In retrospect, there are gaps in the story, a crucial lack of parallelism about the murders, one interview in which Rourke makes amazing leaps of knowledge from we-don't-know where. But the performance that fuels it all, Rourke's unfolding portrayal of a man on a spiraling slide downward toward a truth he doesn't want to learn, may be enough to carry us beyond quibbles. [06 Mar 1987, p.C1]

The movie is nothing if not unnervingly timely.

Volume II builds on emotional foundations from Volume I, even recasting the first film's ironic humor with a darker pall.

Greis-Rosenthal delivers a fantastic and fierce performance as Maggie, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her, even when she shares the frame with Coster-Waldau. Thanks to her compelling screen presence, and Boe’s dramatically dazzling aesthetic, A Taste of Hunger is a delectable cinematic treat, one that deserves to be savored.

Both acidly funny and very moving.

A deeply personal and unexpectedly poetic film.

El Angel doesn’t offer any concrete answers, and though it paints a vivid portrait of this real-life devil, the fact is that ultimately, we end up seduced by him as well.

What really sets "F&F6" apart is the blinding speed with which it shifts between over-the-top action, that speedometer inching toward 800 mph at times, and soap opera emotions that bring everything to a screeching halt. It's enough to give you whiplash … in a good way.

Teasing out the vagaries of language, how confusing communication can be, is such a good idea. Despite a strong start, the filmmaker doesn't exactly know where to go with it. Still, there are moments before things get away from him that are captivating to watch and lovely to listen to.

If the movie doesn't entirely get past its hard-to-buy premise, director Paolo Sorrentino does have the courage of his convictions, not just embracing every contradiction but spinning many of the story's contrivances into moments of strange, aching beauty.

Though there are many delicious little moments tucked inside, the action heads in so many directions it can be dizzying to keep up.

Onward is a touching, lovingly crafted oddity — a movie that acknowledges its borrowed elements at the outset and then proceeds to reinvigorate them with tried-and-true Pixar virtues: sly wit, dazzling invention and a delicacy of feeling that approaches the sublime.

A persuasive thriller for most of its length, it stumbles in its attempt to become an upscale version of "Death Wish" and other vigilante dramas and ends up derailing with a soft thud.

What it lacks in uniqueness of concept, it makes up for in evocative implementation of the medium.

Although it's likely too stark for everyone, 13 Tzameti offers a mind-blowing experience for anyone willing to go along for the ride.

While Extract is mildly amusing and a slice of a mostly working-class world that doesn't make it into comedy that much anymore, it's not completely convincing as a movie.

With the former mayor currently enjoying one of the rare second acts in American political life, Giuliani Time does a strong job of reminding us what the first one was like.

The result is a film that is wise, fatalistic and romantic in just the right proportions--in the best noir tradition.

The movie’s final act takes too grim a turn, leading up to an ending that’s overly dark and disgusting. But even as it goes way over the top, “Hunter Hunter” stays focused on the fragility of the Mersaults, who want to live by their own rules but discover that nature has its own agenda.

The Kite Runner is a house divided against itself. The Marc Forster-directed version of the Khaled Hosseini novel does one part of the story so well that its success underlines what's lacking in what remains.

Captures Los Angeles in a straightforward, naturalistic way, neighborhood-hopping like a native.

Its restraint is its strength. The focus on a woman's passionate hard work without need of marital-status back story is refreshing.

This is a fast, fun watch that succeeds largely on the charms of its star and the able hands of its director.

Moves with the suffocating deliberateness of a river of molasses.

Swicord has a playful sense of humor and a good ear for dialogue, and the movie pleasantly accomplishes what it set out to accomplish.

Director Mikael Hafström's dramatic sense is so pedestrian and snail's-pace obvious -- since this 2003 feature, he's made the leap to Hollywood with the plodding thriller "Derailed" -- one starts biding time for the inevitable retributive smackdown that will save our hero from the gantlet of draggy high-mindedness about counteracting fascism with stony resolve.

The result is solid and efficient, if unadventurous, illustrating both the lure and the limitations of comic book extravaganzas.

Despite the potential for rancorous finger-pointing, one of the remarkable things about “The Front Runner” is its determination to be even-handed, to encourage viewers to make up their own minds (at least up to a point) about what happened 30 years ago and what it means for today.

A small but exquisite film, beautifully observed and impeccably executed. Written and directed by So Yong Kim, it shows a different side of an actor we thought we knew and reveals unexpected aspects of a character who turns out to be not as familiar as he seems.

Its easygoing and engaging quality masks how rare an accomplishment it is to create something achingly true as well as amusing, as wise about people as it is about the craft of film.

Not ultimately original enough to sustain its many horrific images.

Smorgasbord of the bizarre. Hair High is not for everyone, but it's not like anything else out right now.

If the pacing flags a bit en route, enough vivid imagery remains to hold interest, with Solomonov proving a smart, appealing and personally invested guide.

