Haynes says the theme of his movie is deviance, which seems right. It's also clear that the poison of the title is, partially, society's attitudes toward the three deviant characters -- whom it beats up, imprisons, hunts down. That's what makes the reaction to Poison so ironic. The foes of the movie -- and the people who want to take down the NEA because of it -- seem bent on proving that its paranoia isn't a fantasy. [03 Apr 1991, p.F1]

The Great Hack couldn’t be more timely, or unsettling. An intentionally disturbing examination of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it both explains and offers a warning shot about the misuse of personal data and how that influenced past elections and might well do so in the future.

With its bright colors, upbeat rock soundtrack and strong ecological message, FernGully...The Last Rainforest should delight children and amuse their older siblings and parents.

Wonderful, heartwarming.

Dark, dangerous and a great deal of wicked, amoral fun. A film that manages to be as clever, playful and mock violent as its title, Lock, Stock was a major hit in its native Britain and its cheeky tone, simultaneously calculated and off the cuff, is as hip as anyone could want. [5 Mar 1999]

A smartly done, involving look at a number of interrelated water issues.

Back in the director's chair for only the second time, the filmmaker, like his main character, is a little unsteady on his feet. But thanks to his stars, the film - like the book - is a smartly observed study of a troubled teen's first year in high school.

Like a humble gift, In the Aisles makes up for its lack of opulence with quotidian magic.

The movie could have made its points — war is bad; music is the universal language — in half the time. But the harmonies are sweet, the acoustic picking impressive.

Clermont-Tonnerre’s emphasis on playfulness and energy is understandable, but an opportunity to bring back a layered epicness to sex on film feels lost.

Tom at the Farm is strange, idiosyncratic tale that straddles a fine line between homoerotic camp and spider-and-fly thriller.

A richly absorbing historical docudrama.

Blethyn brings tremendous empathy to the introspective, determined Elisabeth, while the tall, gaunt and dreadlocked Ousmane fleshes out his less-dimensional role with a haunting sadness that speaks volumes.

Though its chronological organization and issue management is rough around the edges, Esquenazi’s passionately argued film...easily convinces that the charges are impossible to believe.

"Him" and "Her" are hardly groundbreaking cinema, but they are more rewarding than "Them."

Beautiful gems of wisdom and life lessons are contained within Buena Vista Social Club: Adios. The picture is an edifying celebration of this music, humanizing and contextualizing it beyond its popularity, locating its roots within a history informed by politics, colonialism, oppression, and racism.

Anker evocatively captures the joys (and sometime frustrations) experienced by high-level artists working within an institution. The ardor they bring to their music is both enviable and inspiring.

Takes a fittingly inventive approach to the story of an operative whose MI5 code name reflected his supreme talents as an actor.

Not enough to save ivansxtc from, of all things, dullness.

Kawalerowicz directs with briskness and vigor but cannot keep the first half of his film from slipping into tedium.

Garden State illuminates a young man's overdue coming of age with unexpected depth and grace.

This is not great filmmaking, but their story is so involving that it doesn't matter as much as it might.

First-time writer-director David Robert Mitchell tells a coming-of-age tale with such freshness and such bemused insight it's as if it has never been told before.

A sweet and somber film that works hard to overcome its limitations.

The elegant Water Lilies is not about answers but about discovery of self and of others in all its pain and pleasure.

Téchiné is a restless director, a fastidious storyteller who is not interested in what less adventurous movies have to say about human relationships. He wants to dig deeper, even if the results aren't always clear.

The action sequences are almost an afterthought. “Cut Throat City” is a more thoughtful and personal film, concerned with how systemic racism — and zoning ordinances — can kill more people than a gun.

At times it might remind you of a slightly edgier version of the genteel White House romances that flourished in the mid-’90s, like Dave and The American President. Long Shot may nod overtly to a world under threat by terrorism, corruption and climate change, but it also yearns for a gentler, less polarized moment in our political discourse.

Whether the San Pedro does its magic is of course the big question. Regardless, Silva works his, delivering not exactly the Holy Grail of road movies, but a very mellow summer high.

Freaky has a lighthearted tone and a bouncy energy that keeps it watchable, even though writer-director Christopher Landon and his co-writer, Michael Kennedy, don’t do as much as they should have with a killer idea.

Writer-director Saxon’s own virtuosity, occasionally aggressive, eventually leaves our hopes for real emotions wanting, once we’ve become attuned to the dazzle.

Simply too tedious and stretched out to be amusing. Had Schorr brought in his picture at 80 or 90 minutes Schultze might have been a different story.

