“Séraphine” was haunting; Violette, for all its writhings, is familiar.

The film is often​ sharp and amusing, but it’s a doodle in the Coen canon.

Hammers home its tragicomic points too heavily for either its humorous or dramatic aspects to gather much emotional steam.

It’s to Hall’s credit that, in the end, we see Chubbuck as a victim of no one so much as herself.

Since 9/11-style terrorism is very much on display here, I suppose it’s fair to say that Star Trek Into Darkness is a sci-fi blow-out with overtones of the real. Series founder Gene Roddenberry would, I think, approve.

Under Fire is not a gentle experience. But it offers more to think about than any other new Hollywood picture. [23 Nov 1983, p.42]

The film's predictability dampens its best parts. Having decided to make a movie about a dreaded subject, the filmmakers too often retreat into the comfort zone of easy assurances and flip quips.

The humor is uneven and sometimes crude, but much of the mock-documentary is surprising and amusing.

If Abrams had stuck with the kids and cut way back on all the sci-fi hoo-ha, his film might have stood a fighting chance of being charming. Big is not always better, even when it comes to fantasies.

War Horse, despite its excellences, is a supreme demonstration of a director phoning it in.

Mighty monotonous after a while.

The film, some of which looks staged, is too slick, and its feminist emphasis, complete with Australian performer Sia singing “You can do anything” on the soundtrack, grates. But Aisholpan triumphs over these excesses.

Liu is dazzling as the heroine, and the movie as a whole strikes a lovely balance between comedy and compassion.

Balaban's superb performance blends with Moyle's mostly understated directing to produce an uneven but sometimes enchanting comedy-drama.

Concise, humane documentary.

The flamboyantly filmed story makes some telling points about adolescent life. But despite its oh-so-cynical mannerisms, it falls all over itself to flatter an allegedly self-absorbed and self-pitying teen audience. [7 April 1989]

I've become weary of documentaries about winning prizes, but this one is special because the kids are.

It's a giddy nightmare. Nothing is quite what it seems in I Served the King of England, and this is poetically appropriate. The world it depicts is too dangerous and too lovely to classify.

The movie is strong in sound and fury, weak in nuance and insight.

Egoyan's cinematic brilliance shows up intermittently in this atmospheric thriller, which gains most of its punch from Hoskins's surprisingly subtle performance.

The archival and interview footage is priceless.

The cinematography is gorgeous from first frame to last, but the story occasionally rings false.

If lush landscapes and exotic wildlife are what you're after, this isn't the safari for you. But many moviegoers will respond to its mixture of family drama and Holocaust-era history.

While it's a splendidly acted film, A Beautiful Mind is also a wasted opportunity.

The film is too artsy for its own good, but it has some marvelous Coen Brothers-style black humor.

More good than bad, at least until its too tidy conclusion. Since it's essentially a three-character movie, it's a good thing that the characters, and the actors who play them, can hold the screen.

A slight but winning heart-tugger.

This is a startlingly funny portrait of Gothic Americana.

It's reminiscent of David Lynch, who is a master at mixing the ghastly and the risible. Brick would be better with a bit more Lynch in its soul, but Johnson is his own man, and I look forward to what he comes up with next.

Allow me a quick lament: Do we really want to see a great actor like Cumberbatch, not to mention Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tilda Swinton, entombed in yet another superhero franchise?

Sigourney Weaver isn't quite up to her most demanding scenes, but Ben Kingsley is expertly enigmatic as the stranger, and Stuart Wilson is excellent as the husband who doesn't know whom to believe. [27 Jan 1995, p. 14]

Lena Dunham, the writer-director-star of the microbudget Tiny Furniture, has a distinctive comedic take on the world – a kind of haggard spiritedness.

Equally fascinated by the afflictions of life and the usually squandered opportunities these afford for courage and self-sacrifice.

The best family films are those that entertain both children and adults. The Sheep Detectives can be enjoyed simply as a funny fable with a solvable mystery at its center. The well-placed clues are hidden in plain view.

