A stylized work of unflinching control and discipline, reflecting an artistic maturity unusual in a first film.

Isn't good and isn't bad, it just isn't. A lethargic would-be entertainment as well as a dispiriting vanity project, it is such a misfire that it makes it hard to remember what was special about its predecessor.

Artfulness and restraint can be admirable qualities in a filmmaker, but rage and despair, when channeled with this much force and purpose, can be undeniably effective substitutes.

The Jedi return to us at last, older, wiser and frankly irresistible. Of all its many qualities, Return of the Jedi is fully satisfying, it gives honest value to all the hopes of its believers. With this last of the central "Star Wars" cycle, there is the sense of the closing of a circle, of leaving behind real friends. It is accomplished with a weight and a new maturity that seem entirely fitting, yet the movie has lost none of its sense of fun; it bursts with new inventiveness. With Jedi, George Lucas may have pulled off the first triple crown of motion pictures.

Overall, these brief sections, which feature both authors on camera, come off more like self-congratulatory infomercials than they should.

A self-satisfied film about insecure people, a quirky and episodic comic drama that squanders its genuine assets and ends up not as special as it tries to be.

This compelling psychological horror-thriller contains a tremendous amount of heart. That would be largely thanks to a moving and deeply sensitive lead performance by Jim Sturgess

While Fading Gigolo periodically threatens to come apart at the seams, it is Turturro's most disciplined and delightful work yet.

As a director, Mak must have a remarkable capacity for inspiring a trust in his actors that would permit them to appear in one uninhibited scene after another; to his credit, he never makes fools of them -- and he furthermore gets terrific performances from them in the most potentially embarrassing situations.

For the first hour, the plot is stultifyingly aimless, while the satire of Disney's oppressive optimism is as stale as any theme-park snack. But like a roller coaster, a queasily rollicking and dizzyingly loopy climax... ultimately makes the long wait worthwhile.

While The Greasy Strangler eventually becomes tiresome in its relentless repellence, it’s just so odd it deserves to be lauded for simply existing.

Ripped directly from Disney's playbook of inspirational sports movies, it's devoid of any original elements that might deter it from that successful formula, hewing closer to the sentimental cliches of "Remember the Titans" than the much better "Miracle" or "The Rookie."

For the chance to become acquainted with Salomon’s tragic and unique tale, as well as with her enduring output, this well-intended portrait is worth a look.

As a bored baker with an overactive imagination, the wonderful French actor Fabrice Luchini is the only reason to see Gemma Bovery, a mildly amusing riff on Flaubert. H

Sharrock’s directing is unshowy, focused on the characters and performance moments that make this film a simple, yet effectively moving story about dreaming of a life beyond the walls, something we can all appreciate at this particular moment.

An intelligent family film, a rarity, and while not quite Crowe at his absolute best, it carries his humanistic imprint and benefits from a strong acting ensemble that keep emotions in check.

Add one more extraordinary survival tale to the canon of Holocaust documentaries: No Place on Earth.

Arcan wrote prolifically about beauty and female identity in essays and articles, as well as her books, and Émond uses those words extensively in the film. But what may have been profound and poetic on the page feels redundant and banal on screen. It’s a sad tale that never manifests much more than that singular emotion.

This honest examination of a passionate, disastrous, adult relationship, might feel like a warning itself. Papadimitropoulos doesn’t offer easy answers, but what Monday brings is something tangibly real and profoundly human.

Low Down is one from the heart. It's a melancholy, evocative, beautifully made memory piece, unblinking and unromanticized, a lovely film that brings great emotion and a dead-on feeling for time, place and recaptured mood to a story that is as universal as it is personal.

Despite the perfunctory social commentary and retro political optimism, the film remains a lighthearted romp to its core.

Like many of the classic works for children, it is finally about the rough passage to adulthood, and Hal Scardino's ability to convey that change is another reason why even in a year of wonders for children this quiet film still manages to impress.