Nominally about the life and career of landmark Southern California architectural photographer Julius Shulman, but it's more about the buildings he photographed than it is about him. Which is probably the way he'd like it.

What Teixeira has set out to do, and accomplished brilliantly, is to find drama and pathos in the mundane details, thoughtless betrayals and casual cruelties. What lingers after watching Alice's House are not the moments of conflict but the inexorable rhythms of daily life.

The color riot, the polyester/shag décor and the cartoon portrayals detract. Girl Asleep thinks it’s a stylishly resonant fairy tale about identity when the primary takeaway is an exquisitely curated slide show.

Furious 7 is the fuel-injected fusion of all that is and ever has been good in "The Fast and the Furious" saga.

As a candid and involving socio-sexual time capsule of postwar to pre-AIDS Hollywood and how one free-thinking pioneer made a secret society of legendary artists and performers undeniably happy, “Scotty” definitely succeeds.

Esparza's cast of unknowns is so fresh and raw that the drama could be mistaken for a documentary if the camera work weren't so controlled.

It’s remarkable how fully fleshed out Bateman’s hell-scape is, given that much of this movie was shot in an empty storage facility. There’s something haunting and poetic too about the simplicity of this story, which is primarily about how people find reasons to persevere once they find a companion.

If Upgrade ultimately plays like a genre exercise, it’s certainly a taut, engrossing one.

Gotta Dance is a feel-better movie. Warm and cozy with just the tiniest dollop of tension.

Though the documentary could do without encomiums from Wolfson's parents about what a brilliant child he was, it is clear that as an adult he was smart, dynamic and far-seeing about this matter in a way that few others were.

In gaming terms, this movie’s characters find themselves on a screen where every move leads to a bottomless pit. The nightmare they’re in is as existential as it is visceral.

The Boy Who Could Fly is as fragile as a kite, yet it’s kept aloft by the commitment of writer-director Nick Castle and the talent and presence of lovely young Lucy Deakins, who has that crucial gift of catching us up in her imagination.

Thought-provoking as it is, Brothers of the Head keeps its distance, choosing to tell a story about telling stories. But the story itself remains an unexploited gold mine.

The most compelling aspect of The Green Wave, however, is the extensive footage shot clandestinely by amateurs using cellphones. What they recorded shows us the reality of what went down in a way nothing else can match.

Private Parts is a supremely crafty, smartly written, and--given the number of "himselfs" and "herselfs" on the cast list--surprisingly well-acted piece of pop kitsch.

Even with all the metaphysical mayhem, the movie remains rooted in the lives and attitudes of its characters, and in the magnetic performances of Martini and Appleton.

Kelly tries a bit too much, favoring shock and absurdity over consistency and coherence. But the attempt alone is exciting; and it offers a refreshing alternative for those who prefer their holiday entertainment to be spooky, not sentimental.

The movie is a canny mixture of flash and grit, an unabashedly contrived Cinderella story in Dirty Jersey drag. And in Macdonald’s winning performance, it gets the hoop-earringed, heavy-set, frizzy-blond princess-to-be it deserves.

The grief in this film is relatable to anyone who’s realized how hard it is to go home again, whether that means a newly gentrified neighborhood or simply the security of what a middle-class wage used to afford.

It's a movie about the warm feeling you get when you belong to a family, and, throughout, the thermostat is turned up high.

Liz and the Blue Bird may appeal to fans of “Sound Euphonium,” but many recent Japanese features have dealt with teen friendships and angst in more interesting ways.

The film is at once gently intimate and breathtakingly expansive in scope.

As a result of trying too hard to maintain the original's insouciant attitude, what was fresh now seems institutionalized, what was off the wall now feels carved in stone and the film's trademark irreverence has become dogma.

Matching the strength of these actresses and their personal drama is the film's masterful sense of time and place - the way it makes us feel that this was how it was during four pivotal days in July 1789 as the wheels came off the French monarchy.

The script by Bean and Tolkin is potentially more interesting than what’s been made of it.

Despite the pedestrian screenplay (by Jimenez and Audrey Diwan), Dujardin and Lellouche are magnetic performers who slip easily into their antagonistic roles.

If you started the movie at the end, you wouldn’t be champing to find out what happens next. But the apocalyptic opening act is pretty great.

As Pianomania gradually reveals, Knüpfer is able to do this so well because he is as much of a crazed perfectionist as the pianists themselves, maybe even more so.

A terrifically entertaining, smartly constructed trip down memory lane with one of the American stage's most legendary troupers.

Conventional dramatic hooks have no place in Garrel's filmography, so it's not surprising that his new movie is more atmospheric than involving, or that the two beautiful bed heads at its center hardly invite emotional connection.

