It almost makes you wonder whether Vanity Fair is not the perfect text for a lesson in Buddhist detachment. Certainly, Vanity Fair is a never-ending Western story that benefits from Nair's philosophically Eastern point of view.

Zeffirelli has created an amusing yet touching high adventure and an unusual coming-of-age tale.

Something certainly blows here, but it isn't the archangel's horn.

Johnny Suede has an astonishingly consistent tone and a remarkably talented and cohesive cast. [21 Aug 1992]

Sobrevivire has a satisfying scope and substance with an appealing blend of warmth, humor and pathos with a dash of tartness.

A forgettable title and a barely there theatrical release don't do justice to the captivating and nostalgic coming-of-age dramedy That's What I Am.

Neither terrible nor outstanding, it's the kind of middle-of-the-road picture that's hard to remember a week after seeing it. [8 Feb 1985, p.C2]

The frankness with which Palmer addresses the very adult challenges that kids sometimes face is refreshing, not to mention the ways that kids can influence adults about living life authentically, before the undue influence of strict social norms takes hold.

While individual sequences are genuinely entertaining, Monster Hunt remains considerably less than the sum of its many parts.

As depressing as it is hard to watch, Palindromes is also consistently, horrifyingly funny and sharp-witted, and the darker and more well-observed its humor, the more it belies the director's unsentimental, even grudging empathy for his fellow DNA monkeys.

Kudos to writer-director Antonino D'Ambrosio for taking such an eclectic and disparate number of aims, thoughts, subjects and mediums and creating the smart and inspiring - and uniquely whole -documentary that is Let Fury Have the Hour.

The film can’t quite surmount its fanciful conceit.

While We Broke Up is focused, lean and heartfelt, it does feel at times a bit insubstantial.

Landon gets a lot of help from Harbour, whose facial expressions alone capture this ghost’s wit, hopes, fears and heartbreak. He’s one lovable dead guy.

Less vibrant and proficiently pleasant, the new “Lilo & Stitch” only serves as a reminder to revisit the superior hand-drawn version.

Beautifully made but emotionally empty, it exists only for the sensation of its provocative moments.

It’s only October but your Thanksgiving turkey has arrived. It’s called She Came to Me, a mishmash of flimsy, fanciful and far-fetched notions dressed up as a screwball New York rom-com. Given its pedigreed cast and filmmaker, the results are doubly sad.

Narrow Margin is nothing if not a hard-edge train thriller and to swathe it in so much atmospheric murk that audiences are going to suspect the premature arrival of cataracts seems counterproductive, at the very least.

This delightfully spirited film is perfectly cast, and it's hard to imagine how Daniel Auteuil, José Garcia and Sandrine Kiberlain could possibly improve upon their irresistible, multifaceted portrayals.

Hartley turns what might have been a lurid pulp thriller into a freeze-dried art thing. He squeezes all the juice out of pulp. [19 May 1995]

As it stretches out, it also thins, its Malick-meets-Cassavetes ambitions never rising above clichés of technique and melodrama.

Most of the rest of this Hamlet effective or lovely as parts of it may be, just keeps sawing at the air in a drafty hall and pouring all its light on Mel Gibson and his angelic stubble. [18 Jan 1991]

The film is injected with a refreshing energy whenever McConaughey is on-screen, balancing some of the inherent sadness of the story.

Everything about The Phantom is pleasantly old-fashioned, the opposite of avant-garde and cutting edge. Not intended for those who yearn for greatness, this unassuming adventure film is so cheerful and sweet-natured it's difficult to resist warming up to its modest charms. [7 June 1996, p.CF]

Often lacks momentum, especially in its early stretches. It is, however, a far more solid film than writer-director James C. Strouse's debut, the war-themed family drama "Grace Is Gone."

A flawless gem, a gentle yet ultimately ironic meditation on the power of art.

Oh, there are sword fights aplenty (as bloodless as ever), but instead of a real story, we are left clinging to individual moments.

