Chloe’s determination and smarts make Run much more enjoyable to watch than the vast majority of specimens of the genre. She credibly thinks her way through problems. When things are dire, she ratchets up her courage — and Allen sells us on it all.

No Man of God is impeccably and carefully directed by Sealey, and the craft on display is remarkable.

Mexico has had its share of debilitating transnational news lately, but the arrival of the puckishly entertaining, fleet-of-foot drama-comedy Rudo y Cursi deserves a hearty welcome.

Anyone looking for a definitive survey may want more, but this enjoyable film will undoubtedly score with musicians and cinephiles alike.

Hartley has such a spare, controlled touch in this film that this landscape seems both realistic and fantastic. [16 Aug 1991]

Rather than defaulting to either condemnation or absolution, Nancy instead holds out the fleeting possibility of love to someone who has never known it before — and asks why we should begrudge her the impulse to seize it.

What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance.

Though it may at times seem like just another Japanese gangster picture, in Outrage, Kitano's sense of pacing is so precise, at once restrained and relentless, that the film becomes a vortex, pulling audiences in deeper and deeper.

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

Fathom presumably gets its name from both the watery depths and the attempt to understand these mysterious aquatic mammals, but it doesn’t delve deeply enough into either the science or the scientists.

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.

Writer-director Michael Walker keeps a firm grip on his smart material, offering up big laughs, lots of recognizable behavior and, in the end, a wistful glimpse at life's inevitable priorities.

Strip away all the flimsy copycat stuff, including the cheesy retro synth score, and what lurks beneath is a perceptive portrait of contemporary thirtysomething relationships, no silly sleuthing required.

It’s an evocative film that creeps up on you in unpredictably tender ways, so prepare to shed a tear or two — or three.

As a mood killer and conscience-raiser it’s woefully obvious, but also unlikely to erase the sense memory of all the scintillatingly captured fauna that came before it.

Joyous, daft and hauntingly original, True Stories is Byrne's magical mystery tour of Texas: an introduction to the imaginary town of Virgil and its faintly surreal folks.

Grief is universal, and yet no two stories about it are alike, a distinction that keeps Koji Fukada’s tender drama “Love Life” unpredictable as it mixes the mundane with the inexplicable, and empathy with alienation, to nuanced, if never fully stirring effect.

Differing greatly from the rough, casual mood of many behind-the-scenes pop docs, this one is instead of a piece with Jackson's body of work: dazzling and strange, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

The maximalist approach isn’t necessary to enhance the wild tales, but the film does reflect its subject in its messy yet invigorating approach.

Slight but often seductive and so deliberately not in a hurry it periodically threatens to dissolve right in front of our eyes, Somewhere is more successful in creating ambience and visual imagery than it is in telling its story of a movie star bonding with his 11-year-old daughter.

After keeping its balance over much treacherous terrain, greedily overreaches and stumbles badly at the close.

There is something reassuring in seeing free-thinking individuals express their personalities so emphatically yet invitingly in the places they live.

It may not sound like it, but In Heaven, Underground: The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery is a playful, poetic and all-around charming documentary, an off-center look at an unusual institution.

The story takes some unbelievably tragic twists and turns, and along the way, Dastmalchian unfolds a riveting performance, aided by Schiffli’s beautiful and unobtrusive style.

Though the film eventually gets to where it needs to go, it feels scattered, stumbling over true crime tropes on the way.

"The Next Cut" manages to be entertaining and thoughtful, harmless fun but just serious enough not to seem frivolous.

The Book of Life juxtaposes overwrought visual imagery with an undernourished, familiar story.

Once the singer-songwriter model became the norm for the rock business, the Wrecking Crew's star began to wane, but seeing this film makes it clear what its members accomplished in their prime.

Though this film is as formal and predetermined as a carved palace of ice, it builds interest through the strong performances of its pair of costars, the veteran Catherine Frot and relative newcomer Deborah Francois.

Nonprofessional actors Boidin and Leroux deliver intense performances which shoulder the emotional weight of the film.

As an antic romantic comedy it's fresh and actually gets somewhere. [17 Aug 1990]

Smartly, the filmmakers minimize their topic's punchline potential. But even though the running time is short, the movie feels stretched out.

Not an exposé, and hardly a case of sports-as-uplift, The Workers Cup feels like a toe dip when the topic calls for at least a deep wade.

This is a film done right by just about every measure. The extremes of the story seep deep into your bones -- the beauty, the allure, the desperation and especially the cold in this world where life literally hangs on rope and what Mother Nature chooses to throw at you.

There's an unavoidable joie de vivre (symbolized by Rancho's meditative mantra "All is well") and a performance charm that make this one of the more naturally gregarious Bollywood imports.

