Story and soul are never going to be kings on Skull Island, but they could have fared better than this.

City Hall is inside information in search of a movie, a forced marriage between the trappings of reality and the fantasy of a jerry-built plot. Reasonably intelligent, neither offensive nor enticing, it passes its time on the screen without providing compelling reasons for audiences to either go or stay. [16 Feb 1996, p.F1]

Most important, Hush! is like Chinese director Stanley Kwan's recent "Lan Yu" in that a gay romance becomes but a starting point for an all-encompassing view of human behavior.

All of this film's faults are nearly forgiven for the short but memorable scene of sumo wrestlers singing a karaoke version of "Bad Girls."

The only thing that won't make you laugh, unless you've got a 12-year-old's sense of humor, is the film's tireless parade of gross-out gags and scatological verbal jests. Myers gets a charge out of this material--it wouldn't be here if he didn't--but so much of it is so tedious it's difficult to believe an adult actually sat down and wrote it.

Rarest and most impressive of all, Antwone Fisher is a serious drama set in the African American community, one that showcases powerful, confrontational scenes between black actors.

For all its surface verisimilitude and for all its focus on a problem that couldn't be more current, this film can't manage to feel more than sporadically real.

A hodgepodge of styles, True Legend works best as a freewheeling showcase for Yuen's dazzling fight sequences above any sort of cogent storytelling.

It is clear in every frame that the filmmakers and actors really appreciate that loyalty. It doesn't make for a particularly ambitious film, but it is a satisfying one as it moves easy, breezy over familiar terrain.

The documentary is not so much a call to action as a moving portrait of individuals who devote their lives to understanding the environmental shifts that all too soon might manifest themselves on our own altered shorelines.

It's one hell of a ride and a real, roaring rock movie. [01 Mar 1991]

An intimate movie in every sense, Conversations With Other Women sets out to explore well-trammeled yet at the same time uncharted territory without grinding any axes. What it offers is a modest fantasy that will be familiar to contemporaries of Bonham Carter and Eckhart especially. It's sad and funny, satisfying and frustrating, totally familiar.

Unlike Gore's movie, which focused largely on what Americans had done to cause the problem and what they could do to fix it, The Great Warming treats global warming as a global issue.

Director Sanjay Rawal also allows the likes of Eva Longoria (an executive producer of the film, as is "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser) and members of the Kennedy dynasty to hijack the farmworkers' story. It's a reductive strategy that ultimately insults viewers' intelligence.

Ritt's film does not follow predictable lines, nor does it tidy up the personalities it examines. In the end, that unflinching honesty lends the The Molly Maguires pertinence and power. [08 Apr 1993, p.21]

Irish actress Bolger plays her psychopath with cool, calculating intimidation, while first-time feature director Michael Thelin, sharing screenplay credit with Rich Herbeck, lays a solid foundation of suburban domesticity on which to build all the mounting menace.

Cohn has assembled a quartet of gifted actors who are captivating under Prasad's perceptive direction.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is big-hearted, with as much desire to put something good in the world as its hero wants to express himself.

Hampered by an ending that overreaches needlessly, the film is nevertheless worthy and unmistakably the effort of an enduringly distinctive and important filmmaker.

Sweet-natured, if somewhat familiar, On a Clear Day features fine performances by Mullan, Blethyn and Sives. Dellal and cinematographer David Johnson paint an inviting picture of Glasgow.

The movie is breezy to a fault. The interviewees are focused and articulate, but aren’t given time to cover more than the basics. Anyone who’s already been following the ongoing conversations about the future of AI won’t learn much new.

Working Girls, well photographed by Judy Irola (Northern Lights) will keep you brooding about its issues for days afterward--something of a tribute to its air of unquestioned reality.

Brosnan and Neeson make fine adversaries mining the terse dialogue for veiled dramatic fervor.

After a strong start, Shelley becomes frustratingly vague in the middle, before rebounding with a finale that makes the implicit menace more explicit.

