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

Rocketman is a campy, overblown, self-glorifying fantasia.

Look for realism, and you'll find The Cooler disappointing. Look for a far-fetched yarn that's as unpredictable as a throw of the dice, though, and you'll find it engaging fun.

Like all too many docs these days, it chronicles a contest while caricaturing the contestants.

Well-observed and unassuming as this film is, it glides along rather too blandly.

Coltrane’s final phase of “free jazz” is also amply documented, with stunning concert and music clips throughout.

For all the glam and swank, the film is essentially a bright, shiny, empty puzzle. The puzzlemaking by writer-director Tony Gilroy is clever but most frequently an end in itself.

The movie has a lush mysteriousness that represents a bygone, almost antique style of romanticism. It bears almost no resemblance to the current crop of mostly rat-a-tat movies. To view it is to enter a time warp, and there is some pleasure in stepping back into the languor.

Directed by John Landis with a surprising amount of class, though he lets some of his old ''Animal House'' vulgarity slip ostentatiously into the action.

He's (Giamatti) terrific throughout, although the movie, which is more clever than funny, sometimes resembles second-tier Charlie Kaufman stuff.

Michael Caine gives the most ferocious comic performance of his career, while Elizabeth McGovern is deliciously understated as the ''sorceror's apprentice'' who unwittingly helps him. [23 Mar 1990]

A powerful ending lends a strong emotional charge to this prettily filmed drama, but too much of the story is taken up with romantic clichés about the everyday challenges of childhood.

It’s an important subject, lucidly presented.

A little of Solondz's deadpan creepiness goes a long way with me. Life During Wartime is about how people are not what they seem to be, but most of its characters aren't rich enough to exhibit single, let alone double, lives.

Although the movie goes way back into Rumsfeld’s career, it is the Iraq section that is the most noteworthy – and disappointing. Morris elicits virtually nothing revelatory from Rumsfeld.

Its ethical and intellectual insights wane when the love story kicks in, weakening what might have been a much deeper movie. Still, its performances are wonderful to watch.

The movie is longer and slower than necessary, but it explores interesting questions of wartime violence, personal integrity, and what it means to come of age in a society ripping apart at the seams.

The plot is lively and the dialogue packs many good laughs.

As the "Empress of Fashion" who was the fashion editor of "Harper's Bazaar" before editing "Vogue" in its 1960s heyday, Vreeland comes across in the movie as something of a cross between Auntie Mame and Godzilla. She was a true original in a world where knock-offs abounded.

Certainly few people on the planet were more interested in food than Child, and, judging from this movie, few people are as interesting.

Mortensen, who reportedly put on thirty pounds for the role, starts out playing Tony like a big lug but as the road trip ensues he brings all sorts of subtle shadings to the role. He even comes to appreciate Doc’s artistry. In Tony’s eyes, he’s right up there with Liberace.

It's big, beautiful, and imposing. But there isn't much to it, and pretty pictures -- replacing ideas, not supporting them -- are its only real attraction.

The film is good enough to keep all the Marvel Comics crazed audiences out there deliriously happy while keeping the rest of us earthbound types in moderate thralldom.

The film has a creepy allure but, as movies featuring full-bore sexual gamesmanship often do, it wears thin.

Zellweger is as charming as ever, and it's good to find LaBute working with a script by writers who don't fully share his crabbed, cramped view of human nature.

She emerges as an energetic, narcissistic, and totally self-deluded woman.

Frequently funny, sometimes sad, often electrifying.

Setsuko’s pathetic attempt to claim a new life for herself is touching. The film never makes fun of her.