The filmmakers may be just as clueless as Buddy when it comes to Mavis, who resembles nothing so much as a snooty stalker.

Hollywood is notorious for giving its second-best roles to women, and the situation clearly hasn't changed when a superficial romp like Postcards From the Edge represents the best a major studio can come up with in exploring women's issues. [25 Oct 1990, p.14]

What this film is really about is how interconnected we all are, like it or not, on the Internet, and how alluring and alarming this can be.

The acting is excellent and Penn reconfirms his remarkable talent for muted, understated filmmaking that focuses on character and dialogue rather than spectacle and sensationalism.

Has a graceful simplicity that many will find hard to resist.

It's an uneven film, but Dickens admirers shouldn't miss it.

In addition to its own merits as a social and cultural document, Broomfield's film continues the welcome trend of more and more nonfiction movies finding their way to theater screens and attracting wide general audiences.

At heart this is a cuteness exploitation flick.

The coolness here has its creepiness, as in the dispassionate way Fincher depicts Lisbeth's rape and her subsequent, harrowing revenge, but the suspicion remains: Fincher didn't make this movie his own because he doesn't consider it his own.

A thriller so tricky that figuring it out is half the fun.

The Booksellers is a documentary for people who treasure the sheer look and feel of books. It is for anyone who has ever spent way too much time in used and rare bookstores teetering on tall ladders or squeezing through narrow, tome-filled aisles in search of that most precious of commodities: the book you didn’t know you needed until you found it – or, to be more precise, it found you.

At a time when many of us look to comedy to keep us sane, the question is especially pertinent, although the answers here aren’t especially penetrating.

I don't wish to give offense here, but it certainly doesn't hurt that Mary Lou is voiced by that famously small bundle of energy Isla Fisher. (She's 5-foot-2.)

This latest movie adaptation sustains a consistent note of measured mirth. As in the novel, the romantic flippancies have a serious core because at stake is nothing less than the prospect of an enduring happiness.

French filmmaker Louis Malle is a storyteller capable of reinventing his style to suit every new project, but his ideas aren't dynamic enough to overcome the triteness of the basic idea or the overheated nature of the sex scenes, which have been trimmed down....Jeremy Irons gives a smart and sensitive performance, though, and Juliette Binoche and Miranda Richardson are also strong. [8 Jan 1993, p.14]

Loses much of the book's complexity but gains dramatic power from a cleverly streamlined screenplay... and several persuasive performances. No previous movie has made Austen's vision seem so vivid and alive for contemporary times.

The movie gains a few points for its colorfully filmed Boston background and bright bossa-nova music. But it's filmed in a fake-spontaneous style that's as stale and artificial as the relationships between the characters.

The picture makes up in energy and high spirits what it lacks in structure and style.

Marion Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth, however, is a triumph. She seems transfixed by her own capacity for evil, and her mad scene is one of the most unhistrionic, and therefore spookiest, ever filmed.

Warrior becomes increasingly shameless until, by the end, with the big fights fought, we are clearly meant to rise as one and applaud the indomitability of the human spirit. But the only indomitable thing about Warrior are its clichés.

Ross's comedy isn't as inventive as "The Truman Show," which it resembles in some ways, but it explores interesting ideas with nimble humor.

Solid acting helps the story stay earthbound when Aronofsky's filmmaking gets addicted to its own flashy cynicism, but the picture sometimes seems as dazed and confused as the situations it wants to criticize.

There are some great, rapturous moments in Where the Wild Things Are. Jonze is humbled before the wonders of a child's imagination, and so are we.

The film makes clear that the soft-spoken, diminutive Ginsburg fought early and hard for gender equality in the courts in her own steadfastly clearsighted way. She’s the opposite of a late bloomer.

Lelouch means to transcend the genre. He doesn't really move much beyond his usual glib panache here, but the plot is intriguing and so are the actors.

Malkovich is wryly amusing as German director F.W. Murnau, and Dafoe steals the show as a vampire playing an actor playing a vampire.

Funny, sad, and tinged with magic realism, this ambitious comedy-drama is as original as it is nimbly directed.

Harrowing, realistic, humanistic.

Stylishly made, if less intellectually resonant than first-rate Mann films like "Ali" and "The Insider."

The first hour is excellent, spinning an ethically and emotionally compelling tale. Narrative logic fades during the second half, though, reducing the movie's impact on every level.

It appears to have been made from the inside, not only of the characters but of the historical situation in which they struggle.

While the result is visually brilliant, it's oddly disjointed and packs less emotional force than Richard Price's novel.