The 1950s suit Zellweger, as does the film.

Director Taylor Hackford brings an appropriate level of pulpy energy to the telling, and star Kathy Bates... gives a better performance than the film deserves as the grumpy and possibly homicidal title character.

Unlike most rock docs, “Life in 12 Bars” isn’t a look back from a distance. It’s like living through one man’s pain.

Whether the arc of Marya’s fate feels overly engineered to you or not, Quartet retains its power to unsettle in its accumulation of cuts and bruises, the rare Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala effort that mines a glamorized past not for nuanced dignity but for a kind of elegant, honest sordidness.

A taut, well-acted World War II sub drama starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster and directed by Robert Wise. [27 May 1999, p.F50]

A smart, involving and strikingly adult drama about Sarkozy's rise to power.

Something to Talk About is like a slow-simmering stew, the kind that flavors familiar ingredients with special herbs and spices. Those spices surely accomplish wonders, but underneath it all you are left with the usual culinary suspects.

While Ahead of the Curve doesn’t offer any solid answers, it does make the case that understanding lesbian history should be a key part in assessing the future.

The Rugrats Movie is warm yet minus the gooey sentimentality of so many animated movies for kids. With its lilting score and pleasant occasional songs, this Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo production has success written all over it.

Full of genuine scares and impressively disturbing effects.

Off the Black is a modest, bittersweet character study that hits its mark.

What makes Comedian more than just another documentary about the comedy club comeback of a sitcom prince is that it contrasts his struggle with that of just another stand-up climber, Orny Adams.

A baroque, bloody fantasy-adventure that stubbornly remains less than the sum of its parts.

Even fairy tales could use a bit more substance than this.

Sadly the film is so elusive, so distant, that it never seems more than half-alive.

What the movie lacks, alarmingly, is a shriveled black heart, or a big, red tell-tale one pulsing beneath the floorboards -- anything, really, that might infuse it with the sense of true dread that keeps kids coming back for second, third and 11th helpings of the willies.

Harper and Golda's Balcony generate tremendous influence and timeless meaning.

Aftermath is a bombshell disguised as a thriller.

The central drama never fully engages, but the jolts that Banshee delivers are check-the-locks scary.

The talk and plot twists both have a flavorless, perfunctory quality.

Roseanne for President can’t quite decide what it wants to be: a political farce underlined with John Philip Sousa-esque military marches, a deep dive into the electoral workings of various third parties like the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party or an intimate portrait of a fascinating, wild and influential cultural icon. It’s all of these things and therefore not quite enough of each of them.

Permission asks difficult questions and doesn't offer easy answers. But while it deals with heavy relationship issues including the validity of monogamy, it manages an easy, seemingly effortless humor that seduces the audience while simultaneously breaking filmgoers' hearts.

The leads have a wonderful chemistry, with Bell hitting the right notes of anger and confusion and Morales maintaining the alien’s comic deadpan. Everyone involved has clearly thought through how such a wild fantasy situation might play out — and more importantly, how it would feel.

The film is a compelling concept that doesn’t thread the needle of its competing impulses quite as gracefully as it might have, but driven by the imminently watchable Newton and Pine, it makes for the kind of adult-oriented storytelling one wishes there was more of these days.

Ultimately, Five Minutes of Heaven is stronger as a whole than its individual parts. It's a well-performed piece that perhaps required a more calibrated hand than Hirschbiegel's proves here.

Directed by Brian De Palma with an uncharacteristic twinkle in his eye, the film offers such a likable gallery of cement-heads that we're in no mood to carp about the movie's creaky storyline, belabored gags or meandering chase scenes.

CSA is rough around the edges, especially where the acting and some of the film's invented characters are concerned. But the way CSA works out its ideas is so provoking that its drawbacks are not difficult to ignore.

The Photograph is a movie of seductive, slow-savored pleasures.

