Chilling documentary.

The film tastefully handles the sensitive subject, but it lacks the bite that a Michael Moore would have provided.

The real unflinching truth is that an average newspaper reporter can do a more artful, compassionate job with a drug-war story than this movie does.

More than lives up to its clever positioning as the first movie of the new millennium.

This is one perfectly terrifying movie, an instant classic.

The plot of Attitude isn't exactly original and won't have you sitting on the edge of your seat. But Nilsson knows how to create a noirish mood, and some of the camera work is interesting, if pretentious.

Captures some remarkably vivid present-day performances by the aging performers.

But it's more than a crowd-pleaser shot at spectacular Rocky mountain locations -- it's almost revolutionary.

The Rock deserves better than The Rundown, a brisk, good- hearted but predictable and uninspired - not to mention bone-crunchingly violent - action comedy.

The film is well shot and edited, backed with a bouncy hip-hop soundtrack and full of pep.

Highly entertaining - but far from classic.

Pacino demonstrates considerable comic chops in The Humbling — which has some interesting similarities to “Birdman.’’ It loses some momentum in its third act, but provides plenty of juicy material for a terrific cast.

French director Yann Demange doesn’t clean up the story or make a hurting neighborhood look pretty. The film stays foreboding, gritty and honest. Merritt’s no-frills style is the film’s greatest asset, while McConaughey brings an authentic paternal concern to his usual trailer-park persona.

Firth, who can still be a heartthrob when he wants, douses the smoldering embers of old romance and turns Archibald completely tense and awkward. It’s a wise choice that makes his eventual transformation more poignant.

An unexpectedly disarming, extremely well-cast little variation on "E.T."

Thanks to Jordan's bravura storytelling, Breakfast on Pluto is one of very few movies this year truly worth remembering.

Overly long and complicated, it's packed with crowd-pleasing moments and satisfactorily wraps up the trilogy - without quite capturing the magic of the first two installments.

Check your brains at the popcorn stand and hang on for a spectacular ride.

Now it can be told. The erotic film "Emmanuelle" helped end the Cold War. That's one tasty tidbit from Disco and Atomic War, a subversively funny documentary.

Aspires to be a scary suburban satire like “Get Out” or “Hot Fuzz.” But watching adults murder or attempt to murder toddlers, teens and even a newborn baby just isn’t funny. At times, it’s downright sickening.

While there are some giggles in the film-within-the-film (also called "Road to Nowhere"), the artsy-fartsy direction and flat-as-a-pancake acting (including a cameo by Variety columnist Peter Bart as himself) invites invidious comparisons to "Mulholland Drive."

Fails to elicit any substantive information from his (Tommy Davis) subjects. And he fails to put their plight into perspective.

An overdone sex comedy.

Unbroken, is a cinematic scrapbook, a collection of well-composed scenes practically cut and pasted from “Memphis Belle,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Life of Pi” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Unlike those other films, though, Angelina Jolie’s second effort as a director is more a series of similar events than a story, and lacks an underlying message except that torture hurts.

Wood and Page generate a believable, prickly sibling closeness in Rozema’s unhurried but harrowing micro-portrait of how easily civilization could crumble.

The movie is no more than a TV sitcom stretched to feature length. All that's missing is the laugh track.

The girl kept talking and strategizing as heavy string music played on the soundtrack. This was doubly weird because: a) it made me feel like the bad guy; and b) life doesn’t normally have a soundtrack. Somehow the bitch got hold of a flare gun. Ever had a flare gun fired into your hide? Unpleasant.

One of those all-too-rare cases in which a riveting premise is expertly executed.

Its plot and political symbolism manage to be both over-familiar and confusingly muddled.

Structurally flawed, occasionally shlocky, but written with unusual intelligence and subtlety.

Awfully poky, even for an art film.

Talky, overlong and, ultimately, just as predictable and repetitive as the maddening relationship it depicts.

Well-meaning yawn-fest.

A likable cast and interior-­décor porn worthy of Martha Stewart Living are the highlights of The Best Man Holiday, but the mix of raunchy sex comedy and Christian faith doesn’t quite come off.

