by far the best cast Burns has assembled -- so much so that, unlike his other films, he doesn't come near dominating it.

The director is Kevin Macdonald, a documentary filmmaker making his fiction film feature debut. (He won an Oscar for his Munich Olympics hostage chronicle, "One Day in September.")

I know of no documentary on a contemporary artist that conveys so much about the artist's work so lyrically and directly.

An ebullient toast to grande dames: part homage, part camp, all artifice and a thoroughly entertaining, if light, confection.

Something in the Air, is the latest screen portrait of an artist as a young man. It's a good one too, rich and assured, even if writer-director Olivier Assayas is more successful at creating atmosphere than at making his romanticized younger self a three-dimensional being.

It still had some juice a few years ago, when it was Hector Babenco's "Pixote," but "Salaam Bombay!" is a disturbingly professional, self-assured piece of work. [28 Oct 1988, p.A]

Melody Time delivers on its promise of rhythm and romance, reason and rhyme, something ridiculous, something sublime. [11 Jun 1998, p.10C]

The film is bright, busy, enjoyable, progressive without being insufferable.

That conscious absurdity is at the core of The Quick and the Dead. It's a rousingly grotesque, often wildly entertaining western horror-comedy, with co-producer and star Sharon Stone as a sexy lady gunslinger taking on all comers in the gunfight tournament from hell. [10 Feb 1995, p.C]

The acting is primo and the cinematography, on high-definition video by the gifted M. David Mullen, is striking.

The movie belongs to the women, and they perform with attitude and power.

Bright and engaging, and blessed with two superb non-verbal non-human sidekicks, Tangled certainly is more like it.

Piani did the right thing in casting Rutherford, whose physical embodiment of Agathe suggests a tall, gangly, striking woman trying not to be seen. The actress leans into the character’s unsettled, often sullen side, though not at the expense of the comic tropes.

One part smart, one part stupid and three parts jokes about body parts, the extremely raunchy Neighbors is a strange success story.

It becomes clear that Safdie is intentionally denying a big, flashy “win the game” kind of film, offering instead a cerebral examination of the quotidian, workmanlike drudgery of being a professional athlete who never became a superstar household name, still shouldering the work, the struggle, the bad days, quibbling over contracts and rules, taking every hit without complaint.

Lumet has retained a lifetime of technique and sharp instincts regarding how to make a courtroom full of people worth watching.

Frank's dialogue owes a little something to Elmore Leonard, but it's less comic and heavily brocaded.

There may be less than meets the eye here. But what meets the eye is pretty striking.

This movie might be better-maybe even a classic-if it were less urbane, if the New York tiger that Nicolas Cage and Richard Price unleashed could bare all his fangs, and not just fill the theater with his magnetic growl. Then Kiss of Death might really be a killer. [21 Apr 1995, p.C]

A fascinating examination of the joyous, turbulent self-discovery made by a proper, middle-aged woman.

Two advantages of the British version: It's tauter and much faster. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

This sincerely felt and utterly effervescent coming-of-age tale expresses a universal truth about being alive: that hopefully, you'll have the chance, and the awareness, to make and remake yourself, again and again, dusting off the old bricks you've got and forming them into something familiar but new.

The film leaves a sense of entrapment and despair. Its characters are caught in a shrinking world that leaves no room for notions as grand as "good" and "evil," but only a sordid, creeping malignancy that levels everything in its path. [24 Apr 1987, p.AC]

A nostalgia movie that doesn't get sticky with false sentiment.

With a refreshing lack of fake glamour, the film captures what it's like to be an initially unpromising comedian on the road.

Ozon’s style as a filmmaker favors smooth technique and easy proficiency, and his resume is full of comedy. That would appear to put him at odds with this material. But his handling of difficult subject matter carries a welcome, borderline-dispassionate restraint and a respect for each character’s value.