A bravura act of self-revelation, its vivid portrait of one man's fears, fantasies and neuroses uses a mixture of reality, imagination and comedy to create one of the writer-director's most involving films.

In the thoroughly capable hands of Grant, Delpy and McCormack, whose interplay has been playfully choreographed to the 1-2-3 tempo of a waltz-infused score by composer Isobel Waller-Bridge (Phoebe’s sister), the film proves as pleasingly undemanding as a typical summer read: neither a legit page-turner, nor easy to put down.

The ways in which very ordinary, uncharismatic people try to cope with their needs and longings is ultimately most affecting.

Cats Don’t Dance treads this territory with a whimsy that will be over the heads of young kids and too unimaginative for adults.

This movie is less about the myth of Biggie than it is about the everyday experiences of a man described by his friends as much funnier and more big-hearted than his public image sometimes suggested. Despite the title, “I Got a Story to Tell” is primarily concerned with all the tales that went untold.

It flirts with politics but is content to settle, in the end, for a parlor trick.

For the most part, Fall works because it plucks on the same raw nerve, over and over. How many times can Mann freak out the audience by cutting to a vertiginous shot of the unfolding crisis? Every time. Sometimes cinema is simple.

Crammed with such big-name crowd-pleasers as Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Garner, Maverick reaches for that Feel Good feeling. It settles for Feel OK.

Few horror fans will complain about a movie that’s so generous with well-constructed, energetically staged set pieces featuring elaborate makeup effects and plenty of nondigital goo. The Void is derivative, but delightful.

Director Deepa Mehta ambitiously juxtaposes a teenage love story with rising political tensions and ethnic violence in a film that is ultimately about thriving and sometimes just surviving as someone deemed “different.”

Ultimately Mackenzie's tidy resolutions undercut the psychological depth, but as offbeat coming-of-age yarns go, Mister Foe has a commanding fleetness.

Even with slightly heavier issues, like its predecessor, Despicable Me 2 is light on its feet, visually inventive and very fast with the repartee. It requires actors who can pull off the many peppery lines at warp speed and in that the film is lucky with its voice cast.

In its telling, the love story draws from westerns, musicals, film noir, chase thrillers with stunts so preposterous they verge on parody -- and it gets away with everything because of Basu's visual bravura and unstinting passion and energy.

Greenaway is a man of distinctive ideas and insights who this time out has expended his abilities and perceptions -- and those of many others -- on an exercise in grossness that depresses rather than enlarges the human spirit. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is sensational, all right, but hardly entertaining. [13 Apr 1990, p.F12]

If a concept is to sustain itself over a multipart story, it must make an emotional connection, and this "Reloaded," especially with stars cast for their lack of affect and affinity for blankness, cannot do that.

An agreeable visit with comedy titans who clearly cherish the opportunity to regale their peers with war stories and opinions about the state of comedy today.

It’s a fascinating story, mostly told by Crow herself, who is disarmingly honest about the capriciousness and cruelty of the music business — and about how the best way to survive for decades is to learn how to connect with people.

It can feel more like an audio/visual presentation for a decarbonization conference than an impassioned, artful work building its message to a fever pitch.

Demonstrates how exciting and vital contemporary animated filmmaking is in Japan. The characters may not move with the fluidity of their American counterparts, but the story unfolds with a sinister grace that any live-action director might envy.

The unpredictable nature of this thought-provoking tale and its unusual execution is laudable for its originality, but the ending of “Armand” troubles its strong start, with the sense that Tøndel’s assured direction at the outset has slipped as he makes his way to a strange climax and a questionable conclusion.

The comic targets run the gamut - race, religion, relationships, reality, etc. While nothing is sacred, the sacrilege comes with just enough sweetness to offset the salt.

Underlining it all is the exuberance and charm of the two main subjects, who make this world seem disarmingly innocent.

The Hawkins brothers have an envelopingly moody visual style that strives for offbeat touches, at times easily conjuring the existential threat in desolate areas. But that can't make up for the story deficiencies and character superficiality in the script.

