A true American tragedy, directed with skill and conviction.

Blends compassion for individuals with explanations of the socioenonomic factors that influence them.

Few of its loosely linked vignettes have enough visual or emotional power to be very memorable.

What helps Lin's feature-directing debut is his insight into the dark side of living up to "model minority" stereotypes in a materialistic culture.

It's illuminating and nostalgic and for anyone who lined up for American movies in that bygone golden age.

Rich atmospherics and an all-star British cast make this a superior melodrama if you can handle the heavy-breathing sex scenes.

Forster keeps the picture as a whole in perfect tune with Depp's approach.

Try to imagine "In the Company of Men" with a feminist twist and you'll have the gist of this fervently acted, ultimately unconvincing drama.

With all this working against it, Les Cowboys strikes a fresh chord. The rise of jihadism has infused this revenge scenario with (all too literally) new blood.

Taut almost to the point of abstraction.

The story often seems unfocused, and the talented cast doesn't appear to be fully in synch with its heart-wrenching material.

Zilberman's conceit is that these players, who mesh so beautifully in their music-making, are discordant in their personal lives. Those lives are constructed for maximum messiness, turning what might have been resonant drama into high-class soap opera.

Plowright's performance as a genteel widow in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a small-scale gem, deeply felt without being in the least bit showy.

The delights of the movie lie in its zany characters, its goofy settings, and above all its surrealistic visual style.

Baye and Lopez are excellent, as always.

In all, the film is a striking, if flawed, achievement by a talented actor who may become an important director if he sticks to the genre that suits him best.

Chabrol's filmmaking has rarely seemed more assured, elegant, and intelligent.

This is moviemaking on the highest dramatic, psychological, and moral plane.

Freilich includes interviews with three generations of kibbutzniks and some fascinating historical footage going back to the 1920s.

The film is actually fairly entertaining once you get past its overweening desire to be the bearer of bad tidings. A more adventuresome movie would have treated the down-and-dirty world of politics as its starting, not its ending, point.

The movie has plenty of high-tech power, spinning out action so explosive you'll hardly notice how preposterous the story is or how cardboard-thin the characters are.

Not a great movie, but contains fascinating historical material.

The humor is as crude as the characters, but the picture has energy.

As Sam, the wayward stepsister of Charlie's sardonic friend Patrick (Ezra Miller), Watson doesn't lose her cool, or her warmth, in a role that might easily have devolved into terminal sappiness.

Whatever the case, the film resounds with hyperbolic passion. Hot bubbling currents flow through this film’s constricted veins.

The acting is uneven, but Huston's performance gains eerie intensity as the tale moves from sensationalistic melodrama to humanistic tragedy.

Braff makes a striking directorial debut while leading a superb ensemble cast.

What we have here is a perhaps unanswerable enigma of the sort all too common in the annals of spying.

More of a testimonial than a documentary, but it weaves together a portrait of a remarkable Irish-American friar, who was gay and a recovering alcoholic, and the many lives he inspired.

Writer-director Cao Hamburger works well with child actors and has a spare, unforced style. But too much of this film is desultory and thin.

Among other things, Unforgivable is a free-floating meditation on the distresses and exhilarations of being a parent.

Just in case we don’t register the mismatch, Rogen is outfitted to look especially shlubby, and he sports an unbecoming beard that never comes off. With his crack timing, he still manages to get a few laughs, but he would have gotten a whole lot more if the jokes were any good. Theron, meantime, is photographed in full glamour mode throughout. This is probably just as well, since, as an actress, she doesn’t appear to have a comic bone in her body. Therein lies the true mismatch in this coupling.

Filmed in a leisurely, understated style, this dark comedy is downright entrancing. A spectacular directorial debut.

Shulman was around so long that he even got to weigh in on Frank Gehry's Disney Hall. He was skeptical once but came to love it.

The only grace note in this otherwise determinedly graceless movie is the classy way Walker’s exit is handled.

Some scenes paint a convincing portrait of Stern as a witty opponent of stuffiness, prudery, and hypocrisy. Others mix gross-out humor with nasty doses of racism, sexism, and homophobia that reveal a dark side to Stern's professional personality.

