[An] engaging portrait of a complicated but vivid sports figure.

A complete master of cinematic farce, Veber's latest venture, The Valet, makes creating deliciously funny comedy look a lot easier than it has any right to.

The real strength of Feast of the Seven Fishes is the attention to detail Tinnell brings to the wintry West Virginia setting: from the blue chill of the outdoors to the welcoming bustle of the bars, kitchens and churches.

The young filmmaker rarely digs beneath the harsh environment's many fraught surfaces. He simply lets his cameras be his guide.

Small, smart and inescapably independent, People Places Things has its own offbeat and charmingly low-key way of seeing the world.

Cutting to the beat of the Beasties' propulsive rap, Hörnblowér creates an experience that is simultaneously low-fi and state-of-the-art.

Has the same kind of humor, charm and sensuality that made "Like Water for Chocolate" the most popular foreign-language film until "Life Is Beautiful" came along.

Lola is played by veteran Spanish actress Victoria Abril, one of Pedro Almodovar's favorites, and though the character sounds familiar, Abril brings so much zest and enthusiasm to its creation that it feels original and makes the passion she inspires believable.

A fast and furious action-adventure. The film's comedy counts for as much as the clever and risky ways in which Wahlberg and company go after the nasty Norton, who has holed up in a Bel-Air mansion with a world-class security system.

A powerhouse. Highly dramatic and intensely emotional, blessed with strong themes and an unstoppable narrative drive, it is adult, intelligent entertainment of a kind we rarely see these days.

Brings maximum subtlety, nuance and insight into the timeless story of first love.

Yu's film may be challenging to synopsize, but it's thoroughly engrossing and wildly surprising.

Director Yoruba Richen has refreshingly avoided making this polemic into propaganda, a temptation many lesser documentarians could not resist.

While often affecting and absorbing, the film proves intellectually and contextually light. This is especially true given a leisurely running time that could have easily accommodated more dimensional probing.

Although the film qualifies as an advocacy documentary, director Fredrik Gertten has put in the time to capture how these cities' unique scenarios unfold to mount a compelling case against the powerful automotive, oil and construction lobbies.

Because of that private connection, Hondros is definitely a personal documentary, with the loss and pain Campbell is still experiencing taking center stage more often than might be ideal. But that connection also leads to some detours that might not have happened otherwise, sequences that show what made Hondros special as a photographer and a person.

As a crash course in extreme mountain climbing, the triumph of the human spirit, love of country and family, and those driven, fearless souls who choose to reach above the clouds, “14 Peaks” is a uniquely stirring journey.

The lines between good and evil are clearly demarcated at the outset and remain more or less fixed as the story progresses, a strategy that in no way compromises the filmmaker’s ability to mine fresh complications and surprises from his story.

All the imagination and effort (including 18 months of pre-production) that went into making the dinosaurs state-of-the-art exciting apparently left no time to make the people similarly believable or involving. In fact, when the big guys leave the screen, you'll be tempted to leave the theater with them. [11 June 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

This raunchy unrooting of a settled suburban idyll exposes the considerable angst of emerging adulthood with a kind of scatological fervor designed to elicit oodles of inappropriate laughs. It succeeds.

An enormously emotional and spirit-raising documentary.

Michael Winterbottom's handsome, uncompromising film. Jude glows with Eccleston's and Winslet's performances and with those in supporting roles.

Noah manages to blend the expected with the unexpected and does it with so much gusto and cinematic energy you won't want to divert your eyes from the screen.

It’s marvelous to have Cronenberg back and to behold his undimmed, unparalleled skill at welding the formulations of horror and science fiction to the cinema of ideas.

Engagingly anchored by character actor John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a satisfyingly quirky serving of frisky pulp fiction.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent knows that what it has going for it is Nicolas Cage, and Nicolas Cage is what makes this otherwise forgettable comedy worth the watch. It’s not necessarily only for super fans, but super fans will be richly rewarded by this love letter to Cage, who, remember, never went away.

Ascher is too content to let repetition of experience take over his film.

Like the young Natasha herself, Black Widow feels as though it’s been programmed into submission — and scarcely allowed to live and breathe before it’s suddenly over.

What makes Whip It a blast is the action in the rink. What gives Whip It heart is the pathos, pain and mettle-testing elements that accompany any serious athletic competition. It doesn't hurt that its diminutive star is surprisingly athletic and agile on the track.

Both a stirring sports doc and a rich nonfiction drama, populated by characters who could have stepped out of a Damon Runyon story.

Although The Most Dangerous Year sometimes gets bogged down with explainers, it’s a powerful educational tool and empathy-building story.

More popular melodrama than the usual exercise in high art, it whipsaws us with so many unexpected passions and surprising events that holding on to your seat is strongly recommended.

