The mostly British ensemble can do this stuff in their sleep, but Macfadyen and Donovan and Graves, especially, work up the necessary antic angst and silliness.

Cooper, who steered Jeff Bridges through his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart, gets fiercely committed performances from just about everyone in Out of the Furnace.

Witcher makes a remarkably confident filmmaking debut, eliciting excellent performances from his leads and underscoring their romance with a sound track that flavors, rather than overwhelms, the story. [14 Mar 1997, p.03]

McCarthy, Wiig, McKinnon, and Jones bring a spirit of spontaneity to their interactions; it's not exactly seat-of-the-pants improv, but it doesn't feel blocked-out and belabored, either.

Besides Paquin, who delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the maddeningly inconsistent Lisa, also wrenchingly fine are Jeannie Berlin as the best friend of the deceased and J. Smith-Cameron as Lisa's actress mother.

Apart from its anthropomorphic, allegorical angle, Zootopia is also a tale of female empowerment and a classic noir, too.

Somehow, this rollicking day in the life of a band of skateboarding Latino punk-rockers doesn't exude the voyeuristic smarm of previous Clark forays.

Inspired by the grand Technicolor epics of Hollywood yesteryears, First Knight, despite its flaws, is engaging fun. [07 Jul 1995, p.03]

A handsomely staged and craftily constructed tearjerker.

If we now take a woman's right to vote and to hold public office for granted, Suffragette reminds us that it wasn't that long ago when things were different.

Throw in some business with the CIA, add a small army of Serbian thugs and a mysterious Croatian beauty, and The Hunting Party picks up speed, careening through the forests where the Fox may or may not be hiding out. Whatever fate awaits, it can't be good. But it can be fun.

It's all dumb, but it's wonderfully, comfortably dumb in just the right way.

Has an odd magic about it - the magic of Darger's singularly peculiar dreamworld.

Suave, witty and wonderfully acted ensemble piece.

The Chamber of Secrets -- darker, scarier and somewhat better than "Sorcerer's Stone."

Like many graduate students, Love and Other Catastrophes is smart, droll and doesn't always know when to stop talking. [11 Apr 1997, p.03]

Aimed at tweenage girls and mushy romantics of all age and stripe, Penelope has a quick gait and a nice comic tone.

Fry, Gilbert and scenarist Julian Mitchell make the most familiar details of Wilde's downfall fresh and new. [05 Jun 1998, p.04]

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

Lee distills the flavor of this transforming event and hints at how it transformed some who were there. His movie is a contact high.

A wild, wacky, wide-screen reimagining of the vintage radio serial and TV series, the film - with Armie Hammer in the hat and mask, galloping across Texas righting wrongs, and Depp as his trusty Indian sidekick, Tonto - is an epic good time.

An effectively unsettling mix of Southern gothic and Old Testament hugger-mugger, with shades of "The Exorcist" and even "Rosemary's Baby" thrown in.

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

This is a documentarylike film about a man who creates a castle in the air and then moves right in, the "Harold and the Purple Crayon" of the workplace.

By turns wry, rueful and explosively funny.

It's the cars, and the mega-horsepowered action, that matter most. With its driver-POV spinouts, wrong-way chases, and multilane median jumps, the movie is a roaring revel of an automotive fantasy.

That one sentiment repeats throughout: No matter how horrible the assaults, the schools' treatment of the women afterward was worse.

Still stands as a gloriously silly and twisted send-up.