Two Evil Eyes could give youngsters nightmares and is absolutely not for the squeamish--special effects maestro Tom Savini supplies the grisliness--but Romero and Argento fans are not likely to be disappointed by these tales of the supernatural.

Writer-director Derek Nguyen's supernatural thriller settles confidently in a place between classy and trashy.

Wein and Bang deftly balance the comedy and the commentary, resulting in a fast-moving, funny film that’s as alive as the city of Los Angeles itself.

A first-time performer without formal training, Betancourt is a true revelation and the most accomplished player in an impressive ensemble of nonactors.

It's not "Raging Bull" or "Fight Club," but Fighting is populated by believable losers and lovingly adorned with just the right faces and peeling wallpaper to absorb you in Montiel's world.

Brimming with sharp asides and clever throwaways...plus astute observations on literary pretension and misguided youth, Adult World is a winner.

The story is struck from a familiar template: inactive protagonist, dead parent, worries about popularity, a regional competition looming. But the film distinguishes itself from there, largely due to the direction of “Fast Color’s” Julia Hart.

Three Men strikes a funny chord. The audience seems to want to believe that these guys can be domesticated, but on another level, they don't want the trio broken. They want bachelor fathers, domesticated swingers.

Utilizing such overt stylization of a high-concept approach, Violet is a bit of a one-trick pony. But Bateman, as well as Munn, manage to pull it off in a feature-length format, and Violet’s eventual hard-earned redemption is deeply satisfying.

A cut above the average thriller. For one thing, it's put together with enough professionalism to make you almost (but not quite) forget the implausibilities that films like this are inevitably prone to. And for another, its concern with cops getting out of line seems hardly far-fetched after what the world saw happening to Rodney G. King.

The endearing Judy Holliday's last film, 1960's Bells are Ringing, may not be her best, but it's definitely worth tuning in. [29 Dec 1996, p.4]

Keshavarz spins a lot of plates in The Persian Version and we can see the effort, but she keeps them all in the air.

The problem is that Antal and Metallica took two different movies — a fine live-band document and a supernatural end-of-days romp — and smashed them together to make both of them more boring.

Takes the most somber of predicaments, and makes it involving, romantic and ultimately intensely suspenseful.

A standard-issue Hollywood family film about a boy and his dog growing up in a Southern small town during World War II.

Enduring Love is an intellectual investigation of love from three equally frustrating perspectives - the physical, the spiritual and that mixture of emotion, psychology and interpretation we call art - couched loosely in a cool stalker thriller.

Not only is Polanski very much in his comfort zone with this material, he also has cast it impressively, staying away from any of the actors who played the parts in either its London or New York productions and finding players who match up well with Carnage's juicy dialogue.

It's nearly impossible to put together a picture about ennui without dramatically succumbing to it in a big way. Michael Tolkin, talent that he is, isn't yet the movie maker to meet the feat.

It starts out like a house afire, but by the time it's over we're the ones feeling burned. A slick heist tale with more twists than sense, this is one movie that ends up outsmarting itself.

Writer-director Zak Hilditch, with a strong assist from cinematographer Bonnie Elliott (who's bathed her frames in a kind of eerie sulfuric yellow), has crafted an urgent yet strangely simple and humanistic doomsday scenario.

A brooding meditation on the unnerving power and terrible cost of emotional and political masquerades, the Chinese-language Lust, Caution gets under your skin with its examination of what qualifies as love and what does not.

Transformers' multiple earthling story lines are tedious and oddly lifeless, doing little besides marking time until those big toys fill the screen.

Stabile keeps his affecting story hurtling forward with such grit and integrity it's easy to forgive its loaded setup and occasional lapses in detail and logic.

Lamm effectively uses interviews with family members and the soap's users to draw a well-rounded portrait of the otherwise inscrutable senior Bronner. In doing so, she observes a bittersweet story of a family and the surprising effects a crusading eccentric can have on them.

This one, directed by Mervyn LeRoy for MGM, can get more than a little sappy as we watch this house of pretty adolescents take pretty steps toward their destinies, but it's also affectionately rendered. [15 Dec 1994, p.20]

The themes are all familiar and the plot unfolds slowly and in predictable ways, but there's plenty of heat generated by the three leads.

Wenders’ ideas, emotions--and his characters--eventually do converge in a stately manner, rewarding the patient with a stunning, enlarging vision of human experience, a melding of the material and spiritual worlds.

This is a movie at which some will shrug and some will love. It’s a spiritually probing, deeply personal, stubbornly idiosyncratic work of art. It’s an Abel Ferrara film.

When the stakes are raised, ho-hum thriller plotting takes over and Okoro struggles to clarify what his characters want. By the end, everyone’s motivations are fuzzy and the promise of a uniquely complex story of cross-cultural education, opportunity and morality has withered.

Cinematically, it draws influence from Terence Malick, but in a good way. It’s atmospheric, but not at the expense of emotion and humor.