This is only Ustaoglu's second film, but smart performances and expressive camera work mark her as a talent to watch in the future.

Director Alexandra Lipsitz doesn't do much more than chronicle the noise, but it's intermittently fun stuff.

Cash was a true anomaly: a poseur who was also the genuine article. A better movie would have made that contradiction its core.

If it weren't so smartly filmed and acted, this might add up to an over-the-top mess. But watch how inventively Mr. Antal keeps the action moving and you'll see why his picture has won a passel of prizes.

From a psychological standpoint, this is murky territory but Jacobs presents it as the height of enlightenment – a confluence of two damaged souls. At least "Good Will Hunting," another movie that played this game, wasn't blah.

Rhys-Meyers and Johansson work well together - they both know how to project glossiness and guile.

It’s a strange movie – simultaneously rawly realistic and airbrushed.

Truly, Madly, Deeply takes on grief. It is a hard picture to watch at times, because the grieving protagonist is so convincing.

This isn't a movie, it's a thingamajig - frequently as off-putting as can be, but unassailably one of a kind.

There are some novelties, like views of people surfing down sand dunes, but there's also far too much self-congratulation by surfers. Don't step into this not-so-new wave unless you're a die-hard surfing buff.

This high-quality Disney animation combines strong pictorial appeal with amiable voice-performances.

Carrell has stated in interviews that his accent "falls someplace between Bela Lugosi and Ricardo Montalban," and that's about right.

It takes a while to get into the ruminative rhythm of this film. But it’s worth it.

Capotondi keeps circling his movie in and out of dream states and waking states as the whodunit morphs into who-cares-who-dunit?

Francis Ford Coppola has directed the legal drama with his usual keen attention to atmosphere and texture, although his adaptation of John Grisham's bestselling novel leaves out connective material that would have made the tale smoother and savvier.

I haven't heard this much shouting in a movie since the first hour of "Full Metal Jacket."

Although it does disappointingly go over the top on occasion, there’s just too much depth and style to The Batman for it to be anything other than a success.

Directed by Ang Lee, whose exposure of middle-class hypocrisy would be more effective if it weren't rigged to provide evidence for the story's take on contemporary values.

I wish the directors had emphasized more of the players' personal lives apart from the football field. But, in the end, this is a documentary about Courtney and the transformative powers of caring. He works wonders on his players and they reciprocate.

Harry comes through loud and clear as a conflicted, edgy, avid young man. He's turned into EveryTeen.

Alarmist to an almost apocalyptic degree, the film is nevertheless packed with enough basic facts and figures to give any eater serious pause. Or at least any eater who indulges in sugar.

The movie has some powerful moments, but it's mostly superficial.

The film is better than the recent "The War Within," which tried for the same things, but ultimately, and perhaps unavoidably, we are left face to face with the unknowable.

Although the film is slow and sometimes ungainly, it takes on surprising power from the dignity of its performances and the moral strength of its ideas.

Sprightly acting, understated emotions, and lovingly detailed ambience make this amiable comedy-drama an easygoing indie pleasure.

Although it isn't very original in style, this heartfelt account is always instructive and frequently very touching.

The overfamiliarity of What Doesn't Kill You is redeemed by a full-scale performance from Mark Ruffalo.

The story is thin, but the film has rich emotions and a highly constructive moral sense, showing how racial divisions crumble once people recognize their artificiality.

The greater the illusion the greater the manipulator, and few are as good as Kevin Clash, the subject of Constance Marks's sprightly six-years-in-the-making documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey.

The story has some chillingly suspenseful episodes, although it's marred by overfamiliar themes and weak dialogue.

Poignant, witty, historically illuminating.

The filmmaking technique of writer-director Kevin Smith has matured since the raunchy "Clerks," his popular debut movie; but although his dialogue is often witty, he still relies on blunt sexual humor to get his point across.

Married to the Mob isn't for all tastes. But for cinematic thrills and spills, it's quite a ride.

