Insightful and involving.

It has a quiet thoughtfulness that never comes close to being draggy, and a wisdom that is anything but obtuse. It's a film of many themes.

Phantom Boy will appeal to children who have the patience and imagination to immerse themselves in the film's wiggly animation.

Shelly left her daughter - and her audience - a wonderful gift, this movie about the transforming effects of motherhood. Waitress shows how, in giving birth, a woman gives birth to herself - as artist and mother.

A diverting comedy that in its last act becomes unusually sober. While the film both explicitly and implicitly pays tribute to Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," the upshift from irreverent slapstick to reverent sermonette is extremely abrupt.

The River Wild is not a picture that tries to break new ground or even part fresh waters. Yet it is a crisp and exciting exercise, and while it may not be a watershed in Streep's career, she shows that you can take the plunge into an action movie and go swimming without going slumming. [30 Sep 1994, p.03]

Steeped in quiet despair, Lantana is a psychological thriller that emphasizes the psychology over the thrills. It's a smart, heart-twisting picture.

Forster and his team have also mastered the discreet edit, leaving a lot of the blood, gore, and zombie slime to the imagination. (It's still a pretty convincingly creepy affair.)

A winner.

Despite the potential for some supernatural grandiosity, the tone here remains understated and quiet, and Gainsbourg's performance feels lived-in, and deep, and right.

The Edge isn't particularly deep stuff, but Tamahori isn't a particularly deep filmmaker - he's just really, really good, with an affinity for the natural landscape that comes across brilliantly on screen. [26 Sep 1997, p.03]

With its rebellious themes and pharmaceutical props - Ritalin, Prozac, Xanax all get doled out - Charlie Bartlett isn't going to win any awards from parent-teacher groups. But the underlying message of the film, with its nods to "Catcher in the Rye" and - '70s throwback here - "Harold and Maude," is a good one.

The violence here is never in the service of spectacle, always of the story.

The "black Godfather" comes off as a cold-blooded narcissist whose vision of the American Dream is as twisted as it seems to have been rewarding.

An impossibly enjoyable live-action cartoon that plays on our real-life anxieties about vengeful cadres of foreign radicals blowing up people - and places.

Though the story dawdles at times, the visuals are splendid.

The coda to this fine, loving tribute offers restitution, though no tidy resolution.

Michael Jackson's This Is It looks beyond the reconstructed face and spindly body of the late King of Pop and basks in his meteoric light.

Offers two hours of luxury and loveliness, music and art, and a bit of sexually charged madness, too.

Megamind has momentum and dazzle.

A Very Long Engagement is "Cold Mountain" with French people.

The results are exhilarating, thrilling, and extend the wingspan.

He may be a barber, but by saving the community one strand at a time, Calvin is the heir apparent to populist banker George Bailey of "It's a Wonderful Life."

Full disclosure: I saw Monsters vs. Aliens in 2-D. No dorky plastic glasses, no alien ooze flying at my head. More full disclosure: I liked it.

Sweet, poignant, and winningly evocative of the period, though occasionally dogged by predictable scenarios and caricatures.

The film's humor comes in part from the gap between what Oliver says and what the audience sees.

The two generate more heart than they do heat, but that's the point. You want to see them together not just because they're adorable, but because you believe that their characters can take each other to a place neither could get to on their own.

What's not to like about a girl detective who is a good citizen and better student, a leader rather than a follower, a resourceful seamstress who won't cut her clothes to fit this year's fashions?

The movie is hipper than its L.A. establishment credentials would suggest.

An entertainingly hairy paranormal affair.

Has the confessional intimacy of a video diary and performances to match, particularly those of Kyra Sedgwick and Parker Posey.

The story is as basic as a peasant meal - and just as hearty.

It's a joyride until you think about the film's biggest contradiction. How come this movie celebrating the superiority of human feelings over machine precision is most alive when thrilling in the mechanical perfection of the Terminator and T-1000? Inside Terminator 2 beats a human heart. But its soul is that of a killer machine.

