Contact is superior popular filmmaking, both polished and effective. But despite its success and its serious intentions, it's finally a movie where the storytelling makes more of an impact than the story.

It's too bad that Bühler and Mariani take Kirk's tall tale at face value instead of doing their own investigative work and tracking down other characters for interviews.

The compulsively watchable oddness of Lamb and its commingling of innocence and peril keep it from easy categorization.

Ward directs his actors as adroitly as he has written for them, and the vulnerability that he allows his three stars to reveal is really what makes the movie work. No one, not even baseball fans, should go to Major League hoping for "Bull Durham's" sex, raunch and sophistication. But "Major League" has its own ingratiating charm.

The easy chemistry of Peña as the humble and brilliant aspirant and Salazar as the supportive, put-upon wife with dreams of her own makes their scenes together highlights. Salazar brings life and charm to a role that, in another biopic, could have been pretty thankless.

The Devil Wears Prada spins Weisberger's rant into a sharp, surprisingly funny excursion into the catty realm of women's magazines. The movie skips the condescension usually aimed at this world in favor of rapt observation.

Even though as a whole Hello I Must Be Going lets us down in the second half, the pleasure of watching Lynskey and Abbott never diminishes.

Shifting his energies to a Victorian-era island blood cult hasn’t dimmed Evans’ taste for feverish body harm, but it’s more clearly laid bare his narrative shortcomings.

Writer-director Dalio has firsthand experience with bipolar disorder, and his perspective sheds fresh light on the unique ways in which manic-depressive individuals experience love and creativity.

Until the thought-provoking, from-left-field twist ending, We Are the Flesh mostly seems like a series of sick tableaux, dredged up from the director’s subconscious and then splattered across the screen. But there’s genuine artistry even to this film’s most exploitative moments.

The filmmakers set themselves to the daunting task of involving us in two people they couldn't remotely ask us to like or care about. But Plummer and Reeves create two profoundly damaged and dangerous people with such wit, insight and comprehension that if you're so disposed you can actually see in them your own frustrations, anger and capacity for denial and easy rationalization.

While many of its elements whet our appetite and make the film well worth seeing, The American doesn't manage to deliver a fully satisfying meal. It's against the film's religion to have us believe too deeply in its characters, and that agnosticism, combined with the plot's sense of predestination, put a noticeable crimp in its grand ambitions.

Despite its family-friendly trappings, "Cats" is largely serious stuff; deliberately paced, thematically dark and often wistfully told, with enough moments of survival-oriented tension and dread to question its G rating.

Like the relationship she has chosen to dissect, the film is promising, disappointing, touching or frustrating, depending on the moment.

Shannon laudably offers no easy solutions, although his sincerely crafted dead end feels insufficient in its own way.

Exuberant and insidiously funny satire.

There's the unfettered access to Harmon's brilliant comic mind, of course, yet also a warts-and-all portraiture of a difficult personality, by turns boyish, self-involved, abusive and exhilaratingly self-analytical.

This is a chance to see Shakespeare with mud wrestling, something the Bard surely would have put in if only he'd thought of it himself… Though the actors have no major problems handling the language, the whole venture is listless when it should be sparkling. Shakespeare, even with mud wrestling, needn't be quite so much of a slog. [14 May 1999, Calendar, p.F-6]

Stop-Loss is a film that does it right.

It takes some big swings at a big subject and almost — not quite — pulls it off.

But having stuck the landing once (and a few more times), DeBlois doesn’t leave himself much runway to do something new and improved. This “How to Train Your Dragon” is merely longer.

It's taken a dozen years for Eric Roth's smart, thoughtful, psychologically complicated script to reach the screen under Robert De Niro's careful and methodical direction, and it is easy to see why.

A mostly enjoyable wave of nostalgia.

Very much of a guilty pleasure. A nifty piece of teenage romantic piffle, it combines two strong and attractive performances.

The spirit of the law will be upheld (this being Hollywood), but only after everyone has had plenty of nasty fun (this being Hollywood).

It's no surprise that Imamura has directed the best film in September 11, which is doubtless why the producer saved it for last.

Stolen is about a puzzle that's resisted solution for more than 15 years, but that doesn't stop it from being a fascinating, adventurous documentary with a lively and eccentric cast of characters.

The Viking saga Valhalla Rising, from the brutally stylish Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, has the bones of an action epic but the soul of something cultier.

The film is at its best when it's just Brody stuck in the car.

The brusque teen humor, underpinning turmoil and sentiment all seem to be pulled and massaged from the same organic whole, and that's refreshing in a genre so often built on gimmicks and stereotypes.

The audience's response to The Prophet is likely to be determined by their feelings for the original book rather than the eclectic, imaginative visuals.

The success of “The Absent One,” like its Department Q predecessor, ultimately rides on the shoulders of Kaas’ intriguing Morck.