The screenplay is foolish and Michael Keaton overplays the title role badly, but director Tim Burton gives the comedy a heap of visual imagination. [22 Apr 1988]

The ensemble acting is impressively in tune; and Michael Nyman's surging score adds an extra measure of emotional power.

The main characters are unremarkable, and most of the acting is dull.

This is one of Haneke's least powerful films, although the excellent cast is interesting to watch.

Luca stays close to the surface instead of diving deep into an exploration of how much freedom to give children. Arriving at a time when there’s a robust debate over how best to raise kids in the 21st century, it’s a missed opportunity. Luca is nonetheless a pleasurable movie experience. A summer vacation in one’s living room, it will leave you smiling from gill to gill.

Altman is one of very few directors who could have assembled such a superb ensemble, and he makes the most of it from first scene to last.

Viewers with a taste for bizarre, even surreal, humor will have a ball.

Snarky and enjoyable, but it could have been a ferocious black comedy. No Thank You For Playing It Safe.

Aniston and Reilly give the best of many excellent performances. A few plotty scenes aside, this quietly directed drama paints a sensitive, sympathetic portrait of modern malaise, and has a smart sense of humor as a bonus.

Intolerable Cruelty is a romantic comedy, but it has enough dark, strange, and cynical moments to qualify as a full-fledged part of the Coen canon.

Leconte justifies his vaunted reputation by lending freshness and feeling to what could have been a gimmicky tragicomedy.

Factotum is so sly and low-key hilarious that anybody can be in on the joke.

Biting as it tries to be, Tropic Thunder is mostly toothless. Its targets – Hollywood vanity, Hollywood tantrums – are easy hits.

A third aspect of The Tracker is less successful. In a badly calculated move, Mr. de Heer and singer Graham Tardif fill the soundtrack with songs full of clichés, platitudes, and truisms.

Hilarious, frenetic, and touching, but stereotyped and superficial in its treatment of both homosexuals and conservatives.

As fiercely unsentimental as Disgrace is, it offers by the end a measure of hope, and because that hope is so hard-won, it has the ring of truth.

Matt Damon and Robin Williams give touching performances, but Gus Van Sant's filmmaking is surprisingly ordinary.

As speculative storytelling goes, Mozart's Sister is ingenious but as moviemaking it's plodding.

Here's hoping other filmmakers will follow its spirit, if not all of its methods.

Family home movies and photos and archival clips round out the film, which holds its hero-worshiping to fairly tolerable levels.

Colorful, if not exciting.

The directors, George Miller and George Ogilvie, borrow from every source they can find; movie buffs can pass the time spotting the Lynch shot, the Leone shot, the Jodorowski shot, and all kinds of others.

As Disney animated features go, Tangled is middling.

Cruise is better than he’s been in a while because he damps down his usual all-intensity-all-the-time MO. He’s best here when his character seems the most scared. And Emily Blunt as a commando legend is indomitable, a credit to her exoskeleton.

Mahieux gives a bravura performance as the title character. Director Garrone keeps the story involving even though it doesn't quite live up to the star's strong talents.

It’s the sort of poetic conceit that needs a filmmaker far more rapt and intuitive than Haynes, whose jeweler’s precision keeps everything at an emotional remove.

The mid-'50s version is slow going most of the way, but there's no beating Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the charm department, and director Leo McCarey comes up with some amusing moments that are more diverting than anything in Beatty's updated edition. [13 Oct 1994, p.10]

The war scenes in Hacksaw Ridge, which take up almost half the screen time, are almost on a level with the D-Day invasion sequence from “Saving Private Ryan.”

Tom Hanks makes his directorial debut with this likable comedy, which shows that while pop culture is a business like any other, enthusiasm and high spirits can lead to satisfaction even if major success proves elusive.

Nathalie Baye is remarkable in Le Petit Lieutenant where she plays Caroline Vaudieu, a Parisian police inspector who returns to her post after a bout with alcoholism following her child's death.

The athletic scenes are so lively and the main performances are so magnetic that even moviegoers who resist sports-centered pictures may be won over. [11 Sep 1998, p.B2]