An amiable 1973 John Wayne movie, typical of his later Westerns. [09 Oct 1988, p.4]

Longinotto’s film is a rollicking depiction of the wonderfully self-possessed Battaglia.

The laughs are certainly there, but Andre’s almost trademark sense of intentional derangement is missing and in many ways, this is one of his strengths as a performer.

Penning's feature directing debut, which he co-wrote, has visual flair but lacks the tightly plotted storytelling this type of film requires. Relying on mood isn't nearly enough to make the outcome compelling.

Uneven but ultimately effective, convincing in mood and emotion despite its melodramatic plotting, Avi Nesher's Past Life is straight-ahead filmmaking heightened by a connection to a pervasive Israeli reality not often found on film.

The film’s dialectic qualities can feel a little forced and wooden, though Ritch mitigates this somewhat by directing his cast to deliver their lines at such a snappy clip that viewers don’t have time to dwell on the clunkers

Directed by "Kick-Ass" action specialist Matthew Vaughn with slightly more vigor than necessary and a shade less restraint than needed, it's a bit too too to be "brilliant," as the Brits say. But it's not half bad either.

In Barthes’ curiously distanced, muted handling, we only sense points being made, not lives being lived.

Birds of Prey, directed by Cathy Yan from a screenplay by Christina Hodson, is an impudent blast of comic energy. Light on psychology and devoid of prestige, it’s a slab of R-rated hard candy that refuses to take anything, least of all itself, too seriously.

Only one episode falls flat, while two cruise by on style and attitude, and two are genuinely brilliant.

The Legend of Molly Johnson is too ploddingly paced and too visually bland to stand with the great movie westerns — American or Australian. But Purcell does give a heartrending lead performance, playing a woman whose iron will may not be able to withstand the mob’s prejudices.

Because its gimmick lays bare the evils of racism so easily, the movie works for a while, but it becomes so predictable that it runs out of gas long before the end. [13 Oct 1985, p.5]

[Woo] may have tamped down some of his more sentimental and tragic impulses, but he definitely flexes for the climactic melee in a deconsecrated church, which is beautifully bananas, but also, in a funny way, a personal statement on the intimacy that quality action filmmaking should create.

He [Caton-Jones] has made the film all of a piece, making sure that the three lead performances complement rather than overwhelm each other. [9 Apr 1993, p.F1]

In Jason Reitman’s overstuffed, adrenalized Saturday Night, a dramatization of the windup to that fateful first broadcast, you don’t feel the buzzy air of revolution so much as hear the voice of present-day legacy curation getting in the way.

Any sort of new insight into comedy's darker themes, to say nothing of life's, eludes Funny People. Instead Sandler and Rogen and the rest are left to wander aimlessly, with tedious comedy gigs, an even more tedious faux sitcom and relatively vapid relationships masquerading as a plot.

Skim the pleasantly diverting surface of Absolute Beginners and you can easily forget that there is nothing contained beneath. [18 Apr 1986, p.C6]

The film does a fairly remarkable job of capturing the attitude of the festival, covering its evolution from quaint little Woodstock knockoff into something much larger that is both hallucinatory and hypnotic. It's Mardi Gras meets Burning Man with an excellent, revolving house band.

The actors hurl themselves into their roles with sufficient commitment and feeling that you believe in Tom and Isabel completely, even when the creaky narrative machinery around them begins to trigger your skepticism.

[A] colorful, absorbing documentary.

The Portrait of a Lady may not be up to this high standard, but it is never less than absorbing either.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is a jaunty, amusing patchwork of truths, half-truths and pure fiction that cleverly combine to recount the story of the whirlwind creation of Charles Dickens' famed novella "A Christmas Carol."

Quirky, creepy and increasingly involving, the Montreal-set thriller Good Neighbors throws a trio of offbeat apartment dwellers together under one shaky roof as a serial killer wreaks havoc around town.

Both impish and melancholy, with Timlin and Fessenden handily shifting the molecules in the air each time they share a scene, Like Me has an eccentric bravura to it.

The film's strengths may actually work against it with younger fans who might be disappointed by the few stomach-churning, white-knuckler moments.

Sergio Ballo's costumes have the look of authentic clothing, realistically reflecting the characters' wide range in social status. Rachel Portman's score, at once romantic, majestic and vital, completes this beguiling film.

It's unfortunate and ironic that Temple risks so much so successfully in evoking an atmosphere of literary imagination as well as Coleridge's drug-induced fantasies only to conclude his film in a thud of fustian staginess.

Long-winded and ultimately uninvolving.

The characters make such unrealistic, outlandish choices at almost every turn that it’s hard to buy into their journeys. The pace is so measured as to be stultifying, and at the end of the film, you have to wonder where all of this is going, and ultimately, what is it for?

Schwarz and Hunter never dig all that deep — in fact, it all seems pretty tame by today's reality TV standards — but the film remains an evocative, enjoyable ride.

Dragged Across Concrete has been made with enough skill and moody, meticulous craftsmanship — another Zahler signature — to earn its own measure of tolerance, or at least some closer scrutiny.

