Fundamentally the film succeeds because the musicians themselves are good storytellers.

The picture hurtles along, smoothly if not plausibly, and saves some surprises for the last reel. The Predator, it seems, represents that part of the human spirit that responds with pleasure when violence breaks out, whether it is in Central America, the inner city, or the suburban multiplex playing Predator 2. [21 Nov 1990, p.3C]

It’s a pretty good time, and often a pretty good movie for the nervous blur we’re in right now. It’s cozy.

The tired and washed-out Spanish town is a fitting backdrop for these men - a place where life moves on around them at an uninspiring pace.

A weirdly old-fashioned affair. If it weren't for the explicit sexual encounters, this could be an Ibsen or a Strindberg play, unclothed and unmoored from the late 19th or early 20th century.

Working from a forgotten Victorian thriller by Bram Stoker ("Dracula"), director Ken Russell has fashioned his most watchable film in a long while, largely by staying out of the way of the material.

The actor (Segel) creates a dreamy, solemn but subtly vibrant version of Wallace that works for him and for the material.

Though it never quite transcends its status as a simple concert film, Prince's Sign o' the Times gives far greater range to his talent than his widely successful movie debut, the 1984 Purple Rain. [20 Nov 1987, p.A]

Through good scenes and derivative ones, Adams is disarming.

By the end of this modest, strange venture, Leto made me believe it was worth being forced to hang out on the sidewalk with this man, if only to get a creeping sense of what that might’ve been like.

Celebrated cinema verite chronicle of a quartet of door-to-door bible salesman, pitching their wares with slick expertise or threadbare urgency. [03 Dec 1999, p.L]

Blackbird is a simple tale, well-told, but it’s also the tale of all tales, of life, death and everything in between.

All three leading performers are scarily convincing on the film's own tight, clammy terms.

This isn't a particularly great flick, but Pacino's performance is first-rate. [24 May 2002, p.C1]

Works best when it works primal--which is not the same thing as working dumb.

Sirens is a brazen, luscious Australian sex comedy full of nature and nudity, flesh, food and fantasy. With its theme of erotic awakening on a painter's sunny Blue Mountains estate, and its frequent scenes of lush female models scampering around naked, it's often a pretty silly film. But it's also an immensely enjoyable one: a fairy tale in which everything-fashions, scenery, badinage, music, even moments of angst-becomes a kind of goofy aphrodisiac. [11 March 1994, p.C2]

The on-screen talents, savvy and fine company all, have been ready for something like this far longer than the opportunity has been available.

The only the bum steer in Me Without You comes in the person of Daniel, played by Kyle MacLachlan of "Twin Peaks" fame. It's hard to tell whether MacLachlan was dealt a bum hand in an otherwise fine screenplay or acted on auto-pilot.

Tune in, turn on and drop out with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda as two down-and-out motorcyclists in this classic road film about the 1960s counterculture. Joining them on their cross-country trip is a young Jack Nicholson, whose charismatic performance keeps the movie rolling through some of its more experimental moments. [22 Jun 2012, p.C6]

Toback's films deliver a lot of bang for the buck. He's one of the few serious and original directors who can mix group sex and talk of existentialism; a fast-paced basketball sequence cut with scenes of Mafia members plotting a hit; and an in-class philosophy lecture stylishly edited with Alan's memories of a contradictory in-bed discussion.

Campbell’s film offers not surprises, exactly, but craftsmanship and low, brute, cunning satisfactions.

It's not a frenzied head-trip, the way Roman Polanski's "The Tenant" was, nor does the movie have half the energy and nightmarish allure of David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive." It's best taken, I think, as a jape and a wry male-centric fable on transgression and desire.

Hollywood legends introduce a collection of moments from the finest MGM musicals, ranging from the first all-sound musical -- Broadway Melody of 1930 -- to the climactic ballet from An American in Paris. [02 Dec 2011, p.3]

Since he popped up and broke hearts in Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," Carradine has learned a wealth of practical acting knowledge about how much and how little need be done at any given moment. He provides the on-screen link to those earlier days and brings the natural authority a director craves in a performer.

A movie about love, friendship and finding oneself, and it takes all its subjects very seriously while seeming to treat them with the lightest and most piquant of touches. Like its bizarre heroine, it irrigates our souls.

Wholly predictable yet serenely enjoyable.

Unlike almost every other sexy modern thriller (especially most recent studio blockbusters), this one gives you a lot to think about.

What strikes me about the new Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott, is how its preoccupations and sensibilities lie almost precisely halfway between the derring-do of the 1938 film and the harsh revisionism of the '70s edition