Though Lee Marvin doesn't quite work as the salesman Hickey, the film features amazing performances from Robert Ryan and, in his last film role, Fredric March. [20 Mar 1994, p.5]

Even with a thinly drawn lead, Blizzard of Souls maintains an undeniably raw power as a small country’s coming-of-age story, told through a bright-eyed wannabe hero and forged in a maelstrom of death and disillusionment.

Less a film about the iconic 17th century Dutch painter of the film’s title than it is an acute, often fascinating and occasionally puzzling rumination on aspects of the other titular word — “my.”

While the doc may be overlong, it’s consistently fascinating because of its implications.

While its beats are familiar, TV director Jude Weng’s debut feature diverges from its well-worn path when it matters, staying true to its heart and love of Hawaiian culture.

Striking Distance opens and closes with a pair of jolting high-speed chases, the first over Pittsburgh streets, the second over the rivers that encircle the city’s center. In between is a lively mystery thriller that hurtles past plot contrivances and unintended laughs to deliver the goods as a satisfying escapist diversion. Like a paperback purchased at an airport just before you board a plane, it serves well its time-killing purpose but isn’t designed to stand up under close scrutiny.

This friendship comedy in which best friends Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig), do, indeed, go to Vista Del Mar, is so outrageously infectious the only choice is to submit to its kooky charms.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things mingles happiness and sadness as easily as it does genres, ultimately resulting in a film that is its own little joy.

In the end, Switch isn’t a top-grade Edwards movie--though it shares with his best, a sparkling directorial panache and charm, a charge of risque humanism, a wizardly delight in body language.

Boogie tries to appreciate its own contradictions, and also to complicate the audience’s expectations. It positions Boogie as an underdog of the underrepresented, a potential breakout star in an arena where the odds are stacked against him. But it also resists the temptation to turn him into an easy emblem of success, while neatly sidestepping the feel-good uplift and predictable, reconciliatory outcomes that tend to hold sway in the sports-movie genre.

Wheatley’s film works on a purely elemental level; like nature itself, the film is a sensory event, the narrative often subsumed by the aural and visual experience.

By the grace of a talented cast, especially the reliable Helms and the revelatory Harrison, Together Together is a sweet, albeit incomplete search for companionship in the unlikeliest of places.

Hive is occasionally bumpy, but it’s the rough terrain of a raw narrative — the out-of-place music cue or awkward dream snippet doesn’t disrupt the social realist momentum, which is at its best when focused on the grit of how moving forward is also moving on.

By all rights, a movie about a girl who finds true love with an orphaned busboy (Christian Slater) who needs a heart transplant should be a hoot. It’s a unique premise--that doesn’t mean it’s a good premise. And swatches of the film are indeed as goopy as one might fear. But what keeps the film together is Tomei’s performance.

The delightfully daft, dialogue-driven result makes for a languid farce that mischievously flips a funhouse mirror on jaded audiences to welcome, if fleeting, effect.

Gremlins 2 is better than the original, though it lacks the same archetypal horror-movie drive.

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.

Chaotically arranged, like a feverish dance between mind-altering nightmares and pieces of reality, this ambitious mixed-media thesis operates under idiosyncratic rules to provoke a feeling of subconscious entrapment.

Neither agonizing nor ecstatic, but solidly cinematic, Andrei Konchalovsky’s Michelangelo biopic Sin sees the veteran Russian filmmaker tackling the mystery of genius with what might be described as sumptuous grit.

There are plenty of brawls -- the stars end up in a mud pit and O'Hara runs through the town in her undergarments with Wayne on the case -- along with romance and fun. McLintock! certainly isn't subtle, but it was and is one of Wayne's most popular vehicles. [09 Oct 2005, p.E13]

A minor but enjoyable romp. [03 Mar 1991, p.66]

Arizona Dream is the quintessential Nuart movie. It’s a dazzling, daring slice of cockamamie tragicomic Americana envisioned with magic realism by a major, distinctive European filmmaker, the former Yugoslavia’s Emir Kusturica.

