At the top of his game, Carpenter and his cohorts boldly tap into the twin strains of paranoia gripping the present-day American society, suggesting that we face one or the other of two of our worst nightmares coming true. [09 Aug 1996, p.F1]

As brainy, vital and captivating as its eponymous star, the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy should warm the hearts and minds of science lovers, weather enthusiasts, environmental watchdogs and astronomy buffs, all while inspiring viewers to ask questions and seek answers.

This visceral and anxiety-laden vision ends on an uneasy, though hopeful, note.

And though School Daze isn't as successful as the more modestly scaled "She's Gotta Have It," in the end, it may be even more rewarding and promising. The movie's seemingly twisted view of higher education suggests a straight eye, a cool mind, a steady heart--and a great aim.

As captured through the ceaselessly unflinching lens of Sharif’s borrowed video camera, Nowhere to Hide offers an uneasy prognosis that is at once graphically gut-wrenching and doggedly life-affirming.

Even though It Could Happen to You has its tenderized, good citizenship side, it's been written (by Jane Anderson) and directed (by Andrew Bergman) with an embracing cheer. It's blissfully uncynical.

Warm without sacrificing integrity, pleasant but not to a fault, Back to Burgundy is satisfying rather than earth-shaking.

There's hardly a moment in Three Amigos that isn't silly--make that incredibly, outrageously and breathtakingly silly. Maybe that's why this tale of a trio of inept silent-movie stars turned real-life heroes is such a goofy delight. It's like a cross between a big-budget Three Stooges movie and a Hope-Crosby road picture, with dozens of old cowpoke gags thrown in to spice up the brew.

For all its bloody and violent genre trappings, Pilgrimage — directed by Brendan Muldowney and written by Jamie Hannigan — is a gorgeously shot film that carefully renders the details of this fascinating historical period.

Those accustomed to the sort of grandly executed, tightly paced escape/rescue sequences that tend to go with the territory will have to acclimate themselves to the film’s more subdued rhythms, but in time, the quietly unassuming, character-rich approach pays some affecting dividends.

Thanks to Cruise and Kosinski’s unfashionable insistence on practical filmmaking and their refusal to lean too heavily on computer-generated visual effects, their sequel plays like a throwback in more than one sense. But the era that produced the first film has shifted, and “Top Gun: Maverick” is especially poignant in the ways, both subtle and overt, that it acknowledges the passage of time, the fading of youth and the shifting of its own status as a pop cultural phenomenon.

With its chilling evidence of fetus-centric policies in practice, Birthright shows Big Brother in action, and at his most misogynistic.

In Lemon, Bravo and Gelman find a transcendent absurdity in the mundane that’s awkwardly enchanting. It’s more tart than sweet, but deliciously weird nonetheless.

Grafting the buddy picture onto the framework of the classic political thriller, director Jang Hoon also manages to find time for lighter moments of human comedy, and those seemingly disparate elements are deftly navigated by Song and his fellow fully dimensional characters.

What makes Monkey Shines special--beyond Romero's cinematic lucidity and sheer storytelling ability and the talent of his cast and crew--is the ambivalent responses aroused by monkey Boo as Ella.

Though its theme of the corrosive influence of unimaginable wealth is not exactly news, "All the Money" benefits, in much the same way that Scott's similar (and underappreciated) "American Gangster" did, from the director's expertise at bringing pace and interest to stories he cares enough about to sink his teeth into.

You may long for a more disreputable, less buttoned-up telling, but there is something about this one’s sleek, streamlined conventionality that feels both appropriate and pleasing.

Women Who Kill is delightfully specific in its approach to its characters and their community. It takes a familiar theme of romantic comedies — the fear of commitment — and gives it new life by adding a morbid element to the mix.

This is an unusual venture, both charming and serious, that goes in more directions than anticipated, including more than a touch of magic realism.

This gripping exposé of the dark side of the commercial dog sledding industry, particularly as it pertains to Alaska’s annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, is a horrifying heartbreaker.

Gadot and Pine give great pillow talk, and their easy screwball rhythms provide not just levity but ballast: They ground a movie in which time, for all its malleability, always feels like it’s slipping away.

Craig reveals himself as perhaps the most generous actor to have inhabited the role. And not only toward the rest of the cast, but toward the very idea of Bond itself. Craig sets Bond free from the prison of forgetfulness that has previously trapped him like a caveman in ice, though the price is steep, and it remains to be seen if future installments can continue to pay it.

