I wish it ended better, but Mortal Thoughts is easily the most interesting movie of the year to date. And it's a throwback to that time at the movies when a single murder was a big deal. Run, don't walk. [19 Apr 1991, p.G5]

Wild Grass, which employs a wry, self-deprecating voice-over narrator and some highly stylish camerawork, feels like a comic thriller building into a kind of strange romance.

Dan in Real Life is basically a slightly less-sappy version of "TheFamily Stone."

The volume is pitched high, perhaps so you won't notice how lackadaisically structured the picture is. Get Him to the Greek isn't really a story but a collection of comic set pieces.

Just plain fun. Don't miss it.

Achingly beautiful and visually transfixing, Samsara offers a transporting vacation from the usual multiplex fare. It's a movie to get lost in.

Despite the film's sloppy structure, it feels weirdly good to hang out with these losers again.

What a grand and dazzling route Coppola takes.

Through Tautou's performance, Coco Before Chanel reveals the formation of an artist.

Buoyed by strong performances from Perez and Miami-resident Milian, Washington Heights overcomes the familiarity of its premise through its passion and conviction.

There's never a question which side the movie is rooting for during the trial, and the light tone trivializes what might have been a much more intriguing exploration of the American legal system.

An unexpected ode to peace.

Medem may have disrobed most of the cast, leaving their bodies exposed, but the plot remains as guarded as a virgin with a chastity belt. That's why Sex and Lucía is so alluring.

Despite its flaws, Sleepy Hollow stays with you, the dark beauty of its images powerful enough to invade your dreams.

That's what's wrong with Sweet Dreams. Its insights into this sudden, shortlived star are no more profound than those of a tabloid expose; it's bad-marriage gossip. [17 Oct 1985, p.B6]

There's just not much going on here once the plot finds its stride. It's goofy, and it's mean, but Darkman isn't nearly enough of either. [24 Aug. 1990, p.5]

Turns out to be far more interesting for grown-ups (the movie is probably too long, and too much, for little kids anyway).

Soapdish is a spoof of soap operas, and the problem should be apparent from the start: It is very, very difficult to parody that which dwells already in the land of self-parody. [31 May 1991, p.G5]

In the end The Overnight promises more than it can deliver: Some of the supposedly provocative material ends up being juvenile, and the movie ends just as the situation gets truly, weirdly interesting. It’s too tame a resolution to a film that suggested the capacity for more.

The film is never more than an amalgamation of other movies.

So it's all pretty silly. But it does move along, and the range of weapons is formidable. Steve Carver, who did Norris' An Eye for an Eye, knows how to handle action, though Lone Wolf might have been more convincing had he let any of the bad guys shoot straight. [5 May 1983, p.B10]

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a kid playing with his toys and smashing action figures together, except del Toro does it with more grace and imagination than most. There are long sequences in this movie that merit that most overused of terms, “awesome.”

We Were Soldiers feels strangely irrelevant -- a well-acted, well-crafted and inconsequential visit to woefully familiar territory.

Best of all, L'Auberge Espagnol uses Barcelona as a veritable character, a picturesque, vivacious place where, as one character puts it, ''No one eats before 10 p.m."

The good-heartedness and skill of Ron Howard, director, have become something to be reckoned with. Cocoon, for all its failures -- and its dependence on hokey effects is a major one -- suggests that Spielberg is not alone out there. [21 June 1985, p.C1]

A lot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One feels like slushy set-up for the climactic all-out battle due in theaters next summer. The movie doesn't even give us the expected cliffhanger ending, although I'd be lying if I said I'm not eager to see how everything turns out.

Mostly, though, Ondine deftly demonstrates just how far we'll reach for any promise of relief from life's hardships, in whatever form -- magic or plain dumb luck -- it arrives.

Down in the Valley becomes increasingly harder to believe as it goes along, with people behaving in ways that strain credibility.

That the film avoids the conflicts making the daily headlines out of Israel is one good reason why James' Journey, though not very well made, is interesting.

Even in the 21st century, public discussions of homosexuality still make a lot of people awfully jittery. With passion and candor, Outrage argues that everyone needs to just get over it.

After an exciting high-speed car chase reminiscent of the Mad Max pictures, The Rover settles into a two-character drama between Eric and Rey, but Pearce is so one-note that their relationship is never engaging.

Gere has never been better cast.

As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation.

For all its Buck Rogers-style derring-do, gorgeous vistas of an Art Deco New York and sepia-toned cinematography, Sky Captain is a static, uninvolving experience.

Coppola and her crew were allowed to shoot at Versailles -- family pedigree does pay dividends, apparently -- which gives the film a needed whiff of reality.

Some of the developments feel a bit predictable — shot in the dull hues of gray that match Maud’s life, Suffragette occasionally turns hard truths into platitudes — but the story is inspiring, buoyed by a fine cast, a pointed, important examination of the price paid for a shot at equality.