Shoplifters of the World, in fact, belongs to Cleo, not just because Howard is such a dizzyingly charismatic actress but because her story, which unfolds parallel to Dean’s, is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama that perfectly embodies the youthful angst, ennui and romantic longing expressed so well in the music of the Smiths.

Accentuating the unrepentant Freedman (who has a distinctly monochromatic fashion sense) and her fellow interview subjects with fittingly artistic camera compositions, gallery-ready lighting and a refined strings-forward score, Made You Look makes for an exposé that’s suitable for framing.

The best nuggets come from the interviews, as when a lawyer remarks that when it comes to white-collar criminals, they historically have no filter on the phone.

The Netherlands must be doing something right, and Blank’s generally breezy film, packed with playful Monty Pythonesque animations by Fiely Matias, effectively sums up the contented mood.

As far as shutdown-inspired projects go, Erēmīta (Anthologies) has a certain felicitous intimacy, proof that when called to action, artists can meet a given moment — and the boundaries that come with it — with ideas at the ready, their eyes primed to see.

If Avalon doesn't succeed in its family-of-man approach, it triumphs on a more theatrical level, as a family-of-actors movie. What Avalon is really about is the magic of performing. [18 Oct 1990, p.F1]

A little of Ted Kaczynski can go a long way — especially at two hours — even as one’s appreciation for Copley’s intensity and cinematographer Nathan Corbin’s artful shotmaking never wanes. But in the well-trod realm of forensic examinations of the notorious, Stone’s considered hike into the life and times of a very American-made extremist does have undeniable power.

The blurring of real testimony with a compassionate filmmaker’s inventions is so compelling that when the documentary portion arrives, the movie can’t help but sink a bit.

It takes some getting used to, and there are sequences more awkward in their motley-ness than pointed. But overall, it’s an effectively crashing intimacy created by the performances (especially the fizz and warmth Schilling and Rosendahl have together), Claudia Wolscht’s restless editing and Hanno Lentz’s camerawork.

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.

Whatever his film's contrivances as it builds, with this closing, Joffe has made a permanent contribution to our national insomnia. [20 Oct 1989, p.F1]

You’ll be pleased to discover the entertaining remake has its charms; it actually is all that, for the most part.

The themes of Jakob’s Wife are a bit simplistic, but the lead performances are incredibly complex, drawing on the two stars’ decades of screen (and life) experience.

A little too broad at times, Swan Song smartly balances its excesses with small, sweet moments that leave an impression on the audience just as significant as Pat’s imprint on Sandusky.

For a film that first seems a throwaway, it has unusual intensity and grip. It’s not another over-reaching, under-financed “Terminator” or “Total Recall” wanna-be.

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.

For the most part, aside from a slightly slack start, and its stirring but simplistic ending, that kind of well-researched procedural detail is what makes Penna’s film such an engrossing and surprisingly touching addition to a genre already bursting with splashier, more extravagant and more overtly sentimental titles.

A good, solid, admirable, deeply felt movie.

King for a Day is never less than riveting.

Thunderheart, directed by Michael Apted, is a kind of spiritual thriller, a moderately diverting programmer in which a predictable shoot-'em-up plot is slickly intertwined with American Indian religious customs and beliefs. Though the film has a tendency to take itself too seriously, it is enlivened by some appealing acting and vivid camerawork that save it from the abyss.

The sequel is every bit as amusing as the original, though probably grislier. [08 Mar 1991, p.F16]

It’s a film to be watched not for its more literal filmmaking achievements, but rather for its ability to make you feel seen, with vulnerability and with love.

The story moves crisply, though with all the twists and the lack of introductions to the main players, it’s not easy to follow at first. The fights and chases are handled expertly (the “action director” is Jung Doo); they’re dynamic but believable and deliver emotional impact.

A lot of big action pictures add “a little heart” between the thrills, but The Unthinkable reverses the ratio, centering emotions. Some genre fans may be impatient with this approach at first, but by the end, it really works.

Sorry, haters, the film isn’t a train wreck. This musical, which had its Broadway premiere in 2016, works better in the theater. But the translation to the screen is smoother than expected.