Definitely, Maybe gets too coy in spots, and Brooks is a sharper writer at this point in his career than he is a director. But for a film with a half-dozen fully-formed characters that spans 15 years and works in a swell detail about a 1943 edition of "Jane Eyre" - well, it definitely works. No maybes about it.

Abounds with zero-gravity action ballet, frisky interludes of sapphic foreplay, and weepy drama about doomed love. The film also has an irresistibly kitschy theme song: "Close to You," the treacly Burt Bacharach-Hal David smash by the Carpenters.

RoboCop is a solid near-future action pic that poses moral questions about artificial intelligence and remote-control combat systems without getting too preachy or ponderous about it.

Rogen and Efron's characters find a novel new use for automobile airbags, too. These guys are geniuses.

What makes Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead feel particularly vibrant is how the Lampoon's specific art direction is put to use.

Takes startling - and startlingly unpleasant - turns. This is not a film with anything approximating a conventional ending.

One of the better Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire outings. [14 Jun 2004, p.D01]

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot isn't a great movie, but it is something rare and important: a woman's story of self-discovery - having nothing to do with her finding a husband - that has gotten room on the big screen.

Director Jean-Pierre Denis doesn't explore psychological motives, which are, finally, unknowable. What he accomplishes in his chilling, unnerving film is a double portrait of two young women whose lives were as claustrophic, suffocating and chilly as the attics to which they were inevitably consigned.

Part of its appeal lies in the truth and specificity behind the clunky presentation.

What keeps this cornball business from getting out of hand is the commitment of Gyllenhaal, whose performance is fierce and muscular, in and out of the ring.

It's a performance that will make you cringe - with despair, with empathy - as Gosling's Dan takes one self-destructive step after another.

The story -- which has originality and compelling interest to recommend it -- is forgotten as the spectator, clenching his hands, relives those great victories lost and won "on the wing." [03 Dec 1927, p.11]

The real joy of Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein's documentary is not the copious amount of file footage - such as clips from The Tonight Show when Johnny Carson could still smoke at his desk on camera - or Randi's inherent charisma, or even his acts of escape and magic. No, it's his relationship with his partner of 25 years, Jose Alvarez.

One of the things that distinguishes Love & Friendship from the multitude of Austen adaptations - the worthy and the less so - is its heroine. Lady Susan Vernon, a widow of devilish charms, is as frank and fearless a character as Austen ever imagined.

In the end, you just feel good about these people, and that's a nice sensation these days.

In the end, Ficarra and Requa take all the formula ingredients and blend them into a satisfying - and tasty - concoction. "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," meet "All's Well That Ends Well."

It could have been more taut, could have been harder, but 25th Hour still resonates with power and poetry.

The film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense of grief.

Windblown, with a sage and playful Zen vibe, Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time Redux is a color-saturated, slo-mo martial arts piece about time, memory, love, regret, betrayal.

Blissfully, brainlessly satisfying.

Lacks the visceral sweep of "Saving Private Ryan." But Spielberg's story, for all its gut-wrenching intensity, was a fiction. Dahl's movie, slower in pace and conscious of its own artifice, addresses the same issues of courage and sacrifice - and tells a true story. That's worth something. In fact, it's worth a lot.

What's refreshing about Beginners is its sympathy for all of its characters, which translates into the characters' sympathy for each other.

Nicely run through its paces by John Gatins, who also wrote the screenplay (it's his directing debut), Dreamer is, not surprisingly, about daring to dream the big dreams. It's about family, and faith, and facing hard times together.

Herman Melville would have dug this film. Because at bottom, it's less about the epic struggle of human vs. nature, or the soaring ambitions of the human spirit than about obsession.

This film plays out like one of those trigger-happy video games -- it's all cranial splatter. Word to the squeamish: Dawn of the Dead merits a very hard R rating. The depictions of violence are exceedingly graphic.

Though his film is a tad choppy and a lot chatty, Hindman elicits sympathetic performances from leads who demonstrate a deep understanding of movie physics.

All four performances are strong and nuanced, which makes the film oddly compelling. At the same time, all four characters are hard to like, difficult to care about. They're like car-crash victims in a demolition derby of narcissism and lies.