Harris can be a brilliant actor, and there are flashes of that here. But he's done in by a script that lacks any subtlety.

Stage performance is good training for life, claims this documentary about a high school Shakespeare competition.

A powerful, decades-spanning epic about that country's fight for independence centering on three brothers.

This movie belongs to its stars, who also wrote and produced. You can't say their acting is good or bad because they are not really acting. They're just being themselves, pubic hair and all.

Better Than Chocolate is well-filmed and for the most part well-acted. But its technical professionalism only serves to make the amateurishly crude patches of Maggie Thompson's script more obvious. [13 Aug 1999, p.062]

Director-writer Abe Forsythe (“Down Under”) nails a handful of funny juxtapositions, but too often leans into mean-spirited and tired yuks. As far as red flags for lameness go, fat-kid and pooping your pants jokes are, well, dead giveaways.

This movie doesn't get huffy, it gets laughs.

Sarah's Key belongs to the Holocaust for Dummies section of Harvey Weinstein's History for Dummies series of mer etricious glossy dramas that ransack global events and turn them into middlebrow women's weepies to fill his trophy case.

It’s adequately visionary, it’s routinely spectacular, it breathes fire and yet somehow feels room-temperature.

The script is morose and unfocused - not to mention hard to believe and insulting to women.

Well worth seeing for the incandescent Portman.

That is not an original idea, for sure. But the ensemble cast -- especially Tatou as a 24-year-old store clerk named Irene -- is personable and the Parisian ambiance is catching.

A well-built machine that dunks you into a big warm vat of sadness. There's no plot: It's a situation drama. Instead of punch lines, it delivers regular shots of heartbreak.

Far more worth seeing than most of what's out there.

Finzi's lovingly filmed movie draws viewers into the lives of its two young heroes. You don't have to be a ballet buff to be moved by Isabela's and Irlan's stories.

Depardieu's days as a leading man might be over, but he has a bright future in quirky roles like Germain.

Whelk, I hope the makers of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs earned a nice celery, but I’m afraid they made a hash of things. A hash seasoned with oy sauce.

Grows ever more manipulative and predictable.

This time, ‘Zilla and Kong face off in ginormous Hong Kong — a destruction junkie’s dream battlefield. Neon, chrome and oversize animals clobbering each other. Also around is another adversary whose reveal will have fans drooling. See Godzilla vs. Kong on the big screen if you can.

If one enjoyed manufacturing symbols as much as Miller, one might speculate that Rose is Rebecca Miller, aching to be her own artist, and Jack is Arthur.

The element that really makes it work — when it does, which is not always — is Edward James Olmos, playing to perfection a weary retired police detective.

The complex plot takes some time to get used to, especially if you’ve come to the theater expecting a story consistent with the simplicity of “The Shining.” If that was easy as pie, this is easy as Pi. But when it confidently hits its stride near the middle, Doctor Sleep is gripping.

One of the more entertaining documentaries to come along in some time.

Comedy with a light-hearted flair. The cast is charming, and Garcia is especially easy on the eye.

Can't decide if it's a martial-arts thriller or a sappy soap opera.

This masturbatory exercise is the least revealing "documentary" since Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedian."

Excellent performances in an entertaining if less than totally plausible story.

A charming if overlong romantic comedy.

More frustratingly, Brooks jumps back and forth in time between the couple’s past relationship and the current day, with nary a physical or emotive change evident in either party. It becomes a task just to figure out which timeline you’re in, and then convince yourself why you should care.

DiCaprio may well receive a Best Actor Oscar for his tour de force as the conflicted FBI director -- greatly abetted by Hammer (who played the Winklevoss twins in "The Social Network'') in his first major role as the flamboyant but frustrated Tolson.

Loaded with improbable cultural references (Sherman totes a Stephen Hawking lunchbox and uses words like “eponymous”), I fear Mr. Peabody and Sherman may be a bit too brainy to fully connect with contemporary movie audiences.

Few documentaries have covered such an important matter so convincingly and with such clarity. When it comes to public education, we are all New Jerseyans.

