It's a unique blend of history and hysteria, and there's no escaping the dead-serious ideas that run beneath its flamboyant surface.

Has some smart flashes, and a few of the young performers resemble real people and not the usual prefab teen idols.

The screenplay has flashes of real wit, and Perlman is perfect in the title role.

James Mangold follows up the promise of his excellent "Heavy" with this smartly written, superbly acted melodrama.

This high-quality Disney animation combines strong pictorial appeal with amiable voice-performances.

Although the cast, which also includes Jennifer Jason Leigh and Christine Lahti in sharp cameos, is very good, Wiig’s performance is self-effacing to a fault. Like a lot of comic actors, she overcompensates in dramatic roles by wearing a very long face.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel helped open society's eyes to the evils of pedophilia in the 1950s, and this pensive adaptation renews the warning for a later generation.

The first half of this freewheeling comedy-drama finds Toback at his imaginative best. The second half sinks into silliness.

Korine confirms his reputation as one of today's most experimentally minded filmmakers, helped by an inventive cast including German director Herzog in a surprisingly strong performance as the father.

It's a sophisticated fantasia that adults should enjoy equally. (In other words, it's the perfect family entertainment.)

Jim Jarmusch has made a vampire movie, but, as you might expect, not just any old vampire movie. “Twilight” fans will not be amused, but Jarmusch’s usual coterie of art-film followers will likely find the movie his best in years.

Liu is dazzling as the heroine, and the movie as a whole strikes a lovely balance between comedy and compassion.

The film’s title is derived from a magical black stone of Persian lore that reputedly absorbs the burdens of those who speak to it until it crumbles – freeing the speaker of her troubles.

The film is rude, colorful, and bursting with questions about American culture, subculture, and society. [08 Apr 1991, p.11]

The gently told comedy-drama is more colorful than you'd expect, using wry humor and lively music to keep sentimentality at bay.

The song-and-dance numbers that make this musical tragedy a celebration of life despite its awfully grim climax.

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.

The language of that poem, which periodically pours out from the screen, is the best thing in the movie. The worst thing: the interpolated animated sequences that are meant to "illustrate" the poem but which can't begin to compete with the imagery evoked by Ginsberg's words.

The characters are sharply etched but the plot is made deliberately ambiguous, suggesting that family life is so emotionally intricate that no single story can contain or explain it.

Moving and informative.

It's not a deep-thinking film, and I wish it probed more thoroughly into the feminist issues it raises, instead of finessing them in a goopy finale. But much of it is first-class summertime fare, generating plenty of humor while examining a slice of Americ ana that's as revealing as it is entertaining.

Its refusal to draw solid lines between "good" and "evil" characters is more sophisticated than the psychology of most current commercial pictures. It's well worth a trek to a theater adventurous enough to show it.

Although the story seems disjointed at times, no other war movie has tried so valiantly to convey not only the suffering of combat but the awful fissures it leaves between humanity's ideal oneness with itself and the world we live in.

Nicholson makes the movie so poignant that it's hard to resist, but I wonder if Payne and Taylor are rejecting the skeptical attitudes of their other films to become more popular, hoping a softer emotional tone will help this picture win the Oscars that have eluded their more tough-minded works.

It's surprising no filmmaker has adapted Dodie Smith's novel before now, and pleasing that Mr. Fywell and company have done such a responsible job with it. It's one of the season's most captivating surprises.

Often best around the edges. Without making a big deal about it, Scott reveals how the Mafia, while putting up a businesslike front, deplored the incursion of black gangsters into the drug trade.

Very inventive, but stay away if you can't stomach over-the-top violence.

Although the film doesn't probe Whale's personality as deeply as it might, the acting is excellent and movie buffs will enjoy its behind-the-scenes references and nostalgic film clips.