Star Trek III has a genuine spirituality, and, at its end, you may be surprised, especially if you're not really a Trekkie, to realize how moved you've been.

Perlman has a physical presence that makes him look like he stepped off the cover of a paperback. He brings soul to this old hired gun, who’s become a creature of habit, mired in a daily routine of killing other people and waiting to die.

Schreiber takes Foer's sprawling, multilayered, multigenerational beast and hones it into a post-Glasnost buddy picture; a polished nugget of a road movie, focused mainly on Alex and Jonathan's growing sense of identification with each other and with their origins.

At heart a reverie, a meditation on the past and its treacheries.

A solidly assembled documentary portrait.

In a way, Indy has been swallowed up by not only the very action-comedy movie formula he helped normalize but also by the dispiriting, depersonalizing trends in 21st-century studio filmmaking.

Felon is not a total bust. What does work is because of the strength of the actors. Dorff brings a visceral sense of desperation to his performance, though he does tend to go too big too quickly. Kilmer gives the film its center as an alien, still presence amid the chaos around him.

An often tense release-valve scenario flecked with moments of dream imagery and lyrical naturalism, “Beautiful Beings” certainly positions Guðmundsson as one of the more thoughtful chroniclers of the awkward age, even if he never quite knows how to corral his many moods into something wholly resonant about the nihilistic trap of delinquency.

“For Good” is a worthwhile return to Oz. The extra scenes and rejiggered duets justify the running time (even if the 160-minute length of the first film remains unforgivable).

Ultimately it's the characters who are the joke -- too thin, too vacuous, too unlikable for us to care what happens in the next 30 minutes, much less for the rest of their lives. Too bad, really, because the truth is Gervais is a very funny guy. The ugly truth is that The Invention of Lying isn't -- funny, that is.

Storm is harrowing, provocative and deeply probing yet quite involving.

So strong and secure in its remorseless movement that you buy into what's happening, its people so firmly gripped in the vise of fate and their own character flaws.

It has the awkwardness that characterizes many first features and, as befits a culture that does not always prize refinement, some of its performances and situations are not as subtle as they should be.

The cast, especially Gordon-Levitt and Memar as Vedat, the youngest of the hijackers, excel at combining drama and physicality. Rather than the over-choreographed fight scenes of most Hollywood movies, the violence here is clumsy, painful and visceral.

This sentimental stew is not without its flavors, and the cast tries hard to be winsome and adorably distraught.

The Lords of Salem is like some queasy-making machine, a chamber piece of possession and madness that exerts a strange, disturbing power.

A visually wondrous experience in high-contrast black and white, bogged down by a slow, underwrought story and uninvolving characters. It would be easy to dismiss it as another great-looking film with little else to offer, but that wouldn't be entirely true.

The Wayne's World concept, which, egged on by a rabid studio audience, works so beautifully in skit format, ends up feeling dragged out and energy-less at feature length. [14 Feb 1992 Pg. F1]

The good thing about All Good Things - that would be Kirsten Dunst, for if there is one thing this strange and creepy film does well it is remind us of just what a talented actress she is.

Many fine small moments pepper the family dramedy One More Time, but they don't add up to a satisfying enough whole.

Neveldine and Taylor empty their handbasket of cinematic tricks. They display visual wit, have fun with pop songs, and shoot much of the film in slightly choppy fast-motion ("under-cranked," get it?).

Paul Newman has lots of fun playing the legendary hanging judge, and Ava Gardner is a ravishing Lily Langtry, the object of Bean's unrequited love. [18 Aug 1991, p.6]

It’s a painless watch, and, in its cheery, fantastic absurdity, something of a respite from the messier, crazier, more unbelievable world awaiting you once the credits have rolled.

The movie elicits knowing smiles more than laughs, even as it reveals a boundless observational awareness about the beefs and slights that, for the small-minded, must feel like everyday Armageddons.