It has the requisite amount of knockabout silliness.

Imaginatively directed by Bill Duke, and featuring yet another first-rate performance by Larry Fishburne. [19 Jun 1992, p.12]

From scene to scene The Connection is never less than watchable, although it is also never less than predictable.

Pianomania is the thoroughly apt title for a thoroughly enjoyable documentary.

At its best, this entertaining romance blends the zesty dialogue of a classic screwball comedy with the nonstop energy of a Post-Modern pastiche.

I must say I felt relieved that the film wasn’t a masterpiece. If it was, we’d have more reason to fear Stewart will leave "The Daily Show.”

Like Jim Carrey, Ferrell seems to think that the way to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor is to drain himself of everything that audiences love about him.

You may find, as I did, that the lovely twilit moments in this movie stay with one, and that summoning them up in your mind is like slowing down time.

In its own superannuated preppy way, Stillman's comic universe is as singular as Woody Allen's.

The dialogue swings between platitudes and clichés, but the acting is lively and the music will set even lazy toes tapping.

What we do care about, and what “Final Reckoning” finally delivers on after an overly expository first hour, is watching Tom do stuff. Set pieces involving a sunken submarine and buzzing biplanes amply fulfill the franchise’s main selling point.

It's effective but schematic storytelling.

The movie seems sincere in wanting to explore rather than exploit its subject, but any potential insights are cut off by too-obvious characterizations and plot twists. [04 Apr 1986, p.23]

Anderson can't quite rise above his own quirkiness. It's not that he can't respond to the beauty he places before us – he can – but his jokiness keeps undercutting his own best efforts. The Darjeeling Limited is a transitional film for him: He's outgrown a comic style that can no longer accommodate his deeper feelings.

Frankenheimer doesn't recapture the magic he once created in movies like "The Manchurian Candidate," but he does cook up an effective thriller in the "French Connection" vein.

An overstuffed odyssey that, while disappointing on many levels, has standout performances by Paul Giamatti.

This enjoyable Dreamworks animated comedy is well timed.

The movie's concept is amusing, but much of the acting and dialogue is as uninspired as the story's deliberately bland suburban setting.

Clooney shows strong filmmaking imagination in his directorial debut, but the movie's driving force is Charlie Kaufman's screenplay, a genre-bending romp that blurs all boundaries between the factual and the fantastical.

You may become a cinemaniac yourself after sitting through this beauty.

Daum travels to Poland with his wife and their skeptical sons in this documentary, hoping to prove that people who are not Orthodox Jews like them are worthy of attention and compassion.

The film's real appeal won't be to Clooney fans or adventure buffs, but to moviegoers who enjoy thinking about compelling questions with no easy answers.

Nicholson's over-the-top acting gives an entertaining edge to the plot's feel-good manipulations.

Informative and illuminating.

The rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory is shopworn, but the sibling rivalries are cantankerous and goofy and Bernal's Tato, who fancies himself a pop singing star, wouldn't make the first cut on "American Idol."

Hal Hartley's new comedy-drama is more cleverly conceived and imaginatively realized than his earlier film, "The Unbelievable Truth," and develops impressive emotional power at times. [16 Aug 1991]

Undermines its serious undertones with an avalanche of smirky cynicism designed to flatter the hipper-than-thou fantasies of adolescent moviegoers.

Heartbreaking, exhilarating, baffling. In other words, it expresses the performer's persona in its purest form.

Sometimes empty is just empty. What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland can also apply to Somewhere: "There is no there there."

Emmerich's screenplay gains emotional punch from its sincere concern for family values, but science-fiction fans may be disappointed by the limited exploration of its fascinating time-travel premise.

Directors as different as Otto Preminger and Jean-Luc Godard have taken a crack at "Carmen" and Ramaka's version is a colorful addition to the list.

If one's domestic environment is a kind of autobiography, then the five households visited by this entertaining documentary reveal fascinating lives indeed.

July, like Hal Hartley, another overrated art-house luminary, is an acquired taste I have yet to acquire.

