A kind of deadpan soap opera - but one that, despite its high melodrama and wicked humor, delivers a real emotional wallop.

Has a certain cartoonish vibe. That's OK, because Brad Bird's brand of toonage (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) owes much to the rigors and traditions of live action, not only in the way he references other films, but also in his visual approach - sweeping, swooping camera pans, wide vistas, jolting perspective.

Pulp fiction doesn't come much better than Cold in July, a gritty, grisly - and perversely giddy - crime yarn directed by Pottstown-born indie-film provocateur Jim Mickle.

Remarkable movie.

The good thing about The Company is that nothing much happens. The bad thing about The Company is that nothing much happens.

It's a shame about Ray, because Foxx is trapped in a movie that takes the music icon's unique story and turns it into cheesy, sentimental American Dream cliches.

Things get a little tricky by the end, but it's the sort of trickery that's immensely satisfying.

However moved or indifferent one may be to the joys and heartaches of the very British Marryots, Bridges, their butler, and Ellen, his wife: Cavalcade is a necessary addition to one's cinematic education as an example of screen technique at its best. [15 Apr 1933, p.22]

Johnny Depp, who portrayed Thompson's alter-ego in Gilliam's film, provides the narration. If there's hagiography here, it's counterbalanced by biographical truth.

Steeped in attitude - a smart-alecky, insider sarcasm that can be pretty clever at times, but also pretty insufferable.

Spoofy and sweet... endearingly old-fashioned.

Not since Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Malick's own "Days of Heaven" has a movie been both so breathtakingly beautiful and so narratively abstract.

Apatow's film succeeds in having its virginity and losing it, too. Like "Wedding Crashers," it purges its cynicism with romanticism.

Historical drama of the highest order - teeming with big ideas, and anchored by the nicely nuanced performances of Vikander and Mikkelsen.

Cats is many things: a film diary of an odd-couple relationship, a profile of a forgotten man who slowly reconstructs his past, and the transcendently moving account of a man on the margins who gets reintegrated into society.

Side-splitting concert film.

If there's a more passionate love story out there, then I haven't had the privilege of seeing it.

Fails on a couple of levels. It never really gives you a sense of the psychology, the root causes behind Glass' elaborate frauds... And since we don't know the why, the how becomes considerably less interesting.

For the first 100 minutes of his 117-minute film Spielberg holds the audience in a grip of fear. When Ray and Rachel take refuge in the storm cellar of a survivalist (a miscast Tim Robbins), the director's grip relaxes only a bit, but the film never recovers from this excursion into the Gothic.

Do you dig the current vampire craze? Do you love "Twilight" so much you'd die for it? Then skip South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook's violent, bloody Thirst, a genre-bending - if not genre-destroying - foray into the vampire myth.

What it lacks, though, is any sense that these people - are real.

Adapted from the devilishly clever 1955 novel by master crime author Georges Simenon, The Blue Room is a dazzling deconstruction of the mystery genre that turns its conventions on their heads.

Filmmaker Dabis based Amreeka on her own family's experiences in the rural Midwest during the first Gulf War. Although the drama heads on a predictable course, Faour brings intelligence and humor to her performance and Muallem, as the smart adolescent turned surly and scared, is likewise sharp.

Paradoxically, the closer Mendes gets to his characters, the more remote Perdition becomes. One wishes that his film had as much heart as it does art.

Stevie is compelling, real-life drama: bleak and disturbing, but illuminating all the same.

Winner of a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the quiet, solemn Climates is a bit like those towering ancient columns that Isa photographs to show his class. The fragmented architecture is beautiful and striking, but also extremely dated.

Casey's big brother has made a tough, taut mystery.

An odd and entertaining mix of backstage melodrama, indie verite, and "Showgirls" kitsch, the usual gender stereotypes are upturned.

I'm not sure what kids are going to make of Matilda and its perception of an adult world crawling with menacing, malevolent despots. They'll probably love it - and the film's resourceful, resilient star. Parents, on the other hand, might be squirming in their seats from DeVito's unrelenting send-up of the crass and the cruel. [02 Aug 1996, p.05]

Still Mine resonates in all the right ways.

