Has an inordinate number of good laughs mixed in with the not-so-good ones.

The implicit question overhanging the film: Is the political impetus to present only “positive” imagery of black people an injustice to the fullest range of their experience?

It's a picture marked by competence, not the boiling-over intensity that Frears and Thompson fans have anticipated. [30 Nov 1990]

Although nothing beats seeing and hearing the real story, Herzog has done a fairly compelling job of blending staged action with docudrama authenticity.

It’s a filmmaker’s conceit. These filmmakers may come from Nebraska, but, from the looks of things, they don’t want to be spending much time there.

If audiences are hesitant to believe that the fraternization in this film really happened, it will be because of the storytelling, not the story.

Straightforward and informative, but overlong and repetitious.

Not a deep movie. It is a very honest one, though - there's not a cheap cinematic trick in sight - and it's a graceful one, energizing its small-town story with eloquent camera work and ingenious musical touches.

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.

Braff plays Aidan with easygoing exasperation and Hudson is better than I’ve seen her since “Almost Famous.” As a director, Braff touches on lots of Big Themes: mortality, marriage, fatherhood, the disillusion of dreams. Nothing quite comes to full boil, though.

An amiable look at a bygone time and a set of ideas about the world that once held far more power and magic than it does today.

A lavishly produced and often involving drama that never reaches its full potential. [09 Jan 1985, p.25]

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

Superbly acted, especially by Giocante as the teasing 16-year-old instigator.

It's imaginatively filmed and builds a sense of brooding emotional power.

The nonlinear story consists of loosely linked fragments, some more effective than others, threaded together in a broodingly poetic way.

A long wallow in misery and, after a while, the pain morphs into polemic.

Waters fills the movie with his usual touches of outrageously bad taste, but beneath the sophomoric shocks his story has a serious message about self-absorbed artists who care more about their own careers than the privacy of the people around them.

Rush and Davis shine, and the drama is engrossingly told until it turns sadly sentimental in the last minutes.

Some scenes are just silly, others are dead-on uproarious. Ditka, a real-life football legend, is a real find as our hero's assistant.

Gilliam's first solo flight as a director is more notable for its inspired visual ideas than for the frequency of its laughs, but Python devotees will have fun.

Eric Eason's script is sometimes unduly contrived and derivative, but we are always aware that something larger is being played out.

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

While the movie is well acted and creative, its story and style are too self-consciously clever to build a high degree of emotional power.

A startling, suspenseful ride few will forget in a hurry.

Kicks off the Oedipus theme that gallops through the story.

Canet has a good feeling for lowlife atmosphere and he works up a few fine Hitchcockian twirls. Kristin Scott Thomas and Nathalie Baye round out the sleek cast.

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.

Splendidly acted and directed.

Movie actors are notoriously inarticulate about their craft, but what about movie directors? If the documentary Great Dir­ectors is any indication, the returns are a bit more promising.

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.

Be warned that the violence-prone Spielberg of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" is also on display.

Has social, psychological, and ultimately mystical overtones that raise it leagues above most other teen-centered comedies.

Even if you sympathize with his troubles, it’s hard to actually like the guy. At best, he’s uncomfortable to be around; at worst, he’s irritating and even reprehensible.

This is one of those stories that, on some primal level, goes straight to the heart. Be aware that the film features a child rape scene.

Fans of Robert Altman's hit "Gosford Park" will find similar pleasures here: colorful characters, multiple story lines, and clever blends of comedy and drama.

The action and special effects are mostly first-rate and Vogt-Roberts maintains a vaguely satiric tone that sidesteps schlockiness.

The movie is often as raucous and seedy as its less-attractive characters, but it gains power from inventive acting and poignant touches.

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

Socially alert drama.

Hogan's version brings out the story's somber side, showing how the mischief of unworldly characters like Peter and Tinkerbell can do real damage, and how refusing to grow up is an awful idea if you actually try it.

The sensuous atmosphere often preempts the drama. Neither Elio nor (especially) Oliver are quite rich enough as characters to outshine their surroundings, and, although it’s rare to see a movie of this sort that is so markedly nonjudgmental, the lack of sharp conflict doesn’t make for a terribly invigorating experience.

Clear away the annoying avant-gardism and you have a powerful movie about a writer, Phillip, who undergoes a mental breakdown and is pulled halfway back to health by his girlfriend.

Without an actor of Broadbent’s poise and humor, The Sense of an Ending – which, I must add, is appropriately also the title of a famous work of literary criticism by Frank Kermode about theories of fiction – would be a bit too fusty.

Furtado's comic thriller is a telling commentary on modern avarice in Brazil and elsewhere, which touches on everything from "The Simpsons" to "Rear Window" along the way. Too bad it runs out of ideas before the overlong story is over.

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.

Weaver is superb in a movie as scary and provocative as the timely subject it explores.

It would be even more impressive if the story and characters lived up to the inventive techniques, though.

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.

This sensitive, sometimes troubling family drama is one of the rare movies dealing with intelligent adults tackling lifelike problems.

Four university students band together under the obnoxious mentorship of Andre (Thibault Vinçon), who is meant to be brilliant but, to me at least, seemed all too obviously a poseur. His betrayal of his friends deepens the movie.