The poster made it look kind of fun, and lo and behold, it is. It helps that the pairing of Bullock and Tatum — now that sounds like a law firm I’d hire, or at least a hoity-toity restaurant I’d eat at — is as delightful as you’d expect from two actors of such goofy charm and combustible energy.

Rapace moves through the escalating exposure with a series of subtle shifts that are both painful and exquisite to watch. The actress can make eye contact seem like salt in an open wound.

With its shrewd mixture of paranoia and the paranormal, the way its elaborate mythology combines enigmatic phenomena with potent cabals intent on running the world, The X-Files experience resembles "Twin Peaks" crossed with "The Twilight Zone."

Fans of blood and guts won’t find what they’re looking for here (until the final 10 minutes, that is); but serious-minded genre fans should feel satisfied.

It's so shamelessly obliging that just about every audience of whatever stripe will find something to like in it at least some of the time. It's a confoundingly enjoyable movie because, by all rights, it should be terrible.

As a psychological mystery it plays persuasively if not profoundly. Nolan relishes the sheer nastiness he keeps stirred up, unabated for 70 minutes. You can, too, provided you don't ask more of it.

As an ensemble movie, The Commune isn’t the most gripping, but when it zeroes in on Dyrholm’s affecting portrayal, it’s like Tolstoy’s famous line about the uniqueness of unhappy families, poignantly adapted for group living.

Overall, the film lacks cohesion and a true point of view. Further muddling the film's meaning is a voice-over attributed to Jiang Qing, which we learn at the end is fictionalized.

James and Beth have fun in a grocery store pretending to be different characters meeting in the aisles. As they learn, sometimes the moment works, sometimes it doesn't. The same can be said for this unfailingly modest film.

Directed in bold, energetic strokes by Taylor Hackford, "Devil" is fine disreputable fun at first, a stylish and watchable hoot. But then its tone changes, the plot goes gimmicky and bombastic speeches about the nature of good and evil clutter the airwaves and confuse the issue.

Yes, some of the individual stunts and action set pieces temporarily hold our interest...but the story itself is not convincing on its own terms, playing like a series of boxes (Bond asking for a martini shaken not stirred) that need to be checked off and forgotten.

Here, the message is the moviemaking and the unparalleled joy you get from a film that can carry you off so completely, making you forget about everything save for the beautiful lies in front of you.

The ending, which unnecessarily veers toward lumpy, overwrought melodrama, undoes the scrappy elegance the film previously displays in fits and starts.

The finely crafted Alice Neel is at once tribute, investigative journalism and messy family drama.

What counts here is the acute psychological validity with which Gordon evokes a coming of age that's seen with a darkly outrageous sense of humor--and no small amount of compassionate detachment.

There are hopeful notes here. If you are looking for examples for America's finest hour, it's not our rush to start an optional war but rather that an anti-administration film like this can still be made and still be seen.

With the mixing of the sprawling family tree with geopolitical imbroglios already proving daunting for viewers, the filmmaker exacerbates the confusion by eschewing a linear chronology.

Even when it’s considering a great man’s flaws, it does so with understanding, taking its cues from Q’s own philosophy: “You only live 26,000 days. I’m going to wear them all out.”

Although this movie’s unusual mix of first-person interviews, archival footage, voiceover narration and dramatic reenactments is a bit awkward, it still makes for a gripping, involving and affecting experience.

In Genesis 2.0, the prehistoric past and the near future intersect at a most intriguing — and disturbing — juncture.

Like one of those energetic Martin Scorsese montages where we’re privy to how a vibrant underground ecosystem works, the documentary pulls us inside a partying milieu of lights, stage gimmicks, fad dances and tough, colorful characters, a handful of whom are interviewed here alongside a few cultural commentators.

Squanders an appealing performance from Costner.

A cheerful summer lark that briefly achieves comic liftoff but peters out well before its overblown Times Square climax, it proudly demonstrates that mediocrity — whether in the hunting of malevolent apparitions or the making of a mainstream comedy — is not, and never has been, an exclusively male pursuit.

Them is surprisingly tight, efficient and economical, conjuring a super-creepy atmosphere and incredible tension seemingly out of nothing at all.

Raimi’s sheer passion for his material can sometimes overwhelm the coherence of his storytelling, and his unfashionable sincerity doesn’t always mesh with the breezy quip-a-minute tone that is the Marvel enterprise’s preferred comic idiom. I mean those both as compliments.

Re-Animator is a hard act to follow, but Gordon only falls a notch short here, creating some genuinely gruesome thrills as well as an unsettling current of sexual hysteria.

Freakier Friday won’t trade places with the original in audience’s hearts. But this disposable delight will at least allow fans who’ve grown up alongside Lohan to take their own offspring to the theater and bond about what the series means to them — to let their children picture them young — and then pinkie-swear, “Let’s never let that happen to us.”

It’s a film that begins as a raucous rural comedy and deftly evolves into a poignant and reflective, yet still wryly amusing, story of what becomes of a family.

“All the Streets” feels niche to a fault.

Greenaway's boundary-pushing, breathlessly in-your-face approach begins to take its toll on viewer patience.

The comedy isn't always as crisp as it should be, but Peretz has the perfect partner in crime in Rudd.

