While the film's masterful imagery — this might be the coldest, snowiest western ever — and inventive Ennio Morricone score are spectacular, less audience friendly is a nihilistic, revisionist denouement that apocalyptically subverts the genre's norms.

The feature's visual simplicity ends up countering the play's more florid, flamboyant elements, keeping the lean but intense story more centered and accessible.

Taut, unsettling tale. One of the seminal horror films of the 1970s. [29 Oct 2003, p.E5]

With its bright colors, upbeat rock soundtrack and strong ecological message, FernGully...The Last Rainforest should delight children and amuse their older siblings and parents.

If Upgrade ultimately plays like a genre exercise, it’s certainly a taut, engrossing one.

Although it may evoke such films as "Gremlins" and "The Lobster," as well as David Cronenberg's earlier work, writer-director Bobby Miller's oozy, eerie, yet weirdly soulful yarn feels like an original.

Co-directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke (the latter of whom wrote the screenplay) sacrifice some tension with their more character-based approach, but the cumulative effect is emotionally powerful.

Class Rank is a late bloomer that takes time to find its footing, but once it does, it proves to be as stealthily likable as its characters.

Love & Bananas works on two levels, spreading awareness about the plight of Asian elephants and the damage that tourist activities like elephant treks wreak, as well as documenting Noi Na's 500-mile journey and dramatic rescue.

At its best, That Summer proves an effective time capsule aimed squarely at Beale devotees, adding light and context to the saga of this endlessly baffling and singularly captivating mother-daughter duo.

For the skeptics, the film doesn't only focus on how chanting makes practitioners feel, though that is its most compelling, quiet argument. For those who meditate, it also reveals the physical changes that are measurable in brain scans.

Schneider’s direction is taut, limiting much of the action to the confined spaces of the ship’s bridge and its vantage points. The close quarters ratchet up the tension and intimacy of a space where everyone can see you sweat.

Leviathan is Alien under water. It's not nearly as sophisticated or as terrifying as the Ridley Scott film, but it looks good and moves fast. It's elementary fun with a couple of scary moments along the way.

While A Nightmare in Las Vegas is sometimes rough around the edges, it's intensely compelling and isn't afraid to demand answers to questions that seem to have gone unasked. In many ways, it's a first step in processing the enormity of this event.

When Close and her costars command the screen, we can forgive problems and simply enjoy the proceedings.

Miller, like most directors, isn’t remotely in Cameron’s league as a maestro of action technique. But he gives the visual-effects-encrusted combat scenes a nicely visceral intensity, with just the right ratio of spatial coherence to logistical chaos.

Bye Bye Germany is a deeply felt yet unsentimental, often wry look at a group of Jewish friends — all Nazi-era survivors — who, in 1946 Frankfurt, unite to sell high-end linens to raise the funds to emigrate to America. Not your typical Holocaust-inspired drama.

As wildly inventive as it is empowering.

Compassion, warmth and tenderness radiate off the screen, thanks to the guiding hand of Pendharkar and the nuanced performances of Hollyman and Arison.

The small industry of documentaries about Syria shouldn't deter you from the affecting pull of This Is Home: A Refugee Story, Alexandra Shiva's heartwarming if conventional portrait of four refugee Syrian families navigating new lives in Baltimore.

Thanks to Savage's immersive, often improvisational approach and a compellingly raw, internal turn by Arterton ("Gemma Bovery," "Their Finest") as an everyday woman who seemingly has it all... Tara's claustrophobic world and increasingly checked-out mindset feel undeniably authentic. It's also all a bit grueling to watch.

At times, it seems like a parody of itself but manages to beguile while it sermonizes.

Though its vibe is often too meandering, A Kid Like Jake shows that even the most accepting of environments aren’t immune to the vulnerabilities and worries coursing through any well-intended parent’s soul.

The message is clear, and memorably rendered: Care about where your meat comes from, because then you might eat less of it, feel better when you do eat it, and cause a little less suffering in the world.

More successfully silly than non-Brady fans will expect.

