The story of Laurel Canyon doesn't ultimately live up to the technical polish Cholodenko brings to it, but it's worth a visit if you want to check out the latest emotional vibes emanating from the Hollywood Hills.

The real love story here is between Moore and his bullhorn.

Disney studios, director Randall Wallace, and his screenwriter Mike Rich, obviously targeting a "faith-based" audience à la "The Blind Side," lard the soundtrack with "Oh Happy Day" and readings from the Book of Job.

In all, She's So Lovely is second-best Cassavetes but still one of late summer's more adventurous releases, helped by strong performances from its talented stars and from the great Rowlands in a minor role.

Grant is a fine actor ("Withnail and I," "Gosford Park") and, although he doesn't appear in Wah-Wah, his spiritedness as a performer carries through to some of the others in his cast.

Sean Penn is one of those actors, like Nicolas Cage, who is best (sometimes worst) when he's over-the-top. Unlike Cage, Penn doesn't pour himself into dreadful commercial vehicles. No, his dreadful movies are usually not destined for the multiplex. Case in point: This Must Be the Place.

Gary Sinise is chilling as the villain, and the screenplay by Richard Price and Alexander Ignon shows some interest in class hostility and other social issues, although this doesn't extend far enough to allow the women of the story a chance to shine in their male-dominated surroundings.

Judge still comes up with enough laughs to deserve our attention. He is helped more than a little by hilarious work from supporting players Kristen Wiig, David Koechner, J.K. Simmons, and Dustin Milligan.

Strong acting and no-nonsense filmmaking lend interest and impact to the dramatic story.

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.

Effective at times, and Gyllenhaal shows a new side of her talent, but the main impression is of first-rate performers doing second-rate work.

Any movie that opens with the killing of a pet dog is definitely going to capture your attention. But where do you go from there?

Its view of spiritual healing is closer to Spielberg fantasy than religious insight. Still, its good acting and good intentions will be enough to please many viewers.

The entire enterprise ultimately seems designed to turn Austen into a self-help guru.

Do we really need another Hulk movie? I was one of the few critics who actually liked Ang Lee's 2003 "Hulk," but it didn't exactly ring the cash registers or clamor for a continuation.

Jackman, sporting a distracting, Hart-like brown hairpiece, seems miscast. He doesn’t convincingly convey this politician’s swagger and slickness, and Reitman’s attempts to mimic a loose-limbed political movie in the style of, say, Robert Altman’s “Tanner '88” series or “The Candidate” are rather leaden. It’s a film that’s less interesting to watch than to discuss afterward.

The cast is appealing and much of the action is wryly amusing, although Baumbach borrows so many moves from Woody Allen and Francois Truffaut that their names should be in the credits. [5 June 1998]

Unlawful Entry would be an important film if it followed this scene with an intelligent look at the social, political, and institutional problems that lead to such incidents. Unfortunately, the movie isn't serious-minded enough to do this. What could have been an incisive examination of an urgently relevant subject turns into mere melodrama with the usual sex-and-violence twists. [14 July 1992, p.11]

Wargnier chooses a sweeping title and a sweeping topic, then turns everything into half-baked melodrama, heavy on over-the-top emotion but light on subtlety and ideas.

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

Illuminating, if not exactly edifying.

If this was a quintessential Polanski movie, something malign would reside inside its heart: The sitcom would explode its boundaries. The movie is called Carnage, but the carnivores on display are toothless.

Boyle loads his movie with so many snazzy effects that we lose sight of what it all means – if anything. His showoffiness confuses.

Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II, Ang Lee's uneven new film is a bit like a Chinese variant on Paul Verhoeven's "The Black Book." The sex scenes in this otherwise overly prim period piece are extremely graphic.

Full of fascinating eye-witness accounts.

Just about everything connected to this movie is a tie-in, except for the popcorn. And even then I'm not too sure.

Oka! is a fascinating movie with many free-form charms.

Von Trier sets the action on a theatrical stage, spotlighting the existential isolation that weighs on people who don't seek larger visions of life, individuality, and community. Challenging, dramatic, provocative.

What goes on inside the mind of a terrorist who is willing to blow himself for the cause? The War Within is one of the few films that attempts to deal with this subject in a nonexploitative way.