The result is more of an illustrated storybook of a cherished classic than a living thing in its own right.

The script by Jeffrey Hatcher is overburdened with plot complications, but Bill Condon, who worked with McKellan on “Gods and Monsters,” has a real affinity for this actor’s capabilities. He brings out his best.

Never quite jells into a coherent statement. Or a coherent film.

The Witches of Eastwick, based on John Updike's novel, takes just about every wrong turn it can find. Perhaps this was predictable, with a wild-driving director like George Miller at the wheel. What's surprising is how many opportunities for vulgarity and stupidity the film invents for itself, even beyond the book's built-in temptations to excess. [12 June 1987, p.21]

What makes the film intriguing, and somewhat off-putting, is that Romain is deliberately portrayed as a heel; he strains his relations with his lover and his family, except for his grandmother (Moreau), to the breaking point.

The energy slacks off in the final third. It’s a bit like “The Sixth Sense” – but without any of the mystery.

What Looking For Eric demonstrates is that drama, not comedy, is how Loach makes sense of things. On the other hand, I often find his dramas unremittingly bleak. I guess what I'm really saying is that I'm not a big fan of Ken Loach.

At its best it shares with Stone's finest work a feeling for the imminence of death and salvation.

Resembles nothing so much as a workmanlike TV crime thriller.

The funny thing about this series is that, although we are regularly shown the most exquisite dishes, neither Coogan nor Brydon has much to say about them beyond the mandatory oohs and aahs. Winterbottom works in some midlife crises material, as he also did in “The Trip to Italy,” but to less effect here.

Well acted, handsomely photographed, a bit too long.

The sensitive directing of Richard Benjamin and the exquisite cinematography of John Bailey give the comedy and drama a special glow, as do the strong performances by Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage and the stunning one by Elizabeth McGovern. [03 May 1984, p.29]

My only regret is that the film could not somehow take a leap forward to 1988. I would love to have seen what Lee and Will could do with "Die Hard."

Lively acting and timely humor are the main assets of this garden-variety comedy.

Gripping, suspenseful, and spiced with fascinating information about the long history of chess between human and mechanical opponents.

Viard's energetic acting is the French production's most memorable asset.

All right, it's far-fetched. But it's fun to think about, and Rubbo makes a merry case. Will the real Bard of Avon please stand up?

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.

If none of this seems particularly fresh, you're right. "T3" is strikingly similar to "T2" and "T," reflecting Hollywood's reluctance to tamper with a hit series.

There are many things wrong with Julie and Julia but, if you're looking to get hitched, you won't find a better booster.

Gwyneth Paltrow is enchanting as a self-confident young woman who decides to wile away her time by playing matchmaker for a friend whose romantic life would fare much better without interference.

The action sequences aren’t especially well designed, and the plot, such as it is, is essentially one catastrophe after another.

Movies like this are meant to amuse and entertain, though, not instruct. Meyers's latest is worth seeing for its offbeat story, its tantalizing settings, and most of all, its spot-on acting, especially by Keaton and Nicholson.

A documentary about the alternately celebrated and reviled German-born philosopher who gave us the catchphrase “the banality of evil.”

Beverly Hills Cop is an action movie and an Eddie Murphy vehicle first, but Brest's dramatic intelligence surfaces often enough to make a welcome difference in what could have been an ordinary crowd-pleaser. [13 Dec. 1984, p.35]

Eastwood's performance is a built-in metaphor for Wilson's ungainly effort to be what he isn't. Seen in this light, it's a daring and moving piece of work. And so, despite flaws along the way, is the movie as a whole, which was directed by Eastwood himself. [13 Sep 1990]

It’s a flurry of good gags and bad. The good ones are worth sitting around for.

The actors, all of whom seem too posed and pretty, are not particularly accomplished, and director Luis Mandoki lacks the visual imagination to bring the story to a boil.

The movie is artful to a fault, with too many characters sitting in perfectly arranged, immaculately lighted rooms and talking a lot. It contains near-classic sequences, though, and splendid performances. [28 Sept 1990]