Ignore the nondescript title; writer-director Jeff Houkal's backwoods horror film Edge of Isolation has personality and just enough splatter to satisfy gore-hounds. The plot's a rehash of '70s/'80s drive-in classics like "The Hills Have Eyes," but this movie has its own odd energy and is effectively icky.

Director Cordula Kablitz-Post, who scripted with Susanne Hertel, effectively presents Lou as neither heroine nor genius but as a flawed, complex, fascinating pacesetter.

Kean's perceptive film does an effective job of keeping their moving, lucid observations vitally alive.

[A] briskly informative, convincing documentary.

It wears its influences on its tattooed sleeve, but this drug-fueled film is still an entertaining watch filled with bold style.

The film gets laughs from a script emphasizing Steve’s awkwardness and the soundtrack’s use of ’80s power ballads. Of course, nothing in it is as endearing as the birds themselves. The mere sight of their fat bodies waddling across the ice gets the warmest response of all.

Screenwriters Sigurdsson and Breidfjord are fiendishly good at imagining the complimentary ways things spiral out of control, and the actors are expert at making us believe in what the director accurately calls “a war film where home is the battlefield.” On another level, however, with situations so grotesque it is often an effort to laugh.

The film’s as eclectic as it is eccentric, and it stays true to its own twisted sense of poetry, all the way to an epilogue that’s somehow even odder than anything that came before.

Director Ondi Timoner, who co-wrote with Mikko Alanne (based on a screenplay by Bruce Goodrich), has crafted a stylish, evocative, absorbing snapshot of creative expression, artistic ambition, sexuality and eroticism.

An enlightening, lively, perhaps not unfamiliar outing.

For those who like their jokes on the cruel side, Goran is a darkly comic treat that is a far better experience for the audience than its characters.

So much for the plot; what's important is Maddin's witty, knowing evocation of vintage movie kitsch. [11 Dec 1991, p.F11]

Jack Bryan’s thorough, chilling rabbit-hole inquiry into our president’s connections to Russia — Active Measures — is as good a place as any to fuel one’s fear/outrage.

It's a dry, fluky comedy about the perils of immigrant communities and bad health facilities -- shot in a style that's a clever pastiche of early '30s experimental talkies. The imagery is purposely deranged and the movie pumps it out in slow, deliberate rhythms that become daffy and excruciating. [11 Sep 1989, p.6]

Though the script relies on gross-out body humor more often than it needs to, it manages to be deeper and more resonant than most girls gone wild comedies. A truly enjoyable trip.

Believer has a well-told, entertaining story sustaining a running time 20 minutes longer than “Drug War.” With the extra space, Lee explores the motivations of his two protagonists, working toward similar ends for different reasons.

What's most effective about the film isn't just the events at Porter-Gaud or their aftermath; it's Tolmach's emphasis on the disturbing truth of how often abuse like this is allowed to occur.

With its gorgeous photography, charismatic participants and unabashed love for discovery, The Most Unknown feels like a science documentary cross-fertilized with that sentimental old Coke commercial — the smartest among us holding hands across the globe, charting our universe in happy harmony.

It’s like a “Fast & Furious” movie that’s been deconstructed and reassembled as a gleefully demented live-action cartoon.

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.

At War has plenty of cinematic energy for a movie devoted primarily to people shouting at, but mostly past, each other.

As Gamal, himself raised in a leper colony, knowingly navigates the uncomfortable glares he encounters along the way, Yomeddine (Arabic for “judgment day”) takes an affecting path toward belonging and acceptance.

At its best, when we can live Dogman through Marcello’s eyes, the movie keeps reminding you of that opening, of people and animals, menace and kindness, and the cages we sometimes don’t realize we’ve made for ourselves.

This high-concept tale works because of the two leads' charisma and chemistry. Tong is a star, and the role asks her to display her full range. Lei makes a great unlikely romantic hero.

As with its beloved subject and his enormous catalog of multiplatinum earworms, the movie’s familiarity turns out to be crucial to its charm.

Where so much horror cinema wields the sledgehammer, Flanagan consistently applies a scalpel. His work here is notable for its visual control, its refreshing dearth of jump scares and the delicate filigree of its world building.