Paper Tigers may not be a deep comment on aging or friendship, but it has enough humor and action to make it worth a few rounds.

Van Sant pays tribute to the restorative power of faith, discipline and perseverance, but he also resists the temptation to follow these themes into an overly pat or complacent groove.

You'd have to be a stone not to be moved.

Stewart acquits himself solidly, though not thrillingly, as a beginning director, doing especially well in the film's involving central section dealing with Bahari's time in prison, where the filmmaking is as compelling as the feature's intentions are admirable.

A refreshingly grown-up comedy, "Stranger" is a charming film that is unafraid to be low-key in ways that studio releases seldom are.

Arachnophobia manages to be genuinely frightening without being '80s-style revolting. Marshall has gauged his pattern of frights and laughs carefully, to let the audience giggle at its own jumpiness, and his cast, which includes a sprinkling of the best-known American character actors, is a clue to his affection for the form. [18 July 1990, p.F1]

Stillman too often substitutes pith for insight, until even that is drowned out by the sound of him chortling into his sleeve.

Selena is in part a completely predictable Latino soap opera that should satisfy those who complain they aren't making movies like they like used to.

Cruise is reason audiences will, and should, see Final Reckoning on a large and loud screen.

A Wolf at the Door is undoubtedly effective and well-crafted, but its tale of reckless obsession and its inevitably unhappy ending are finally too unsavory for its own good.

It's a rare delight to spend so much time with the inimitable André. This revealing documentary shows the playful, loving and vulnerable side to this towering figure of taste.

It’s telling that both the first “Black Panther” and this messier if seldom less engrossing follow-up are at their strongest when they resist or even flat-out ignore their franchise obligations.

Directed by Stephen Williams with a sense of momentum and fluidity, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this version of Bologne’s life story glides over the most interesting parts.

There are so many ways in which Nowhere Boy, an emotionally raw and yet raucous, rockin' riff on John Lennon's turbulent teenage years, is such an entertaining piece of nostalgia.

For a story about sexual awakening and discovery, Desert Hearts is a taut, fatally careful movie with no looseness--and no abandon--to it and no feeling for detail that would let these characters really live.

The tricky brilliance of Queen of Hearts is in how el-Toukhy uses a well-worn narrative — the unsuspecting, hidden passion with the appearance of erotic freedom — to unveil what in reality is a poisonous tale of abuse.

The movie has a lot of the elements that might make it thrilling and it's visually arresting, but it's missing the emotional connection necessary to make it interesting.

The India of the movie is more an idea than a reality...Exotic, spiritual and, according to Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), "spicy"-smelling, it's a magical mystery place where wayward foreigners can go to get their souls back on track.

The movie is pleasant and charming, but when making a big-screen adaptation of a beloved classic and genuine touchstone for generations, adequate doesn't feel like quite enough.

It's a welcome throwback to the days when the world didn't have to end or tanker trucks explode to get an action audience's attention.

Whatever the film's flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating.

The Creeping Garden cultivates more style than substance.

Director Seet’s gorgeously filmed production proves to resonate as much today as it did 40-plus years ago.

There’s a terrific ensemble — including Ella-Grace Gregoire as a girl Jack has a crush on — but it’s Nighy who will have you enthralled. He delivers a subtle, nuanced performance that allows the actor to shine while in full support of his costars.

The disappointingly pedestrian computer-animated Over the Hedge will be more entertaining for little tykes than their older siblings and parents, and would not seem out of place on Saturday morning television.

The film becomes a dizzying descent into a world of contradictions, military illogic and ineffectual bureaucracy.

It’s got some future-world smarts that sporadically elevate it above the junk that dominates this genre, and they help carry it through the routine spatter-and-gore moments and sci-fi clichés.

An engaging, straightforward narrative about two childhood playmates and the stages of their friendship from 1973 to 2001.

Heartfelt and deeply moving.

Unfolds as a shaggy-dog story, full of hilarious and outrageous twists that suggest that weirdness lies just below the surface of daily life seemingly at its most ordinary.

George Clooney's first effort behind the camera was doubtless more stimulating to direct than it will be for audiences to watch.

The spirited young cast includes the luminous Oksana Akinshina, best known for her title role in Lukas Moodysson's devastating "Lilya 4-Ever," who still lights up the screen like few actresses in the world.

Schepisi may have made the first truly and intelligently uplifting spy movie. His style here is magisterial yet playful: The melancholy grandeur of Russia, on view at last for the whole world to see, has turned him into an eye-popping enthusiast.

Ends up more challenging and intriguing than personally involving, and while these are far from small things, it is only human to hope for more.