Good at scenes of high-level nastiness, but there's too much confusing exposition in this "Legacy" and the action scenes, some of them good, are too little and too late.

Blomkamp overdoes even his best effects. (I would have welcomed more vistas of Elysium to break up the grungefest.) If Elysium is an example of how recession-era Hollywood intends to dramatize the rift between the haves and the have-nots, let’s hope the studios don’t also bring back Smell-O-Rama.

Its wasted cast includes Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman, Len Cariou, and Brenda Vaccaro, who miraculously manages to give a fine performance in this malarkey.

Along with the lapses of taste that have become standard in pictures aimed at teen audiences, filmmaker John Hughes offers moments of wit and warmth.

Bale is brilliant.

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.

The Karate Kid will probably work best for young audiences unaware of its predecessor – or of much of anything else for that matter.

The mixture of humor, suspense, and ominous undertones is effective but rarely inspired.

The characters are stereotypes and the psychology is simplistic, but the movie builds an effective sense of claustrophobic menace that thriller fans may enjoy.

I wish Mo' Better Blues were a little mo' better than it is, but Spike Lee remains a major filmmaking talent, and even his second-best work has an awful lot going for it.

The Thursday Murder Club, despite the best efforts of its truly superlative cast, is pretty much a Sunday night detective drama – albeit one with spectacular production values.

Camping it up, Jackson is hilarious.

A schematic, often contrived look at an important subject. [17 Feb 1983, p.19]

There's not much freshness to the plot, about a young woman who has a love affair when her husband sails off to fight World War II. But director Jonathan Demme shows the same keen interest in Americana that sparked his fine Melvin and Howard, and while some story details are murky or unconvincing, his probing lens captures delicate nuances of atmosphere and performance. [03 May 1984, p.29]

At its best, the film demonstrates a showbiz truism: It takes a lot of hard work to make something look easy.

Not quite funny enough, or serious enough, falls into the muddle middle.

This thriller was overpraised in the '60s and it still looks hokey. The acting ranges from wooden to petrified: Day and Rex Harrison are at their least convincing, and John Gavin sounds like his voice was dubbed by someone barely more British than himself. [29 Jul 1987, p.19]

A splendid adaptation that will be hard for the others to match. The Portrait of a Lady, directed by Jane Campion, brings intelligence and sensitivity to a story rich in psychological subtlety and sociological detail.

For the most part, plays like a pretty good TV police procedural.

This is more than enough material for two hours of summer-movie fun, and The X-Files delivers said fun reasonably well. The action scenes are bigger and bolder than their small-screen counterparts.

The movie tries to outdo "Thelma and Louise" by upping the number of heroines, but it lacks the moral seriousness to tackle its sensitive material.

Dyrholm’s extraordinary performance is conspicuously better than Thomsen’s. She’s the best – the only – reason to check out The Commune.

Taylor Hackford's thriller makes a mischievous assault on today's legal system, but its points would be more telling if the story didn't veer so often into needless sensationalism and eye-catching effects.

Even a subpar James Bond movie is worth seeing because, well, it’s James Bond. But if one of the most successful and long-running franchises in movie history wants to keep pumping, it’s once again time to change the formula.

May not always make sense, but it's crammed with flamboyant images and frisky cinematic pranks -- It's far from a great movie, but there's nothing like it on the current scene.

Fine acting and creative directing lend three-dimensional life to this absorbing story, which blends dreamlike elements with sharply etched drama and touches of pure cinematic ingenuity.

This documentary strives to fill the gap, and the result is memorable; viewing is mandatory.

This modest drama is a touching tribute to the late Argo, a character actor you'll instantly recognize.

The whole family can enjoy That Christmas, a bright and cheerful animated movie.

Ron Shelton's romantic comedy has no more visual excitement than a televised golf tournament, but the climax is truly surprising, and there's solid acting by Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.

All I can say is, I certainly hope this dreary, bleary comedy doesn’t end up serving as a referendum on anything. That would be a disservice to women, not to mention movies.

Despite his sorcerer bona fides and voluminous cape, Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange isn’t strange enough, and trying to parse the convolutions of the Marvel multiverse is more exhausting than engaging.

Humans, it seems, weren't meant to tamper with some things. This picture makes you wonder if cinema is one of them. [14 Nov 1986, p.27]

Some of the material is dramatic, other bits are dull.