Madison’s work aside, this picture isn’t all that exciting. It’s 80 tedious minutes of shouting, swearing, nudity and gore, cut together with the deftness of a chainsaw.

Although Finley, who previously directed the Emmy-winning Hugh Jackman drama “Bad Education,” doesn’t quite manage to sustain the film’s irreverent energy, especially during its more melancholic second half, he handily succeeds in delivering a piece of entertainment that is at once wildly out of this world and all-too-relevantly down to earth.

The pun is a gun for Penguins' writers. Not a sharpshooter rifle, but a machine gun that unloads a nonstop quip barrage, mowing down the real promise of this 3-D animation action comedy.

But the magic has deserted him with She's the One, which turns out to be one of those remixes that creates nostalgia for the original.

Though Logelin’s story of loss and perseverance is touching, there isn’t really anything deep or convincing about grief or parenting in Fatherhood, making this promising tale something more middling and a touch disappointing.

If The Hudsucker Proxy is a triumph, it is a zombie one. Too cold, too elegant, too perfect, more an exhibit in a cinema museum than a flesh-and-blood film, "Proxy's" highly polished surface leaves barely any space for an audience's emotional connection. [11 Mar 1994, p.1]

In the absence of a more conventional storytelling approach, this series of brief, fragmented glimpses of the harsh challenges that shaped Lincoln's early life never allows you to get sufficiently close to its celebrated subject.

The Occasionally Amazing Spider-Man 2 might be a better way to think of the not-always-spectacular but sometimes satisfying Spider-Man sequel.

While Macy is persuasive, much of Focus is not.

Director Dan Ireland and the Jermanoks strive for and achieve a light romantic comedy with humorous, fanciful plotting yet shaded by genuine tenderness and passion.

It's polished without being slick; well-paced and graceful and brought alive by stellar performances led by Jaffrey.

Has little to occupy us once its battle scenes recede. One of those goofy movies where devil-may-care Russian soldiers unwind by playing the balalaika far into the night, it takes itself far more seriously than anyone else will be able to manage.

In not taking itself too seriously New Suit scores more points than some pictures that take a scathing approach.

The film contains many moments of canine uber-cuteness that although not unbearable, are definitely a bit much. Fortunately, the kids here are less aggressively adorable and feel fairly authentic.

Roth, who is no Michael Haneke (or even Adrian Lyne), seems unconcerned with creating genuine tension or digging into an allegory of moral consequence.

It’s swift and mean--a little empty perhaps, but not enough to distract you from its pleasures: the stark, brilliantly metallic gleam cinematographer Misha Suslov puts on his images, the psycho-electric jabs of the Lalo Schifrin score, the clean thrust of the plot, the furiously lucid action and the canny, almost stylized, minimalist performances of the actors (Jones, Hamilton, Vaughn, Richard Jaeckel, Keenan Wynn, Ving, Smith and the others). The movie may be shallow, but it’s also trim. It has that easy virtue of the old-line Hollywood B film: little visible excess fat.

Although the results could never be accused of being uneventful, the characters cry out for deeper, more complex dimensions than simply the wide-eyed dreamer and the rhetoric-spewing agitator on display here.

If writer-director Sam Hoffman’s charming, well-performed tale feels at all familiar, it’s territory worth revisiting.

That diffuse focus — and a whimsical tone, bordering on the silly — work against the film. Perhaps the government intervened in this case yet again, making sure Finding Steve McQueen would be too muddled and goofy to be entertaining.

Imagine Steven Spielberg gone existentialist, Carne and Prevert making rock videos, a punk "Diva" and Jean Cocteau crossed with the Clash, and you may get an idea of the peculiar charms awaiting you in the cavernous, fluorescent interiors of Subway. [Nov 16, 1985, p.16]

While Hamm and Bateman have the right idea overall, their love of contrivance too often gives The Journey the sense of being reverse-engineered to explain a breakthrough rather than driven by the messy, human possibilities of their what-if.

