The Wave, directed by Roar Uthaug, is pretty good. It’s also pretty strange. At least for American viewers – and Norwegians, too? – experiencing all these familiar disaster movie tropes in a Scandinavian setting, even on a relatively low budget, can be weirdly disorienting.

Provides a compassionate look at problems of old age that Hollywood rarely bothers to treat seriously.

As deliciously eccentric as the real-life characters it chronicles.

Slums of Beverly Hills is less a hard-edged exposé than a mood-shifting satire, though approaching its subject with a wryly ironic touch.

The movie peaks about halfway through, when town officials try to stop Perry from revealing what's going on.

Quirky, heartfelt acting makes this a superior entry in the perennial teenage-misfit genre.

The film discusses important social and personal issues, although the interview subjects don't always have enlightening things to say.

I found it immensely touching that these women found it in themselves to keep plugging away. Despite everything, they ended their days with a measure of peace and happiness.

It’s fun for a while to see Kurt Russell hamming it up behind his voluminous mustache or Samuel L. Jackson once again raising rafters by laying down the law. But the film is pointless, even as entertainment, because it builds to nothing more than a comic book blood bath.

The profoundly strange presence of Rodney Dangerfield triumphs over sloppy writing and lumpy editing in this sometimes raunchy farce about a middle-aged dad who joins his son as a freshman at college. The theme of father-son loyalty is attractive, and the supporting cast is strong.

It's a ridiculous story, and the screenplay (by Phil Alden Robinson) stuffs it with low jokes and bathroom humor. Yet a number of scenes are sly as well as silly, and director Carl Reiner knows when to inject a little pathos for a change of pace. He also uses touches of jazz that lend a gentle rhythm the movie would otherwise lack. [25 Sep 1984, p.23]

An overly stately affair that often substitutes production values for imagination.

In a surprise move, the creator of "Beavis and Butt-Head" has made a laid-back, even subtle comedy that generally favors mischievous ironies over outlandish jokes.

The saving grace of Queen and Country is that its nostalgia is not laced with sentimentality. Even working in this conventional mode, Boorman doesn’t try to strong-arm us into blubberiness.

For Your Consideration is, except for "Borat," the funniest film of the year. Or, it's the funniest film that you don't have to watch through parted fingers.

Maglietta gives a magical performance in this lightweight but flavorsome comedy.

Tykwer doesn't aim for the heights of excitement and invention he reached in "Run Lola Run," but he blends an impressively varied palette of moods into an intriguingly unpredictable story that's never short of ideas.

Films borrow tricks from pictures made years ago -- try to watch Bourne without thinking of "The Manchurian Candidate."

Like the Oscar-nominated "Seabiscuit," though, Miracle fails to ring true as it tries to make a sporting event an all-embracing metaphor for the American way.

Polley has a sometimes graceful understanding of emotional temperate zones and Williams, when she isn't being zombielike, is touching. But Margot comes across as such an elusive and unsympathetic twit that you wonder why we should care about her.

As a piece of storytelling, Everybody Knows covers a vast expanse of human experience, but it doesn’t dive very deep.

Scott has the courage to let the imaginative story unfold at its own leisurely pace, and it's not surprising that the acting is excellent, considering that he's among the very best American screen actors.

The most interesting character in Imperium is not even Nate. It’s Gerry Conway (Sam Trammell), a seemingly normal family man who reads the great philosophers and loves the music of Brahms and Tchaikovsky, even making an exception for the recordings of Jewish maestro Leonard Bernstein. Terrorists come in all flavors.

Myers, whose background is in documentaries involving Afghanistan and Iraq War vets, is good at capturing the revealing, offhand moments in this story, but Maggie’s conflicts about motherhood and the military needed a greater psychological scope than this film provides.

The account is highly informative, although it would come across more vividly if there were fewer talking heads and longer stretches of archival footage.

Although von Trotta seems to regard von Bingen – played with a cool ferocity by Barbara Sukowa – as some sort of medieval feminist precursor, there are enough fault lines in the portrayal to subvert hagiography.

Some of the sequences are undeniably thrilling but, at about 2-1/2 hours, overkill sets in early.

What finally holds all the hokum together is Pitt. Even though the movie keeps ramming home the idea that Formula One racing is a team sport, Sonny’s outlaw vibe is clearly its focus.

The documentary is like the cinematic equivalent of humblebragging. But it does provide one great “told you so” moment.

There’s a pretty good movie buried somewhere deep inside the ungainly pastry that is Chef.

