Riveting and heartstoppingly fine documentary.

A smart and creepy fable in which the myth of the vagina dentata - yes, a toothed sex organ - is transplanted to teen suburbia.

Basic as a home movie -- and twice as touching -- Charles Lane's Sidewalk Stories is a black-and-white silent comedy that pays tribute both to Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and to the urban homeless. [06 Apr 1990, p.4]

Eloquent, moving, and deeply troubling, Little Accidents is a true contemporary tragedy.

An entertaining foray into a world of spy guys, stakeouts and secret government machinations, Spartan teems with the kind of terse crypto-speak that is the playwright and filmmaker's stock-in-trade.

A Raimi-esque mix of gross-out madness and sick laughs.

A maniacal, over-the-top, daring, and insanely funny satire of the American cultus from Hollywood to Madison Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue, Machete has all the nutrition a growing film geek could possibly need.

Feels both absolutely of the 1970s and absolutely fresh.

In presenting their testimony to the jury of public opinion, Morris would seem to be building a case for absolving some of them of mistreatment charges and implicitly asking for an investigation of those who were not charged.

At times, Spare Parts sails perilously close to the saccharine. But the film is a fine example of a message movie that does justice both to its important subject matter and to its characters' inner lives.

It's hilarious - in a Scandinavian Sartre-esque sort of way.

A torn-from-the-headlines tale of institutional racism and injustice in the Lone Star State of not-so-long-ago, American Violet might not be subtle, but it's certainly powerful.

A work that demands patience, and it will easily exasperate some moviegoers.

A feast for the eyes and ears as its story is a banquet for the heart.

Was it just three years ago that Perry made his feature debut with "Diary of a Mad Black Woman?" Then his filmmaking was strictly amateur; now his sweeping pans and portentous closeups approach those of Pedro Almódovar.

Carion's cri de coeur is at once a historical chronicle, an ode to the European Community, and a not-so-veiled critique of a 21st-century war.

Like Connery - but in different proportions - Craig is earthy and erotic, holding himself like a smoking gun.

This drag-queen melodrama, like its star, perseveres.

Melodramatic and strangely moving.

The Trip to Italy doesn't feel entirely new, but there's comfort in familiarity, too. And as Brydon and Coogan note in one discourse, it's the rare sequel (The Godfather: Part II) that's better than its forebear.

In the film, the music, beginning with a muted a cappella ballad, is from Eastwood himself.

"The Silence of the Lambs" gave us an articulate, Euro-suave gourmand cannibal, but served up pretty much the same stew.

Remember the name Shohreh Aghdashloo. The heartbreakingly fine Iranian actress is only a subsidiary character in House of Sand and Fog...But she is the soul of this pungent film.

A throwback in style, pace, and storytelling to the 1970s and the downbeat mood pieces of directors like Bob Rafelson.

A droll piece of deadpan played with mostly unerring pitch by a talented cast.

Full of pungent and telling observation.

Speed Racer offers a crazy, turbo-charged mix of cartoon kitsch, gamer action, and a wild new way to think of - and look at - movies.

I'll See You in My Dreams is delicate and nuanced, with writing that rejects, or at least reshapes, the cliches of movies about people facing the glare of their sunset years.

The movie has a musical rather than a cinematic shape, defined by songs played in their entirety.

A Summer's Tale is one of those movies where it looks like nothing is happening; there is a lot of walking and talking (against exquisite backdrops), dissections and discourse about the intricacies of romance, the false signals, the fickleness.

In the end, Arbitrage disappoints a bit. The writing isn't as sharp, or sophisticated, as it needs be. And the cynicism exhibited by Miller and the circle of traders and tycoons he moves in seeps into the fabric of the story itself.

The Babadook, then, is a study in madness that lurks beneath the surface. But it is also very much (and amusingly) a look at the trials of parenting, especially single-parenting: those days when you just want to, well, get your child out of the picture somehow. Of course, you don't act on those impulses. That's what the movies are for.

Disarmingly laid back for this kind of fare, with a jazzy musical score (courtesy of David Holmes) and a sleek, straight-ahead style, Haywire may not make much sense plotwise, but it's a rollicking 90 minutes.

A very curious and very entertaining mix, the Labradoodle of inspirational romantic-comedy-melodramas.

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

Illuminating and unsettling.

By the time this globe-hopping, movie-star-crammed disaster saga - directed with petrifying efficiency by Steven Soderbergh - comes full circle, you'll never want to touch a subway pole or elevator button or ATM again.

