There is a sophistication about affairs of the heart, about the wisdom and the risks of romantic involvement that is more than quintessentially French. It's irresistible as well.

Stillborn, pointless piece of work.

Fine escapist fare with a saving sense of humor and an underlying premise that, when revealed, proves to be arguably plausible even if a reach.

Turns out to be a tedious and under-inspired comedy.

Yes, it's inventive, yes, it's out-there and audacious, but no, it's not always as funny as those good things would lead you to hope.

As sanctimonious as it is sincere, this is a well-meaning picture that is seriously stuck on itself, that can't hide its air of self-satisfaction. [25 Dec 1991]

This mannered character study comes across as more affected than affecting.

It becomes clear that fame isn’t what he’s chasing — it’s perfection in innovation. Anything less is eighty-sixed.

The ground-level view of New York — high-energy, semi-farcical — avoids clichés while finding its own romantic pulse with Duris' charmer the compelling center of the buoyant and bittersweet storm.

The parts of Coming Home in the Dark about confronting guilt aren’t what make the movie so harrowing. Instead, what matters is that Ashcroft and his cast — and especially Gillies as the menacing and charismatic Mandrake — excel at drawing out the moment-to-moment tension of a crime in progress.

Its glimmers of comic rage and generous helpings of battlefield carnage, though patchily entertaining on their own, never coalesce into a coherent reason for being.

Punchy dialogue, sharply drawn characters and excellent performances fuel Glass Chin.

We've seen the inner lives of hit men and mobsters rendered innumerably in recent years on film and television, but You Kill Me does it in a satisfyingly comedic way, loaded with easily identifiable idiosyncrasies.

The writer-director becomes so intent on hammering home the parallels between economic decay, political disappointments and petty criminals, there is nothing soft, or subtle, about it. He should trust his audience more.

It's hard not to appreciate the visual and thematic scope of "Downsizing's" reach. But it's harder not to see the chasm between its strange, misshapen story and the grand, towering vision to which it aspires.

This friendship comedy in which best friends Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig), do, indeed, go to Vista Del Mar, is so outrageously infectious the only choice is to submit to its kooky charms.

While par for the course in terms of its premise as well as much of its plotting, “Marvelous and the Black Hole” is still somewhat refreshing in its visual style and experimentation.

In short, Bound is admittedly derivative, but it's such an amusing low-down entertainment it really doesn't matter.

It’s a film that calls into question our own biases and accepted notions and encourages one to get out there and find the truth — it could be an adventure after all.

That the film is neither a true triumph nor a total disaster makes it somewhat difficult to justify revisiting "Brideshead," apart from the hope it will inspire someone somewhere to pick up the book.

Schizo is an ugly name for a dark and lovely piece of work, but maybe that's the point. The world this film depicts can be a casually pitiless one, half modern and half tribal, but it can also offer compassion and beauty.

Forbes pushes the positivity a bit insistently, yet one of the most appealing aspects of her film is its depiction of kids thriving in an unorthodox household.

The rehabilitative power of forgiveness is thought-provokingly explored in Ilan Ziv’s An Eye for an Eye.

Ruben’s stylistic devices, his high angle shots and his black-and-white recountings of courtroom testimony, become just so much cinematic corpse-rouging.

Anyone interested in gaming history will find a lot to enjoy here; and the general niceness helps make what is essentially a fun 15-minute anecdote tolerable for 90.

Adept at wringing maximum suspense and might have reached the heights of the Korean monster film "The Host" but for the limitations of the camcorder ploy. While it injects the film with a run-and-gun urgency, the device grows tiresome and ultimately leaves the film shortchanged.

The sophistication gap between the character Cheadle has created and the film that contains him is so great it begins to feel like you're watching two different stories that have been unaccountably spliced together.

What makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material.

It all leaves "Drewe" and its often jarring turns of motivation and tone - feeling haphazard and cartoony, and the whole thing more a vibrant mess than something comically disarming.

Part character study, part PSA, the movie chronicles a brief but meaningful period in its protagonist’s healing journey, and if there are few surprises along the way, there are equally few easy answers or miraculous breakthroughs.

It’s a raw, explosively funny, elemental tragicomedy about the pure willfulness of love...Basinger is the movie’s revelation. She makes May a jumpy, juicy, full-tilt, sensuous creature. Scrubbing in exasperation at the tendrils of hair that cloud her face, clamping herself to Eddie’s leg like a blond barnacle, she has her own funny side too, but what you remember most is May’s longing, so deep it’s torn her up inside.

An elegant, witty but also sometimes tedious spin on the legend of Dracula.

In the end, there’s a point about black struggle alongside white dominance in The Cotton Club Encore that Coppola can’t get quite right because, ultimately, atmosphere won out over emotion.

What emerges from Arlyck's musings is a penetrating cinematic essay on how generations in the last century struggled to take hold of history and reconfigure the shape of daily life.

