More important, Nicholls has created a rich alternative conclusion, one that poignantly sweetens the love story. It's a novel approach to Great Expectations - sharp and gritty giving way to a sentimental finish - and a satisfying one.

An enjoyably clever and cartoonishly gory rom-zom-com.

There are good things to say about the inspirational Disney sports film McFarland, USA, starting with its up-from-the-scrap-heap story, which happens to be true.

The beauty of the actors and the ravishing landscape of New Zealand goes a long way to make Ben Sombogaart's sudsy film so eminently watchable.

All in all, not good, but not bad.

The parade of senators parroting the rationale for invasion - what we now know was misinformation - does not undermine Young's story. Given the private's eloquence, the flashbacks to 2002 are superfluous.

This profanely hilarious and tonally erratic spoof of buddy movies is funny as it begins in "Miss Congeniality 2" territory, funnier still as it zooms into "Lethal Weapon" climes. But it stops dead, and I mean that literally, when it takes a U-turn into a "Pulp Fiction" sinkhole of slapstick violence.

As a mainstream Hollywood film about men in skirts, the assumption here is that drag queens Make Accessories, Not Love. Even if you're offended by this, or by the attitude that all of life's problems can be solved by a change in decor or lipstick color, or off-put by the assumption that every town in America between the two coasts is populated by rednecks, there are things to like about Wong Foo. [08 Sep 1995, p.03]

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.

A spare and moving study of regret and redemption, marked with chilling truths about a life behind bars.

Few movies are as eloquent in their performances and their art direction.

This modest drama is the art-house equivalent of comfort food: satisfying in its familiarity.

A rollicking, mascara-smearing, intergenerational coed crowd-pleaser. Imagine "Sex and the City" negotiating "Terms of Endearment" with "The Golden Girls."

Unlikely to be remembered in decades to come - or even in months to come, once the next teenage dystopian fantasy inserts itself into movie houses.

Encourages viewers to think outside the big box of super stores such as Wal-Mart.

Tumbledown comes up light in the categories that matter most, miring a capable cast in a forced cable-knit folksiness familiar to anyone who has ever watched anything set in New England.

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

In the end, this earnest, inquisitive film leaves the viewer longing for some sanity, and some hope, in a world that appears to be seriously lacking in both.

A conventional biopic made anything but conventional by the magnitude of its subject's life and accomplishments, and by Idris Elba's imposing performance in the title role.

Too long, too busy, too loud, and too reliant on slam-bang stunt work, Red's glib dialogue and sinister government scenarios begin to wear.

Goosebumps fulfills its purpose, and that's what matters.

Happy Accidents is romantic perversity in reverse.

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.

And talk about transcendent parenting moments: When Lindberg's girls pull out their Barbies, the Pennywise singer goes and gets his Devo doll to play with them.

For all its brilliant touches, Dragon loses its fire midway, nearly flickering out by its perfunctory conclusion.

That this ambitious, if deeply odd, film is so compulsively watchable is a credit to Gibson's compelling performances, both as spiritless Walter and the Cockney-accented voice of the tireless title character.

Kinetic and kooky, with a climactic shoot-out at a rail station that's daring in its ridiculousness.

The story hooks us because stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walters look as fetching in woolens and Wellingtons as they do in the altogether. But it reels us in because it is about people who for so long have paid lip service to making a difference that they are profoundly altered when they actually do.