It is to director Tykwer's credit that, although you never come close to understanding Jean-Baptiste, you don't turn your nose up at him, either.

Don Jon is nominally a love triangle between a woman, a man and his laptop, but the movie is much more thoughtful and substantial than that, and it takes a compassionate and humane approach to all of its characters, even when they’re at their most despicable.

Funny in the juvenile, crass way we expect.

Never stops having its dark fun.

By turns endearing and hilarious, Lilo & Stitch is proof the folks at Disney should break their own rules more often.

The result is a kind of quiet epic of rural life, redolent of the Taviani brothers' Tuscan reveries. And though Jean de Florette is whole enough to stand on its own, there's unfinished business at the end -- enough to hook us. [25 Sep 1987, p.D5]

The movie is wild, but not in the ways that you expect, and it’s also surprisingly chaste — you think you see a lot more than you actually do.

The impact of Promises comes from the openness of the children.

The Constant Gardener is difficult to watch, literally. Meirelles' lens leaps and jitters too much, as if it's anxious it might be bludgeoned to death, too.

Shower is also a comedy -- but it's the movie's melancholy streak that is its strongest asset.

Excellent trick photography and a solid plot based on the H.G. Wells novel results in a superior horror film as Rains goes amouk and vows to use his power to rule the world. [11 Aug 1984, p.B3]

Shot in the style of a documentary, which lends the movie an aura of utter realism, Maria Full of Grace derives an unsettling power from the clinical details of Maria's ordeal.

Stoker is the sort of stylish, cerebral movie that engages your brain instead of your emotions, and yet you’re never less than intrigued by the breathtaking visual artistry of this slow-burn thriller.

For this last chapter, the filmmakers play things relatively straight, resulting in the best Shrek movie to date.

Woody Allen's new movie, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, will not make you cry, as Annie Hall and Manhattan were capable of, and it won't make you cringe, as Stardust Memories almost demanded. It is not screamingly funny, romantically piquant, bitter or even, in most ways, unusual. With the exception of a single recurring image--that of Allen as an amateur inventor of the early 20th Century, flapping about in various homemade flying machines--there is not even anything of the absurd in this film. It's just an engaging Woody Allen movie, in which much of the humor is familiar and the tone is as moistly appealing as the title suggests. [18 July 1982, p.L3]

A crackling crime drama assembled from a scrap heap of hoary cliches, Takers proves that everything old can sometimes really be new again.

There is nothing in this surprisingly funny, exciting film that feels like homework, and Branagh even dares to end the film on, if not quite a cliffhanger, then a daring "To Be Continued" note.

Norton isn't the first guy who comes to mind when you think ''period piece,'' but he's starred in two such films this year (in addition to The Painted Veil, he stars in "The Illusionist"), and he is terrific in both.

In its last half-hour, A Bigger Splash becomes a specific kind of story, and it’s not as pleasurable or strange as what preceded it.

Unlike many child-driven movies, Shyamalan trusts in the ability of a young audience to handle serious questions. There's also room for some truly funny moments, and a fine performance from Rosie O'Donnell as one of the nuns at Joshua's school. [03 Apr 1998, p.9G]

An uncommonly intense and frightening experience, The Conjuring is the first genuinely scary release in ages by a major studio that features practically no violence and spills only a bit of blood.

Some of the most riveting passages of the film are Harris slathering skeins of rich color, dipped fresh from cans of house paint, onto canvases stretched out on the floor.

Focusing on the contestants who make the initial cut -- two men and two women -- the film can't resist wringing some American Idol-style suspense from speculation about who the eventual victor will be. But the movie also leaves no doubt as to who the real winners are.

Rush is the kind of Hollywood studio production that has sadly become all too rare — a smart, exciting, R-rated entertainment for grown-ups that quickens your pulse and puts on a great show without ever insulting your intelligence.

In The Shape of Things, love doesn't just hurt: It bites, and bites deep.

May not reinvent the wheel, but its expertly delivered thrills would hit the spot at any time of year.

It's the overriding spirit of the movie that forms its greatest appeal: Here's a movie that isn't intent on conquering the world but simply entertaining you for a breezy 90 minutes.

This is a quiet, powerful film about the lengths we'll go to for the sake of the people we love - and the depths we'll sink to for the sake of the ones we hate.