The film may be subtitled "Shut Up & Sing," but you can't sing with your mouth closed.

The real halo here belongs to McConaughey. He does justice to Ron’s story and to his own quicksilver talent.

Visually sublime and intellectually dense, this is one of the extremely rare movies that prove cinema can be as complex and profound as the very greatest art works in any form.

The Imposter has too many reenactments for my taste, and Bourdin is glorified by Layton more often than he is condemned. Still, this is one creepy mystery.

It’s a dirgelike odyssey sparked by Julianne Moore’s overheated turn as George’s best friend – a welcome respite from Firth’s clenched emoting.

My Brilliant Career is a calm and sunny movie, carrying a family-film G rating despite its essentially grown-up theme. As a bonus it contains a delicious performance by Australian actress Judy Davis -- a clear-eyed beauty whose character long-sufferingly endures countless insults about her "looks" because of a turn-of-the-century Australian prejudice against freckles! [4 June 1980, p.18]

Clarke started out as a dancer studying with Martha Graham, and much of Ornette has a dancelike swing and propulsion. What it doesn't provide is a cogent look at Coleman's artistry. This is not a jazz film for people who want to sit back and get mellow. The film itself is a species of jazz. It's offbeat without missing the beat.

Captures the fear factor in the lives of these men without turning them into the usual home front head cases.

There's plenty for us to feast on in Under the Sea 3D without drawing a single drop of blood. If you have small children, you'd be crazy not to take them to this film.

Chronicles the eerie and oddly inspiring story of Johnston's ongoing battles to survive - both as artist and human being.

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.

This modestly produced family drama has all the poignancy and humor associated with today's vibrant Iranian film industry.

A lousy title for a marvelous movie.

The cast is uniformly good, although Tomlin overdoes the crusty-crone routine. She scowls a lot, but we all know she’s a secret softy.

Janney knows how to nail a line like few others in the business. It helps that, in this film, she has most of the best ones.

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.

Dumont's cinematic style is aggressively physical and philosophical at the same time. It irritates as many viewers as it inspires, but it prompts more thought than ordinary movies ever do.

In all, it's a fun exercise in nostalgia but a three-hour homage to grade Z movies is a long sit. Grunge overload sets in early.

The ferocity of the performances is inextricable from the men’s real-life criminality. We are baffled, moved, and repulsed – often at the same time – by the elemental spectacle before us. In this metaprison drama, the prison bars are both illusory and unbreakable. Caesar Must Die chronicles an exalted entrapment.

This film is apolitical in the best sense - it bears witness to a time and a place.

Directed by Cooper, who also co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, the film serves up so much Sturm und Drang about the great man’s messed-up private life that it barely bothers to explore his creative genius.

In place of a conventional plot, this utterly unique Swedish movie offers a series of related episodes -- Some are funny, some are tragic, all are dreamlike and unpredictable, suggesting that the 21st century will be a lot weirder and wackier than we expect.

Nunez unfolds her story at a leisurely yet steadily absorbing pace, allowing Ashley Judd to develop one of the year's most luminous performances in the title role. Made on a low budget by artists with high hopes and towering talents, this is another undersung gem that deserves much wider fame. [13 Jan 1994, p.12]

There's lots of atmosphere and information to be gained, but stay away unless you can tolerate graphic plunges into the wildest kinds of youthful excess.

This movie doesn't end up taking on all the problems it offers up. Meting out justice to an evil school administrator seems to be enough for now. As an enlightened and energetic film - a voice for the '90s - it is enough. [12 Sep 1990, p.11]

Gleeson is a wonderful actor and he keeps a lid on the blarney. He manages to convey a lot – fear, anger, compassion, rue – with only the slightest of squints and frowns. But he’s still the center of a cooked-up cavalcade of souls.

Jarecki's thesis is that law enforcement targets minority communities, but his analysis is far too simplistic. Since when did pushers become victims?

Since music is so much more than music between these two, their filmed sessions resemble not so much rehearsals as communions.