A stirring commentary on our better angels.

Any higher intentions are brought crashing down by predictability, wooden characters, giggle-inducing attempts at scares (shrieking bats, anyone?) and cinematography so gloomy it should be checked for serotonin deficiency.

Raw, earthy yet tender and perceptive, Lila Says marks a strong directorial debut for Doueiri, who was Quentin Tarantino's camera operator on "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown."

The confluence of rebellion, personal responsibility and genre violence never quite gels, perhaps because the realities of a zombie movie ultimately dictate where these things are headed.

The film's stark juxtaposition of domestic melodrama and gonzo exploitation is very much reminiscent of "Audition." Whereas the Miike film turned into a feverish anxiety dream about feminist revolt, R100 suggests that extreme and perverse films allow the everyman to seek thrills in his otherwise-monotonous life.

The actors are better and subtler than their earlier counterparts; the gore effects, too. Moviegoers looking for an excuse to grab their companions’ arms for two hours could certainly do worse.

The emphasis of Armstrong is to demonstrate that while its subject was not superhuman, he did have exactly the gifts and character the task demanded.

Serving mostly as a strong calling card for star Jaime Camil, the film has an appealingly loose, slightly ramshackle charm.

After the sharp bite and harsh light of most American-style guy-based funny films today, Paul comes as such sweet relief.

Scarcely an insightful biographical portrait, Color Me Kubrick is still interesting, perhaps even intimidating, as a study of the way fandom can so readily be turned against itself.

Pellington bestows on the film a distracting, if occasionally effective, amount of video technique, and Wakefield’s story is rich and often truthful.

The mysterious Bart and the mythology of the senior prom as the defining moment in the life of a teenager are the unseen specters hovering over the slight comedy Bart Got a Room.

The French are very good at taking sit-commy setups and cloaking the machinery with charming and surprisingly resonant comic nuance.

At once hilarious and serious, cruel and tender, and bristling with vitality, Holy Smoke is the right movie for the millennium, envisioning new possibilities in the way people view and relate to one another.

An exquisite period film from a script Akira Kurosawa did not live to direct. It has a softer edge than the master probably would have delivered, but it is deeply affecting.

Certainly acceptable. But no one seeing it is going to feel as spooked as executive producer Roy Lee. To make an audience feel that intensely, you need a different kind of director and a different kind of film.

Warts and all, Osmosis Jones is the year's ultimate bodily functions comedy.

In the end, despite the clunky mix of narrative formats, My Father and the Man in Black makes for an illuminating alternate history of sorts to the Hollywoodized version of Cash's ascendancy in "Walk the Line."

Byrne does a fine job fragmenting William's innocent, scary and guilt-ridden sides, and Amy Seimetz makes his wife a compelling, grief-stricken figure. But The Reconstruction of William Zero has its own identity problem, essentially, being a solid sci-fi story with a welcome emotional component, yet never fully effective at either.

Although Chris Perkel’s two-hour documentary can feel like an extended episode of “Behind the Music”...it’s admittedly tough to condense half a century of such remarkable musical diversity.

The movie is both a lesson and a diversion, a movie that seeks to educate by means of trickery and misdirection. It is thus best approached as a kind of cinematic shell game, in which the focus of the story keeps shifting and the full scope of the corruption on display remains just out of view.

Like most westerns, Surrounded is about people trying to reinvent themselves on the frontier. But this is also one of those westerns with a cynical streak, where the hostility the characters are trying to escape hounds them mercilessly.

An emotional experience that is straight-ahead but satisfying.

Each character choice in “Ezra” is plausible because it comes from a place of emotional honesty, both in the script and the performances.

[The] story never fully comes into focus. You catch glimpses of it in between the busy, mechanical lurchings of the plot, in the swirling movement of a camera pan and the ardent commitment of the actors.

