This furry family comedy about a boy and his border terrier is irresistible, if not exactly in the league of "Babe."

Despite its title, The Exploding Girl is an oddly tranquil experience.

Fascinating and strangely involving piece.

Ranging in age from 30 to 96, the Berlevag men clearly enjoy being on camera and are unusually candid about their various pasts as Casanovas and hashish addicts.

Fast Food Nation picks up, and drops off, various members of its cast, sometimes without a satisfying resolution. But its final scenes, inside a real working meatpacking plant, on the killing floor, are brutally to the point.

At its best it is one of the most dynamic movies from a most dynamic filmmaker, now 76.

But the ending, at once ambiguous and obvious, is a letdown -- a frustratingly literal-minded, or literary-minded, conceit.

Maybe it's just the subtitles, but it would seem that Fontaine has a keener eye for the elements that made Chanel's style than she has an ear for dialogue. But she gets a splendid performance from Tautou.

Morel and his crew certainly know how to stage action: the fight scenes and shootouts, the stairwell pursuits and motorway mayhem, are as good, if not better, than anything to come out of Hong Kong in a long time.

Quite literally the blockbuster of the year.

Jolie's Maleficent is magnificent.

Heartbreaking and sometimes dazzlingly effective, the film still has flaws -- most of them in a too-often-maudlin script.

A pink-collar "Sex and the City" made urgent by the performance of Nathalie Baye.

Irreverent, provocative and provoking.

Einsteinian, Kubrickian, Malickian, Steinbeckian - Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's epically ambitious space opera, is all that. And more. And, alas, less.

A remarkably weird and wonderful exercise in psychological terror featuring a virtuoso performance by Scottish actor James McAvoy.

This unassuming and unexpectedly moving picture set in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood is a sugarplum-and-sofrito affair centering on the Rodriguez household.

Push has a cool, sinewy style, energy to burn.

Handles the strained daddy/daughter bond with sufficient lightness and laughs so that fathers won't mind accompanying their spawn.

Compulsively entertaining documentary.

Michael Keaton has this incredible, I’m-at-the-edge-of-the-abyss look that should be taught as "the hangdog" in drama school.

Graced with unusually expressive and seamless voice work by Drew Barrymore and George Lopez, the best of its kind since "Babe."

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

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.

As directed by the stupendously talented and aggressively eccentric George Miller (creator of Mad Max and producer of the first Babe), Pig in the City is far busier and faster than the original, which was directed by Chris Noonan. This has some benefits. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

While I much liked The Duchess, this portrait feels unfinished.

A running joke about hipster clichés is tiresome, and the movie's plot threads are uneven. But watching Field work her magic is so delightful.

They're not exactly Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy, but French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch's "Spanish Apartment" movies - 2002's "L'Auberge Espagnole," 2005's "Russian Dolls," and now, Chinese Puzzle - have their devotees, too.

With its clever structure and pacing, its range of emotional notes, and its remarkable use of magic realism, The 9th Life of Louis Drax makes for an absorbing and memorable mystery.

Betrayal is at the heart of this story, but also dreams of liberty and a life where all people are treated with respect.

A triumph for Cheadle and Sandler, whose performances strew the seeds of regeneration.

An edgy, disturbing drama.

A gloriously tacky horror movie with an inclination toward the occult, The Mother of Tears hails from the Italian schlockmeister Dario Argento, who photographs his Euro movie star daughter, Asia Argento, with something more than paternal pride.

You go to a Daniels movie not to be entertained, but edified. While not everyone goes to the movies for self-improvement, you will leave this one having witnessed phenomenal acting.

Is Steve Jobs a great film? I don't think so. It's an achievement, certainly, full of Sorkin flourishes, breathtaking and brilliant one-liners that reveal a lot about the characters who deliver them.

Filmmaker Kormákur orchestrates all this with broad strokes and winking intrigue, although the line between hambone melodrama and irony-tinged satire gets walked across a few too many times.

The film delivers what it promises - an education and a thrill.

A one-of-a-kind experience that boasts a twice-in-a-lifetime performance from Nicolas Cage. The actor has not gone this deep into the abyss since "Vampire's Kiss" (1989).