It’s an inspiring portrait of a truly feminist mode of art.

With This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, acclaimed filmmaker Barbara Kopple retains her signature intimacy and freedom from judgment of her subject.

It's Momoa's show and he brings strength, warmth and gravitas to a part that, thanks to an emotionally-grounded script by Thomas Pa'a Sibbett, based on Mike Nilon's story), proves more than just "Conan, the Lumberjack."

This is a soothing and transporting journey sure to inspire gardeners of all stripes to create their own slice of heaven.

This Is Our Land emerges as a vital portrait of political machination, human duality, the power of fear-mongering and how people can reflexively divide into "us and them."

Thompson’s directing is serviceable, if slightly scattered and derivative, using every rom-com trope and flourish available. “The Year of Spectacular Men” feels a bit long and self-involved — and a lot like the men whom Izzy dates, it’s fun but far from spectacular.

Though it’s not without humor, All the Bright Places takes teens’ emotions seriously and will move romantics of any age — in possibly unexpected ways.

There's vivid period atmosphere and similarly vibrant performances from a cast headed by Karen Black and Donald Sutherland. [24 Mar 1985, p.5]

Lonergan has created a forceful yet extremely fitful film that teases with moments of brilliance only to frustrate in the end. Margaret is an unrealized dream, one you wish he'd gotten as right as his 2000 debut, "You Can Count on Me."

Not all the right notes are hit in Grand Piano, but for an elegantly schizoid B movie, it's more B-sharp than B-flat.

Copshop is an enjoyable, slow-burn action movie featuring a smart script, sharp direction, strong cast — and the emergence of a possible star.

It is an imperfect film about this imperfect world. But if "Mister & Pete" doesn't make you rethink the social safety net that fails these kids, and so many others like them, book some time with a cardiologist.

Vice Versa may be a better film than Like Father, Like Son, largely because of the direction and Savage’s performance, but it’s still a disappointment.

It would be lying not to say that some of the moviemakers here aren't working at the top of their craft, or that the movie won't reach audiences. On its own terms, Kindergarten Cop is nearly fool-proof: the last word in glib, shallow, soulless, spuriously warm-hearted commercialism. [21 Dec 1990, p.1]

Fascinatingly muddled.

A well-photographed inside look at a fascinating culture and its people.

The problem rather is the wholesale embracing of what has become de rigueur in animation, the practice of treating major characters as if they were stand-up comics working a room in Las Vegas.

You can see the years of effort, the polish and precision that went into creating The Boxtrolls... But somehow it still doesn't add up to enough.

Even with the Gen Z-friendly touches — and Dever delivering a winning performance — Rosaline still feels frustratingly stale.

Ansari’s ambition is admirable but he’s better at diagnoses than solutions. His gold-touch move is giving the hilariously deadpan Reeves one of his best roles in years: a goofy meme brought to disarming life and the movie’s beating heart.

It’s a grim vision, sure. But it’s a compelling one too, using the flash of a space opera to remind viewers that — whether on the ground or in the stars — we’re stuck with each other.

While the subject is deeply moving — and bringing tissues is recommended — Guggenheim's treatment is restrained, as he deploys inventive storytelling techniques that invite viewers inside Malala's world, to feel her joy, trauma and ultimately forgiveness.

Zippy if forgettable, Meet the Robinsons keeps the tone mildly tongue-in-cheek and ends on a dutifully inspirational note.

Land is a movie of hard truths that go down a little too easily, a story as terse but never as elemental as its title.

Suvari's increasingly loopy and cruel selfishness is its own nifty moral suspense, while Rea's sad sack vibe -- he already looks like a collision victim in the pre-accident scenes -- is a bleakly amusing counterpoint to his gritty refusal to go quietly.

Has too much depth, too much freshness and imagination ever to be adequately described in any of its aspects as merely "quirky" or "off the wall."

A smartly done morality tale that couldn't be more in sync with these troubled times.

Perhaps inevitably bleak and grueling, Private is also involving and provocative -- and critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians in an effectively understated manner.

Where “The Raid” films used a thin story to efficiently showcase the rapid-fire lethality of silat, Headshot attempts to wrangle an emotional back story into the proceedings, which is a hard combination to stomach when the characters are brutally beating one another senseless.

Aiming for the tough-minded nostalgia of John Boorman's "Hope and Glory," writer-director Paul Morrison catches both the innocence of childhood and its unconscious cruelty.

If Remembering Gene Wilder isn’t always the most dimensional or penetrating look at an actor’s life and psyche, it still serves as an upbeat tribute to a singular movie star, and a worthy reminder of how much he’s missed.

The film stands up well to the inevitable comparisons to "Spellbound," a riveting documentary about young spelling bee contestants.