In supporting roles, Bullock and Hanks deliver performances that are low-key and perfectly scaled. Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright are, likewise, excellent as a couple Oskar meets on his reconnaissance expedition.

Both austere and garish, simultaneously dry and sentimental, tightly repressed and extravagantly expressive, bourgeois and bohemian. It's a seesaw, but Dorrie finds the balance.

One of the most insightful films about the War on Terror since 9/11.

The two leads, Edgerton and Hardy, pull off their respective roles - rising above the cliches and the melodrama - with ferocity and focus.

An efficient, if not exactly inspiring, espionage thriller, full of high-tech gadgetry (surveillance drones! flash drives!) and low-tech action (car chases! shootouts! a shovel to the head!).

Mr. Hulot's Holiday is concerned not with character, but with how the unreliability of nature, human nature, and mechanical objects makes human actions and interactions awkwardly funny. [05 Mar 2010, p.W12]

Trumbo, a rousing documentary as ornery, orotund and captivating as its subject (1905-1976), is an anatomy of irony.

An unexpectedly moving family portrait of cousins we didn't know we had.

Dreamy and impressionistic, full of debauchery, drugs, disco, and dazzling couture, Saint Laurent is a biopic that picks its moments, leaving backstory behind.

Phoenix's performance is one of such wild, intense abandon that it is not to be believed, and this, in fact, was my problem as The Master sailed into its momentum-less second hour.

It's business as usual, even if that business is pulled off with brilliant precision, ingeniously choreographed action, and an itinerary boasting some of the most photogenic spots on Earth.

The Force Awakens is half reboot, half remake, and all fun.

Footage from VanDyke's travels provides the first-person narrative thrust to Point and Shoot, but Curry's interviews with VanDyke, back in his Baltimore home, are what give the film its larger, more challenging context.

It mostly is a triumph of stagecraft and speaker-blowing freestyling.

Safe, disturbing and edgy and grounded by Moore's riveting performance, resonates with uncertainty.

The story is simple, illogical, mysterious, strange, and, of course, very, very sparse.

A high-performance low comedy, House succeeds because Martin's Peter Sanderson and Latifah's Charlene Morton each plays Henry Higgins to the other's Eliza Doolittle.

With the likes of Nicholson, Keaton, Reeves and Peet -- and a fleeting, funny few minutes with McDormand -- Something's Gotta Give is never less than entertaining. And once in a while it's sweetly, and extremely, funny.

The movie pivots from what I expected it to be: a family drama about an outsider, as the opening conversation suggests. Instead, it becomes an eerie mood piece about secrets buried deep in a family's fabric.

Monsters, like a serpent eating its own tail, comes back on itself in ways that haunt, and hurt.

In the engaging Looking for Eric, Loach, the master of British kitchen sink social drama - tries a bit of imaginary whimsy.

Stern and Sundberg, best known for their Darfur documentary "The Devil Came on Horseback," did not shrink from the atrocities in Sudan; nor do they shrink from the fame-hungry excesses here.

The sameness of the two movies doesn't make the second feel like a re-tread. If anything, it feels comfortable.

Hopelessly raunchy, helplessly romantic, and wickedly, wickedly funny.

Kenya and Bryan are both victims of racism and also guilty of it. But the colorful mosaic of their courtship is no downer like "Crash," but rather an upbeat account of expanding social and romantic possibilities in a world where women wear the suits and men speak the language of flowers.

At its best, the film's visual dazzle equals the tasty wordplay of the novel. But it is overlong, overscored, and curiously misshapen.

Yet, despite a mesmerizing performance by Gyllenhaal - he's as transfixing as a cobra in a snake charmer's dance - and a terrific turn by Riz Ahmed as an unskilled homeless kid Louis hires as his assistant, Nightcrawler doesn't quite have the satirical smarts that made "Network" a classic.

A movie about people who literally carry a lot of emotional baggage, metaphorically unpack it, and spiritually lighten their loads. By the end, I felt lighter. Which is closer to enlightenment than most movies get.

Roth, who has taken more than a few cues from Raimi, David Lynch (whom Roth worked with), and George Romero (Night of the Living Dead), is working in a horror tradition that goes way back -- and he's working it with nasty glee.

Spinney comes across as a man whose warm spirit is literally at the core of the loving, if loopy Big Bird.