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.

A very well-meaning movie, and it will stand in future years as an eloquent memorial to the World Trade Center tragedy.

Excellent acting, intelligent screenwriting, and dynamic filmmaking give this Mexican production a forceful emotional and intellectual charge.

A hilarious and harrowing cautionary tale.

What hits home is Renner’s performance, which gives full weight both to Webb’s fierce, abiding love for journalism and his despair when his livelihood – his reason for being – is trashed. It’s a tragedy, doubly so since the core of Webb’s allegations remains unchallenged today.

An eye-opening movie, both socially and politically.

It’s a delicate little fable that creeps up on you. It seems slight at first, but it’s held together by a performance from the veteran actress Kirin Kiki, playing an older lady who makes supernal dorayakis, that cuts very deep.

The movie doesn't reach any deep insights, but its mixture of psychology, philosophy, and realpolitik is downright riveting.

Unusual and imaginative drama.

Redford gives one of his best performances ever in this taut, emotionally engrossing thriller.

The influence of Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier looms heavily over the whole film.

The most powerful sequences in the movie are the linked vignettes involving Margaret and the various grown-up children whom she attempts to help in their search for – what, exactly? Closure? Catharsis?

In real life, Mary and Elizabeth never met, but this film, directed by Josie Rourke and written by Beau Willimon, stages numerous interactions, many of them accompanied by flaring nostrils.

Directed by Michael Apted, who keeps the action hopping at least for the first hour, and treats most of his Russian characters as reasonably whole human beings. [05 Jan 1984, p.23]

Bernardo Bertolucci's romantic drama has great visual beauty but little new to say about life or love.

Some of his theories seem cockamamie compared with current intellectual norms, though, so it's too bad the filmmakers don't give him time to make a coherent case.

If the head of the bureau is God, then why is he played by Terence Stamp and not Morgan Freeman?

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

The filmmaker keeps things lively by roaming far and wide with her camera, returning to the statesmanship side of the documentary often enough to let us follow relevant events as they unfold.

Norton gives the comedy unexpected sparkle in his directorial debut.

Straightforward and informative, but overlong and repetitious.

The fact that it's based on a true story doesn't alter the fact that, like most such Hollywood movies, it seems fabricated.

Switching between the 1950s, the '60s, and the present, it's compelling in a middling miniseries kind of way – expansive but not terribly deep.

Suicides are proliferating in the city -- is the song to blame, or is it the tenor of the times?

The movie is surprisingly strong despite its potentially flaky plot, combining '80s-style humor with a sincere romantic story.

The film is directed by Dallas Jenkins, the creator of “The Chosen,” a long-running TV series about Jesus’ life. His tonally perfect adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s book boasts a gentle wit. He deftly conveys the movie’s message without a heavy hand.

It takes awhile to get going but, still, it’s rather sweet.

The plot, based on a Phillip K. Dick story, is ingenious; and Arnold Schwarzenegger brings an effective blend of machismo and innocence to his role. Too bad director Paul Verhoeven lets brainless violence and tricky special effects swamp the cleverness of the tale itself. [22 June 1990, Arts, p.10]

It’s not really such a great achievement to have women cops in the movies acting as boorish and rowdy as their male counterparts, especially since the movie seems designed for a sequel. But then again, what movie these days – or at least this summer – isn’t?

The film's touches of unconventional style interfere with its emotional effectiveness at times.

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

No great claims should be made for In Her Shoes. If the aim here was to show how chick lit can become just plain lit, the effort failed. But there is something to be said for froth when it's expertly whipped.

Driver gives a winning performance in a human-scaled story that avoids romantic clichs and gender stereotypes, although a few of both creep in from time to time.

Tomorrowland is a rather sweet excursion into speculative sci-fi, and, wonder of wonders, it doesn’t even seemed primed for a sequel. But this movie about the thrill of the visionary is, alas, mostly earthbound.

Days of Thunder wants to be an action drama, but it's really just a star vehicle of the most rudimentary sort, with nothing to offer Cruise except a chance to look pretty and chant time-tested punchlines. Ditto for the rest of the cast, which may be talented but gets little chance to show it here. [3 Jul 1990, p.13]