Oddly enough, it's as black comedy and social history, far more than thriller or human drama, that Patty Hearst works best.

Scanlan is stunning as the odd but fiercely loving Lyn. She regards Iona warily, knowingly, seeing into her future and what she’s walking into, but with no way to stop it.

Let the Corpses Tan — or, to use its even better French title, “Laissez Bronzer Les Cadavres” — is a feverish, obsessive act of cinematic rehabilitation, a shoot-’em-up conceived in tribute to a peculiar strain of blood-spattered B-movies from the 1960s and ’70s.

Salazar’s deliberateness of image and tone can sometimes feel like its own archly overemphasized meaning, but it’s never less than an artfully sincere companion to the drama of missing years and reconsidered choices that fortifies Sunday’s Illness.

Despite its frustrating lack of narrative cohesion, there’s something intoxicating about the vibe of Poor Boy. It’s a world you want to explore more, and Pucci’s Romeo is a character worth falling in love with.

You can't beat this film for demented heart-tugs though. When Prymaat looks at a big pile of cone-like eggplants in the supermarket and lets out a momentary shriek of horror, you know you're watching nutbrain perfection.

Centineo is the big beating heart at the center of the somewhat reserved To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. He’s a lot like his character, bringing out the best in this love story.

The film takes liberties with certain truths about Gauguin and his time in the tropics, yet despite — or maybe because of — its concoctions manages to produce a highly compelling central character.

Between the punchy dialogue, the skilled cast (some comic actors, some genre stalwarts) and the impressive animation, “The Littlest Reich” is good, sick fun. It’s got puppets, it’s got gore. Who could ask for anything more?

It all plays out more convincingly than it may sound, with McIvor layering in depth, dimension and grace. Period re-creation is also first rate and, for animal fans, there’s eye candy aplenty in the form of giraffes, lions, chimps, flamingos and, of course, one soulful elephant.

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.

Its plot can be opaque and its characters often too remote and inscrutable to embrace, but Guilty Men, Colombia’s official Oscar entry for 2018, remains an absorbing, visually gripping crime-thriller from writer-director Iván D. Gaona.

The emotional momentum...is carried along easily by Mozhdah, making a remarkable screen debut: In an instant, she can melt from trembling vulnerability to hair-pulling defiance, and in nearly every scene, we see her not just emoting but also thinking, continually renegotiating her position in a world that perceives her as tainted goods.

“To a More Perfect Union” could be more focused, particularly given its brief running time. However, the larger history behind the gay rights movement may be a helpful primer for those unfamiliar with it. But this doesn’t cloud the documentary’s emotional impact and effectiveness.

To call this movie assertive would be an understatement; to describe it as small would be a lie. At nearly two-and-a-half hours and with a terrific ensemble of actors singing, rapping, dancing and practically bursting out of the frame, In the Heights is a brash and invigorating entertainment, a movie of tender, delicate moments that nonetheless revels unabashedly in its own size and scale.

Difficult to experience though its finale may be, Peterloo very much gives off the sense that watching is essential. This fight for democracy is our story too, and the end has yet to be written.

38 years after his death, Beaton's name is not so much on everyone's lips, and one of the pleasures of this film is to revisit his gifts beyond his best known work, the Oscar-winning production design and costumes for "My Fair Lady."

The movie is both a painful reminder of how Muslims are most often the victims of terrorism and the kind of behind-the-scenes glimpse at everyday evil...that reveals a confounding bizarro world where the inexplicable and mundane mix.

In a state fighting the scourge of opiate addiction, Sheldon presents Jacob’s Ladder as a bright light, building a recovery community on the values of love, compassion and understanding.

Ultimately, it’s the social, sexual, political and artistic power of the same-sex dance phenomenon that gives the topic its unique heft and vitality.

Touch is not one of those movies that hurtles toward a slam-bang climax. A bemused gloss on the varieties of religious experience, it knows enough to take its time, making sure we enjoy ourselves along the way.

The plot line may fray at times, especially with Fisher's dizzyingly quick segue from magazine reporter to Geraldo Rivera-like television muckraker. But Schatzberg anchors his story with enough pungently observed details of New York--its lofts, chic editorial offices, in restaurants and sad and tawdry street scenes--and with enough marvelous actors, in big roles and small, to give his story real bite.