Dick Tracy is brash, irresistible fun. Warren Beatty's vision of a comic strip on film comes in paint box-bright colors with nicely irreverent dialogue, a gaggle of crisp performances and one with million-dollar moxie. [10 Jun 1990, p.3]

What should be a sexually and emotionally charged atmosphere instead ends up feeling like an intellectual exercise, with the actors attempting mightily to simulate chemistry that simply doesn't exist.

If I call the movie a love story, don’t laugh. Torres has made it with love in his heart.

American Woman at once reveals its soft underbelly while landing a surprisingly effective punch to the gut — largely thanks to Miller’s deft performance.

Sleek, erotic and suspenseful, at least for the first hour, and even with the piece wobbling between dark psychology and campy soap, the cast is compelling as it navigates the uncertainty.

An outrageous, savagely comical account of the disastrous circumstances surrounding the assassination of dictatorial South Korean President Park Chung Hee in 1979.

Though the film flirts with being in a sense too intimately drawn from Jaye and P-Orridge themselves - more context from those who knew P-Orridge before the couple got together would have been useful - the sense of intimacy created by Losier is remarkable.

Grimly powerful and intersectionally acute, Thomas' serious, haunted period saga is a portrait of colonial rot and patriarchal cruelty as experienced by characters inextricably linked — male and female, free and chained, native and not, even sane and otherwise — in one remote outpost.

Frustrating as I ultimately found it, Primer is undeniably geek heaven. For everyone else, it's a nice antidote to big-budget bogusness.

Best known for 1994's "The Wild Reeds," Techine has been a director for more than 30 years, and the fluidity of his polished, intelligent, at times enigmatic works make him someone whose films are always worth watching.

Doesn't offer moviegoers one obvious message, but rather a complex and considered glimpse into a rarely seen world, one of utter absurdity and horror.

40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie transcends the trippy nostalgia to deliver a moving message about the healing power of reconciliation.

Rustin is on firmer footing when detailing the creative spit-balling that created the framework that made the March on Washington possible, as well as the competing egos and interests that almost doomed it. You’d need a 10-part limited series to really do all this justice, but the movie puts across the complexities with a nimble shorthand.

By the time their jaw-dropping story is over, you may feel you have traveled every inch of their journey with them, a downward spiral all the way. What you still may not understand is what really made Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) and Andrew Daulton Lee (Sean Penn) do what they did, or, more importantly, what made director John Schlesinger feel their story was worth telling.

Opera, while undeniably entertaining, winds up overwhelming its suspense with morbidity. [13 Jun 1990, p.F6]

Promising as it seems in theory, everything in this new version, like Lena Lamont's image in "Singin' In the Rain," falls apart as soon as the talking starts.

Director David Lewis' movie functions as mostly a highlights reel rather than an exhaustive look at Hentoff's life.

This isn’t an easy movie, which is to say its meanings and motives have no interest in announcing themselves. But neither is it especially difficult, and if you let it, Schanelec’s gentle, supple stream of images and their attendant associations will bear you dreamily aloft. The meanings, if not necessarily the motives, will follow.

Although Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf says The President was inspired by the turbulent events of the Arab Spring, there’s also a timeless quality to this absorbing and powerful fable that provides added resonance.

The result, while fragmented by design, is a politically astute, emotionally layered examination of a violent death and its lingering psychic residue.

Like an aging athlete who knows how to husband strength and camouflage weaknesses, it makes the most of what it does well and hopes you won't notice its limitations.

Within the story's sometimes too-neat outline, Volpe lets most of her characters breathe.

Try as they might, the filmmakers never hit the outer reaches of imagination that both Kubrick and Bowie did. Which is not to say the film completely implodes into a black hole either.

A complex and truly original film. [19 Jul 1993, p.F7]

At times a beautiful wandering, at other times an admirable character study, but rarely a powerful whole.

The film is a true dramedy that wrestles with the darker, sadder elements of life in a frank, funny and deeply relatable way.

Schwentke’s grim history lesson carries an undeniable propulsiveness. But it’s ultimately too ugly a story to be truly resonant.

The movie's big revelation, though, is Brand's Aldous, whose idiot-Lothario exterior masks a frank, accidentally wise and Yoda-like interior, and whom we grow to like more and more despite getting to better know him and his faults. The same can be said about the movie.

Though Bottle Rocket is wryly amusing from beginning to end, the hard edges of the real world are never too far from its surface. And it is the particular grace of the film that though all its characters end up with something like what they're looking for, its not exactly how they'd imagined it would be.

Enjoyable, involving dramedy.

Because the stories are so specific, and because they play out over such a long period of time, it is hard not to be fascinated by this intimate look at how particular families deal with the great parental challenge of shepherding their children through the all-important educational experience.

Although the constant shifts between contemporary Toronto and ‘90s New York can at times cause confusion, the film remains firmly rooted in Williams’ quietly powerful, laser-focused performance.

The result is a faintly comic curio that hurtles along without much impact.