On the upside, the action is consistently quick and breezy, and New York City looks te rrific through the loving lens of Carlo DiPalma's camera. On the downside, the jokes are more bemusing than hilarious, earning smiles rather than full-fledged laughs despite the efforts of the energetic cast. Also unfortunate is a nastiness toward women that creeps into some of the gags. There's at least one scene of classic brilliance, though, involving five tape recorders and a telephone; and the stars get solid support from Alan Alda as the couple's best friend and Anjelica Huston as a poker-playing nove list. Allen directed the picture, and wrote the screenplay with his old-time collaborator Marshall Brickman. [20 Aug 1993, p.12]

Elba is one of those actors who radiates his own force field even if he’s sitting still, or just tying his shoe. His no-nonsense performance helps to eradicate some of Sorkin’s nonsense.

In some ways the movie's straightforward style is more appropriate to the horror than a more souped-up approach would have been. With material this strong, sometimes the best thing a filmmaker can do is to stay out of the way.

Berlinger is after more than a true crime recounting here – the film attempts to explain, often lucidly, sometimes laboriously, how deeply entrenched Bulger was with the FBI and the police.

Although I Am Big Bird is no great shakes as a piece of filmmaking, and skews into treacly inspirational terrain, it’s still worth seeing to make the acquaintance of a man who, although he would probably be the last to say so, is an artist of the first rank. And a nice guy, too. What a rare combo.

A major treat for the eyes.

Like its star, it's quietly sincere and compulsively watchable.

The footage of Gehry's work, notably the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, is often startlingly beautiful, and Gehry is forthcoming about how he achieved his effects. But too much of the film is taken up with gushy self-serving talking-head testimonials.

Linklater keeps it lively with imaginative camerawork and razor-sharp editing.

The action is nonstop and often harrowing and well staged. But van Houten, while a charmer, doesn't adequately convey the disgust (and connivance) that her character would inevitably feel in such a situation.

The movie is small, sincere, and riveting from start to finish. [06 Jan 1995, p.10]

Florence Foster Jenkins isn’t really about how passion trumps art. It’s about how life is more important than art.

Sokurov is a playful philosopher. If his playfulness is sometimes juvenile – as in those Napoleon scenes, or, worse, in the scenes of an actress playing Marianne, the spirit of France, exhorting, “Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood” – at least he’s not stuffy.

Highly uneven, but at least it doesn’t glamorize Hawking’s life or turn it into a paean to endurance.

Excellent acting, and a plot that combines suspense, whimsy, and political resonance make this Palestinian comedy-drama an unusual treat.

What have the Yes Men actually accomplished with their japery? Their film is an inadvertent reminder that activist antics are not the same thing as reform.

Jeffs is an unusually gifted director, but her screenplay (based on Kirsty Gunn's novel) never quite gets a firm grip or a fresh perspective on its coming-of-age subject matter.

The filmmaking is uninspired and Fiennes inexplicably plays three different characters with exactly the same acting style.

There is no law requiring a biopic to make “nice” with its subject, but Get On Up, which presents Brown almost entirely unflatteringly except as a performer, makes you wonder why the filmmakers (including Mick Jagger, one of its producers) took the trouble.

Marvelously enjoyable.

The film’s most joyous performer is the bagpiper Cristina Pato, known as “the Jimi Hendrix of Galicia,” who is such a powerhouse that she could probably upstage the Rolling Stones (in their prime).

Entertaining documentary about stuntwomen who do risky business for a living.

For all its pretensions and intermittent power, is essentially high-grade claptrap.

The conceit of the movie is that everyone is obsessed by something and never really tunes into anybody else.

Logue's magnetic performance is the movie's main virtue, supported by a good secondary cast and a sharply written screenplay.

The acting is passionate, but the film would be more effective if it presented a more thoroughgoing lesson in the raging horrors that swept through European culture during the era of the French Revolution.

Contains quite a few grisly and ghastly images.

The barometer for whether you'll enjoy Amélie is whether you liked "Moulin Rouge" last summer. If snappy visuals, tangy colors, mood-drenched scenery, and a good-hearted heroine make you as happy as a box of Parisian chocolates, it's definitely for you.

Siegel calls it a talking-heads film about the talking cure, and that pretty well sums it up. The nonfiction scenes are most interesting, and could have easily sustained the whole picture.

The acting is smart and gritty, Almereyda's visual style has a raw immediacy found in few films with Shakespearean pedigrees, and an eclectic music score adds atmosphere and surprise every step of the way.

Delivers enough action to please Saturday-night crowds, if not the surreal wit that made the first two "Batman" movies, directed by Tim Burton, so entertaining.

Devotees of the "Whole Earth Catalogue" may regard this film as a nostalgia trip, but it's much more comprehensive, more forward-looking than that.