It's hard not to wish this film were more of a piece and less like loud music at the wrong party.

Edmond does, on the surface, seem very much a contemporary tale of urban terror. Yet despite the best efforts of all concerned, what seemed explosive and provocative two decades ago now comes across as schematic and artificial.

Two Lovers and a Bear is above all thrillingly cinematic, even when its elements of lived-in intensity and jokey fantasy refuse to coalesce.

It’s an often tender, affecting film that slowly creeps up on you — then completely takes hold.

The movie is most interesting when addressing how important belonging in the world she covers is to Hartman as her recording it, and there’s obviously a hard-bitten, self-obsessed personality to explore, but it’s lost in the surface-skim technique.

Kill Me Again doesn't look like the noir classics; instead of black-and-white, it's shot in slightly muddy color with vagrant green tints. But it feels like them. It has that nerve-jangling mix of pungent cynicism and thick gobs of pseudo-Expressionist style. It's not brilliant or original, but it's still a lean, fast, wide-awake sleeper.

Emulating its hero's recklessly independent spirit, The Wackness aspires to be something more than your average psychiatrist-bashing, dysfunctional-parents coming-of-age dramedy à la "Running With Scissors." It snows us with more visual flash than it knows what to do with.

In its more amusing and accepting moments, Best Worst Movie captures the geek-joy fizz when fame morphs into notoriety, and artlessness becomes its own art.

Ostensibly, this is a tragedy about mental illness, and the way that someone can slip through the cracks in society without family, friends and a network of support. But Horse Girl is far more subversive and playful than just that, allowing for Sarah’s peculiar reality to envelope our own.

A slyly observed slice of Americana.

Energizing the entire film, in fact powering us past its more conventional aspects, is the compelling performance of veteran German actor Burghart Klaussner, who captures Bauer’s firebrand intensity exactly.

Enemy may be built more on questions than answers, but in the probing it generates a satisfyingly arch hum of weirdness.

There are some premises that absolutely aren't going to work--no matter how much intelligence, talent or craft the film makers bring to them. And Marshall Brickman may have stumbled onto such a premise in The Manhattan Project.

“Wolfboy” is a compassionate film with some insight into being different and into the destructiveness of letting the world’s unkindness shape one’s self view.

Ultimately, the scale of the production and the expectation built into the release don't entirely justify the effort.

Haley’s movie is ultimately a feature-length valentine to his star, and as such it’s something of a mixed blessing.

Like its predecessor, Super Size Me 2 is largely entertaining, with audience enjoyment varying on their appetite for Spurlock’s fun, smug shtick.

A movie that wants to be hard-hitting and gritty but lacks the stomach for the job, it meanders through what should be a lean and focused narrative and ends up more of a letdown than anything else.

A detailed and affable exploration of this world, This One’s for the Ladies is so unabashedly sex-positive you just might want to find the closest all-male revue.

The film falls short of delivering the outrage and uplift that should have come easy for this true-life fight against justice denied. Unfortunately, that makes Conviction more a trial than a triumph.

The actors give their characters a resonance beyond the symbolic, but the action doesn't quite transcend the stagy setup.

Taylor Hackford's 1980 debut feature The Idolmaker, inspired by the life of Bob Marcucci, discoverer and promoter of Fabian and others, has some gritty, satirical commentary on the pop music scene of decades past but is hampered by an ending that seems self-dramatizing fantasy made real. Ray Sharkey, however, is impressive in the title role. [11 Aug 1991, p.6]

Song Sung Blue couldn’t be less cool. But the Sardinas were completely sincere and Jackman and Hudson honor their innocence by playing them straight.

It’s a charming and quirky New York tale, if a bit disorganized, finding its voice when it quiets down to just listen to the three women at the center of the story.

Block wears his neuroses so guilelessly on his sleeve and organizes his material with such skill, that what might have been insufferable navel-gazing attains poignancy.

Brick Lane has been whittled down from Monica Ali's expansive 2003 novel into a glossy but overly efficient drama that, like Nazneen's husband, is ultimately too ineffectual to make much of a dent.

It is a measure of the singularity of the Band’s story, and the way their music remains such a tonic to experience, that “Brothers” still demands to be seen.

The largely engaging class-reunion dramedy 10 Years allows audiences to pretend they went to high school with the likes of Channing Tatum, Justin Long, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Mackie and Kate Mara.

Cameron’s affection for the place is still a convincing reason to hang out in outer space until the popcorn visionary finally returns to our planet. But plot-wise, the story is the same as ever.

A wickedly funny satire.

The new Willard, which has taken the original's humanity and the psychological validity, leavened with a dollop of dark humor, and replaced them with a technically impressive but essentially heartless spoof.

A smart, lively and unpretentious exploitation picture...Consistently funny and clever.