In practice this mélange of imagery is aimed more at the inside of Reggio's head than anywhere else. Unless you are able to get on his quasi-experimental wavelength, a dicey proposition at best, Visitors will miss your solar plexus entirely and instead put you right to sleep. With one exception.

Not Okay hits its marks more often than not, and at its best it illustrates, step by inexorable step, how a carefully sculpted social media persona can encourage people to fake their way into a real crisis.

"Apocalypse” is equal parts exhausting and impressive — though thanks to the giddy fun the filmmakers appear to be having, it’s mostly the latter.

This film is smart, funny and, thanks in no small part to David Geddes' cinematography, it occasionally approaches the poetic.

The filmmakers maintain a delicate balance that generates tension on multiple levels, including sexual. They giddily mix genres, but Baghead, part meta-cinematic comedy, part relationship drama and part horror movie, remains rooted in reality.

If the story is laid out none too subtly, its straightforward purity is, finally, its greatest strength. Screenwriter Jane Goldman has adapted Susan Hill's 1983 novel (which spawned a radio series, TV movie and long-running West End stage play) with economy, placing a premium on eeriness, not gore.

Although it’s anchored by a deeply felt performance by the wonderful Emily Mortimer, with a marvelous supporting turn by the always-welcome Bill Nighy, the film, scripted and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet (“Elegy,” “Learning to Drive”), is at times a bit too mustily mounted and told to keep us as fully immersed as we might like.

Gets high marks for tension and excitement.

Yet another Merchant Ivory triumph.

It's no great surprise that after a tough beginning, Saved! soon starts to sound a lot like the inspirational TV movie (with Valerie Bertinelli).

Dazzling in its possibilities, but the holiday message of the 37-minute Santa vs. the Snowman leaves a lot to be desired.

A charming supporting cast fails to invigorate Goodbye to All That, a relentlessly flat seriocomic take on contemporary relationships.

An impassioned plea for change, the film balances bleak, Dickensian conditions with details of a growing number of international programs designed to combat the epidemic.

As he uses Rathbun’s old tactics against his observers, Theroux raises troubling questions about psychological warfare and how devoutness shades into fanaticism.

Weighed down with gimmicks and special effects, a number of which are far from special, Sky High is best left to 10- to 14-year-olds because it's not likely to do much for older audiences and is too violent for the very young.

If it struggles to make sense emotionally (or logistically), it benefits from the confident pace of a literate, mainstream entertainment, and the tactical showmanship of star Bryan Cranston, who’s made something of a specialty out of the average guy going through a metamorphosis.

For those fans who don't mind enduring some tedium and confusion, Yakuza Apocalypse at least offers something memorably bizarre.

As always, Berman and Pulcini suffuse their movie with a let's-try-anything spirit — and liberate most of their actors. What keeps Ten Thousand Saints from being another "American Splendor" (2003) or "Cinema Verite" (2011) is that this time, their tapestry has a hole in the center, where their pale antihero cannot pull the colorful threads together.

It's hard to imagine "The Wild Bunch" having the depth and grace it did without Peckinpah having this experience to draw on, and for that masterful film alone we're grateful to have Major Dundee back among the living again.

Alex Strangelove is a deeply annoying failed experiment at melding a sensitive LGBTQ love story with the ethos of raunchy teen sex comedies.

The film is bracingly frank about the younger generation’s pursuit of sensual pleasure (and pain). And it’s graced by Weil’s superb performance as Avishag, a multilayered character who swings from maudlin sentimentality to the extremes of human desire.

Bruni-Tedeschi is a lovely actress, and whatever emotion is evident onscreen comes courtesy of her.

Juiced to the max and drenched in style, this "Romeo," mad about its image-a-minute visual agenda, is sure to infuriate as much as it delights. But the film can't be bothered to slow down for your reaction, and it never forgets its duty to be alive on the screen. [1 Nov 1996, pg.F1]