This is a smartly told story, and as fresh as any contemporary romance.

The Road is a road you'll wish hadn't been taken. Not because anything's been badly done, but because there's a serious imbalance in the complicated equation between what the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return.

It's a gritty story made in the director's more elegiacal mode, a confusion of style and content that is not in the film's best interests.

A clever, delightfully rendered summer diversion.

See this smart, showboating movie now, before its simmering sense of justice begins to feel like a thing of the past.

Finnegan offers a vision of domesticity as a soul-sucking grind, done for the benefit of malevolent overlords. His film chills the mind more than the spine.

Carefully made, involving and old-fashioned, the superior work it's inspired gives it an impact that lingers even when the endgame is over.

A heady yet disciplined work, a dazzling fable of love, destiny and redemption.

Among the most sophisticated, fully realized and satisfying films of the year.

If the screenwriter and director had followed their cinematic instincts fully, they would have collaborated on one of the more satisfying political thrillers in years; instead, they've managed to create three-quarters of one.

Deeper socio-historical context and a more electric approach could have helped us better appreciate the far-flung impact of this visionary artist.

By turns funny and sobering, sweeping and intimate, the consistently entertaining Inside Deep Throat plays like a giddy prance through the minefield of the last three decades of American sex and politics.

It’s not only poignant but also fun and unabashedly entertaining in the way that “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” still is. And it does have it all: authentic, sumptuous 16th-Century settings awash with warm Tudor brick, a splendid cast adorned with jewel-encrusted costumes, palace intrigue and, best of all, a pair of star-crossed young lovers who are irresistible.

Sadwith, whose TV credits include the miniseries “Sinatra,” conjures a few memorable moments in his big-screen debut. But the most stirring moment belongs to Cooper, who turns a barely audible, exasperated sigh into a complicated life story.

The best movie twists — like the ones in “Psycho,” “The Crying Game” and “Parasite” — aren’t just unexpected, but also change the direction and meaning of the story. Director Ant Timpson’s blackly comic thriller Come to Daddy isn’t in the same elite class as those films, but it does deliver a good, sick twist; and sometimes that’s enough.

There are some blunders on The Road to Guantanamo. The movie front-loads its first-person accounts with a short list of facts to keep in mind as we watch, creating an imbalance that serves only to undercut the movie's overall credibility.

The film, like the tour, will satisfy the Conan cravings of hardcore fans the most, and prove an enjoyable enough diversion for the rest.

It’s a film of decided care and forethought.

It is a teen romantic comedy that largely fits the familiar template but is also fleshed out with atmosphere, a nice blend of broad goofiness and sophistication, and two appealing leads who bring it to life.

Playful in unexpected ways and graced with a genuinely off-center sense of humor, Ant-Man (engagingly directed by Peyton Reed) is light on its feet the way the standard-issue Marvel behemoths never are.

Though everyone tries her or his hardest to make it otherwise, this is by definition a place-holder film that exists not so much for itself but to smooth the transition from its hugely successful predecessors to a presumably glorious finale one year hence.

How much filmgoers enjoy it may depend on how much they enjoy the mixture of smugness and naivete in a college sophomore.

In Jensen's uniquely wacky world, there's a genuine affection for his offbeat characters.

It is funny and fast paced, with an outstanding cast, and Orley modulates the tone well, conveying both the fun and the danger of being young, impulsive and poorly supervised.

There may not be a moral, but it's a fascinating human story, one that The U.S. vs. John Lennon only begins to tell.

Lurie spins off into invention like a "Law & Order" writer on deadline, scrambling the issues so thoroughly it's no longer clear what, if anything, the movie is meant to address.

Perhaps the slickly made documentary overstates the cultural impact of a little-seen and widely disliked film. However, it earns points for scraping at the surface of something rarely discussed in film fandom — homosexuality in horror.

Ultimately, this film celebrates living — including the part that includes taking big swings and making terrible mistakes.

Given the flimsiness of the material, why settle for D. H. Lawrence when you can have the Playboy Channel instead?

An enjoyably eccentric, insouciantly funny and often beautiful-looking jumble of an entertainment that plays — at least when it isn’t let down by a wobbly seriocomic tone and some excessive narrative multitasking — like a sincerely moving farewell to some of the more likable rogues and motley misfits in the Marvel cosmos.

As it is, Wrestling With Angels is neither compelling enough for people with little knowledge of the playwright's work nor insightful enough for those of us who have followed his career closely.

Fun for fans and a healthy primer for those previously unaware, the film's overall air of fawning worship makes it feel softer than befits such a gruff, roguish figure.

A work of exceptional subtlety and is all the more captivating and heart-rending for being so.

Though it's more than a little awestruck and feels padded even at 82 minutes, the story it tells remains completely fascinating

Acted with gravity, emotion and a sense of the serious issues involved by stars Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha and Natalie Paul, Crown Heights deals with the intensely human factors tragic events bring into play — perseverance and despair, love and longing.