Just as Baird is sustained by his self-mockery, this tender and witty film is saved from sentimentality by its satirical edge. [19 Apr 1998, p.3]

The movie is sheer soap opera, but fine writing by Terence Rattigan (upon whose play it is based) gives the melodrama meaning. And a cast sure to make any movie lover swoon (David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth and Wendy Hiller) takes the poignancy to levels that are sometimes painful to watch. [07 Oct 1993, p.17]

Even in a film that makes no bones about presenting its subject in a flattering, softening light, this 89-year-old stage and screen legend has refreshingly few qualms about saying exactly what she thinks.

An enjoyably eccentric, insouciantly funny and often beautiful-looking jumble of an entertainment that plays — at least when it isn’t let down by a wobbly seriocomic tone and some excessive narrative multitasking — like a sincerely moving farewell to some of the more likable rogues and motley misfits in the Marvel cosmos.

Paper Tigers may not be a deep comment on aging or friendship, but it has enough humor and action to make it worth a few rounds.

Ego-stroking bio docs being a cottage industry these days, Balvin is one of the more disarmingly open figures to get this kind of treatment. But it’s also nice that The Boy From Medellín makes the most of its allotted time with a busy phenomenon to at least dabble in the ins and outs of an artist contemplating his place in the world.

If the end-of-the-world genre seems downright somnambulant lately, Awake is jolting proof a fiendishly clever twist can shake it from its doldrums.

Unfolding deftly under Asher's direction, Night Warning combines darkly outrageous humor with persuasive psychological validity. [12 Feb 2004, p.E14]

A work of superior craftsmanship, Wilde moves quite briskly, and the idea of approaching an unconventional life with a traditional narrative style pays off. [01 May 1998, p.F10]

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 is no classic, but it’s a clear improvement on “1994,” with more tension and excitement (and generous gore).

A jaundiced look at the CIA, bolstered by a terrific cast. [14 Sep 1986, p.6]

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 Stallone and the assured young actor Walton give fine, nuanced performances — as does Asbaek. The premise of “Samaritan” is the stuff of cartoons, but the actors makes the stakes feel real.

Álvarez and Sayagues have delivered a blood-spattered potboiler that’s no work of genius but is much better than average.

Italian Studies is a unique curio of a film, a free sketch of time and place melting into a singular subjective experience that asks “does memory matter?”

Despite occasional dips in energy that usually coincide with the root-worthy characters’ own flailing moments, 7 Days remains a buoyant and involving jaunt.

Long and Midler are so good they almost make us forget that Outrageous Fortune is yet another elaborate chase movie with the usual comic CIA and KGB stooges and vast, familiar stretches of Southwestern deserts.

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.

By cycling through humor, joy, sentimentality and surrealism, The Year of the Everlasting Storm reminds viewers of the myriad possibilities of daily life. The film’s poignancy comes from its confirmation that even in tumultuous times, our senses of wonder, love and loyalty remain integral to the human experience.

Although this well-acted film, which was Israel’s official submission for the 2022 international film Oscar, is a bit slow-going, it presents a timely, pointed, at times cleverly satirical snapshot of Israeli-Palestinian relations. It also offers an often poignant look at a dysfunctional family at the center of it all.

Like a lush ballad that’s somehow both off-key and in total harmony, it’s unlike anything else out there, and certainly more interesting in its swings and misses than a lot of the machine-stamped celebrity biopics littering the movie landscape these days.

Where the documentary succeeds most plangently is in its fan testimonials of the album’s impact and Blige’s emotional recollections of the songs’ roots.

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.

Although Salomé’s lower-key approach to the material occasionally creates the sense that moments of ripe comedy have been left untapped, as well as a low-key ending that might have benefited from a final twist, there’s plenty to appreciate.

The intimacy, warmth and humor of the memories give the footage of him teaching the feeling of watching home movies from the adoring offspring of a cherished father.

Whatever its legacy, the film remains a gripping drama. [09 Nov 2008, p.E10]

The core question Settlers asks is who “deserves” to occupy this inhospitable planet. To Rockefeller’s credit, he doesn’t offer any pat answers.

Written by Scott Wascha, the script is simultaneously crude, rude and whip-smart. Wexler‘s direction is a rapid-fire attack of highly stylized skirmishes and aestheticized action.

