The result is a fine production with splendid singing by Angela Gheorghiu, Ruggero Raimondi, and Roberto Alagna. It joins the very short list of first-rate opera films.

La Vie en Rose elevates Piaf the archetype over Piaf the artist. Although I question this approach, I'm not sure it could have been done any differently, at least given the facts of Piaf's life. If there is such a way, Duhan didn't find it.

This disturbing drama has many telling moments, but it ends with an out-of-the-blue shock episode that raises more questions than it answers.

Hellboy II comes across as an original. But being original is not always the same thing as being wonderful.

Be warned that the results are in aggressively awful taste from beginning to end.

The young cast is mostly callow and TV-bland and the special effects don't quite seem worth that hefty price tag, but overall this is a presentable addition to the franchise.

Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.

The ultimate feel-good movie about feeling bad. And within those limits, it succeeds all too well.

A slight but winning heart-tugger.

While it's often harsh in style and melancholy in subject, Kandahar taps into veins of humor and compassion as well.

The story is so complicated that the movie can't quite make it clear, but the picture has impressive energy and high-intensity performances from Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and Guy Pearce.

Too often ambles into inconsequentiality. And, predictably, Ned becomes a kind of family savior – the idiot becomes the sage. It's Frank Capra for dummies.

It’s a major performance (Ruffalo) in a minor movie.

Crammed with show-biz jokes that younger kids won't fathom, but the action is so quick and colorful that they probably won't mind.

It would be easy to overrate I've Loved You So Long, which often dampens its best effects with undue tastefulness, but the image of Scott Thomas, with her despairing resilience, stays with one.

She emerges as an energetic, narcissistic, and totally self-deluded woman.

If you don't compare it with the novel, it's one of the season's better films.

The movie's style is fairly staid, but it's hard to imagine how Neeson could be better, and the subject is handled with taste and tact.

The wonderful Polish actor Jerzy Stuhr plays the harried papal spokesman. It's a marvelous movie until the halfway point, when it unaccountably devolves into silliness.

The movie is very small in scale, but the performances are appealing and Fernandez's screenplay casts an interesting light on the main characters' self-images as Latina women.

Redeemed by sensitive acting.

The movie has nothing intelligent to say about post-cold-war tensions or anything else, but it's great fun to watch Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington square off in a submarine that looks like a cross between the Starship Enterprise and something you'd get in a cereal box.

So few unexploitative movies are made about young black men, especially young black gay men, that the overpraise for this frail, sweet, discursive fantasia is understandable – and forgivable. It’s a beautiful film around the edges.

Werner Herzog, better known as one of the finest living directors, plays a bad guy with Teutonic relish. If he doesn't watch it, he'll have a whole other career for himself playing dead-eyed villains.

Coil up with a tub of popcorn, get a stranglehold on your soda - this is a creepy, action-packed boat ride down a jungle river with lots of huge snakes dropping by for man-sized snacks.

The screenplay is overwrought at times, but the acting is superb by any standard.

Fiennes's performance, tricky and impassioned, is the showpiece.

The strongest exchange in the film comes when he is confronted by several angry black activists who believe what he is doing is self-abasing and hurtful to the cause of civil rights. It is left for you to be the judge. I think he’s a hero. Every little bit helps.

As Molière, Romain Duris is frisky and, playing the wife of his benefactor, Laura Morante proves once again that she is one of the most intelligent and attractive actresses in the world.

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

Consistently good as long as it centers on Buck and his seriocomic travails.

Depp gives a smart, subtle performance, and Turturro is terrific as a foe who's both exactly what he seems and exactly the opposite. Koepp's makes his (literally) corny tricks seemfresh and surprising.

A compassionate, life-affirming Spanish comedy-drama.

An intense, claustrophobic drama of love and infidelity.

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.

Almodóvar is attempting to create a continuum of genres as well, one that particularly involves the traditional Hollywood “women’s picture” and film noir. That he doesn’t altogether succeed is perhaps due to the fact that Almodóvar is too enraptured by old movie conventions to give them a new life.

The results are unsparingly perverse and oddly spellbinding.

From its restlessly moving camera work to its heartfelt acting by a splendid cast, "Azkaban" is a horror movie for mature kids.

Herzog soft-pedals his cinematic ingenuity in this personal documentary about his love-hate relationship with Kinski, whose performances in Herzog classics...helped both of them become towering figures on the international movie scene before Kinski's untimely death.

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

With a minimum of actorly fuss, Winger shows us the rage and hurt inside this overcontrolled woman. It's a great piece of acting – high drama at the service of the highest talent.

There are thrills and cliffhangers galore, even though everyone now knows the outcome of the tale, and chief wheeler-dealer James Carville emerges as a zesty screen personality. [12 Nov 1993, p.12]

The movie, despite what you may have gathered from the goofy trailer, is more sweet than silly.

Lacks the subtle sense of mystery that distinguished E.B. White's lovely novel, but nicely conveys its playful spirit and amiable tone.

It's all fairly entertaining but also confusing for anybody who doesn't get the Wall Street lingo. Irons, as the company's chief executive officer, seems to sympathize with us: He keeps asking his minions to explain the impending problems in plain English.

While serving up music so free of thought that the best of it seems to crystallize our thoughtless, tightly wound era.

No show-business tradition is sturdier than the two-man comedy team, and no contemporary stars are better suited to the format than Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. Pairing them was a terrific idea.

The first-time director, James Marsh, and his co-writer Milo Addica (who wrote "Monster's Ball"), sustain a black-comic tone, and the performances, as far they go, are quietly chilling.

In this forthright screen version of E.M. Forster's posthumously published novel. Directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, who show the same literate skill and the same fidelity to their source that marked "A Room With a View."

