A light and extremely likable comedy -- just what the doctor ordered right now.

Possession, humiliation, jealousy, revelation . . . they're all painted in light, swift strokes by the veteran director and his two stars.

In A Somewhat Gentle Man, a deadpan comedy best described as the Coen Brothers Norwegian style, Stellan Skarsgard is colorless and oddly configured, like a potato fallen from the sack.

As entertaining as it is exasperating.

Part biography, part idol worship, Bhutto is a bullet train through South Asia, chronicling its subject's 54 years, a period of unrest in her nation and family.

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]

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."

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.

As he's done in such otherwise diverse pictures as Lone Star, City of Hope, and The Secret of Roan Inish, in Limbo writer-director Sayles circles down into a community of friends, colleagues, strangers - and shows what happens when paths cross, and sometimes double-cross. [04 Jun 1999, p.03]

David Ayer, the writer of "Training Day," director of "Street Kings," writer/director of "Harsh Times," does not make movies about princesses with witchy curses, about yuppie commitment-phobes, about talking plush toys. His territory is narrow, but he owns it: cops, in Los Angeles.

The heart of the matter - and the viscera - is the action, and one man's determination to survive. Apocalypto is primal.

Its dabs of dark comedy and stabs of gore, still rings with a sense of the real. It's electric-charged.

And if there's a problem with Tintin, it's that it's too big and booming.

Peter Glenville's staging of the material is the opposite of cinematic, but the pleasure of these two extravagantly gifted actors at the top of their game - their diction! their conviction! their beauty! - is enormous.

Unexpectedly fresh, alive, and vibrant - and wonderfully traumatizing.

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.

It's giving nothing away to say that Munro makes it to Bonneville, and breaks the record - which apparently still stands - on his two-wheel contraption.

The imagery is uniquely that of Oshii, who deserves a place in the pantheon of visual artists.

A wise, wistful study of hope and dread.

At a certain point, The Homesman will take you by surprise. By the end, a ferry ride across the Missouri River, it will take your heart.

Fragmented, dreamlike, a whir of memories and misery, We Need to Talk About Kevin is unsettling, but also somehow unnecessary.

As Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands reminded us, Burton always has been more absorbed by what his audience sees than by what his movies say. It's part of his unique talent as a filmmaker, but it leads him to ignore the flaws in the structure of what is, after all, supposed to be an exciting adventure film.

Easily the best computer-animated feature to come from Hollywood in a long while, Monster House is also one of the weirdest. A creepy-crawly, freak-show Halloween yarn.

Black Mass, a down and dirty crime drama based on the exploits of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, is thrilling for a number of reasons.

A thrilling, gorgeous actioner about a massive tsunami that wipes a tourist town off the map.

Bittersweet and funny.

Kari's film, witty and sad, is a spare, small thing, but Noi has a poetry about it, and a poignancy.

It's an action movie that's also an intellectual-action flick.