I hope this won’t be his last acting job. He’s too vital to go in for such a soggy send-off.

There's no over-the-top music or comedy sequence to place this with the very best Disney animations, though, and Phil Collins's songs won't be to everyone's taste.

The ending is especially inventive, managing to be sour, cynical, sentimental, and upbeat at the same time. [22 Dec 1989]

There is no need for Murmelstein to break down here. In The Last of the Unjust, it’s as if the whole world is weeping.

As it turns out, bearing Welles’s words in mind, it becomes almost a meta version of Welles’s movie. I would like to think that the great magician himself would have approved.

Its dark-toned cinematography by Henri Decaë still packs a wallop, and the screenplay has a refreshing sense of humor.

Never entirely escapes its theatrical origins, and, by framing the story so pugilistically, the filmmakers don't bring out the full richness in this material.

Not surprisingly, a documentary constructed entirely from newsreel footage proves inadequate to the task of sounding the depths of someone as complicated or driven (pun intended) as Senna.

Its grimness is explicit, so approach it with caution.

As this film amply demonstrates, in the highest realms of commerce, wielding power is paramount.

The movie's cutest twist is that the monsters are more scared of kids than kids are of them, because they think human children are toxic.

It has moments when the spiritual and the secular burst forth in stunning disarray.

Although stylistically and conceptually it never lifts itself entirely out of the realm of a made-for-television drama – don't expect "My Left Foot" – The Sessions is bracing. It's also one of the few movies to recognize that people with severe physical disabilities have sexual lives, too.

For all its skill and scrupulousness, I found the film a strangely remote emotional experience – a slice of black and white that never quite bursts into living color.

As a zoological spectacle the movie is riveting. But the narration tries to make us think of these adorable animals as if they saw the world in human terms.

De Felitta dodges the temptations of sentiment and preachiness.

The movie's seven scenes were filmed in real time (as opposed to condensed editing-room time) over the course of a year, giving the drama an extra touch of realism and humanity.

Garland is great at setting a tone of creepy ominousness, and the women’s foray into the swampy terrain is an unnerving blend of lustrous loveliness and split-second horror. But the visual effects throughout the film are often disconcertingly cheesy, and the pulp elements pile up with an extra serving of gore.

In its cinematic approach, though, the film is as slick as any Hollywood thriller, directed by Fernando Meirelles with visual flourishes - jazzy editing, lurid colors, crackling sound effects - that dilute the impact of what might have been an indelible cautionary tale.

The filmmaking is often wayward, the scenes of confrontation sometimes too stagey, but Oduye is a marvelous young actress with a camera-ready face brimming with soulfulness.

The subject is crucially important, but the movie dilutes its impact with by-the-numbers filmmaking, and Cheadle's one-note performance displays few of his acting gifts.

Understated acting and brilliant use of wide-screen black-and-white cinematography.

Photographic Memory is about the permanence and impermanence of what we choose to preserve: on film and in our heads (which is often the same thing). I would like to think that one day Adrian might look at this documentary and see it as a supreme act of paternal love.

The film's biggest unexplored question: Why is someone with a reputation for laying bare the truth so addicted to plastic surgery?

This astoundingly beautiful Korean production is poignant, original, and engrossing.

Expressively filmed story of rivalry, romance, and cultural conflict.

The meandering story and channel-surfing style prevent it from gathering the emotional momentum it would need to get below the hero's skin and let us know what really makes him tick.

There's not enough substance to support the sentiment of this longish comedy-drama.

The greatest performance, though, is Vanessa Redgrave's as Martius's blood-lusting mother, Volumnia. It's an extraordinarily powerful piece of acting, all controlled rage. When, in the end, that rage erupts, her vehemence splits the screen.

[An] affectionate documentary.

It’s a gangster movie that tries to be more than that, not always successfully. In his own small-scale way, Chandor wants to expand the reach of his vision to “Godfather” status, with Abel as his shining (tainted) knight.

Understandably wanting to leave audiences with a measure of hope, Garrone in some ways falsifies what is most powerful about his movie. But there is power, too, in dramatizing the endurance of people such as Seydou. Epic stories require epic bravery.

A few of the supporting players, including Kim Dickens, as a suspicious local cop, and Carrie Coon, as Nick’s twin sister, move beyond the formulaic, which is more than can be said for the movie.