Durkin is a bit too fond of drawn-out scenes of ominous anomie, and he doesn't provide enough psychological ballast for Martha's misery. He doesn't need to. Olsen, with her angelic face and hard-bitten voice, provides it for him.

Bullock is cute. Grant is even cuter. They have the timing and panache of a first-rate comedy team.

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.

Striking an excellent balance between wry cultural critique and crisp entertainment value, the picture is as smart and funny as any comedy-drama in recent memory.

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.

Sometimes enticing, frequently savage.

Its low-key charm shows that Dogma filmmakers have yet to run out of ideas.

Blitz captures high school atmosphere well – not an easy thing to do – but overall the movie coasts on quirkiness.

Strangely moving and mournful, but I wish more had been made of the beauty these people are relinquishing, if only as a counterweight to all that artful drear.

For movie buffs, the only real fun to be had at Inception could be toting up the lifts from other movies, including Cocteau’s “Blood of a Poet” and “The Matrix” series and just about anything by Kubrick.

It's all a bit precious and preening, but Coogan is marvelous, almost as good as he was in Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People."

A lively portrait of contemporary painter George Condo.

Lively acting and good-natured feminism lift this lightweight comedy a notch above the norm.

Ronald Harwood's screenplay, based on his stage play, brings an impressive range of moral and political issues into play. The acting is also strong.

The Four Feathers ends on the same dubious note as "Black Hawk Down" and other recent war movies, suggesting that loyalty in the trenches -- not the reason for fighting in the first place -- is all that matters. Many will disagree.

Braugher perhaps overvalues the parallels between Stephanie and Lydie. The scenario is too schematic and diminishes the power of each woman's story. She frames the drama as a cross between a whodunit and a whydunit, and neither strategy is entirely successful.

This unevenly paced comedy is an amusing parody of monster movies from "Them!" to "Alien."

The real heroes are cinematographer Stephen H. Burum and editor Bill Pankow, who help the picture keep popping even when its plot and dialogue go into a slump.

The movie is longer and slower than necessary, but it explores interesting questions of wartime violence, personal integrity, and what it means to come of age in a society ripping apart at the seams.

Too intense for the youngest viewers, but teenagers will enjoy it -- an ill-smelling "stink-god" character is almost worthy of a Kevin Smith gross-out movie -- and grown-ups should find it diverting, if not exactly deep.

Fiennes brings to the role a shimmering subtlety.

Poignant, witty, historically illuminating.

There are endearing and powerful moments which thankfully overshadow the occasional clichéd passages.

If Jones were a more accomplished director, and if the relationship between Pete and his captive wasn't so schematic, this movie might have been worthy of Sam Peckinpah.

There's hardly an original shot in the picture, and the screenplay ignores all opportunities to explore the patterns of poverty and racism that contribute to mob behavior. [22 Apr 1988]

No masterpiece, but that shouldn't dissuade moviegoers from giving it a whirl as a flavorful alternative to the summer's more gimmicky fare.

Even if baseball isn't your favorite sport, or if you don't like sports much at all, you'll find something to catch your attention in this smartly made (if unblushingly vulgar) new comedy. [7 July 1988]

The film's power grows from its dark-toned portrayal of the World War II era and from its evocative use of flashbacks, which show more interest in the characters' emotional lives than in story devices like surprise and suspense.

The film works best when it focuses on the touching, crazymaking relationship between the two men.

It’s all fairly entertaining and eminently disposable.

While the movie is strong on the history of its subject, it allows some yawns to enter its own account of a big, heavily hyped tournament. Still, it's very entertaining.

If you're in the mood for razor-sharp satire, this is the most refreshingly outrageous movie of the season.

The performances are engaging and the views of rural Brazil are captivating, making the film a solid audience-pleaser even though its story often seems familiar and sentimental.

The film works best as a straightforward melodrama set in an anything but straightforward world.

Admirers of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and other Dick literature will enjoy this nonfiction look at the writer, his career, and his eccentricities, some of which were as bizarre as his fiction.

Kennedy documents their efforts with skill and compassion, almost entirely avoiding the pitfalls of sentimentality and victimology. He and his likable "cast" deserve a standing ovation.

In some ways, this glossily enjoyable movie is a lot closer to Hollywood than Beirut. At times, I thought I was watching some oddball Lebanese variant on "Barbershop."

Fukunaga has a fine, spacious film sense and a gift for action, but the doomy, heavy-handed plot devices and overwrought, overacted gangland set pieces betray a novice's hand.

As is true of most movies about “important” topics, The Post is least successful when it’s glorying in its own righteousness. If the movie has any shelf life beyond the current historical moment, I suspect it will be because of Meryl Streep’s performance.

Harrelson hits just the right sardonic note in this self-mocking crime drama, but look out for grisly touches along the way.

Hodges and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg fill the British production with Dostoevskian ironies, and Owen is perfect as the antihero.

A fascinating glimpse of family love and rivalry, if not a deep-digging documentary of "My Architect" quality.

Dance's directorial debut isn't exciting, but it's deeply felt and engagingly acted. Why doesn't he take more advantage of the story's opportunities for fine music, though?

The scenes of magic and mayhem are peppered with sly surprises, and Anjelica Huston plays the wildest wicked witch since Dorothy got back from Oz.

While it's not a blistering look behind the scenes, Last Dance gives a fuller picture of the creative process than most others of its ilk.

Energetic, fun, lively. [19 Jun 1998, p.B2]

Full of bright colors, offbeat people, tuneful sounds.

A stirring documentary, and would be more so if it focused more on social problems than on Briski's own work.

The story sometimes seems hesitant to confront the most harrowing implications of the harsh realities it portrays. But it benefits greatly from Syed's close-to-the-bone performance as the boy.