Rent is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads.

Given the subjectively interpretive nature of scripture and ancient religious history, which informs most of the Christian-centric debate here, the result is an often dense, contradictory discourse.

Free Samples is a film about wasting time, and it feels like it. Despite clocking in at 79 minutes, Jay Gammill's comedy drags by no fault of its delightfully sour lead.

The boys are breezy; their companions glib and glittery. This big studio mix of bang-bang and badinage isn’t really a bad movie. But a lot of it suggests a fancy misfire: a super-powered evening at the town’s most expensive eatery, where everybody starts out psyched up to have Big Fun, and things start to slide. What happens? The food disappears. The music is too loud. The conversations are brittle, the jokes are pushed too hard, everyone laughs too much. And, at the end, in case your attention starts wandering, people start pulling out guns and killing each other.

The stylish Renfield is a bit of frothy fun. It may be too flip for some, but flippancy isn’t the issue — it’s the flimsiness. Hoult and Cage sell the toxic odd-couple dynamic well, but a sturdier story is required to fully support their performances, especially Cage’s operatic Dracula, who delights in terrorizing his foppish familiar.

If plausibility isn't at the very top of your list of requirements in a courtroom thriller, and if dashingly assured performances are, you can have a cheerfully good time at Suspect. [22 Oct 1987, p.1]

The film itself feels as if it has emerged fully formed from the mind of its author, for better and for worse. It is a study of women’s sexuality, desire and autonomy that succeeds just as much as it stumbles, a method of feminist storytelling that privileges the pursuit of desire over an evenness of narrative. It cares not for the customary, but instead for the messiness of real life, which here is inextricable from its own means.

The-impossible-to-upstage stars are the penguins, a combination of real Gentoos specially trained for the film and some computer-generated counterparts. The special effects gurus blend the two seamlessly, making it easy to believe there was no digital wizardry involved, which is perhaps the niftiest trick of all.

Has enough virtues -- principally Sutherland's presence and the quality of the music -- to make it an enjoyable trip.

The film is well intentioned and mildly diverting, but in attempting to modernize its story it has lost many of the things that make the original so memorable and not gained much in return.

Mell never quite knows how to mine this conceit to best effect. The result: a tonal mishmash involving silly demon-trapping bits, supernatural speculation and lots of yakking that derails the film’s potential tension and credibility.

Little more than torture porn tricked out in art-house finery. That is the bigger crime here.

For the most part, The Rocker is content to simply keep the beat, marking time as the summer movie season moves on.

As hopelessly strained and unfunny as the fish-out-of-water material is in the guess-the-lines-predictable screenplay by Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft, the actors ultimately sell its sentiment, like expert landscapers who can make a homey garden using artificial turf.

A tense and gripping thriller inspired by yet another true-life, World War II-era tale of courage and resolve against one of history’s most unthinkable evils.

Above all, its gratuitous graphic gore and exploitative nudity are unmistakably giallo. What "The Strange Color" lacks is the heart that separates a good film from a great one.

Porizkova and Sands seem too young for their roles, but then the film seems as timeless as a fable.

Though at times sentimental, the documentary is a terrific character sketch, capturing both the rough edges and the compassion of its subject.

A decorative Italian soap opera with an asterisk for earnest aspirations. Its beautiful people say painful things to each other in gorgeous clothes, and though the film expects us to take their problems seriously, it's awfully hard to do so.

The gimmicky nature of the flashbacks weakens the story and lessens the film's suspense. Nevertheless, The Burial Society is a clever, spiritual film that argues that God sees all and, what's more, he's always right.

It’s such an astute and warmhearted journey that it’s hard not to succumb to its underdog charms.

It is billed as a comedy, but it's really a lipstick-smeared drunken tragedy. The humor is so caustic you won't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Next Chapter" may not exhibit the scrappy charm that characterized the first film's glimpse into a marginalized but colorful world, but for devotees, Dana Brown has assembled a love letter to a now-global culture.

