I can’t imagine a world without the Beatles, but I can well imagine a world without this movie.

The movie is a star vehicle at heart, aimed more at marketing Pitt's popularity than probing complexities of empire-building and cultural clash that trouble the Tibetan region to this day.

Livelier, more absorbing, and generally better acted than "Dangerous Liaisons," which arrived a year ago. But it runs out of inspiration long before it runs out of plot twists, and we've seen the twists too many times before.

The material is right up Schrader's alley, and while his vision of the first "Exorcist" chapter isn't a masterpiece, it's far superior to the Renny Harlin prequel to "The Exorcist" released last year.

Mostly, Rule Breakers is as joyful as its standout score by Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal. You’ll root for the immensely likable team as they become immersed in the world of competitive robotics.

And yet the great conundrum of the Holocaust is that it was perpetrated by human beings, not monsters. Few movies have rendered this puzzle so powerfully.

Chalk this razzle-dazzle chase picture up as effective Friday-night entertainment, not the heart-stirring romantic thriller it might have been. That's the real truth about "Charlie."

The offbeat screenplay turns even the corny bits in unpredictable directions, and it's rare indeed to see such consistently superb ensemble acting.

Vigorously directed by Joel Schumacher, the film is closer to a suspense thriller than a journalistic report.

An odd amalgam of soap opera and street-level realism, with, alas, the former trumping the latter.

It’s essentially a buddy-cop romp with the usual assortment pack of graphic gruesomeness.

Judged on any kind of rational level, this film is a mess, and Fairuza Balk, as a punky friend of Howard's son, gives the single most annoying performance I have ever seen. But Franz Lustig's cinematography has a Walker Evans-like power.

There’s a creepy subtext to all this, especially when Tim uses his time-travel gifts to woo an American girl without her assent.

The movie is a mish-mash of action-adventure clichés, book-ended with lame attempts at psychological interest. Written, directed, and acted with ham-fisted heaviness.

Ostensibly it’s a tradition versus progress fable. In actuality, it’s a movie furiously, perhaps intentionally, at odds with itself.

I wish the movie weren’t quite so sappy about the spiritually redemptive powers of fine cuisine. Sometimes a meal is just a meal.

Black and Kyle Gass started their acoustic/heavy metal rock music comedy act back in the late 1980s. Gold albums and HBO shorts followed, now this. Still, any movie featuring Jack Black with an appearance by Sasquatch is not a total loss, and, for those who care, we learn the origin of the group's name.

There's little fire to the story, as directed by Ulu Grosbard, but the performances are strong and it's refreshing to see a romance that limits the lovers to one unconsummated bedroom tryst. [06 Dec 1984, p.50]

A romantic comedy-drama has to make sense, though, and Love Actually doesn't, actually.

Vitkova’s direction is big on long lingering shots of dreariness. With a 2-1/2-hour running time, that’s a lot of dreariness.

The title characters are wittily crafted by Messrs. Stiller and Wilson, and Snoop Dogg is a riot as Huggy Bear.

The stars are appealing and the filmmaking is imaginative at times, but the picture never builds much dramatic momentum.

Promised Land is more effective as an anti-fracking screed than as a drama. Damon has his low-key charisma and Van Sant captures the enraged anomie of the community, but, except for one big plot twist, everything in this film is telegraphed from the first frame.

David O. Russell hasn't yet developed enough filmmaking savvy to juggle so many intellectual, emotional, and narrative elements. He's clever and ambitious, but perhaps too much so.

For all her chops as a dramatic actor, she's our new Judy Holliday and Goldie Hawn, only even sharper.

About two-thirds of the way through, Rendition takes a bad turn and sells out most of what made it worth watching in the first place. Witherspoon is given little to do except look weepy, Freeman's change of heart is Q.E.D., and the radical Islamist subplot overwhelms the action, which becomes so confusingly structured that I thought the projectionist had misplaced a reel.

Sir Walter Scott's novel is turned inside-out by Michael Caton-Jones's movie, which transforms the title character from an elusive rogue into a conventional hero who swaggers across the screen from beginning to end.

It's great to see so many smart girls in a Hollywood movie!