Like Shane Black's directing debut, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" with Robert Downey, Jr., his The Nice Guys borrows from noir traditions and pulp fiction, throwing a fresh coat of smart-alecky comedy over the whole thing.

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

A fresh, striking and rewarding piece of work.

Admittedly, it is redundant to make a comedy about the Celtics because their current team is a joke. But it is also deeply satisfying. [19 Apr 1996, p.03]

Did I enjoy Shadyac's film? Very much. Do I think he made many of his points more accessibly and entertainingly in Bruce Almighty? You bet.

A first film with a deft comedic touch and a trio of charming stars, Saving Face isn't deep - but it doesn't profess to be.

Serves up a dramatic comedy piquant as its title.

At the multiplex where so many holiday movies feel regifted, This Christmas is a gift.

Y&J could have been made anywhere, really; it's a tale of being scared, of being hopeful, of the unsettling intersection between commitment and loss.

Yojiro Takita's movie simultaneously tickles tears of mourning as it wrings laughs about the meaning of life.

In addition to Carell and Fey, Date Night boasts a deft supporting cast...Best of all are a very droll James Franco and Mila Kunis as the downtown hipsters for whom the Fosters are mistaken.

Michelle Williams is a beautiful moper.

Comparisons to HBO's "Girls" will abound, but Fort Tilden has a more satirical bent than Lena Dunham's much-talked-about show.

Makes for the most thrilling action movie of the year.

Crafty, cutting movie.

If the film itself isn't brilliant, its star most definitely is.

An economical thriller, both narratively and budgetarily, Sound of My Voice serves up moments of extreme dread and discomfort, but works a winning undercurrent of playful absurdity into the material as well.

House is one of the most exciting genre discoveries in years. [17 Jun 2010, p.14]

A powerful indictment of Russia's illegal adoption industry - and a story of pipsqueak resolve and resilience - The Italian is clear-eyed and tough in its depiction of a corrupt, atrophied social order.

A parablelike melodrama with obvious symbolic meaning.

There is so little emotionally or intellectually at stake in most popular entertainment that Goya's Ghosts, Milos Forman's challenging, compelling and wildly uneven film, shoots like a cannonball into the solar plexus. I can't remember when I've been so physically and mentally shattered.

Ain't no mountain high enough to keep the Funk Brothers from getting to you.

Penny Marshall brings a logic to the premise that is sustained through most of the movie. And where the other movies snickered at the sexual possibilities in the idea, she faces up to them with both candor and taste.

Fascinating and flawed spy thriller.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on.

Question: Is life still like a box of chocolates if you're going in reverse? The answer, in the case of the curiously Gumpian The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is a gooey yes.

For its first two acts this flashy vehicle is an anodized titanium streamline baby. Then comes a robot rumble that brings the action to a crashing halt.

A well-shot, gore-free psychological thriller about our elemental fear of darkness, Lights Out has a good deal in common with "The Babadook." While it can't touch Jennifer Kent's masterpiece, it does mark the arrival of a major new talent.

While Thorpe ostensibly explores the sibilant consonants and careful enunciation that characterize what we have come to think of as "sounding gay," his film is really about his identity.

Wang's young actors are impressively natural, and his documentary-style camerawork captures the rhythms and cacophony of the big city, all its crazy-quilt comings and goings.

Remarkably poignant (and pungent) when it comes to child psychology.

For its first hour, it's a delightful cloak-and-dagger comedy starring a brave Beagle James Bond and a depraved Persian Dr. Evil.

The four women couldn't be better - or better matched. As always, Parker is the standout, cracking your heart and cracking you up with equal ease.

While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

The middle 40 minutes of Lone Survivor have to be some of the toughest battle scenes in Hollywood history - an epic, close-range firefight that finds the SEALs throwing themselves down rock faces like superheroes. Only they aren't superheroes - they bleed, they break.

While Weitz's story is diverting, the performances cut deeper than the film.

Best of Enemies offers a bracing view of a pivotal time in our recent history, as Vietnam and race riots scarred a nation's soul, and as the Establishment and the Counter Culture exchanged epithets and blows.