The subject matter, already troubling, is made even more so by Vinterberg’s almost sadomasochistic penchant for propping up Lucas’s martyrdom. He’s gunning for prey, too.

On the plus side, we get a front-row seat, often closer than that, to some of the wowiest concerts ever committed to film.

Gene Hackman is solid as the hero, and Dennis Hopper does his best screen work ever. [6 Mar 1987, Arts & Leisure, p.23]

A few of the performances, especially Nicole Kidman’s, as the lady in charge, and Kirsten Dunst’s, as the teacher pining to flee with the corporal, have some bite, but not enough to make much of an imprint in this brittle, vaporous chamber piece.

The director has a good eye for semidocumentary detail, and the performances, which also include Bruce Dern as a veteran trainer, Gideon Adlon as Roman’s estranged daughter, and especially Jason Mitchell as a fellow inmate and trick rider, all have the sharp tang of authenticity.

This gritty drama doesn't rank with the greatest Iranian films, but its urban characters offer an interesting change from the nation's best-known productions, which generally center on rural subjects.

Princess, as a singer, is the real deal, with a throaty resonance that at times recalls Nina Simone. What Kutiman, whom she eventually meets in Israel, has given her is a newfound and miraculous platform for her talent.

Superbly cast, evocatively directed.

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.

Not only Duvall shines. Murray, in case anybody still doubted it, is one of the finest character actors in America.

The Immigrant is reaching for the same thing that Fellini achieved in “La Strada” – the state of grace that arises between people who at first would seem to have nothing in common but desolation.

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.

It's all very pretty, but its use of motion-picture possibilities is unimaginative. What lifts The Best Intentions above its visual limitations, and makes it seem impressive, is the extraordinary depth and sincerity of Bergman's screenplay.

If the film had focused on more than the Algiers Motel incident, if, as it starts out to do, it had attempted to convey a comprehensive and incendiary portrait of a city in crisis, it would have rendered far more justice to those times – and our own.

Many times more African than "Tarzan" and "The Lion King" combined, Kirikou and the Sorceress is one of the best movies so far in this very young year.

As inspirational academic stories go, it doesn't get much better than this.

Set in 2029, Logan is the closest thing to a valedictory the Marvel universe has yet concocted. Depending on how sentimental you are about these things – me, not much – it’s a bittersweet event.

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.

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

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.

Excerpts from Schroeder's long video documentary about him, and from the flawed melodrama "Barfly" they made together, add more variety.

Fascinating.

The Plot Against Harry isn't likely to be a smash hit; it will be most successful in large cities, with audiences who want something different from slam-bang Hollywood comedies. But it has the special kind of charm that comes from watching believable characters behaving in real, if eccentric, ways. [02 Feb 1990, p.11]

The dragons in this movie are expertly brought to life.

The tale doesn't always seem sure where it's going, and for once in his career, Leigh doesn't always appear to have a firm grasp on his project.

One of the main rallying points of The Messenger is that birds have “something to tell us” about the environment’s mounting ecological hazards. The canary in a coal mine phenomenon, according to this film, has assumed global proportions.

For most of the movie, Dheepan, for all its flaws, is hard-hitting in ways that count. It has the intimacy of a personal drama but the amplitude of a much larger immigrant odyssey.

What makes the movie powerful is Timoner's decision to structure it via Taylor's perspective on his competitor, with no holds barred.

During vast sections of Broken Embraces, I wished I was watching the actual old-time noirs instead of the miasmic concoction that Almodóvar has made from them.

Carries a strong emotional charge along with its valuable reminder of the suffering that youngsters may undergo when a heedless society overlooks their needs.

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

The two leads are remarkably fresh, and so is the movie.

Writer-director Rebecca Miller never wrests her movie free of its associations with the films of Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach, and some of it plays like a generic indie film rom-com.

Written and directed with uncommon sensitivity by James Mangold, a strikingly talented newcomer.

A young adult romantic comedy with a sweetness and delicacy that lifts it out of its genre.

Has the stately picturesqueness of old-fashioned “quality” British cinema. At its center, though, is a performance that cuts right through the decorum.