Deftly filmed and directed by Jean-François Richet.

A mischievously inventive, surreal entertainment, one that celebrates not only Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight and Nutty Crunch Surprise but Busby Berkeley, Stanley Kubrick, the Beatles, and the outer-space acting choices of one Johnny Depp - not to mention those bushy-tailed rodents in all their bustling splendor.

The film is suffused with the generous, nonjudgmental spirit of Uncle Tomas, whose live-and-let-live attitude warms like the sun and who helps Magdalena and Carlos make the safe passage from adolescence to maturity.

The film only occasionally comes to life - it's too literal (and literary), too studied, too still.

Irreverent, provocative and provoking.

The film's recurring image is that of a butterfly fluttering around a flower, a lovely symbol of the reader drawn to a novel's nectar.

A mostly glum, gray and grim story lit by a fugitive sunbeam.

The movie sometimes seems (like its title character) to drag its feet. It’s messy, but with the untidiness of real life.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is really about watching paint dry. S l o w l y.

We know how the story ends: Nordling persuades Choltitz to back down. Yet, the film somehow maintains a razor-sharp sense of suspense throughout. And it ends with a delicious plot twist that makes one rethink Nordling's moral superiority.

In his newest film Egoyan memorably gets under the skin of the skin trade. [10 Mar 1995, p.03]

It's a documentary that is ostensibly a profile of a man, but is really about the vibrant city he inhabits, beyond the Hollywood sheen and the grit of Compton.

Anyone with a casual interest in gospel music stands to learn a lot by seeing Rejoice & Shout; a true fan won't want to miss it.

It's not as good, nor as complex, as "The Lost Boys," but that doesn't make the story of mass annihilation, sprawling refugee camps, the generosity of Americans, and the resilience of a handful of Sudanese survivors any less worthy of telling - again.

It's a charmer.

A standout.

The three (human) leads are perfection. Bridges' Howard is as breezily garrulous and glad-handing as Cooper's Smith is laconic and withdrawn. Maguire's Pollard has haunted eyes and orangey hair that makes him look like a human jack-o'-lantern, and establishes his own unique rhythm and less-is-more style.

A wide-screen wildlife documentary in which the cycles of birth and death, migrations and seasons, are captured in stunning - absolutely stunning - ways.

Brings home the complexities and contradictions of the man.

A spectacularly satisfying reworking of the legend of Kal-El.

It works beautifully and illuminates aspects of Freud that you might think beyond the reach of the the camera.

Although its tone is generally genial and jovial, Good Hair touches on some tricky issues, at times complicitly.

Colorful, noisy, and pixel-deep.

At times Let It Rain recalls one of those Katharine Hepburn comedies where the New Woman gets cut down to size so as not to intimidate the Old-School Men. Yet the film so likably deflates the pompous and pumps up the humble that it's hard not to like.

Breaking a Monster is a revealing window into the industry. But it lacks a certain human component.

The film - despite being a half-hour too long - is a rocking, rolling supernatural spectacle.

A goofy conflation of Coenian elements: the numbskull huggermugger of "The Big Lebowski", the La La Land surrealness of "Barton Fink", the Old Testament overlay of "A Serious Man."

Smart and novelistic and spiked with more than a bit of The Catcher in the Rye, Steers' movie is a prickly coming-of-age tale in which everybody -- but especially Culkin -- shines.

It's about time: Aubrey Plaza gets her own movie!

Rebecca Hall is wondrous as Christine, delivering a sly performance that brings out her character's extraordinary intelligence. Her Christine has a peculiar brand of dry, subversive humor that takes aim at various absurdities of modern life and mass media.

The action is exhilarating, the visual effects spectacular - and spectacularly realized.

Bellflower has plenty of rough edges and it suffers from a bad case of hipper-than-thou-ness. But it's a triumph.