When the key comic minds behind that singular sendup of past-prime glory-seekers aim to rekindle their magic, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues leaves one thinking some classics are better left in their original, endlessly re-playable states.

The new Margot Robbie vehicle Dreamland seems to be about legends, the price of escape, maybe unreliable narrators — but ends up not saying much about any of them.

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.

Ip Man 3, set in Hong Kong circa 1959, combines the customary, inventively choreographed action with an unexpected emotional depth, proving as hard to resist as its entertaining predecessors.

Warmth and intelligence — and a strong sense of both fun and feminism — make Malik’s film worth a watch, and rising star Ali is worth keeping an eye on as well.

Whenever the energy starts to flag, Anvari can always come back to Bonneville, who is magnificently oily as Blake: a man who has convinced the world he’s a nice guy, though every now and then the mask slips and we see the anger and bigotry bubbling beneath.

Not enough to add up to a fully satisfying movie.

No one else could have elicited these responses from the songstress other than her own daughter, and for that this is a worthy, if historically vague, effort.

"Them" is spun from callow romantic notions, the sort that make for heady moments. What's conspicuously missing is any grasp of the lovers themselves.

But there's something missing, something tentative and uncertain. In order to pull off a magic trick, you often have to distract the audience with smooth patter, clever detail or indirection. And this movie tries to play it so pure and unabashed that we can see right up its sleeves. [21 Apr 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

The result of Zhang's experimental theater will be a rich brew for some, weak tea for others - a divide that will largely depend on your taste for a blend that is lighter on the subtext and heavier on the slapstick.

Lace Crater is a thoroughly modern ghost story that creeps into camp, testing the audience as it wavers between terrifying and deadpan funny.

This overlong film’s glacial pace and talky, unevenly told narrative undercut its potential power and accessibility.

“Dicks” can’t maintain that level of performative thrust all the way through; it sags a bit in the middle, as one might expect from making the considerable jump from the stage and through the hoops of major revisions. But the film bounces back toward its back nine.

Make no mistake, Vamps is mostly a misfire, but Heckerling still shows enough flashes of wit and wisdom that she remains hard to entirely dismiss. Don't bury that coffin just yet.

Coppola decided that he really wasn't making a horror film after all, but rather a love story, a comic burlesque, a costume drama, a piece of erotica, whatever. But no matter what else you do with it, a Dracula that cannot manage to be more scary than silly is as pitilessly doomed as that elegant old Transylvanian himself. [13 Nov 1992]

For all its sad moments, Romulus, My Father is a love story between father and son kept aloft by unalloyed admiration.

Called the Holy Grail of the Hong Kong martial arts movies of the '70s, and now that it has been lovingly restored and given a regular theatrical release, it's easy to see why.

A pow-in-the-kisser kind of movie.

High-grade lampoon, at once more consistently on-the-money and less patronizing than anything off the Christopher Guest conveyor belt.

A good example of complex Hollywood wizardry placed in the service of sharp, intelligent family entertainment.

The movie bleeds honesty, though its individual components are more memorable than how they’re assembled.

Funny Story is only mildly humorous, but it’s watchable thanks to Glave’s game performance that makes him likable despite his foibles.

In this sentimental feel-good saga of an ultra-wealthy quadriplegic and the petty criminal who becomes his caretaker, the chemistry between the two lead actors goes a considerable way toward elevating the broad-strokes culture clash. That's crucial to a film that is, in essence, a love story.

Meester and Jacobs have an easy, authentic chemistry, but there isn't enough structure or storytelling thrust to sustain interest in the plot: Triumphs, calamities and reunions keep happening, but none contains real dramatic heft.

Thor has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be.

Permanent Midnight's Hollywood segments are clever and amusing, but the more Stahl's life unravels in his demeaning search for drugs, the more the film inevitably goes down along with it. Watching Stahl searching frantically for an unused vein in his neck with a baby fussing next to him (don't ask) may be unnerving, but it is far from irresistible.