Director Stefan Forbes interviews a slew of victims and beneficiaries of the Atwater attack machine and, in the process, gives us an even-handed portrait of a man who, as much as anybody, bears responsibility for the toxicity of high stakes political campaigning on both sides of the aisle.

Milk is an agitprop fantasy about the selflessness of sainthood. If anybody but Penn was playing the saint, we'd probably feel as if we were being sold a bill of goods. Instead, he just about pulls it off. Such is the treachery of talent.

The best commentator is Alda, whose rueful memories of being raised as a boy in burlesque are the film's highlight. "It was a form of abuse," he says of those days, but without rancor. It was, after all, the only childhood he knew.

Longer than necessary, that is, for the story it has to tell. This flaw aside, the drama is well crafted and sometimes touching, with especially forceful opening scenes.

Suffers from touches of sentimentality in its last portion -- Many viewers may welcome this last-minute brightening, though. If so, All or Nothing could join "Topsy Turvy" and "Secrets & Lies" as one of Leigh's most widely enjoyed recent films.

The account is highly informative, although it would come across more vividly if there were fewer talking heads and longer stretches of archival footage.

A fascinating account, if less urgently compelling than it might have been.

Quite appealing, thanks to good-humored acting and to Martha Coolidge's quiet directing style. She lets romance and comedy bubble up from the characters instead of imposing gimmicky twists on the story.

Much of the style strains too hard to be cute, but true romantics may shed copious tears of sympathy and empathy.

Rob Reiner directed "Ghosts of Mississippi" from Lewis Colick's screenplay, and both deserve credit for their conscientious work. In the end, though, a race-related irony lingers in the movie despite its positive achievements. [20 Dec 1996, p.12]

The filmmaking is often wayward, the scenes of confrontation sometimes too stagey, but Oduye is a marvelous young actress with a camera-ready face brimming with soulfulness.

Taut almost to the point of abstraction.

Superbly acted.

One aspect of this story that could have been more deeply underscored: The steroid use that ultimately banned so many Russian Olympians was not just about winning. It was about winning under threat of disgrace or death.

Carrey is excellent, making the most of his comic gifts even in a cumbersome Grinch outfit, and the eye-spinning color scheme is dazzling to behold.

Swank gives one of the year's most complex and hard-hitting performances in the demanding central role.

Decorous to a fault, in the manner of middling Eric Rohmer talkfests, it's a film that could use some shaking up.

It’s to Nathan’s credit that he doesn’t negate the allure of dirt-bike riding as an escape hatch from inner-city woes.

If you're not in the mood for "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" meets "Last House on the Left," stay very far away. Horror fans will find what they're looking for, though.

There are many kinds of heroism, of course, but the version on display in Sully is, well, unsullied, and that sort of thing is more suitable for a monument than a movie.

A tribute to the therapeutic powers of musicmaking and choral camaraderie.

The characters are so convincing and the mood so light and flaky that it's hard not to find it a delicious little hors d'oeuvre of a movie.

The Wave, directed by Roar Uthaug, is pretty good. It’s also pretty strange. At least for American viewers – and Norwegians, too? – experiencing all these familiar disaster movie tropes in a Scandinavian setting, even on a relatively low budget, can be weirdly disorienting.

Smart and surprising.

The movie doesn't have much more get-up-and-go than the characters, but solid performances and richly textured camera work keep it involving most of the way through.

The irony of this film is that it's all about how we need to come together to conquer a calamity that pushes us apart.

The movie's intentions are as serious and thoughtful as its content is timely and sometimes horrifying. For adventurous viewers only.

This doesn't mean Maelström is for everyone. It's a strange and quirky yarn, moving between deceptively calm scenes and episodes as tempestuous as its title.