Tries mightily to make the case that Spitzer was brought down by his political enemies.

In addition to the usual pontificators like Gore Vidal, whose world weariness has assumed Olympian proportions, the director provides interviews with such right-wing counterparts as Richard Perle and William Kristol. Nobody is allowed much time to develop an argument.

Audiences may howl at the hackneyed plot and dialogue, but you won't hear them over the Dolby sound effects assaulting your eardrums at a gazillion decibels.

The overall result is a serious though harrowing journey into the dark corners of this century, marked by a compassionate approach and even a fillip of optimism at the end.

The movie is more striking to watch than to hear, more interesting as a tone poem than as a drama. In the end, it's a half-successful film on a subject that could have been all fascinating.

Since the only really good "Planet of the Apes" movie was the 1968 original with Charlton Heston, I've always wondered why filmmakers can't just leave well enough alone.

Energetic acting and perky filmmaking help this likable Argentine comedy-drama avoid the sentimentality that intermittently threatens it.

A scrupulously balanced look at the subject outlined in the title. Packed with historical, sociological, and cultural context.

The movie keeps up for a while, then falls into a slump, dwelling too long on the tangled emotions in the heroin's tangled marriage. Since the musical numbers aren't especially lively, either, the energy level sags dangerously low. In its best scenes, though, Yentl entertains with its crisp performances and invigorates with its sturdy feminist perspective. [22 Dec 1983, p.19]

The cast is terrific, the movie isn't... It all plays like the pilot for a series that wasn't picked up.

The movie doesn’t delve especially deeply into the psychology of double-agentry, and the shifting viewpoints between Israelis and Palestinians flattens the drama instead of broadening it.

Joe Pesci has more energy than charm in the title role, but the supporting cast has some terrific moments, and the comedy supplies a fair number of laughs before running completely out of steam.

Too many different stories are vying for attention here, and none of them are very good.

It offers up the requisite thrills, stunts, and bad guys. Beautiful people abound, and 007 still knows how to fill out a tux. I had a reasonably good time at it.

It works better as a nature and historical study than as a drama, though.

O'Neill and Curry, both heretofore nonactors, can't put across much more than a single emotion at a time, but their amateurishness isn't as annoying as it might have been in a movie with higher aspirations and artistry.

There is a great movie to be made about the first stirrings of rock 'n' roll. Honeydripper is not that film, but it certainly whets your appetite for it.

While more performance views would have been welcome, this is a treat no balletomane can afford to miss.

There's some very funny dialogue, but the picture falls apart when it tries to think real thoughts about celebrity, publicity, and the media.

With all the talk in Page One about the demise of print journalism and the rise of new media, this shiny spacious emporium seems like both a beacon and a staggering folly.

Whitaker's acting is highly creative and Jarmusch's filmmaking is as elegant and original as ever.

Hayek gives one of her better performances, though – she makes it clear that Beatriz may be righteous, but she’s also more than a bit unhinged – and Lithgow is so good at playing CEO oiliness that you have to smile. He’s the man you love to hate.

For a major sci-fi release in the Star Wars era, it's surprisingly slow and even maudlin.

On the action-adventure level it's a sure-fire delight for fans, a punchy entertainment for average sci-fi buffs, and a colorful rocket-ride for moviegoers who just want a good time on Saturday night.

The new film Paris by writer-director Cédric Klapisch was originally supposed to carry the subtitle "An Ephemeral Portrait of an Eternal City." That kind of sums it up.

I wish this movie wasn't so purposefully elegiac and attenuated – at times it's like a middling Terrence Malick fantasia – but it's well worth sitting through.

The plot's many complications pretty much all add up, which is a rarity these days for a murder mystery. It's possible that audiences don't even care anymore if a film makes sense as long it's entertaining.

Departures is sappy and wacky – not the best combination.

It’s unseemly, I know, to praise a movie like this for the stand-up-comic affability of its host. But Reich’s engagingness also gives credence to the seriousness of his message. He’s all about fairness, and, in his demeanor, as well as in his presentation, he embodies that ideal.

It’s to Nathan’s credit that he doesn’t negate the allure of dirt-bike riding as an escape hatch from inner-city woes.

The acting is fine, the filmmaking is honest, and the class-conscious story couldn't be more timely.

Sean Connery is still up to par as James Bond in the latest adventure of Agent 007,

There's only one kind of movie that Spielberg has truly mastered: the kind that looks like a wide-screen video game complete with loony plot twists and mind-bending special effects. And that's Jurassic Park down to its bones. [11 June 1993, Arts, p.12]

It’s gross, all right, but rarely funny – unless jokes about alcohol-laced breast milk is your thing.