Throughout, Bergsholm's poker-faced performance creates the effect that we are watching the misadventures of an actual teenager. It may be a slight comedy but Turn Me On, Dammit! is enormously entertaining.

The 85-year-old Chilean-born auteur returns this week with his latest directorial attempt, The Dance of Reality, an intensely personal, deeply felt, if at times solipsistic autobiographical work about his childhood in Tocopilla, a seaside town at the edge of the Chilean desert.

Great as Whitaker is in this juicy slab of Oscar bait, Macdonald's movie doesn't have much to offer beyond a pair of stunning performances, propulsive editing, fantastic scenery and the heartbeat rhythms of African music.

It's a bloodsucker's paradise.

Kill Your Darlings is a tale of inspiration, then, but also a tale of jealousy, obsession, homophobia, and homicide. It's a whirlwind. Even if it doesn't all hang together, it's worth the ride.

A spare document featuring one talking head. But what a talking head and what a story!

This peripatetic farce practically propels itself.

Though I liked Love's unhurried pace and oddball digressions, its obligatory romantic-comedy resolution seemed too schematic for what had preceded it.

Ripe with homoeroticism, but also with what the director — who made the film after recovering from a stroke a few years back — calls "the scent of murder."

A solid double rather than a grand slam, The Sandlot remains a refreshing antidote to the daily round of contract squabbles on the sports page.

It's got one of the best kisses in movie history: Spidey, hanging upside down, delivers an open-mouth smooch to Mary Jane, a lip-lock for the ages.

It's a compelling piece of propaganda that argues for Shakur, whose 1996 murder in Las Vegas at age 25 remains unsolved, as a complicated individual, ambitious artist and magnetic personality by using the most persuasive weapons at its command: Tupac himself.

Sunshine Superman, named for the Donovan song, is about more than just Boenish. It's about the power of the image, something that Strauch uses to great effect.

Her (Chadha) film tastily demonstrates that variety is the spice of not only American life, but of American cuisine.

As a director, Cassavetes is a keen observer of character and social interaction but not yet much of a visual stylist (which might also describe the improvisational dramas made by her actor/director father, John).

Sure, it's a skewed view through adolescent eyes, but it's one that still speaks to the aspirations, agendas, image-making and spin control behind a real, grown-up political election.

The result is visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.

An undeniable and, indeed, unprecedented technical feat that's a feast for the eye, Dinosaur is less easy on the ear.

A weird fusion of blaxploitation and American indie, built on a template of old-style, follow-your-dream Hollywood drama. But it works - sometimes magnificently.

A charming, warm-hearted Swedish dramedy about the redemptive power of neighborly love.

Much as I enjoyed this diversion, I couldn't help but think that The Princess and the Frog had better songs and (hand-painted) animation, and that Mulan was a ripping adventure that didn't need tweaking to qualify as an action flick.

Has a glorious good time satirizing the extravagant lengths to which the military and intelligence establishments will go if they think there's a payoff at the other end.

Alvarez triumphs because he made one crucial decision: Avoid digital animation and use only practical in-camera special effects. He uses every trick from classic Hollywood and invents a few of his own.

The value and uses of spectacle become part of the story in Far From Home, which can be read as a bit of playful in-house MCU criticism of CGI fatigue.

Director John Crowley trots his crew around London, working up a suitable amount of suspense. And paranoia.

Dedication works anyway, thanks to Theroux's jumping visuals and Crudup's jumpy performance.

Isn't exactly fraught with psychological depth and nuance, but as a stalker-stalkee suspenser, the pic has some nice things going for it.

Striking a balance between Howard's harum-scarum comedies such as Night Shift and Splash and his fuzzy family "dramedies" such as Cocoon and Parenthood, The Paper delivers the goods - and also babies and the news. [25 March 1994, p.03]

With Sarandon in the title role, Scafaria has a winner: The actress tackles Marnie headlong, with heart and soul, trolling the fancy outdoor shopping mall for products to buy and for people to intercept and hang on to.

A turbocharged and pungently enjoyable take on the sport so many observers see - Stone, of course, included - as a reflection of the darker side of American life.