In Avatar: The Way of Water, the director James Cameron pulls you down so deep, and sets you so gently adrift, that at times you don’t feel like you’re watching a movie so much as floating in one.

Despite all-around wonderful performances and excellent dialogue, the story never quite coheres narratively. Instead it moves toward a hopelessly bleak -- and I mean bleak -- climax that's more traumatic than dramatic.

A glum and unpleasant experience, caught between what it wants to do and how it has chosen to do it.

Harmony and Me, written and directed by Austin-based Bob Byington, represents much of what is wonderful and fresh about the recent wave of ultra-low-budget American independent filmmaking.

If nothing else, patience has rewarded Hoogendijk and moviegoers with an inside look at an art administration without common sense.

It succeeds as a comedy but not quite as a horror film, the genre merely a setting and style for sending up insidious character stereotypes.

A heartrending survivalist saga positioned in the proximity of Debra Granik’s indie darling “Leave No Trace” and Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic novel “The Road.”

It's a movie for people who really dig Cronenberg's mulchy fixations-and probably for no one else. [27 Dec 1991]

There’s a lived-in quality to Dig Two Graves that’s all-too-rare for low-budget movies in this genre.

Emotions run deep and wide here; anyone who’s ever lost a parent, longed for love and acceptance, or tried to find his or her true self should easily relate. It’s a terrific film.

Dealing with all these crises and decisions gives Thirteen Days a surprising amount of tension and watchability for a story whose outcome we already know.

Succeeds as a delicately moving memory piece about a subject not often put on film: the process of moving on into ordinary life after surviving the Holocaust.

The big action pieces, particularly the final face-off, are masterful both for their cleverness in bringing down the house and the detail jammed into every frame. Even composers Hans Zimmer, who's scored a zillion movies, and John Powell seem to be having more fun than usual.

It's not all doom and gloom. This crisply shot picture also offers stirring views of these industrious little creatures, their complex habitats and the rich amber goodness they create. Some jaunty animation enlivens things as well.

Everything about Robot & Frank is as unlikely as it is irresistible. Charming, playful and sly, it makes us believe that a serene automaton and a snappish human being can be best friends forever.

Slither is a gross, disgusting, but undeniably amusing treat laden with homages and in-jokes.

If ever a movie needed a modest, straight-ahead style to its telling, it's this one. And while James Foley's direction (and strong, iconoclastic casting) has resulted in a handful of indelible performances, he can't get out of his own way when it comes to how he tells his story.

The movie doesn’t just feel coldly analytical; it’s raw and enveloping, darkly funny and terribly alive.

Chen and Chiu's genuine, rarely cloying performances along with Cheung's urgent sincerity add immeasurably to this timely film's many modest pleasures.

A dark comedy with a melancholy streak and punchy sense of humor.

Narrator-hosts Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly offer more than routine continuity with their timeless class and superb timing in their first film appearance together since the 1946 Ziegfeld Follies. [26 Jun 1992, p.F22]

When the writer-director is on his game, as he is in Ned Rifle, the effect is bizarre black comedy that is designed to set you thinking about what his satire is really saying.

Brigsby Bear becomes a winning tribute to the joys of amateur filmmaking, one whose lovingly crafted sets and props recall the handmade sensibility and do-it-yourself spirit of other independent movies.

Sophisticated, uncompromising and refreshingly original, it is one of those rare films which is likely to mean as much to teens as it does to their parents.

It’s a strange brew: stark yet beautiful, urgent yet dreamlike.

MacDonald seems less interested in the Silver Belles' past than their inspirational present. Eventually, the inevitable broken hips and dizzy spells take their toll, but those who remain seem determined to shuffle-step their way into the sunset.

The writer-director invests a tricky narrative juggling act with an intensity of human feeling that is the opposite of skin-deep. He tears through the veil of slick, self-admiring style that has both unlocked and at times obscured his very real merits as an artist.

Charming and antic, Russian Dolls doesn't quite cohere in the way of "L'Auberge Espagnole" into a clever snapshot of contemporary Europe.

Directors Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott could have easily ditched the stagy narrative bits (and behind-the scenes chats with the actors) and relied entirely on the vast amount of fascinating, well-assembled archival footage that, along with recent interviews with the late DeLorean’s children, co-workers, lawyer and other observers, nimbly recount the renegade’s complex, tabloid-ready adult life.

At the end of the day, Bolt is a sweet Disney family film.

Made to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth last year, In Search of Mozart is challenging and exemplary.

Best of all "Daughter" marks a return to old-school French moviemaking, the kind of classically well-made endeavor that unrolls before us like a beloved tapestry. This is the kind of film they don't make anymore, only here it is.

It's all presented with equal parts humor and sensitivity, though Buford doesn't much delve into the potential landmines here - racism, classism, exploitation - allowing the power of assimilation and opportunity to carry the day.