This big-scale work, directed by Martin Ritt, is of solid craftsmanship but little style. James Earl Jones' Johnson is, however, intensely vital and larger-than-life. [10 Dec 1989, p.2]

Smart and winning, this sixth Muppet feature film comes closest to recapturing the pure joy of the 1979 original, "The Muppet Movie." Kids will like it; parents who grew up with the Muppets may like it even more. [14 July 1999, p.F6]

Although it’s an often repellant, uneven film that, in the end, doesn’t amount to a whole lot, there’s something thrilling and a bit liberating about the anarchic vibe that permeates this stylized walk on the wild side.

The original film was not a time capsule; it was a snapshot, capturing a unique time and place. The new film simply doesn’t have the same spark and energy.

Directed by Kevin Lima and produced by Dan Rounds, it moves briskly, and, if it doesn’t make a star out of Goofy, it doesn’t trash him either. It lets Goofy be Goofy.

This gently amusing, genuinely sweet animated film makes you smile from start to finish?

Chaves is a solid craftsman with a weakness for easy jolts, but also a gift for filling the frame with strategically unnerving pools of light and shadow; he can turn even a daylit room into something ominous and suggestive.

It's terribly long and repetitive for so delicately dreamy a diptych, and at times the modern-day story feels like little more than a drawn-out apologia for the wandering male gaze.

If anything, the manic energy and aggressive sarcasm of Wain's "Role Models" (2008), which also starred Rudd, has become much more refined in Wanderlust, (well, as refined as something this raw can be).

Just like the play, the first half is a delicious, hotel-room-set duel of desperate characters, while the second half goes awry. [01 Dec 1989, p.F18]

It’s fun to see [Rodriguez] color in new shades of film genre, but the script and performances in “Hypnotic” are too laughably absurd to take seriously.

Even if you don’t know her music, the film still works an acidic sketch of fame.

The movie's intended audience will likely be satisfied by its parade of gory mayhem, cheap thrills and groan-worthy dark humor. Everyone else: You're on your own.

Had the movie itself been more focused as a story of messy loss — and not played tonal Twister with its high concept — it might have better served its freshly oddball lead.

Even with Arthur Penn as its director, and ingenious casting, it is, sad to say, mainly for connoisseurs of the car chase, European style

The film is sanitized to the point of sterility.

The cystic fibrosis-themed romantic drama Five Feet Apart feels like a real evolution in the sick teen movie genre, because it’s actually a great movie that just happens to be about sick teens, and it doesn’t condescend or try to cheer up anyone.

Slithering along as deliberately as one of Vic’s snails, Deep Water runs hot and cold; it’s sometimes a self-aware hoot and sometimes a disjointed drag.

This is an in-depth film about a person many presumed had no depth at all. It’s a cautionary tale — not just for future sex symbols, for those who write about them.

An ambitious combination of suspense thriller and brooding treatise on existential themes, The Quarry feels like a throwback to the era of late-night cable movies, when art, ambition and genre pulp would often collide.

If you are willing to take the plunge and view things through Luhrmann's prism, "Australia" does deliver the classic dramatic and romantic satisfactions its ambitious advertising campaign promises.

Emerges as an epic tale of love, sacrifice and redemption that attains a Shakespearean aura of grandeur and nobility of spirit.

Essential to the success it manages is Hartnett's low-key, charismatic performance -- cool, withholding, compelling. The triumph of his insinuating Hugo/Iago is how plausible he is, how he manages to convincingly inject poison in so many minds without seeming to be trying.

Brent Sloan is the executive producer for the 87-minute Boys Life 4, each segment of which is polished, succinctly developed and well-acted. It deserves as warm a reception from audiences as its predecessors.

It's an ideal film to open on Earth Day, for in the least preachy way possible it celebrates the natural world to make viewers pause and consider the profound importance of preserving the planet.