Even if he couldn’t summon the experience of walking in Ferragamo’s shoes and getting to know him deeply, Guadagnino makes one appreciate the shoemaker’s indelible footprints from afar.

As pure of heart as its heroine, Cinderella floats across the screen like a gossamer confection, full of elegant beauty and quiet grace.

[An] authoritative and engrossing documentary.

Allen may consider Alice to be a minor jest before his next Big One, but there are pleasures in its small-time ambitions that sometime elude him on his more ambitious projects.

An exuberant look at a heady moment in America's soccer past that is well worth remembering.

Maneuvering shrewdly within the boundaries of the traditional canon and aided by the impeccable performance of Ian McKellen, Bill Condon directs an elegant puzzler that presents the sage of Baker Street dealing with the one thing he's never had to contend with before: his own emotions.

What we’re left with is, thankfully, sharp exchanges about loss and conscience, a director’s sincere approach to potentially melodramatic material, and in-the-moment actors like Keaton, who makes the humbling weight of adding up lives into the stuff of compellingly sober contemplation.

An impressive array of archival news footage, enlightening interviews with activists, politicos, academics and journalists, plus a dispensable Alfred Molina-narrated animated parable, round out this provocative, if at times overly ambitious effort.

They Will Have to Kill Us First doesn't offer much of a primer on Mali's political or cultural histories — which is the movie's biggest weakness. But Schwartz did capture some remarkable footage of musicians who've spent the last few years taking tentative steps to reclaim what makes their nation special.

There is a great deal of playfulness between the couple that will touch the romantic in most.

Immensely entertaining.

A strongly acted, character-driven melodrama, concerned with the dynamics of family in general and father-son issues in particular, it presents situations so emotionally supercharged that the whole story could have come straight out of Balzac.

As overdue tales of history go, Palestine ‘36 (currently one of the last films with access to its real-world locations) is certainly more of a blunt instrument than a novelistic endeavor. But its broad strokes and rooted passions easily earn their place, and deserve to inspire more such stories.

It's an exasperating, irresistible, must-see mess of a movie about life in the modern world and so very good that even when its story finally crashes and burns the filmmaking remains unscathed.

Under Australian director George Miller ("Mad Max"), The Witches of Eastwick begins so promisingly. It has such smashing separate moments, so succulent a cast and so interesting a premise that watching it crumble into stomach-turning crudeness and "Poltergeist"-scale special effects is deeply painful.

As with any Ozon film, Time to Leave comes across with unexpected moments of illuminated stillness.

Culkin's performance is never exploitative. His eyes often say everything, appearing simultaneously laser-focused and distant — he can't reconcile his brain with the world.

There is all the violent mayhem, for certain, but the thing that sets I Saw the Devil apart is its undercurrent of real emotion and how unrelentingly sad it can be.

With a well-knit array of picturesque long shots, shadow-strewn medium takes and the occasional silhouetted close-up, The Eclipse finds plenty of heartfelt gravity in its tale of love lost and found on a gothic coast.

This is a far more brutal film than Wheatley's first, 2009's "Down Terrace." Though it had crime at its center as well, it was balanced by a dry irony and far less blood. There is no offset in Kill List, with one scene so relentless in its gore that it makes the notorious elevator scene in "Drive" pale in comparison.

Behrman has crafted a classic high school tale of outsiders finding themselves while looking in, bullied and beaten for daring to “experiment,” to be different. The images are sumptuously saturated and gorgeously crafted, and the soundtrack thrums and whines with anxiety and racing pulse.

Blink Twice is a big, bold swing, even if its message becomes muddled along the way. It’s clear Kravitz wants to make a statement with this film. What’s less clear is what exactly that statement might be.

Especially good at showing how unnervingly, even heartbreakingly contradictory this man could be.

A small movie with some big moments and a lot of unfinished business.

The archival game footage -- Cantona on the field, the roaring crowds -- infuses the film with that high-spirited sense of hope and heart that only a brilliant play when a game is on the line can deliver. Loach, a brilliant player at his own game, delivers the rest.

A beautifully rendered, lovingly constructed action-comedy that's sure to please kids and adults alike.

While his breakthrough documentary, "Dogtown and Z-Boys," cracked open the window on a largely unknown world in vibrant and visceral ways, Bones feels like an epilogue.

It’s a movie that ultimately may mean more to those raised in heavily Catholic cultures, but it has an engaging prickliness as a satiric peek into the life of a brooding idealist.

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

Natty Gann may have been created with the thought of giving young women a heroine to admire. Perhaps, to return to Places in the Heart, the difference is between a film written out of a personal need to tell a particular story and one created as a "property," full of sure-fire elements that have worked in the past: a kid, a dog, a missing parent. The real missing element is heart. [11 Oct 1985, p.1]

The Boys Next Door is a dark, forbidding vision--perhaps too harsh for audiences accustomed to more frivolous pictures of teen high jinks. But its lack of sentimentality gives it a rugged moral force--it doesn’t soften the twisted fury that sends these kids careening into a crazed death trip.