Starting from a single key insight into human behavior — the natural compulsion to compare oneself to others — White has spun a funny, empathetic and surprisingly grounded comedy that itself defies obvious comparisons.

The result, unusual in a documentary involving the police and the public, is a film that does not advocate for anything but the truth, one that aims to show what happens on both sides of an issue rather than coming down in favor of one or the other.

So much of Ruthless People goes so far that maybe it was inevitable that the film makers would pull up short and make this half-sappy compromise--cynicism with a smile--as compensation for their previous audacity. A pity. A lot of the rest gives you something better: full-bore, shameless, gut-clutching laughter.

Hollywood Shuffle is boisterous, out-at-the elbows movie making, an uneven series of skits, really, rather than a consistent whole. But there are wonderful comic moments here, alongside ones that droop from having gone on too long. And pervading the film is an unquenchable air--of optimism, even of community, which uses comedy to address some grievous inequities.

Although “Dark” eschews overly graphic depiction of the more horrific physiological aspects of MND and barely touches upon the financial toll the illness clearly takes, this is as real a human story as it gets.

This is a beautifully shot film whose visuals work well with its philosophical approach to life and relationships.

It never succumbs to making poverty a graphic ornament.

Bening has done a remarkable job of capturing Grahame's look and her breathy way of talking, insuring that her performance is real and using it to explore still-relevant issues of aging, glamour and relationships.

An enigmatic, if perhaps hopeful, epilogue caps this sad, strange, at times weirdly poignant portrait.

Messy and ungovernable at its strongest, Lafosse’s film is a story of heartbreak and real estate and, not least, money, viewed from within the still-smoldering ruins.

The series has been with us since 1962 and, like many another old timer, tends to repeat itself. Yet, every once in a while, it pulls in its stomach, pops the gun from its cummerbund, arches its eyebrow and gets off another bull's-eye. The newest, Licence to Kill, is probably one of the five or six best of Bond.

The film is a stirring salute to human ingenuity.

In divisive times, Pig and his friends, who consist of maybe a dozen drawn lines apiece, provide much-needed laughter in the tradition of the great Warner Bros. cartoons.

Made with care and conviction as it explores this unexpected relationship, "Our Souls at Night" understands both what changes in people as they age and what remains the same. It covers quite a bit of emotional territory, and it covers it well.

The fact-based story, which is allowed to quietly unfold in a series of extended takes, has been stripped of all artifice, especially in regard to the pared-back performances of Harewood, a British actor with regular roles on “Homeland” and “Supergirl,” and Findley, who starred in Ava DuVernay’s 2012 breakthrough feature, “Middle of Nowhere.”

Cocoon is a sly and salty bit of wish fulfillment that, by its tremendous close, has its entire audience wishing along with it. The combined energy it generates is probably enough to raise the Titanic.

Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is an involving film that tells a more complicated story than its unexciting title would indicate.

Hamilton's story is so filled with dramatic incident and personal and psychological complexity, not to mention spectacular visuals of waves upward of 100 feet tall, that it compels attention whether surfing means anything to you or not.

Obsessive but accessible.

As keenly observed by Korem and cinematographer Jacob Hamilton, Dealt achieves the neat trick of giving its main subject a rewarding character arc.

Desperately Seeking Susan is a lark, an exhilarating celebration of people who have the good sense to be in touch with themselves and with each other.

Though American sports dramas find it hard to avoid heartwarming elements, this is a decidedly more even-keeled film, its European nature allowing it to focus on the drama of character as well as what happened on the court.

There’s no artifice in this documentary, with the director simply presenting the women’s lives as they tell them, one after another. Slow-moving and sad, Twenty Two isn’t easy to watch, but it isn’t meant to be.

Côté’s film patiently paints a picture of men who are more than their bodies, revealing the emotions beneath the skin and muscles and challenging perceptions about them.

In the mythology of personal growth, liberating yourself leads invariably to increased happiness. Yet what characterizes the seekers in the powerful One of Us is nothing that straightforward.

The film's concerns are profoundly therapeutic, but it nimbly avoids every therapy-drama cliché.

Pearce, in his feature directing debut, proves himself a solid craftsman, with a gift for giving even derivative story elements a nerve-jangling tweak. He also has a shivery way with ambiguity, a knack for toying with our expectations and turning the power of suggestion to his advantage.