What we do see, among much else that is damning, are archival NYPD videotapes of the boys being interrogated by detectives who press them to implicate one another in exchange for a leniency that never materialized.

It does leave you with something, though – a deeply wistful mood, if not a full experience. It bears out the sadness in a line from Tao earlier in the film: “Nobody can be with you all through life.”

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.

Indelible images and brilliant use of unconventional music make this a nonfiction film that must be seen – and heard – to be believed.

Wordy, wearying drama.

The aura of shock-and-awe surrounding this game is laid on a bit thick, and sometimes you feel like you're just watching an ESPN special. Still, it's fun. The interviewees include Harvard's stone-cold-serious Tommy Lee Jones and Brian Dowling, Yale's wonder-boy quarterback who became the model for B.D. in classmate Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury."

Loving is a decent and heartfelt movie that, rarity of rarity these days, suffers from being too decent and heartfelt. It is so careful not to give offense that, in some ways, it’s more admirable for what it doesn’t do than for what it does.

Silence, though conceived on a grand scale, is an almost obsessively personal, at times even private, film.

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.

It’s impossible not to be charmed by these students, by their aspirations and idealism, not to mention the fact that one of them, or someone like them, may well end up winning a Nobel Prize. It’s also impossible not to recognize, although the movie does not make a political point of it, that a goodly percentage of these participants are first- or second-generation immigrants to the United States.

In Moving Midway, Cheshire chronicles not only the history of the move but also of the family members, past and present, who occupied the place, and, most pointedly, the slaves who worked its fields, some of whom turn out to be related.

Eastwood has made an honorable movie about honor, but the naivete of the conception - which some will call purity - keeps "Flags" at arm's length from greatness.

Deeply personal, morally alert, and highly entertaining.

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.

This is the kind of movie that literate viewers pine for, laced with gracefulness and wit.

Tsai's cinematic style is unique: He unfolds his stories in long, static shots that let you discover their surprises and mysteries on your own. And that's great fun. What Time Is It There? is perky, entertaining, and one of a kind.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are attractive stars, but what's most appealing about the picture is the value it puts on sharing ideas and feelings through language.

While Jaoui's film is interesting to watch, it dawdles enough to lose its storytelling grip.

The best addition is Austin Butler as the baron’s bald-pated, hypervicious nephew. It’s official: Butler no longer looks or sounds like Elvis Presley. Villeneuve is adept at staging grand-scale battles, but the movie’s best set piece is the climactic tooth-and-nail face-off between Paul and this grinning gargoyle.

John Sayles's offbeat western shows how public controversies often overlap with private grudges and conflicting memories.

Only Amy Adams, playing Mickey's tough-tender girlfriend Char­lene, manages to be convincingly working-class without seeming either dopey or rabid or strung-out.

This movie equivalent of Robert Rauschenberg's artwork "Erased de Kooning" is funny, ornery, and ultimately inspiring.

The film in the end seems more of an expertly orchestrated blood bath than a full-scale tragedy.

Apollo 10½ is a portrait of innocence untainted by any agenda other than the need to convey as honestly as possible what it felt like to be that particular boy at that particular moment in history. It’s a movie about how we conjure and commemorate our pasts.

How intently should we take Joel and Ethan Coen as artists? Despite their extreme unevenness and the flip misanthropy that runs through their work, I think they deserve to be taken seriously as such. In this new film, their extraordinary jeweler’s-eye attention to detail, their gift for concocting dialogue in plummy 19th-century vernacular, their lyrical embrace of wide-open landscapes, and their woeful nihilism that conceives of a world where paradise is always on the precipice of ruination are hallmarks of something much more than mere jokesterism.

Not that Honda's original Godzilla is a message movie first and foremost. It's a horror flick, and an ingenious one at that, with visual effects so vivid that gimmicky spin-offs became an enduring staple of popular film.

McCarthy is so careful not to take a political stand that his film seems neutered by good intentions. In the spirit of squishy humanism, he soft-pedals a hard-hitting topic.

I suppose it's asking too much for a great actor to be matched up with a great director on a project like this. On the other hand, there's always the sequel.

A riveting new documentary about the Arab-run Al Jazeera network, reminds us that news programming can vary so widely from place to place that journalistic myths of "objectivity" and "impartiality" seem more naive than ever.

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.

Jim Jarmusch has made a vampire movie, but, as you might expect, not just any old vampire movie. “Twilight” fans will not be amused, but Jarmusch’s usual coterie of art-film followers will likely find the movie his best in years.