The filmmaking style is annoyingly slick, but the testimonies of these children are excruciatingly moving.

The basic plot of Thomas Hardy's great novel "Jude the Obscure" comes through accurately enough, but its sublime irony and sardonic wit apparently got lost in the misty English countryside.

The derby sequences are just OK, and the conflict between Bliss and her uncomprehending parents, played by Marcia Gay Harden and (a fine) Daniel Stern, is so predictable that you wish someone had rolled onto the set to whip it into shape.

The role of Deb is not written with any great depth, but Miller gets into the character’s psychological complications in a way that almost compensates for the lack.

It's a deliciously perverse melodrama.

The screenplay is convoluted but fascinating, flawed less by its built-in complexity than by the limitations of the characters' psychological depth.

Téchiné's movies are always worth seeing, and The Girl on the Train, for all its faults, has moments that resonate

The result is yet another remake that should send viewers scurrying to video stores for the original.

The documentary includes peerless clips of Billie Holiday and Lester Young from a TV show Hentoff coproduced as well as snatches of an interview with a young Bob Dylan, a clip of Hentoff on William Buckley’s “Firing Line” TV show, and lots more worth your time.

Scott's filmmaking is as blunt and bullying as the mayhem it portrays.

It just may be the most boring movie ever made – period.

Although the drama doesn't quite live up to its early promise, much of it is emotionally involving and intellectually stimulating. [22 May 1992, p.12]

Ultimately, forgettable, but for most of the way it's a pleasant little vacation of a movie.

Despite the film’s intentions, Idris and Seun can’t really stand in for anybody but themselves. What they go through, as middle-class kids in a privileged school system, seems far less race-based than the filmmakers would have us believe.

[Cameron] may not be a great artist, or a visionary, but in its look, and its feeling for family, this behemoth enterprise still has an ardent, cornball grandeur to it. I look forward to “Avatar 3.”

The subject is so gripping that you almost forgive the filmmakers for skewing their material in order to keep Costner's pretty face at the center of everything that happens.

The film's underwater views are breathtaking, as are its drawings and photographs of the Titanic's original splendor.

The gently told comedy-drama is more colorful than you'd expect, using wry humor and lively music to keep sentimentality at bay.

For a movie touting "inner peace," this 3-D sequel sure goes in for its share of battle scenes, but for the most part they are excitingly conceived.

Langella's performance turns what might have been a "Twilight Zone"-style trifle into something more: a movie about a proud, ornery man combating his fearfulness.

It's a showpiece for that Belgian city's medieval splendor. You may want to book vacation reservations upon leaving the theater, although the memory of this underwhelming movie may tarnish the sightseeing.

The film could be more adept and probing, but the ladies - Cleo Hayes, Marion Coles, Elaine Ellis, Fay Ray, and Geri Kennedy - are delightful.

The only performances worth discussing are delivered by the always excellent Michael Shannon, the Texas detective who tries to set things right, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the scurviest of the marauders.

There's something both simple and sweet about Bolt, yet epic, that's entirely surprising.

It's a movie that could easily have been made 50 years ago, and I don't mean that as a knock. There is much to be said for a film that values unflashy craft and simple, unhurried storytelling.

Bridges is fun to watch, Fanning emerges as Hollywood's best 6-year-old actress, and Rogers's talents are wasted. A likable drama within its limitations.

The style is slick, the action is suspenseful, and despite the explicitness of the sex scenes, the message is against extramarital affairs.

Director Koepp relies more heavily on editing tricks than old-fashioned atmosphere.

Moore makes no pretense of being "fair and balanced." He makes a passionate case for his own perspective, and invites us to agree with him or not. "I fulminate, you decide" could be his motto.

The real subject, though, is how globalization fosters a homogeneous, "same-old-stuff" conformity that molds almost everything on the planet into an ever-shrinking number of shapes, sizes, and varieties.

Above all, literally, are the kites. When a character says, "You fly these kites and feel the joy," we know just what he means.

It's nice to watch a political movie that, for a change, isn't trying to save our souls. It's possible to have a good time with this movie while, at the same time, regretting all that it isn't.

The movie captures so well the push-pull of family dysfunction that, after a while, even the Fangs’ extreme eccentricities seem routine. And that’s the point: The filmmakers are trying to demonstrate that, no matter what we think our family dynamic may be, we’re all on the same strange spectrum.

More than awe, the film provokes gratitude for what this man did.