Everything old is shockingly, stirringly new again in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the rare sequel so unexpectedly enchanting that it plays less like a rehash than a reclamation.

The film captures the intense emotion of the October 2014 performance that capped Whelan’s 30-year career. But more crucial is the way it shows her creating new challenges for herself, turning the terrifying prospect of irrelevance into a shot at reinvention.

A sweet-natured, high-spirited comedy, that rare movie that plays effectively to all ages. Even rarer, it celebrates genuine sportsmanship, placing the emphasis back on how the game is played in the face of the winning-is-everything philosophy that permeates every aspect of contemporary life. [1 Oct 1993, p.F4]

A beautifully filmed, subtly political travelogue with some central conundrums.

Amid the verisimilitude of location shooting and a cast of mostly nonprofessionals playing fictionalized versions of themselves, Carpignano inserts poetic touches.

It’s a touching glimpse at a community solution to an inclusion problem, where the water’s more than just fine.

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."

The film elegantly unfolds as if someone had peeked inside a steerage trunk and thumbed through the brittle pages of scrapbooks showing sailboats on the Euphrates and hieroglyphics in the moonlight.

Writer-director Amanda Kernell’s assured first feature has a classic sheen, but with its powerful sense of place and sensitive performances, it’s no fusty museum piece.

Romantic and preposterous all at once, it's actually a funny, endearing fable about courage, love and faith...So endearing that the flatness about its last few minutes manages not to sink the picture. [9 March 1990, p.C1]

Cohn’s slickly edited verité-style storytelling lets each person’s humanity rise to the top, just enough to mix expected poignancy with a simple clarity about the struggles of low-income, opportunity-challenged souls.

The House on Coco Road is a remarkable document of how social forces affected the lives of Baker and his ancestors. It might lack the scope to encompass all of the story it wants to tell, but it’s a compelling conversation starter.

While Tag doesn’t get every character beat right, it nails the energy and enduring companionship that the game has engendered among the friends. It’s the kind of frothy escapist fare that goes down easy on a hot summer day, with a big old beating heart to boot.

Fukada’s take on family is genuinely bleak — what he sees is loneliness together instead of real companionship, and all the problems that arise from manufactured togetherness. But his storytelling instincts are solid, and his actors always bring humanity to their darkest impulses and saddest epiphanies.

Escapes is as unconventional as its subject, demonstrating the charming things that can happen when a life in no way ordinary gets documented by a filmmaker most unusual.

Village of the Damned is a good-looking, well-wrought film with some knockout special effects, some dark humor and crisp portrayals.

The film is a moving experience for both its subjects and the audience.

King and Romero are a natural match, and though this isn't the best of the King-derived horror movies--The Shining and The Dead Zone probably are--it's close.

Boorman signals that he may not like what the real Cahill did, but as a storyteller with a proven affection for larger-than-life subjects, he can't resist him, either.

In the Mouth of Madness is a thinking person's horror picture that dares to be as cerebral as it is visceral.

At the top of his game, Carpenter and his cohorts boldly tap into the twin strains of paranoia gripping the present-day American society, suggesting that we face one or the other of two of our worst nightmares coming true. [09 Aug 1996, p.F1]

As brainy, vital and captivating as its eponymous star, the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy should warm the hearts and minds of science lovers, weather enthusiasts, environmental watchdogs and astronomy buffs, all while inspiring viewers to ask questions and seek answers.

This visceral and anxiety-laden vision ends on an uneasy, though hopeful, note.

And though School Daze isn't as successful as the more modestly scaled "She's Gotta Have It," in the end, it may be even more rewarding and promising. The movie's seemingly twisted view of higher education suggests a straight eye, a cool mind, a steady heart--and a great aim.

As captured through the ceaselessly unflinching lens of Sharif’s borrowed video camera, Nowhere to Hide offers an uneasy prognosis that is at once graphically gut-wrenching and doggedly life-affirming.

Even though It Could Happen to You has its tenderized, good citizenship side, it's been written (by Jane Anderson) and directed (by Andrew Bergman) with an embracing cheer. It's blissfully uncynical.

Warm without sacrificing integrity, pleasant but not to a fault, Back to Burgundy is satisfying rather than earth-shaking.

There's hardly a moment in Three Amigos that isn't silly--make that incredibly, outrageously and breathtakingly silly. Maybe that's why this tale of a trio of inept silent-movie stars turned real-life heroes is such a goofy delight. It's like a cross between a big-budget Three Stooges movie and a Hope-Crosby road picture, with dozens of old cowpoke gags thrown in to spice up the brew.