Milos Forman's drama is full of outrageous material that will offend liberals and conservatives alike, but it's positioned on the cutting edge of contemporary debates about free speech, feminism, and the effects of mass media on modern society.

The gifted Zhang Yi-mou directed this gripping and colorful drama, which mingles beauty and perversity in equal proportions. [15 Mar 1991, p.12]

The best thing about the movie is David Oyelowo’s performance as King. He doesn’t simply portray King; he inhabits him.

The buildup is slow and deliberate, creating a vivid sense of love and warmth within the family who share the harrowing adventure. The climaxes are horrific, with effects recalling ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' but in a less exotic setting.

The story offers more fast-moving intrigue than heartfelt emotion, but star performances by Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve lend it additional depth. [27 Dec 1996]

What’s striking about this new film is that it lays out the message-mongering in such a way that you can enjoy the movie equally well on a purely action level.

The movie soars highest when De Palma engages in the purely visual storytelling that he considers (rightly) his strongest suit as a director. [4 June 1987, p.29]

An intense, claustrophobic drama of love and infidelity.

Nolte gives one of his most fully realized performances, Coburn makes an amazingly powerful comeback, and Schrader's filmmaking has never been more expressive or assured.

Junge's testimony is a salutary reminder that Hitler was like other people in ways, and that the evil he manifested could visit us again if more civilized humans don't remain watchful.

The movie is all a bit more airy than it needs to be, but Isabelle’s startlements are like a double take that never lets up.

Lee may, in the end, be too balanced a filmmaker to give Life of Pi the extra spin of lyric delirium it sorely needs. It's a sane movie about an essentially deranged situation.

The result, as might be expected, is strong on acting and overly stagey.

What The Witness makes clear, especially for people who know very little about the Kitty Genovese case, is that the scenario of 38 apathetic witnesses was a gross misrepresentation of what actually occurred.

Miss Bala has been praised on the festival circuit for being a gritty look at the Mexican drug trade but too often it seemed like a bargain-bin "Scarface" to me.

In "Birders," by contrast, nature is one big entrancing show; a world of tweets without "tweets."

Bong's style is comically tart even in the film's most noirish moments.

Implicit in this film is a simple truth: The sheer force of artistry has the power to convert outsiders into insiders. I left Fill the Void feeling privileged, however briefly, to have been brought into this world.

This is a real-life fairy tale with a remarkably happy ending.

Roddam's minor but imaginative 1979 movie.

Magical movie, which has brilliant fun with the contrasts between film and theater, love and infatuation, reality and fantasy.

In Zodiac, working from a script by James Vanderbilt, Fincher has decidedly toned down his act. His straight-ahead, methodical direction isn't as flagrantly unsettling as much of his previous work, but it's more psychologically layered. In this film, for the first time, we feel for his characters when they bleed.

A fact-filled study that's also a full-fledged work of cinema art. [2 Sept 1988]

Tykwer's style gives the movie an explosive energy that never quits, marking him as the most ingenious new talent to hail from Germany in ages.

A love-it-or-hate-it movie. Put me in the (sort of) hate-it column. My slight qualification here is because Darren Aronofsky's movie starring Natalie Portman as an increasingly unhinged ballerina gets points for being unlike anything else that's out there.

For a movie featuring so much emotional discord, Indignation has an overly cautious tone: It could have been made in 1951. I realize that this effect is largely intentional, but that doesn’t altogether excuse it.

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

Bird isn't an easy film, and it doesn't always make an effort to be likable. But it's a dazzler - at least as good as "Round Midnight,'' and that's saying a lot.

The ending is a set-up for yet another sequel: Can "28 Months Later" be very far away?

Wharton's old-school compassion and Davies's taste for artfully wrought melodrama make an unusual but ultimately successful combination.

Top Gun: Maverick is a perfectly tolerable time-killer, and I enjoy popcorn as much as anyone, but I just hope these won’t be the only kinds of movies that bring audiences back to the theaters.

Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable.

More thoughtful and varied than the average Hollywood cartoon.

What makes the film stunning is less its metaphorical scheme than its cinematic style. Always a matter of flowing camera movement, Kubrick has photographed much of the action with long "traveling shots" that capture time and space as a seamless whole, not fractured into the bits and pieces of standard editing techniques. [26 June 1987]