Bwoy (Jamaican patois for boy), which largely plays like a stage-appropriate two-hander, is ultimately a surprising and cathartic, if often unsettling, film anchored by Rapp’s superb portrayal of a tortured soul desperate to connect. Brooks’ deftly enticing turn is also a standout.

As unpretentious as it is perceptive, Gigante is a gem.

This turns out to be an informative, involving, even sobering advocacy film.

A work of artistry and craftsmanship at the highest level.

It would take an opera expert to judge the merits of Bánk Bán and its renowned singers. But to the layman Erkel's music soars, and the singers' voices sound glorious.

[Pappas] and co-director and co-writer Jeremy Teicher have created a funny, sweet movie that explores the struggles of a serious athlete without alienating those whose sneakers are gathering dust in the closet.

The movie is at its funniest and most original when zinging the sometimes pretentious milieu of competitive figure skating. Whatever combination of choreography, camera trickery and special effects were required to render the over-the-top, hyper-real skate numbers, they're executed with wit and ingenuity.

The film's greatest asset and strongest selling point is the former senator from South Dakota himself, thoughtful and articulate at age 83, who talks candidly, even eloquently, about his political career.

Sexy and sexually frank, Becks works thanks to the musical talent and offbeat charms of its lead. Hall feels authentic at each moment, whether she's strumming a guitar in a dive bar, fighting with her mother or falling in love.

An exquisite, intimate film of restraint and delicacy.

For its merits as a dynamic nonfiction piece incisively dealing with a pivotal issue from heartbreakingly human angle, Us Kids is indispensable viewing for anyone who genuinely cares about the future of this country beyond “thoughts and prayers.”

There is never a sense that The Fall exists for any reason besides simply being something nice to look at. Yet no matter how good-looking a film may be, if it's as sleep-inducing as this, there's simply no point.

Somehow when State of Play should be at its stomach-clenching best, the tension simply evaporates.

Too gingerly to be persuasive.

Cloak and Dagger is fun for adults as well as older kids, thanks to the imaginative writing (by Tom Holland) and direction (by Richard Franklin).

This film engages and challenges the audience throughout, raising questions about the relationship between humanity and the technology we rely on. It’s an exciting film to watch, but an even better one to think about after — preferably in the company of a real, physically present person.

Gray hasn't filled out the emotional terrain he's surveyed here. He hasn't quite grown into the emotions he wants to put on screen. When he does, he'll come up with something lasting.

Hamburger Hill pays heartfelt, richly deserved tribute to the young American soldiers who fought so valiantly there. If only director John Irvin, who was in Vietnam in 1969 making a BBC documentary, and writer Jim Carabatsos, a Vietnam veteran, had been content to honor these men who were prepared to risk their lives in what had become a singularly unpopular war. But they don’t trust the soldiers’ brave actions to speak for themselves and instead give them a series of preachy, rabble-rousing speeches that add up to a diatribe against the anti-war movement at home rather than an attack on U.S. involvement in the war in the first place.

A timid, far-from-revelatory film, authorized by the three surviving Zeppelin vets and graced by their presence in new interviews that give off the faint scent of impatience.

The story is simple but what makes the film remarkable is how Haley effortlessly, earnestly marshals performance, tone and style.

In the role of dramaturge, Rogen and his co-scripter Goldberg lack Apatow's discipline and deft hand for peripheral characters; the writing in Pineapple Express gets lazy whenever it strays too far from its central axis of players.

What emerges is a rich portrait of one of 20th century pop culture’s great facilitators, whose keen observations, quirky personality and natural affinity for the outré helped greatness happen.

In a roundabout way, St. Vincent delivers, though less as a film than a platform for an object lesson by St. Bill in effortless acting.

The plot here is too plain, but the details are vivid and the outrage palpable. If nothing else, this movie is one hell of an education.

In the modest but sneakily affecting Australian father-son drama West of Sunshine, your sympathies for a problematic dad come and go in waves, sometimes within the span of a few seconds.

But the film isn’t just a well-made TV-style thriller either. It’s on to something--the way upwardly mobile parents, hoping to make their lives more professionally fulfilling, unwittingly bring the danger of the unknown into their lives.

The story moves crisply, though with all the twists and the lack of introductions to the main players, it’s not easy to follow at first. The fights and chases are handled expertly (the “action director” is Jung Doo); they’re dynamic but believable and deliver emotional impact.

What comes through are highs and valleys seen from the inside, a clarifying memoir from an unsentimental woman who endured being called every shaming name, with powerful grace notes of understanding from a son whose eyes betray a tough childhood.

Between the forced artistry and the confused tones, it leaves this well-intentioned tale of transgressive imagination and transactional humanity more temporary in its effect than permanent.