It's half hilarious, half serious; all poignant.

The unforced performances of Courtney and Fanning are remarkable.

Spielberg and his team - composer John Williams, as always, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, screenwriter Richard Curtis - never forget their mission: to pull at heart strings, jerk some tears.

Though a fine specimen of cultural anthropology, The Aristocrats is too shapeless to be satisfying as a film.

Gluck is not a visual storyteller. He depends entirely on his performers and their snappy dialogue.

Manages to pull off a couple of startling surprises.

Lean, mean, and utterly compelling, Ma’s beautifully paced and remarkably understated 80-minute thriller Old Stone is a Kafkaesque satire about the soul-crushing effects of bureaucracy.

First Position shows the dancers' emotions, but it is weaker in building the suspense of the competition.

Jarmusch’s movie serves both as a fine intro to one of rock’s great bands and as a window for longtime fans into what makes Iggy tick.

Delicious confection about the resilient Czech character, tastes like a bittersweet chocolate souffle, it's much more substantial than dessert.

An elaborately worked-over opus that's as tarted-up and artificial as Scorsese's '70s classic Mean Streets was gritty and real, Gangs of New York feels like a movie musical without the songs.

It's hard not to get caught up in this improbable but true follow-your-dream tale.

In this, Alfred Hitchcock's centenary year, Felicia's Journey so startlingly channels the obsessions of the late director that it might be the greatest Hitchcock movie the master of suspense never made.

What gives the story added insight - and detracts from it - is the personal quest of the filmmaker who bears the scars of having an itinerant rogue who was never around as a father.

Enchanted and thrilling film.

What began as a bold and thrilling story descends into Hollywood cliché. But Crowe and Connelly's work rises above the mush. They make A Beautiful Mind go.

Shelton and her cast are so skillful that before long it seems we are not moviegoers watching a screen but flies on a wall witnessing real encounters and the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

A movie as atmospheric as Hereditary, narratively more satisfying, but much, much longer.

If the arrival of The Crow - a visually dazzling and hyperkinetic action movie - is an occasion to mourn the loss of Lee, it is also ample reason to celebrate the protean gifts of its director, Alex Proyas.

Bacon's portrait chills to the bone.

McQueen finds the exquisite tension between the brother wanting to disconnect and the sister longing for connection. To paraphrase a line of Sissy's, it's a good movie that comes from a bad place.

In its final act, Akeelah is as exciting as any Final Four matchup. What it may lack in cinematic art it compensates for in abecedarian adrenaline guaranteed to pump the pulse and the spirits of viewers from 10 to 90.

Alas, Brick, from writer-director Rian Johnson, isn't as clever as its conceit.

The film is surprisingly engaging. It’s fun.

Feels downright ancient.

A heart-grabbing, awe-inspiring work that needs no embellishment.

A darkly comic, piercing, and occasionally painful study of a young woman's quest for identity.

Develops microclimates of mood without fully developing the same shadings of character.

It's a bright and breezy piece, and a refreshing alternative to the gross-out Hollywood comedies.

Add Mostly Martha to the list of great mouth-watering food flicks - "Eat Drink Man Woman," "Big Night," "Babette's Feast" -- but don't stop there. Add it to another list: movies that get at the heart of what family, and love, is all about.

It's a celebration of the good times and bad times shared by a man and woman who found each other in the middle of some historic craziness, and it rocks.

Deserves to be considered on its own merits, and while not a masterpiece, it is beautiful, nonetheless.

It is painful, it is funny, and it marks the remarkable debut of Wysocki.

Whether it's simply the change of locale, or a change in Allen's psyche, something is up in Match Point. With a dark view of humankind, and of the vagaries of chance - bad luck, good luck, dumb luck - the filmmaker has crafted a wicked, winning gem.

Moore is nominated this year, and whether she wins or not, her performance deserves attention. It is one of this very fine actress' defining roles. And it resonates with humanity and heartbreak.

Pray has a great story here, but it's much more than just "The Brady Bunch's Endless Summer."