De Niro is solid in a role that requires little more than righteous indignation. The stretch, however, is by Sam Wanamaker in the role of a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in getting his Hollywood clients out of trouble by feeding them names to inform on. Wanamaker himself did 10 years in exile in England rather than answer a congressional subpoena after publicly defending the Hollywood Ten among other witch-hunt victims. The film is worth seeing if only for a look at him in this role -- these days, when the word hero is tossed about with something approaching desperation, Wanamaker gives us a glimpse of the real thing. Maybe he should have directed this one. [15 Mar 1991, p.G5]

Despite the efforts of the cast (Byrne and Murphy are particularly good), you rarely feel a thing for any of them, but I don't think you're really supposed to, anyway. The characters in Sunshine tackle thorny ethical questions and debate the sanctity of life on their way to the sun, but the movie is really about the voyage, not the voyagers. Enjoy the sights.

Nowhere near as insightful as Boyz N the Hood, nor as uncompromisingly truthful as Colors, South Central still has some worthy things to say. But the film continually resorts to stock situations to express them. [22 Oct 1992, p.F8]

The best parts of the movie, as in all Muppet ventures, are when director Frank Oz takes the action into pure fantasy. [13 July 1984, p.D1]

A hellishly bad film. [8 Feb 1985, p.9]

Mother and Child is good when it takes a harsh, unsparing look at lament and the burdens we carry throughout our lives. Then it goes for your tear ducts, and we're suddenly stranded in Lifetime TV territory.

The film builds to a three-pronged tumultuous climax, shot in slow motion that could have been overwrought but somehow isn’t.

14-year-old Noah Fleiss gives a performance that's every bit as astonishing as Haley Joel Osment's work in "The Sixth Sense."

It's the cinematic equivalent of a good page-turner, and even if it's nonsense, its claws dig surprisingly deep.

The film hardly aims to be serious entertainment, and, to its credit, it's never uninteresting visually.

For most of its running time, Wes Craven's New Nightmare is simply a s-l-o-w- tease to a paradoxical, reality-bending shockfest that never materializes. [14 Oct 1994, p.G9]

After a promising start, this ambitious but ultimately clunky and unwieldy movie dissolves into a pile of ideas in dire need of dramatization.

It's all pretty hoary stuff, but you'll be willing to overlook most of it because the premise is so compellingly delivered, with flashy sturm und drang, by director Wolfgang Petersen. [10 Mar 1995, P.5G]

Girls Town is a volatile little urban drama spiked with a dose of feminist outrage. [20 Sep 1996, p.6G]

Best of all, though, Part Deux lampoons the cinema of cheerful ultraviolence without mercy. You've probably seen the coming-attractions trailer in which Topper, having emptied his quiver, uses a live chicken as an arrow. The film tops that easily a few scenes later, when Topper's gun jams and he simply throws a handful of cartridges at some bad guys, all of whom are instantly slain. This is the genuine article: good spoof, no prisoners. [21 May 1993, p.5]

The script, which Harron co-wrote with Guinevere Turner, presents a disappointingly superficial portrait of Page as a person.

It's only near the end, when Romanek sets out to release the tremendous tension he's built up, that One Hour Photo loses its bearings.

An insufferably artsy, pretentious work, the sort of picture that gives art films a bad name.

Quartet is truly an actor's film.

The whole of Prometheus - which was written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, and rips off everything from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Event Horizon" - feels derivative and passé: The film is a shiny, high-tech relic.

Canner is able to keep Orgasm Inc. trained on its eponymous theme with a brisk pace and precise detail that will be equally illuminating to men and women.

It's a small, heartening slice of life that feels like a crucial step toward something bigger.

You expect something far different and better than the same-old.

The movie is essentially a vehicle for Smith, but the actor more than rises to the challenge. Rarely has attaining the American Dream seemed so impossible or daunting or so intensely, profoundly satisfying.

Not only does the fragmented delivery become trying, but also the behind-the-camera dialogue and city shots with heavy Parisian traffic numb the senses. And as beautiful as it looks, there's really nothing new coming out of the lens of the revered Godard.

Solid family entertainment, with thrilling action sequences and gorgeous scenery.

It still feels a little like a lesson you’re supposed to learn before you can enjoy anything truly satisfying.

For about an hour or so, 1408 has you thinking you're watching The Next Great Horror Movie: That's how good the first half of this adaptation of Stephen King's short story about a haunted hotel room is.

The idea of cracking a secret message from the enemy during war is thrilling; making the process interesting to watch is more problematic.

Repetitious, uneventful and, in the end, dull.

Clearly, this unabashedly silly movie, written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, is the work of people with a grasp of the stream-of-consciousness creativity that a few bong hits can impart.

Page, who died in 2008 in Los Angeles at the age of 85, makes for a blunt but engaging narrator who’s refreshingly candid about sex and her own inner demons.

There's an irrelevance to the movie that the filmmakers, hard as they try, can't quite shake - something awfully square about the picture: It would have played a lot better a decade ago.

Although not quite as over-the-top visually as his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, Youth is still spectacular, filled with tableaux (a group of people sweating silently inside a sauna, a naked man and his prostitute inside a hotel room) that juxtapose the desires and personalities of young and old without dialogue.