More important, Nicholls has created a rich alternative conclusion, one that poignantly sweetens the love story. It's a novel approach to Great Expectations - sharp and gritty giving way to a sentimental finish - and a satisfying one.

How much is shaman and how much is showman is hard to tell. Some of Levitch's staccato soliloquies have the ring of truth, and some have the ring of jive. Either way, though, The Cruise is a journey worth taking. [27 Nov 1998, p.03]

A pleasant taste of Roman life.

Few American directors drive this wedge between mind and gut as masterfully as Michael Mann.

A stylish thriller so highly strung it zings, gives us Hopkins, an actor at the top of his game, in material that's only middling.

A gentle fable about how the young boy from Zurich struggles to fit in rather than stand out, Vitus is both a cautionary tale for pushy parents and an endearing, if eccentric, empowerment fantasy for precocious children.

No walk in the park, Tyrannosaur is a character study steeped in the British (and Irish) tradition of social realism, and the experience of watching this skillfully made film is, well, exhausting.

Franklin has enormous fun using these varied technologies to ramp up the suspense in a movie that is the most purely entertaining thriller since "No Way Out."

The pair are scrappy and smart and riff off each other like a no-budget, indie version of Tracy and Hepburn. It's impossible not to like them, and there's absolutely no reason not to.

A jazzy, immensely absorbing thriller.

It hobbles its otherwise fascinating premise by descending into hagiography. Webb's story is a tragedy, to be sure, but portraying him as a saint and martyr does little to advance the truth.

The borrowings from other movies, going all the way back to the car chase in 1968's Bullitt, are heavy. But Bay has three leads to lend weight and dimension to characters who are hardly original and flatly written.

The film is an omnibus ride through Brighton Beach, Central Park, the West Village, and Tribeca.

Rodriguez is riveting, with a drop-dead cynical charm.

Yelchin and Jones are up to the challenge of suggesting much by doing little.

Although it's pretty much impossible to avoid the cliches and constructs of a war movie, Ayer pushes his actors to find the adrenalized fear, and fire, in their guts. Pitt brings "Wardaddy" alive in ways that put his cartoonish "Inglourious Basterds" Army lieutenant to shame. Lerman's rabbity dread is palpable.

Mostly, Not Fade Away is a hit.

Writing with her sister, Karen, Jill Sprecher rigs up an elaborate cause-and-effect comedy of errors, with Kinnear's predatory protagonist as both perp and victim. I won't say more than that, but Thin Ice is deeper than it first appears.

A muscular, no-nonsense genre pic (well, two genres: prisons and boxing), Undisputed isn't going to score points for originality, and the climactic bout is a bit of a letdown. But Rhames, as the cocksure millionaire pugilist, seethes brute force.

One of the film's cleverest devices is a "Personality Diagnostic Checklist" that equates corporate "serial behaviors" - exploitation, deception, greed, lack of empathy and guilt - with the antisocial makeup of a certifiable psychopath.

While it lacks the heart and hipness of the similar-themed Pixar odysseys, The Meltdown has the physical humor of slapstick comedy.

British screen stalwarts Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton appear as locals - he twitchy and reticent, she chatty and full of cheer, both with their hearts in the right place.

A cartoon that's truly cinematic in scope, and a story that's compelling and heartfelt - even if the heart belongs to a big, four-legged herbivore.

Best when skewering New Age entrepreneurs for what might be called Compassionate Capitalism. Steve Martin is sublime as Kate's boss, Barry, purveyor of organic food and Zen koans.

This provocative account of a war-weary administration that denied Surratt her right to a fair trial starts slow but builds momentum in the scenes with Wright and Evan Rachel Wood as Surratt's flinty daughter, Anna.

It is also to Khouri's credit that she has written a movie that begins with the men on Mars and women on Venus and ends with their being able to share a planet. [4 Aug 1995, p.03]

Winterbottom also has the insight to share the novelist's suggestion that landscape can reflect and, to a degree, even shape character.

Coolly crafted crime thriller.

Give Saldanha's film an A-plus for visuals and a B-minus for story.

Gives audiences something more than just a heart-stopping beauty to contemplate.