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.

The reason The Wedding Plan rises above its flippancies is not only because of the novelty of its Israeli trappings but also because Michal is such an ingratiating whirlwind.

You could argue, I suppose, that this film, a Sundance hit, is essentially a funny sketch padded out to feature length. And what of it, my man?

A great way to go on a safari without ever leaving the multiplex.

A celebration of the gloriously mundane.

Soderbergh does overemphasize the "little-people" dreariness of it all. But there is much low-key humor here, too, albeit on the dark side.

Phil Hartman wrote and directed the picture, which proves for the zillionth time that a low budget doesn't have to mean low quality.

There’s real verve in the animation and wit in the byplay.

Sonia may seem happy-go-lucky at the start, but grief steels her. It makes her grow up very fast. She becomes a kind of heroine in the course of the film, which ultimately owes its stature to her presence.

It’s clear from the way writer-director Martin Zandvliet sets up the story that the fiery Rasmussen, who denies the boys adequate rations and pens them indoors at night, will eventually soften. It’s to the film’s credit that he does so in ways that are eminently believable.

Often remarkable and often exasperating.

For a movie that is about a collection of oddballs, it can sometimes feel rather generic. But at its core, the film is not a comedy at all. The eccentricities issue from real adversity.

The emotional stakes are large-scale, and Farhadi honors them by delving into their intricacies.

Damon is an agile comic performer, and Soderbergh knows how to serve him up without losing sight of the ultimate seriousness behind it all.

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

This is the kind of it-can-mean-whatever-you-want-it-to-mean art film that I usually run from, but Carax is such a prodigiously gifted mesmerist that, if you give way, you're likely to be enfolded in the film's phantasmagoria.

In addition to being a beloved author and illustrator, Beatrix is also presented as an early feminist and environmentalist who took control of her literary empire and saved vast acres of luscious farmland from greedy developers, eventually bequeathing property to Britain's National Trust.

It all seems like a stunt, especially since Beaven has also written a just-published book about his experiences, but he and Conlin are an engaging pair who don't let zealotry get in the way of humor.

Although Howard doesn’t go in for a lot of musicological analysis of Pavarotti’s genius, which would have enriched the presentation, he compensates by giving us an ample dose of the singing.

Dano and Cusack never let us forget that Wilson is human before he is anything else – genius, icon, legend. The film provides him with the succor that was so lacking in so many aspects of his life. I would like to think that the real Brian Wilson, looking at this film, would be OK with it.

I think the film overreaches in casting Simone as a standard-bearer against racism and sexism, but it’s filled with mesmerizing clips from throughout her performing career as well as numerous interviews with Simone, both audio and on film.

It's all something of a stunt - "Speed" on a shoestring - but very well done.

Garrone's messy storytelling compounds an already messy history. He's a powerful filmmaker, though, and a fearless one.

Everybody connected to this movie appears to be operating on the same wavelength: They want to do justice to the lives of the people that we see. To a remarkable degree, they do.

Their chief adversary is the greedy, heedless BP executive played by John Malkovich in his finest slinky-slimy mode. At its best, the movie is like “The Towering Inferno” but without all the sudsy subplots that doused that film’s fires.

It brings the nature versus nurture debate into shattering focus.

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.

Sheen is startlingly good here, and so is Timothy Spall as Clough's trusted and much abused lieutenant.