In trying to say everything, Plus One reveals it doesn't have much to say at all.

A string of unlikely events and coincidences set off Night Falls, and Lumet makes them believable the old-fashioned way: through interaction with a screen full of strongly drawn, fully dimensioned, psychologically valid characters.

The film aims to be a gentle comedy (there are even some songs approaching musical numbers) with serious undercurrents. It stumbles most when reaching for its bigger themes.

Anthony LaPaglia and Sigourney Weaver are superb in this moving adaptation of the post-Sept. 11 play.

The remarkable things about the new film, adapted by Vicente Leñero and directed by Carlos Carrera, are how smoothly it has been transposed to today's Mexico and how far good acting and skillful directing have gone toward tempering those melodramatic roots.

Though Overnight seems to be cautioning us about the excesses of filmmaker ego, it isn't always consistent.

Jagged Edge is really something. It vanishes from the memory like an old grocery list, yet while you’re in it you’re caught. Shocked, intrigued, confused, unnerved and finally snapped right back in your seat with fright, but held all the way.

A bland ensemble drama with an unremarkable script that somehow inspired actress Mary Stuart Masterson to make her feature-directing debut. The material doesn't serve her well -- and vice versa.

Sachs' ability to draw deeply affecting, completely open and unself-conscious performances from Chan and Gray and other nonprofessionals as well is most impressive and highly effective. Working with masterly New York cinematographer Benjamin P. Speth, Sachs has created in The Delta an achingly poignant portrait of alienation and longing so evocative that it is poetic in its impact. [15 Aug 1997, p.F4]

This pulpy, energetic film is a fast-moving and entertaining tale.

White's film is a love letter not just to Kelly and the Beatles, but also to postwar working-class Liverpool.

Some of the special effects are genuinely spectacular, but the narrative is often difficult to follow.

The writing-directing brothers are usually interested in the small stuff of everyday, but perhaps they've gone a little too small here.

The exquisitely calibrated Breathe In explores such a fraught mutual passion with honesty, intimacy and complete emotional involvement.

Like the man at its center, the film is aggressive and awkward, but there’s a sense of playfulness in how it pokes and prods at the world of independent cinema.

While the dramatic underpinnings could have used more work, the labyrinth that’s the focus of Dave Made a Maze is truly an amazingly inventive sight to behold.

This movie can spot the handsome face that lies beneath an ugly exterior, but it seems to get fooled by the rot that sometimes lurks beneath the sweet and the safe, the formula and the sure-fire.

As pop culture narratives go, “Scandalous” wants to be as colorful and fun as a flip through of the rag itself at the supermarket. But in these truth-challenged times, the jovial tone of “Scandalous” all too often outweighs the judgmental.

Though "Romy and Michelle" doing Tucson doesn't take us much further than Beavis and Butt-head doing America, the ride, and the company, are a lot more fun.

Even though it is ultimately anything but an endorsement for street racing, the movie stunningly captures its undeniable excitement.

Despite its gorgeous soundtrack, historical sweep and wealth of archival material, (the film) is weakened by sluggish pacing and an overly detailed, increasingly narrow focus.

Fans will be thrilled that the auteur hasn't missed a beat with Wild City, although he appears to be making the same concessions to the Chinese market as his contemporaries.

As respectful as writer-director Jon Watts is toward creating opportunities for wise-ass capering, the movie is curiously both a labored and lax attempt at restoring that luster.

The complications are ludicrous, but the movie navigates them with cheek and verve, and the jokes land with surprising consistency.

Without gimmicks or pomp (save a picturesque setting) and through the supreme talents of Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds, it offers up an affecting two-hander about a couple on the brink who’ve never really acknowledged said precipice. As directed with low-key confidence by Polly Findlay, the movie is both good and, in a certain way, good enough.

Strongly acted by a highly competent ensemble.

The result is a lopsided, visually uninspired film that works best when it eschews the complex numbers-crunching of its financial industry pundits and whistle-blowers to profile the everyday victims of the crisis.

Peirone’s first feature is marked by a daring style and a willingness to dive deeply into the darker psychology of female friendship. A uniquely feminine horror film, Braid is a bold debut worth watching.

Its sentimentality is tempered by the elegant restraint of the fine lead performances.

Krauss digs into the murky, uneasy morality of wartime, but The Kill Team doesn’t quite convey the brutality of these crimes with the same power that news accounts or even Krauss’ own documentary have.

Though it is a vivid, promising piece of work from first-time director Ernest R. Dickerson, it also shows how difficult it's becoming to deal with this material in any kind of fresh manner.

There’s plenty of intelligence and atmosphere in play here.... But the prevailing tone is of pressure applied and nothing released, a genre exercise that plays as educational rather than exhilarating.

Like leading lady Williams, the exterior of The Perfection is flawless, covering up the darkness that lies beneath. The wild ride in store is both supremely disturbing and unpredictable. But rendered with such care, skill and sheer glee — it’s utterly divine.

Trumbo is timely in its portrayal of a moment when political speech is dangerously charged, yet unabashedly old-fashioned in the sincerity of its storytelling.