Whatever the numbers, testimony cited in Nanking portrays the episode as a horrifying chapter in man’s renowned inhumanity to man.

The film sags in the middle section, and it's more a novelty item than a fully formed work . But it's very entertaining. And Van Damme proves himself a brave, possibly foolhardy actor, which is more than Steven Seagal ever did.

The film isn't much as cinema, but it doesn't really matter. The final half-hour, in particular, generates the sort of suspense you rarely get in a sports documentary.

Twohy pulls all the strings to create an inventive genre piece.

John Travolta stars as a Texas construction worker who spends his nights chasing a woman and the cowboy myth in a huge honky-tonk bar. Debra Winger is a standout as the object of Travolta's anger and affections. [11 July 1980, p.8]

Hartigan has a knack for sensitive, human dramas, and while Little Fish takes place in a near-future heightened reality, the story is relatable not only because we’re all living through a pandemic ourselves, dealing with grief and loss on a scale that ranges from the deeply personal to the impossibly large, but because this kind of loss is also very real.

In film circles there's a name for pictures like Lifeforce. Film Comment magazine has dubbed them guilty pleasures, movies you're embarrassed to admit you like. Maybe somebody spiked my popcorn, but I can't deny that I liked Lifeforce.

The latest film version loosely adapting the Wells story exploits it both ways, subtly and crassly. It works, thanks largely to a riveting and fearsomely committed Elisabeth Moss mining writer-director Leigh Whannell’s stalker scenario for all sorts of psychological nuance.

Captures the complex dynamic of a mentoring relationship like few movies before it.

Besides being super-duper gory, of course, the new movie is jaunty, good-looking and full of what you might call esprit de corpses.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Eddie Murphy has just paid himself a heartfelt compliment. Cut for cut, his Beverly Hills Cop II is almost a perfect match for the wildly successful "Beverly Hills Cop I," with only the crimes and the shticks changed to protect fans of the original. It could have been written by a witty computer. That's not all bad, given the quality of the model. [20 May 1987, p.C13]

Mainly, Booksmart works because Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are so magically right together.

Manages to wring some originality out of its fairy-tale plot. This freshness compensates for the expected hackneyed qualities in this Cinderella tale.

The rigidity of most of the rabbis interviewed in the film is balanced by the presence of openly gay Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg, who offers a more liberal, but no less scholarly, interpretation of the Torah.

Despite an abrupt ending, Mana gives us compelling, damaged characters who we want to help -- or hurt. Perhaps most important, El Bola forces us examine our personal motivations for each impulse and their consequences.

The first hit movie western of the new century - wins us with a wink. It leaves you in a bright, happily cross-cultural mood. Adios, amigos. And vaya con Jackie Chan.

Little Odessa is a portrait of New York subcultures, the Russian immigrant community itself and the orginizatsya, or Russian mafia, that employs Joshua. The cityscapes are wintry and menacing. The characters have a strong pulse.

An engaging character study full of lyrical images and strong performances. It's an exceedingly well-made film.

A warm-hearted gem of a film based on the V.S. Naipaul novel of the same name.

For much of its length the picture is brilliantly successful-light, surprising and, because it asks the audience to participate in its creation, unusually engaging.

The value of Romantico is that it lets us experience vicariously what Carmelo and others like him go through.

The movie — certainly Daniels’s best since “Precious” — is as turbulent and zigzaggy as Holiday’s life no doubt felt like to the woman who lived it. If this risky movie hits some bum notes, Andra Day cannot be found anywhere in the vicinity.

There are few marquees that could contain the title The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years, but Penelope Spheeris' documentary on the heavy metal bands of rock 'n' roll turns out to be much more graceful than its name. [05 Aug 1988, p.B]

If Blind Date is soft and simple at its core, it is certainly the sharpest, funniest film Edwards has made since Victor/Victoria. After the sogginess of his last few features, all of his dazzling craft seems to have come back to him.

A sometimes-sharp, sometimes-shallow, cunningly crafted thriller that tries to rely more on ideas and character than carnage and crashes. [30 Aug 1996, p.C]

Clean is above all a movie about making peace with uncertainty and doubt and living with the aftershocks of the choices we make. Not the easiest task, but it may be what redeems us in the end.

The movie is a thing of honey and gloss, yet there's just enough heart in the central father/son relationship, and in the teenagers' ensemble interactions, to make it glide by.

Leoni is one of the truly distinctive comic actresses we have in the movies today, a tough broad with murderously effective timing and phrasing.