Has its laughs, but pretty much every single one of them is in the trailer. And even more unfortunately, the improbable new romantic comedy team of Steve Carell and Keira Knightley works about as well as you'd guess - like oil and water.

I think I’d rather have the waterboarding than the movie’s bromides about how we’re all victims and hate must end.

If (like me) you have a parental obsession with brainwashing your children to adore everything from Sinatra to “Shake It Off,” Sing may be your most effective weapon since “Happy Feet.”

Starts out a lot like an expensive-looking episode of "CSI" before morphing into a solidly entertaining time-traveling romance.

The acting by Seigner, Marina Hands, Karin Viard, Patrick Bruel and other French notables is first-rate, although their characters and what they have to say are trite.

There are a couple of grams of interesting stories about Miami's drug traffic in Cocaine Cowboys, but the good stuff is cut with 50 kilos of cinematic baking soda.

The tone of The Playroom is one of soppy moroseness. This imitation “Ice Storm” is as refreshing as a step into a puddle of slush.

For the most part, however, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is in conversation with where Springsteen’s mind and passions rest today, as evidenced by his memoir “Born to Run” and his introspective Broadway show — revisiting the mansion on the hill and returning to his father’s house.

Splashed with Monte Carlo glamour, physical comedy and nimble scams, the movie rolls along enjoyably to its goofy but endearing big scene: an homage to "Dirty Dancing."

Most of their scenes come off as low-stakes dueling stand-up routines, rather than a plot that builds.

Here, Ginsburg is just an idea, a symbol — a meme.

Run All Night is routine in its contours, occasionally sloppy in its editing and filled with the usual implausibilities.

Pleasant enough, with funny moments.

Too slow to be a guilty pleasure and too dumb to be an innocent one.

The rare sequel that is better than the original.

Though Mantegna can't quite lick the essential staginess of Mamet's adaptation of his play, even with lots of scenic shots of Lake Ontario, the performances are what one would expect with such a consummate actor in charge.

A movie more interested in shocking than in entertaining.

A beautifully crafted, white-knuckle, roller-coaster ride of old-school filmmaking -- the kind that believes that the less you show, the better.

It all gets repetitive, and after about the halfway point, you get the feeling that Myers and Co. don't know where to go next, and are making it up as they go along.

An atmospheric and subtly engrossing relationship saga, which wowed the critics when it played on British TV and is just now getting a theatrical release.

A convoluted, pointless thriller that wastes the considerable talent of Max von Sydow.

As North Korea undergoes a highly publicized change of leadership, The Front Line proves timely. In fact, one of the movie's army commanders looks like the north's new baby dictator, Kim Jong-un.

If you go to the movies to ogle topless young women, Simon is definitely for you. If, on the other hand, you want something more cerebral with your $10 ticket and overpriced snacks, stay clear of this Dutch melodrama.

On one hand, third installment is series of hilarious meditations on trials of being middle-aged woman, co-written by feminist goddess Emma Thompson, who gives self all best lines as deadpan OB-GYN.

Elvis & Nixon is the funniest Nixon movie since 1999’s forgotten “Dick.” That comedy was a Watergate-era fantasy, but as incredible as it seems, this one is based more or less directly on fact. A photograph of the meeting is the most requested image at the National Archives.

Merely a watery, poorly directed update of "Clueless."

Quirkily likable comedy-drama about a family trying to coping with loss, contains three of the best performances you're likely to see in an American movie this year.

On the whole, it’s a pitch-perfect love letter to “Ab Fab” devotees. As for newcomers? My advice: See it after a couple of Stolis, darling, and you’ll be just fine.

It's a shame that, after nearly 40 years of writing about rock, Cameron Crowe is receptive to the clichés of the genre.

Despite its excesses, Savage" is never unintentionally funny, just gritty and mean. The run time is more than two hours, yet it's also tight: no drag, no waste, no message.

For most adults, and kids raised on "South Park," the painfully earnest story won't hold much interest. And the comedy is tame.

The tone teeters between delicate and affected, and there’s only so much flitting around and soulful stares a movie can sustain before an audience starts wanting something more earthbound.