The mix of busy comic exaggeration, affectionate ’80s nostalgia trip and gloomy mid-perestroika history lesson never comes together.

Lee's attempt at making a romantic comedy that black audiences can enjoy without having to reimagine themselves as Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

At its best, it's about madness disguised as utter rationalism, utter dispassion, noblesse oblige. As such, in odd moments, it chills through to the bone and beyond.

That Hoon lived such a prototypically rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, while simultaneously commenting on it — he notes his first broken hotel room mirror — is fascinating. And heartbreaking.

Writer-director Chiwetel Ejiofor (following up his impressive 2019 directing debut, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”) proves more earnest than skillful at bringing heartfelt complexity to another tale of whiz-kid promise and resourcefulness.

While the art world caricatures are hardly fresh, there’s a lot about Velvet Buzzsaw that’s pretty savvy and even inspired.

Any horror movie with the moxie to play Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" during a zombie attack can't be all bad.

A one-sided attack piece like FrackNation doesn't add much to the conversation.

The visuals and concepts presented here may be compelling and vital, but director Luc Jacquet (“March of the Penguins”) weaves them together with too little urgency, propulsion and, ultimately, unique sense of purpose.

It’s the glimmers of penetrating observation that make the overload of clichés so frustrating in Onah’s first feature, and suggest better things for his second.

As a micro case study about some acutely flawed 21st century strivers, When You Finish Saving the World has its well-turned moments, but when you want it to be gloriously messy about families and human interactions, it stays resolutely in lab mode.

A provocation, a coup de theatre and three hours of tedious experimentation.

Writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick keep the blade sharp, while directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett bring a brawny, bruising and bloody style to this “requel sequel.”

Bahrani sometimes pushes too hard as he reaches for big drama. But when the story works, it has a dark power that draws shrewdly upon his two leads' screen charisma.

Not entirely free from an aura of didacticism or contrivance, but the film by and large functions as a taut thriller. A drastic act late in the film on the part of Duri seems somewhat implausible, but that does not deter The War Within from emerging as a mostly well-wrought and timely tragedy.

Complex, unexpected and dazzling, alternating relentless tension with resonant emotional moments, this is an exemplary espionage thriller that has a strong sense of what it wants to accomplish and how best to get there.

Although the pulp energy that Blomkamp brings to this material makes it consistently watchable, the film doesn't feel as singular as we would have hoped.

As a niche entertainment catering to an overlooked audience, Boynton Beach Club is remarkable mostly for its optimism and solid performances.

The bane of documentaries on creative people is that they're often little more than a fan's note, of interest only to those who already know and love the work in question. The Universe of Keith Haring starts out that way but the force of the late artist's energy and personality is strong enough to win over the skeptics.

While an abundant sense of humor cannot save the film from terminal silliness, it might make watching it bearable and even sometimes amusing.

A movie destined for a cult following and subsequent midnight showings, “Divinity” does commit the sin of placing style over substance, but there’s enough of the latter to keep one’s mind spinning along with it, even if it’s all a jumble

This fanciful piece, written and directed by Alexis Michalik, based on his popular play “Edmond,” owes more than a passing debt to “Shakespeare in Love,” among many other stage-centric films, while staking its own claim as a brisk, funny, sneakily poignant love letter to words, plays, playwrights and actors.

Not quite stunning enough to live up to a boldly bleak and unrelenting buildup.

Nichols gives the piece a funny, fragile somber mood that works almost completely.

One of Difret's strengths is the care it takes to present many of Ethiopia's traditions in a respectful way.

The Monster Squad is such fun, it makes you wish you were a kid again.

The film has its flaws -- the length of the arduous journey certainly could be conveyed with greater economy, the action is not dynamically depicted and the lack of character development makes it occasionally difficult to follow -- but the earnest minimalism of "Masai" makes it an unusual moviegoing experience.

f you’re not in the mood for messages or social commentary, however, “Scary Stories” is still fertile enough with its accessible gross-outs and giggle shocks to serviceably add to a legacy of kid-centric mainstream mayhem Del Toro clearly loves.

The Wolverine is an erratic affair, more lumbering than compelling, an ambitious film with its share of effective moments that stubbornly refuses to catch fire.

The trouble with this muscular, fitfully absorbing, confusingly titled action movie — a bigger, brasher and less memorable picture than its predecessor in every respect — is that its cynicism too often feels like a put-on.

A kung fu kick of a film that hits more than it misses.

Saltburn is shocking only in its puerility. No sophomore effort should feel this sophomoric.

It's exasperating -- a near-parody of bad French comedy.

Even though there are tedious stretches with less-than-riveting characters, the film gradually pulls you into its claustrophobic spell and becomes acutely suspenseful in its final half-hour.

Tsui will try anything once in 3-D. Splatters of blood travel in bullet-time, and the requisite ridiculousness — like action scenes with skis and zip-lines — characterize Tsui's work. But bookending the story with the 2015-set prologue and epilogue turns out to be his most inspired touch.