It's a scary tale.

Bacon's portrait chills to the bone.

Hip, stylish, funny.

Intelligent, scary (scorpions! lots of scorpions!) and full of the possibilities of scientific fact taken to far-reaching (but credible) extremes, The Arrival delivers more bang for the buck than its high-profile multiplex-mates. [31 May 1996, p.3]

The Core is unabashed Hollywood spectacle, but with a cast of up-from-indie actors that makes the cataclysmic kitsch all the more fun to behold.

A polished piece of advocacy filmmaking, He Named Me Malala begins - and is intercut with - beautiful animated sequences featuring Malala's 19th-century namesake, Malalai of Maiwand, an Afghani Pashtun poet who inspired her countrymen to rally against an onslaught of British troops.

One caveat: The film has more blood-splatter than a dozen zombie movies. If you can handle that, Doomsday's drunken mash-up of futuristic and feudal is surprisingly satisfying.

Spider is a difficult film, but an inspired one, the movie equivalent of eating a meal of artfully prepared eel or sea urchin. It's for those with adventurous tastes and no fear of squishy textures.

Twilight - directed with savvy humor by Catherine Hardwicke - turns vampirism into a metaphor for teen lust.

Watts gives a deep and Oscar-worthy performance here, displaying the steely composure that made Plame a valued NOC (non-official cover operative).

For a film that strives so hard to show the sheer messiness of real people's lives, Burning Plain does have an impossibly neat ending.

Even the Rain strikes a deep and resonant chord.

A genre pastiche that's fun to watch, although it's also frustrating.

If a movie with suicide as a central theme can be deemed funny, then writer/director Craig Johnson has pulled it off, mixing heartache and humor and giving Wiig, especially, the opportunity to shine.

As it is, most of X2's action is restricted to the Northeast Corridor, with a climactic face-off in the western Rockies, where, in typical blockbuster fashion, everything goes kablooey and ka-bam.

Works the basics with style and intelligence.

Loaded with Hitchcockian hugger-mugger, this is a genre Polanski clearly revels in.

Among the slew of recent futuristic hell-in-a-handbasket spectacles, Elysium takes the cake.

This is a smart, spirited spoof that will leave you with a smile on your face - and an appetite for some serious '70s funk to play on the eight-track in your solid gold Cadillac convertible.

Doesn't match up against the new millennium martial artistry of "The Matrix," nor do the special effects - but he knows how to establish characters and relationships.

An enjoyably trippy Japanese animated feature.

A comedy about friendship, faith and the acting life, Le Grand Role is unabashedly corny and tear-jerking - and still quite likable.

It's all head-spinning and lovely - and a little exhausting, too.

A sad and funny examination of issues of racial subjugation, cultural stereotypes and sexual mores. Although some of its filmmaking techniques seem naive and anachronistic now, there is much that is bold, inventive and poignant about Van Peebles' feature debut. [09 Nov 1994, p.E01]

"Lousy times make lousy people," someone opines, and maybe that's the point Romero's trying to drive home.

Although its origin-story machinations get the better of it, Ant-Man isn't a bust.

Not only are LaBeouf and Bridges terrific, but Jon Heder is hilarious as surfing fowl Chicken Joe. And Zooey Deschanel is saucy fun as penguin lifeguard Lani.

It's not exactly high art, but it's certainly high.