The result is a film made of loosely connected scenes, the best ones floating between observation and storytelling, not unlike a dream.

Kid Candidate isn’t about winning as much as a reinforcement of the notion that apathy is the death of democracy, a lesson best learned, as Pedigo comes to understand, when you’re young.

With every added account of shameful contrition, the realization that this issue exists very much in the present tense weighs heavy on the viewer.

That dance of performance and being — mindsets committed artists don’t always manage smoothly — is what makes Val an appealing, at times even touching hodgepodge of the actor’s journey.

Seen then as radical, her views are in fact rather reasonable and still applicable. That said, the dense paragraphs in silent title cards prove strenuous. Since her inferences are immensely relevant, one can only wish that the format were more accessible.

Its sentimentality is ragged at times, but the overall quilt of the film is well constructed. [09 Apr 1992, p.15]

The first hour’s parade of oddballs and exaggerated vignettes under the bright Neapolitan pop of Daria D’Antonio’s cinematography can be broad to a fault, but there’s an honest perspective at work about what lands in an awkward boy’s memory.

Whether snarling behind shades in uniform or off hours in elegant dresswear, Chen is a rule-breaking hoot, never more so than when she’s gearing up to heap abuse on a near-tears little girl in order to break her.

There’s something fitting, even respectful, about the sheer number of movie stars that have been pressed into service here. Throwing subtlety to the wind with wild gesticulations and exaggerated Italian accents, they may flirt with and sometimes tumble headlong into stereotype, but they do so with a verve and commitment that, for the better part of 2½ hours, disarms judgment and suspends disbelief.

Seth’s cinematography is stunning, meeting the mood of each contrasting moment but set within a cohesive look that gives the film a dreamy, unreal quality.

To be sure, there's plenty of humor to offset serious matters, and Mayron reveals both terrific rapport with youngsters and ability in maintaining a gentle flow to material that is inherently episodic when there are so many characters' stories to tell. [18 Aug 1995, p.F8]

The parts of Coming Home in the Dark about confronting guilt aren’t what make the movie so harrowing. Instead, what matters is that Ashcroft and his cast — and especially Gillies as the menacing and charismatic Mandrake — excel at drawing out the moment-to-moment tension of a crime in progress.

Working with cinematographers Ehab Assal and Peter Flinckenberg, Abu-Assad continually boxes his female leads into tight corners, visually and dramatically. Nearly every scene takes the form of a single unbroken shot, a technique that sometimes pulls you in and sometimes merely calls attention to its own virtuosity.

The Wonder undeniably resonates in these confounding times concerning belief, fact and manipulation.

With Eating the ever-idiosyncratic independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom continues his intimate, spontaneous, witty but always compassionate observations of compulsive, neurotic human behavior--and reveals his ongoing fascination with women.

Part biopic, part mystery, part exposé, Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed is ultimately a cooled celebration, one eager to acknowledge that gurus are complicated, showbiz is treacherous, and some landscapes hide things.

Perhaps the highest praise we can lavish on Fuqua’s solid, enjoyable, easily watchable remake, is that beyond the addition of Gyllenhaal, it doesn’t try to fix anything that wasn’t broken in the first place.

The Unforgivable transcends its own self-importance and becomes an experience that is often rattling, challenging and haunting.

A good, rock 'em, shock 'em political thriller, done in the best imitation Costa-Gavras style by director Roger Spottiswoode. [08 Oct 1989, p.5]

The film takes its cues from Elwy’s remarkable performance as Cadi, who is at once seductive and terrifying.

Even if mildly convoluted, The Deer King, a welcomed mature animated feature, nurtures enough admirable ideas and visual panache to command our attention.

Where the filmmakers’ approach sets itself apart in these days of image-massaged biographies is in juxtaposing the bookending health catastrophes of Fauci’s career as an especially illuminating lens through which to examine his drive, decisions and personality.

Cyrano slips in and out of that realm fitfully; it’s not always the most graceful retelling of this oft-told tale, and its ardent defense of love for love’s sake can feel paper-thin one moment and swooningly sincere the next. What gives the movie its sustaining pulse is Dinklage.