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.