Much of the action is as ponderous as it is predictable. Lector fans will get their fill, but be warned that the menu contains at least two scenes with over-the-top excesses that Hannibal himself might not want to swallow.

At times the filmmakers seem to be taking potshots at Philomena for her placidity; other times Martin is made to seem crass and unfeeling – insufficiently spiritual. Life lessons are imparted, although the players never budge very much from their initial attitudes.

Ferocious satire.

More imaginative and responsible than the somewhat similar "Life Is Beautiful."

Tavernier's compassionate views and long filmmaking experience shine through this eloquently acted drama.

What does it all mean? I'm not convinced that Fricke's movies are much more than exalted travelogues, but you certainly feel as if you've been somewhere after you've seen one of them.

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

Words and Pictures is a minor effort from Schepisi, but minor Schepisi still trumps most of what’s out there.

Sensitive performances and intelligent storytelling keep the sometimes-violent tale involving from start to finish, marking a giant step for director Raimi, previously known for action stories and over-the-top fantasies.

At its best it's as refreshing as it is daring. Superbly acted.

The sadness and almost Chaplinesque pathos that ensues is well wrought and Close, although she is so recessive that at times she seems to fade into the ether, is quite touching.

Less ambitious than "Blade Runner" but more coherent than "Artificial Intelligence: A.I.," which it vaguely resembles, I, Robot is best during homely moments when Smith shows his human side.

Allen is content to have Jasmine, babbling to herself, waft into a psychoneurotic, Antonioni-esque haze that seems preordained by her class and her predicament. Her cry for help, if you wipe away all the artifice, resembles nothing so much as a plea for her charge cards to be reinstated.

In all it's a pleasant surprise if not a great comedy.

The script is more functional than funny, and the animation, while adept, is not altogether memorable.

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

Jane Austen's deeply ironic novel loses some of its bite but little of its beauty in Emma Thompson's screen adaptation, which is fetchingly photographed and capably acted by Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant, among others.

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.

Nothing more than an efficient time-killer with the added bonus of being based on a real misadventure. But, unlike its benighted cast of characters, it gets the job done without a hitch.

Not always believable, but the film has a moody expressiveness that stays with you.

The plot isn't very original, but the acting and dialogue have a low-key realism that packs more emotional punch than a dozen of the standard-issue romantic dramas crowding the independent-film scene.

At times, the film meanders from its course and loses dramatic focus. But it's vividly acted and creatively directed.

The performances are excellent and the filmmaking is remarkably restrained, although moments of perverse violence are necessary to the real-life story being told.

A couple of scenes directly reference the Iraq war and the Holocaust (where the humans are herded into cattle cars), and this is taking things much too seriously. This is a big blow-'em-up franchise movie. It should not under any circumstances be confused with a Statement.

Without Hudson, Dreamgirls would be a whole lot less exciting. Knowles, the ostensible star, is rather bland, and Foxx, surprisingly, seems miscast. Murphy is wonderful, but that should be no surprise.

See it after you've eaten dinner. And don't see if you've recently been to "Ratatouille."

What links all these characters is Myers's gift for antic, elfin burlesque. He's like a second-best Peter Sellers.

It's this year's "An Inconvenient Truth."

The results are ragged, disjointed, and endearing.

Lohan is sparklingly good as the look-alike little girls, and the movie as a whole has enough bounce and energy to overcome a few dull spots and a too-long running time.

(Jonze and Kaufman's) work is so bold, funny, and original that it's hard to believe they aren't wide-screen veterans.

A kind of companion piece to Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” and it’s the sort of failure that only a director (Paul Thomas Anderson) of his talents could make – a movie about a stoner private eye (Joaquin Phoenix) in Los Angeles circa 1970 that seems to have been concocted in a stoned haze of its very own.

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.

The doc is longer on historical interest than original insights or analysis.

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

If you've seen "To Sir, With Love," "Dead Poet's Society," "The Corn is Green," or "Stand and Deliver" - to take a random sample - you've already seen much of this movie. Swank is good, though, and so is Patrick Dempsey as her suffering husband.

The people who made Flight have done a courageous thing. With all the potential revenue to be had from in-flight movie sales, they have made a movie that is guaranteed to never be shown on an airplane.

The story is dramatic and Béart gives one of her best performances, even if Téchiné's style has its usual sense of distance.

Genz and Erling have constructed a story so clever that the pleasure of following its twists is enough in itself.

Mangold front-loads the action, but near the end there’s a first-rate fight atop a bullet train between Wolverine/Logan and some especially pesky ninjas. It puts the train fights in the recent “The Lone Ranger” to shame.

Most moviegoers will leave buzzing about the climactic Battle of Helm's Deep. But in my eyes, this is Gollum's show more than anyone else's, even the special-effects wizards behind the scenes.

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.

Despite the film’s emphasis on Ryota’s transformation, the most piercing moment for me came in the scene in which his wife anguishes over her guilt in not realizing right away, as a mother, that Keita was not her birth son.

Don't miss this harrowing movie if you're in the mood for adventure more thrilling than anything Hollywood has to offer these days.

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."

It's hard to find a current release that so effectively teases the mind and emotions.