At this late date there is little that is factually revelatory about his film, but as a human document of what people are capable of in wartime, it's indispensable.

The action is carefully calculated to captivate a wide audience while allowing hard-core trekkies to savor nuances of plot and personality.

Rudd is amusing enough; Segel, who towers over Rudd, is amusing, too, though the role seems to have been written for Owen Wilson. Maybe Wilson was busy. Lucky him.

I wish the film had done more – anything – to analyze Petit’s psyche. But he barely exists in the movie except as a certified daredevil.

A bit too neat and calculated to make the emotions ring really true.

What may have begun as a descent into the personal depths of an enigmatic genius ends up as one more cog in the Bob Dylan myth machine.

The story is blatantly contrived, milking every situation for maximum emotion and suspense; still, the picture has a lot of old-fashioned charm if you overlook its lapses into needless vulgarity, and its shameless insistence on giving male characters more dignity than their female counterparts. Michael Keaton is terrific as the hero. [18 March 1994, p.12]

The first feature-length movie from Bhutan tells its lighthearted story through smart performances, appealing images, and unfailing good humor.

The movie is designed to show off Liotta's acting skills, but pointless mayhem and sheer nastiness crowd out any virtues it might have had.

The story is silly, the acting is campy, the effects are amusingly tacky. A mildly entertaining romp that pokes refreshing fun at its own occasional violence.

The suspenseful set-up never pays off, but Rampling continues the impressive collaboration with Ozon that began with "Under the Sand."

Penn's excellent acting doesn't raise his character above the level of familiar clichés about woman-chasing jazzmen.

The rap music we hear, which is produced outside Cuba's state-run music industry, is politically audacious and charged with personal expression and uplift. The film was produced by Charlize Theron's socially conscious company, Denver and Delilah films.

The gentlest of his movies, it shows a new maturity in Mr. Carpenter's outlook, emphasizing close human relations rather than shocks and outlandish effects. Although it never quite comes together, it shows a shift of focus and interest that bodes well for his work to come. [31 Dec 1984, p.18]

The fact-based story is so riveting and revealing that the filmmakers needn't have used melodramatic formulas to boost its impact.

With all this going for it, Vicky Cristina Barcelona should be better than it is. But there's something intriguing going on here. It's a movie about the sacrifices that people make to be happy.

Could have used a lot more grit. Without it, we're left with a crime movie fantasia that slips all too easily into the ether.

Tsotsi never comes across as anything but a brutal cipher, and serious issues such as black-on-black crime in the townships are left unexplored.

Lively, gentle, smart.

Made-up horror movies have nothing on Countdown to Zero, a documentary about nuclear security that won't make you sleep better at night.

In a supporting role as Giacometti’s beleaguered wife, who endures her husband’s penchant for prostitutes, the great, undervalued French actress Sylvie Testud strikes the film’s most resonant note.

The violence is cartoonishly garish and the yuks are few. Crowe, looking (deliberately I presume) flabby and somnolent, is more dead than deadpan, and Gosling, who appears at times to be doing a Lou Costello impression, is, to put it mildly, not in his element.

Though a tad lightweight, Tim Robbins's comedy cuts through Hollywood political blather.

The computer-animated portions that function as a real-world framing device are more tedious than fanciful.

Stephen Fry gives a convincing performance as Oscar Wilde in this biopic based on the 1987 Richard Ellmann biography. But the film focuses less on Wilde's talents as poet and playwright and more on the breakup of his marriage and family as a result of his infatuation with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. [12 Jun 1998, p.B2]

Written and directed by John Sayles, with biting wit and scathing insights into earthly race relations. [04 Oct 1984, p.27]

Based flimsily on a minor F. Scott Fitzgerald story, it's an anecdote stretched to would-be epic proportions.

Rodriguez's acting almost scores a knockout even though the movie's directing and dialogue are fairly routine.

In the acting department, there's nobody on the current scene with more sheer talent --- or offbeat charisma -- than Philip Seymour Hoffman, in whose bearish body nestles the heart of a lithe and limber artist.

The action is talky and philosophical but in sweet celebration of everyman going nowhere.

Diane Keaton directed this ragged but lively comedy-drama from Richard LaGravenese's imaginative screenplay.

Given the pitfalls of gush and treacle in this type of material, The Friend is no small achievement. Is it impertinent to say that Watts has never had a better partner in the movies? The levels of emotion she brings to the role clearly have much to do with her co-star.

That may enough to pique your curiosity. It did mine, for a while, until it didn’t. To paraphrase what Brahms once told a young composer, what’s original in the film isn’t very good, and what’s good in it isn’t very original.

Combines a celebration of tolerance with an affirmation of family and community values, and a surprising amount of laugh-out-loud hilarity.