Despite some admittedly intense sequences and a lean, spare script, The Hills Have Eyes hasn't aged all that well, particularly the business with the cannibals, who are more likely to inspire laughter from modern viewers than anything else. [31 Oct 2003, p.22G]

Sounds like Dirty Harry, looks like Dirty Harry, plays like Dirty Harry. The big difference is that Norris is not so mean as Eastwood, nor so interesting. Eastwood's Harry is flawed, even philosophical in his grumpy way; Norris' Sarge is just a nice guy who can kill you a hundred different ways. [06 May 1985, p.B6]

Yes, the Muppets are back with a yo-ho-ho and a ship full of fun. Director Brian Henson transforms Robert Louis Stevenson's classic into a splashy spectacle with sword fights and flamboyant calypso numbers. [16 Feb 1996, p.6G]

With Kaboom, Araki takes a huge step backward from the maturity and restraint he demonstrated in 2004's "Mysterious Skin," his best and most-assured film to date.

The movie is polished, well-acted and atmospheric, but still pure formula, and not very scary, either.

Has the feverish intensity of a bad dream, leavened with a subversive sense of humor that is both sophisticated and cracked.

Egregiously vulgar satire on terrorism, global politics and Hollywood action movies gets an immeasurable boost from its wonderfully designed, old-school string puppets.

Leoni's presence adds a jolt of energy to a movie that, while not necessarily worth going out of your way for, turns out to be a lot more clever than it initially appears.

This new Brideshead Revisted, though imperfectly revised, is not entirely regrettable.

There are a few surprises lurking in Cloverfield, and director Matt Reeves has an uncanny ability to time his jolts and scare when you least expect it.

Fury aims for history, and the contrived resolution shows a timidity by Ayer that is uncharacteristic of his previous work. Still, the action sequences, which use actual vintage tanks and little CGI, are pretty extraordinary and, at times, incredibly gruesome. War is hell. That’s entertainment, folks.

So. All this virtuosity, lots of thumps and crashes and even a few empty moments in the desert night. Signifying: Not so much. Not in the movies, which throw a glare even into the corners, which are empty here. Fool for Love has the look of a project that was a lot of work for director, writer and actors. It's not so much fun for the rest of us, either. [28 Feb 1986, p.D3]

It's fun seeing what these two can do when they're inspired, but it's awful having to sit through what happens when they're not. [21 Dec 1984, p.D10]

A nice set of drapes and a striking ballgown or two are not enough to provide this interesting love story any serious heft or insight.

The filmmakers capture enough of the book's essence -- and the power of its knockout, transcendent ending -- to more than justify the movie's existence.

This is a thriller that embraces stillness and silence where others prefer noise and bombast. It thrives on the hush before the explosion instead of its aftermath, and it's that eerie sense of expectation that gives the film its thick aura of suspense.

Considering the seedy nature of the adult film industry and the sad fates of many of its stars, Inside Deep Throat is surprisingly light on tragedy.

The movie is filled with wonderful music, memorable characters and rich, quotable dialogue. But what makes the picture really soar is the way it reminds you what it feels like to fall in love -- and the endless, countless possibilities a new romance brings.

Dark, grim and exciting entertainment.

Duigan instead relies on a light, whimsical touch, with just a dab of fantasy and much beautiful imagery. The result has the feel and texture of a bewitching, richly gratifying dream. [11 March 1994, p.5]

Like binging on a bottomless box of truffles: Tastes good and sweet at first, but after a while, you start feeling a little green.

It's Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, as a rival brother-sister skating team who are a little too intimate for comfort, who seem to be giving it their all. If only the movie had been about them.

It's the kind of movie for which the phrase ''you've never seen anything like it before'' was invented. The question is whether anyone would want to.

Co-written by Tony Gilroy, who penned the tricky "Michael Clayton" and the even trickier "Duplicity," State of Play displays its savvy without being quite so showy.

Cloak and Dagger does have its charms. It also has its tense moments, and an unforced sentimentality that helps it end on just the right note. And it's nicely performed. [10 Aug 1985, p.6]

Though there's a scene of racial discomfort (nothing more serious) and a few rather flat-footed references to anti-war feelings back home in Hamburger Hill, the sense of time and place is missing altogether. Hamburger Hill is an all-purpose war movie with the requisite noble message -- war is hell, and futile, too -- but it could be set anywhere. In those parts of the world where local audiences will not accept an American adventure movie with the Vietnamese as vanquished foe (parts of Southeast Asia were shown Rambo with subtitles that portrayed it as a anti-Japanese commando raid from World War II), Hamburger Hill will play with few problems...Unhappily, neither screenwriter Jim Carabatsos (who did Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood) nor director John Irvin is able to provide the story any tighter focus, either. [28 Aug 1987, p.D1]

Yes, Pineapple Express is exceedingly crude, but it's never mean or lewd, and for all the drugs and gore in it, the movie is also strangely, unrelentingly sweet, even when its characters are bleeding to death.

But by the time you understand the meaning of its title, Sabiha Sumar's film has delivered an emotional punch.