As Lelio's earlier films demonstrated, the director's style is restrained but potent, which helps the impact of the actors' performances as well as the picture's fairly graphic love scene. The possibilities for these characters are more varied than it initially seems, and "Disobedience" thoughtfully considers them all.

What happens to Charley, the film posits, the bad and the good, is not so much the fault of specific individuals but of the indifferent dead ends built into America's despairing culture of the underclass. Your heart goes out to this striving, yearning young man, and that's a tribute to the fine filmmaking on display.

While many familiar tropes are present, including murder, mayhem, a tough lawman and a tentative posse, Thornton uses them to tell a 20th century outback story and offer sharp, pointed commentary on relations between whites and indigenous peoples.

The skillfully assembled documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste proves as eye-opening as it is mouth-watering.

Gilbert emerges as a tenderly observed, remarkably insightful keeper.

Time to Die turns the showdown narrative of so many oaters into an actively intelligent, darkly funny and no less suspenseful rumination on the pull of the horizon versus the ill wind at the back.

Artful and atmospheric to the max, Never Here is a study in personality disintegration dressed up as a whodunit. The film marks an auspicious debut for writer-director Camille Thoman.

The election’s startling results give the movie more resonance and emotional heft than it might have otherwise. A brief closing interview with Obama provides some stirring — and haunting — grace notes.

If Yonebayashi’s movie doesn’t have the visual richness and imaginative depth of Ghibli masterpieces like Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” its emotional warmth and wondrously inviting hand-drawn imagery carry on that company’s proud tradition.

Aida’s Secrets movingly embodies the traumas that, at war’s end and long after, are inseparable from liberation.

Deftly balancing humor and grief, The Bachelors is fueled by wonderfully human performances and fully realized characters.

A slow-building shiver of a movie, The Little Stranger tells a familiar but pleasurably engrossing story.

On paper, a 90-minute documentary involving the playing of a 3,000-year-old Chinese board game wouldn’t seem to lend itself to adjectives like “lively” and “compelling,” but darned if Greg Kohs’ AlphaGo isn’t those things and more.

Survival stories aren't rare in cinema, but Garcia's journey will make even the most jaded viewers drop their jaws.

In Roman Polanski's Frantic--an elegant, icy thriller about an American doctor chasing his wife's kidnapers through the deadlier byways of Paris--we can tell after 10 minutes that we're in the hands of a superb craftsman.

George combines a wide array of strong, if at times grisly, archival footage and photos with remarkable interviews with two centenarian survivors of the killings, plus moving commentary from many Armenians whose relatives perished in that first massacre and/or more recent conflicts across Azerbaijan.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is by far the best of the series, a superior horror picture that balances wit and gore with imagination and intelligence. It very effectively mirrors the anxieties of the teen-age audience for which it is primarily intended. [19 Aug 1988, p.17]

Unfailingly sensitive about issues of selflessness and suffering, The Departure is in a way its own work of meditation, on the pressures of living up to the turbulent promise of life’s expected length.

Farley reminds us just how liberating an agile, uninhibited, out-sized comedian can be in these times of caloric restraint...Tommy Boy is a good belly laugh of a movie.

A tenderly intimate, affecting documentary portrait.

Like the films it pays homage to, Ghost Stories is more classy than chilling; but each of its dark, twisty tales is smartly staged.

Nyoni, working in English and the local language of Nyanja, has an unforced way of dealing with themes like exploitation, oppression and superstition, showing how easy it can be for nonsense to pass itself off as sense.

While Twohy has some fabulous technology at his disposal and uses it to great effect, the answer to that second question is obvious: He keeps us on the edge of our seats not by dazzling us with lights and sound (even if the sound is spectacular) but by tantalizing his audience with basic, well-wrought suspense.

Mantegna and Nussbaum are so good as the con artists that their reading of Mamet's dialogue--and often Crouse's reading as well--justifies the movie. These actors have worked many times on stage with Mamet, as have J. T. Walsh, and cardsharp Ricky Jay (as a Las Vegas gambler), and when they latch onto these lines, they're like seasoned pitchers palming and scuffing the ball. Oozing confidence, they, and Mamet, put on a coldly skillful, killingly well - calculated show.