When you won’t speak the evil of “Speak No Evil,” then a disservice has been done to the source terror and how expertly it refused to deliver us to a safe place.

The problem is not so much that World Trade Center is an attempt to make a feel-good movie about a ghastly situation, it's that the result feels forced, manufactured and largely -- but not entirely -- unconvincing.

Though it keeps Auggie's fine sense of humor and his remarkably even-keeled attitude about himself and his situation, the movie version of Wonder feels more pat and After School Special-ish than the novel.

The key reason "Jimi" doesn't need the signature music is the extraordinary performance of actor-musician André Benjamin.

In all, writer-director Jennifer M. Kroot effectively jams in quite a lot about the super-busy Takei.

By sifting through and tying together an enormous variety of footage, directors Lindsay & Martin (who also served as editor) create an experience that gives a full sense of the anarchy and rage of the post-King verdict days, thrusting us fully and disturbingly into events in very much of a You Are There manner.

Using a twist on the ingenious premise of "Fantastic Voyage" -- miniaturized travel within a human body -- and a pair of very different but equally irresistible leading men, Innerspace is densely inventive and consistently hilarious. [1 July 1987, p.C1]

Here you get a clear sense of each member’s personality — all but impossible to find on this month’s “The Album” — and of how the four relate to one another.

Brunner does a fine job of conveying how the harsh, forbidding landscape where Johannes and Maria live distorts the way they engage with the secular world.

Plays out like a Frank Capra movie with the "little people" taking on corrupt and indifferent officials. In the process the film strikes a strong blow for the dignity of labor and introduces an array of brave individuals.

Though the thriller is in the hands of a different filmmaking team this time led by Swedish director Daniel Alfredson and screenwriter Jonas Frykberg, they've kept the searing intelligence and ruthless bent.

Attempts to both explain the situation to audiences and offer some reason to hope for the future. It's an almost impossible task, and though the film does better than anyone might expect, its success is not complete.

A certain exhaustion sets in well before the end, collapsing any meaningful distinction between camera-hogging self-indulgence and critical scrutiny.

The Wind is ultimately more allegorical than literal. It’s not about history, or pioneer life, or bloodthirsty ghosts. It’s about a loneliness so overwhelming that it becomes terrifying.

For all its emotional roller-coastering and wild intrigue, the film's purpose — as well as its title character — feels more symbolic than specific. Still, this well-shot and -designed picture is a mostly compelling, intrepid ride.

It's a convincing romantic drama, written, directed and acted with so much skill it's able to break loose from its conventional moorings and become more effective, more moving than we anticipated.

Allen and Anderson are outstanding in roles that require a lot of levels and moods, as the central relationship goes from loving to shaky to … well, something else.

Behind the Mask is original and weirdly delicious, and executed with gory aplomb.

The Tenth Man is a low-key charmer, an unlooked-for combination of Jane Austen and Isaac Bashevis Singer. With a twist of Buenos Aires thrown into the mix.

The film now seems less urbane and innovative, more coldly flashy and bluntly affected -- full of sound and Furie, signifying little. [2 June 1987, p.Cal-1]

The super-hip style is groovy but doesn't mask the fact that Son of Rambow doesn't really go anywhere special or say anything much. For a film about falling in love with the movies, its insights on them are next to nil.

Genial, generous-spirited and unmistakably entertaining.

The Phenom may be choppy, but it’s saying something sincere about how the pressure to be thought of as a winner can be an athlete’s most formidable opponent.

The highly partisan Game Over ably illustrates the often-silly psychological gamesmanship that accompanies world-class chess and nearly catalogs enough circumstantial evidence against IBM to convict.

Its privileged glimpse deep into unfamiliar spiritual territory has the strength of revelation.

There's no denying Watts' skill at a certain kind of desolate cat and mouse, but it's in the service of what is ultimately a somewhat heartless exercise.

The movie could use a little more energy — this is Paul Mazursky territory, after all, not Andrei Tarkovsky — but in its sick-but-sweet attempt to reclaim grief from the trappings of tradition, To Dust is its own well-measured godsend.

Bracing and remarkably compact drama, which invests some standard movie tropes of rough-and-tumble urban life with deep feeling and urgency.

A beautiful film that flows with a luminous ease and assurance.

An expertly paced and efficient sci-fi thrill machine, "T3" effectively marries impressive action sequences with persuasive storytelling and its star's uniquely appealing style of "No" drama -- as in no reaction, no expression, no emotion of any kind.

Evokes the dawn of cinema in China with much charm, humor and subtlety.

It’s a daughter’s ode to her mother at a particularly perilous time, designed to humanize a leader who has been viciously targeted.