So free-floating that it floats away.

In Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon," which only looks better with the years, New York was as much a character in that film as its people. It was a movie that took its cue from the energy of the city. The Inside Man takes its cue mostly from other movies.

Assayas doesn’t bring out the fiery best in this material, but he’s smart enough to know that revolutionaries like their comforts as much as the ruling class does.

Saskia Rosendahl is a highly expressive actress within the limited confines of her character, and the film is studded with memorable scenes.

The latter element joins with Crudup's excellent acting to make this deliberately scruffy tale a worthwhile experience if you can handle its explicitly sordid subplots.

What he forgot to ask Woody [Allen] for was the keen insight into middle-class folkways that marks the best Allen pictures. [28 July 1989, Arts, p.10]

The story has too many trite moments, but strong acting and a goodhearted attitude keep it afloat.

I wish Rowley didn’t so often dabble in standard movie-thriller-style stylistics, but his film is an exposé of practices that need – demand – exposing.

This clever and original movie is like a John Hughes comedy for the '90s.

What Alfred Hitchcock once said about thrillers also applies to Westerns: The stronger the bad guy, the better the film. By that measure, 3:10 to Yuma is excellent.

The latest cinematic adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel, is like "Masterpiece Theater" without the masterpiece.

Writer/director Peter Duncan's first film is darkly humorous, with dashes of slapstick, brilliant, and original material.

The riders who appear in Buck seem almost uniformly exalted by their contact with Brannaman and his methods.

In its own coy way, the film celebrates “the slop” it pretends to deride.

If Balram was simply a born hustler, his odyssey would not have the resonance it has here. But we can see glimmers of what he might have become if not for his caste.

Syriana falls down at the most basic storytelling level, and this incoherence damages even the good parts.

Much of the film is wordless, and apparently some of the Merjan ritualism is a concoction of the filmmakers. There's a trancelike quality to its best moments, but too much of it is artfully boring. Silent Souls is at the opposite extreme from Hollywood – it's all mood. Be careful what you wish for.

The performances of this quiet Iranian drama are utterly genuine, and the story is a delicate blend of slice-of-life realism and soft-spoken social commentary.

It leaves us with a question that may be unanswerable: How does one extinguish terrorism when its causes are myriad?

Gentle, humanistic, delicious.

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.

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.

Clearly Sorkin sees the Chicago 7 as victims of the vilification of dissent. He also sees them as exemplars – this is his version of a superhero movie – and the idealization at times gets a bit sticky.

The Lunchbox, the debut feature from Indian director Ritesh Batra, has such a sweet premise that I sincerely hope it doesn’t get remade with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Kevin Kline gives a tremendously likable performance as the ersatz president, and Sigourney Weaver brings charm and elegance to the role of First Lady who's as ignorant of the switcheroo as the rest of the country.

Each minidrama is quietly touching and compassionate, and Riker is honest enough to avoid suggesting easy solutions for the social, cultural, and personal challenges his characters confront.

Ms. Moncrieff's low-key directing is matched by fine acting from Agnes Bruckner as Meg and David Strathairn as her mentor. Aside from a somewhat schematic climax, this is as smart a debut as we've seen in a long while.

Almereyda's movie is riveting for several reasons: its inside look at Shepard in action, its vivid account of how a challenging play is brought from printed page to public stage, and its glimpses of Shepard's troubled youth.

Longer than necessary, that is, for the story it has to tell. This flaw aside, the drama is well crafted and sometimes touching, with especially forceful opening scenes.

The acting is excellent.

Shine A Light is essentially just an expertly made concert film. But what a concert! (And what a camera team.)

Given what this film is about and the dangers hindering its fullest accounting, a dramatic rendition, rather than a documentary, might have been more emotionally satisfying. Still, there’s nothing like seeing some of this stuff up close and for real.

The performances are persuasive but the plot rattles on much too long.

Levy-Hinte has said that a great deal more concert footage exists. I can't wait for the expanded version DVD.