Things Change is a coldly controlled, immaculately mounted show, with a softly beating heart. Everything--the dialogue, the performances, Ruiz Anchia's jewel-like lighting, Michael Merritt's wittily elegant production designs and Alaric Jans' haunting, spare score--contributes to the final effect.

Bunker Spreckels was the real deal — a true original who was as entertainingly gonzo as Bunker77, the documentary that affectionately pays tribute to his brief but eventful life.

This documentary won’t provide an exhaustive view of his filmography or life offscreen, but it paints an impressionistic picture that feels almost experimental at times. Simultaneously arty and artful, it refuses to take the standard approach and it will reward cinephiles who want something different than most film biographies can offer.

However pointed the drama's lessons, they're never simplistic and always involving, pulsing with compassion and urgency as Hamoud's vivid characters defy the rules.

A delightful, embracing cultural experience.

As a wry commentary on religious tourism, and the limited avenues of prosperity for occupied, idealistic Arabs, “Holy Air” is tartly effective. And Srour’s deadpan way with storytelling, satire and elegantly fixed camera framing is a biting pleasure throughout.

Even though it ends up falling off the tracks--maybe even because it falls off the tracks-- Homicide absolutely holds your interest with the passion that powerfully felt but ultimately screwy efforts often have.

The Neon Bible is elegiac, formal and sometimes boldly stylized. The result is an extraordinary experience in which the familiar is made deeply and effectively unsettling.

The songs are lovely, and the first-time actors give performances that grow warmer as the film progresses, and their characters release, relax and find a groove, if only for this moment in time.

By getting out of the way as much as he does, Jarmusch makes Year of the Horse as much a statement about creative freedom as it is about music itself. [17 Oct 1997, p.F20]

No Greater Love may leave viewers emotionally wrecked, but they’ll emerge with additional respect and gratitude for the soldiers’ sacrifice.

Sensitively written and directed by Damon Cardasis, the movie is punctuated by an affecting string of musical numbers (Cardasis co-wrote the film's song lyrics with composer Nathan Larson) that deepen and enliven this lovely, vital tale.

We all like to imagine ourselves as brave resisters. Pomsel's unapologetic account of being "one of the cowards" is a haunting, ever-timely reminder of how easy it can be to cash the paycheck and look the other way.

Between the defensive driving and offensive behavior, and vice versa, The Road Movie is a gleeful rubbernecker’s large popcorn’s worth of crazy.

This is very much Foy's movie, and if the role of a woman trapped and surrounded by crazies couldn't feel farther removed from Queen Elizabeth II (or could it?), this superb English actress brings furious conviction to every agonizing moment of Sawyer's journey.

Shadowman is at its unsettling, want-to-look-away best when tiptoeing around the question of what makes for success regarding artists like Hambleton: the hoopla that keeps the work in circulation, or the mysterious inner pilot light that keeps a self-destructive talent going?

The stirring, masterfully constructed documentary “Apache Warrior” makes intriguing use of three recovered flight tapes from a squadron of U.S. Apache fighter helicopters that launched a deep attack in Iraq at the start of the war in March 2003.

Above all, it’s the warm, searching conversations between father and daughter, whether they’re seated side by side or she’s questioning him from behind the camera, that give the documentary its poignant immediacy.

The movie sparkles with playful tension, bubbles with amiability. The plot is formula, unsurprising, but the film makers and cast seem to be enjoying themselves; their sheer ribald exhilaration becomes infectious.

Director James Foley and his co-screenwriter Robert Redlin have pulled Thompson's story out of film noir shadows and set it unflinchingly in the desert's orange-red glare.

Tarantino was a boy of 6 in 1969, living far from the center of Los Angeles, and in a sense what he’s done here is re-create the world he’s imagined the adults were living in at the time. If it plays like a fairy tale, and it does, don’t forget the first words in the title are “Once Upon a Time.”

The story is larger than life. Padilha brings a frenetic, authentic style and flair to this depiction and never loses sight of its larger messages and themes.

If you’re in the mood for a movie like “Alita,” “Alita” is the movie you’re in the mood for.

If writer-director Sam Hoffman’s charming, well-performed tale feels at all familiar, it’s territory worth revisiting.

Though Living in Oblivion may sound like a one-joke movie, the pleasure of the endeavor is that it has no trouble holding your interest without feeling repetitive. Mark it down to the excellence of the acting, including the smallest roles, and the amusing and accurate way the ambience of bargain-basement filmmaking is captured.