The movie’s only intermittently successful at blurring the lines between art and life. But it’s a sincerely felt experiment, and it has spirit.

Pure gold, no Whammies.

An involving, stacked deck of a story plus strong acting and a mix of vital themes combine to make The Citizen a solid drama about immigration, nationalism and survival in an often unforgiving world.

In the cynical worldview of BuyBust, there’s no escaping this crushing cycle of killing and corruption. That real-life message makes this wild action film more powerful, but the violence is a hard pill to swallow.

Fahrenheit 11/9 may be a scattered summing-up of bad origins, and a loose blame game about our present corrosiveness, but what gives it its sear is its message of a ruptured country as eminently fixable, as long as wishing and hoping is replaced by organizing and doing.

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

The movie isn’t just an excuse for the filmmaker to declare his love for “Lethal Weapon”; it dives into family dynamics, focusing on the son’s relationship with his unconventional father with some sweet and more serious moments.

Writer Mark Saltzman and director Charles T. Kanganis do a fine job of keeping things happening and moving in an easy yet highly kinetic fashion. Although aimed at children, this smart-looking TriStar release is actually more inventive and better-paced than many a comedy for adults.

The martial-arts sequences are zesty, a description that applies to this well-crafted movie as a whole.

If the show’s hilarious first half gives way to a more modestly amusing second part, Noble Ape remains good, clean, relatable fun.

As long as the world worshiped fame, Hunt realized, that light could be redirected where it was most needed, and in our toxically fused celebrity-political climate, that focused, principled, humane simplicity of purpose feels as resonant as ever.

It could have been smarter without sacrificing pacing or chills. That’s not a dealbreaker — target audiences will likely be satisfied by its many pluses — but the film is good enough that you wish it went all the way.

Ambitious and well-executed, The Apparition is a kind of ecclesiastical thriller. An involving and intelligent entertainment, if it ends up somewhat less than the sum of its parts, it's not for lack of attempting something different.

It’s a silly, fairly rote animated film, but underneath the hijinks and mishaps is a rather devastatingly sad story. It’s this poignancy that makes Luis & the Aliens a step above the rest.

Beautifully designed and well-crafted, Jungle 2 Jungle is arguably the equal of the French original and perhaps even better, thanks to Tim Allen.

A villain will rise, as he must, and the inevitability of that spectacle is the source of this movie’s undeniable power as well as its real limitations.

Is it possible to be a great filmmaker and not make great films? Steve Mitchell’s entertaining documentary “King Cohen” makes that case for prolific writer-director-producer Larry Cohen.

Brain Candy is not for kids. But adults, especially those cursed with a twisted, jaded or perverse sense of humor, will find plenty in it to laugh about. [12 Apr 1996, p.F12]

Good Burger, K&K's inevitable first movie, will satisfy their audience's appetite for basic, messy silliness while leaving many grown-ups mildly bemused by the fuzzy obviousness of its humor, the gawky pacing of its sight gags and the second-handedness of its slapstick--almost all of which is redeemed by the eager but never cloying charm of its two stars.

Richie Rich presents an irresistible Macaulay Culkin in a wonderful part and bursts with the gadgetry that many adults thrill to as much as children do. At the same time, it never loses touch with its humanity, directed by Donald Petrie with humor and panache.

Ultimately, Studio 54 proves a nostalgic, sometimes wistful, other times unsettling look back at a singular period of time.

A perfectly respectable thriller that mostly manages to be as crisp and efficient as the crimes it depicts, this Roger Donaldson-directed Getaway compares favorably with the Sam Peckinpah original.

Psychological thrillers are only as effective as their villains, and The Vanishing serves up one hell of a specimen.

While Major Payne is too predictable for most adults, it's an ideal entertainment for youthful audiences that allows Damon Wayans to be at his best in a dream part.

Snapshots nicely shuttles between past and present to tell its affecting, evocative tale of familial and romantic love among several generations of women. But it’s the flashbacks that prove more wholly compelling here, so much so that they could have made for their own standalone film.