Directed with an easygoing grace by Campbell Scott, has the feel of a coming-of-age novel.

I've rarely encountered such pure poetry of action as in the opening minutes of Deepwater Horizon, director Peter Berg's exciting and emotionally wrenching thriller.

The matchless Alberto Sordi - a contemporary of Peters Sellers and a progenitor of Steve Martin - stars as the buffoon Everyman, Antonio Badalamenti, a perfectly poised figure destined for the pratfall.

Apted opts not to show the horrendous cruelty inflicted on thousands upon thousands of captive Africans, shackled and chained, making their way to the Americas in ships. Instead, he has Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists describe the inhumane conditions - in the precise, passionate language of legislators who believe that human decency is more important than money and power.

The Assassin is not "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and it is certainly not "Kill Bill". But Hou - a linchpin of Taiwan's New Wave movement, the director of "A City of Sadness" and "The Puppetmaster" - evokes the magic, the majesty, the artistry of the martial-arts movie tradition, and brings a Zen-like sense of observation to the proceedings

Something about the way the film has been assembled doesn't feel altogether organic.

A triumphant, feel-good, laugh-out-loud, sports biopic.

A tale of childhood innocence and adult corruption - and the point where the two intersect - I'm Not Scared is a lyrical thriller inspired by the run of kidnappings that befell Italy in the 1970s.

A Very Brady Sequel isn't quite as successful as its big-screen forerunner. The contrast between the time-warped Bradys and the '90s world around them seems a little forced here, and the sexual double entendres - and there are lots of them - are almost painfully arch. But the cast is dead-on in its impersonations of the original Brady gang, great pains have been taken to re-create the cheesy pop furnishings and fashions of the 1970s, and the writers have crafted some inspired bits of lunacy, even if more than a few of the gags are destined to rocket right over the heads of non-aficionados. [23 Aug 1996, p.03]

It's a gently provocative film diary about tobacco and its mixed legacy.

The plot and dialogue are still stilted and stupid, but that only proves that Justin Lin, who has directed the last four F & Fs, has his priorities straight.

Sweet. The pun is unavoidable. It's the only adjective that fully captures the flavor of the romantic comedy Brown Sugar.

It's an interesting look at an often glossed-over aspect of the subculture - although the doc sags as it progresses into the mid-1990s and current modes of fashion.

A slick, stylish hardboiled caper filtered through a druggy haze and borrowing a bit of a "Memento" revenge motif and "Pulp Fiction" playfulness.

The humans, particularly the wistful Wilson, deadpan Alan Arkin (as Grogan's editor) and Nathan Gamble, a 10-year-old who plays the eldest Grogan child, are very affecting. Aniston, who has great offbeat comic timing, doesn't quite find her rhythm here.

Béart, too beautiful for words, brings a complex swirl of emotions, elegantly restrained and marked with pain, to this finely wrought work.

A snappily fun Mantrap Movie, as films about husband-hunting gals are known, is that rare hybrid of romantic comedy and Super Bowl.

Most of the footage is stunning, yet the film is more about observation than visual stimulation.

Those who give into its spell will find this a gentle, moving, and deeply intelligent portrait of the awkward, fumbling steps teens make into adulthood, and the promise of first love that draws them on.

Delivery Man, with its democratic band of half-siblings and its feel-good view of humankind, is what it is: a reproductive remake that will make you laugh. More than once or twice.

That the fantasy comes crashing back to earth seems all but inevitable. That Rudo y Cursi doesn't crash in the process - that's muy bien.

A slow and knotted-up film, but one imbued with a keen sense of what motivates people beyond mere avarice.

Until its conventional third act, Elysian Fields takes surprising turns. Garcia, Coburn and particularly Jagger surprise throughout.

Here, Jews are not victims of genocide, but victors in the organized resistance against it.

Enormously satisfying.

There's probably not much of an audience for Elmo in Grouchland beyond the toddler crowd.

If Blow Dry isn't a rousing triumph on the order "of The Full Monty" and "Brassed Off," Rickman, Richardson and Nighy make sure it's a winning film.

Simplistic and jingoistic. But it's also explosively fun.

I also like that when Our Hero starts swinging from skyscrapers, he's not just emulating Tarzan, but is working out the Newtonian physics of action and reaction.

It is at once inspiring and troubling.

Brosnan is good, and he and Dyrholm erase any and all signs of contrivance in the plot, the script.