Apparently it’s the second film of a trilogy Demme intends on Young -- and the middles are always the hardest parts to get right, yeah?

Spider-Man 2 succeeds in pretty much the same way "Superman II" did -- only more so.

With much dialogue coming from the Charles Portis novel, this is an exceptionally clever and eloquent Western with surprising levity among the mayhem. [01 Jun 2007, p.34]

20 Feet From Stardom spends time as well with Claudia Lennear, Táta Vega and Lisa Fischer. None of the three ever found much success as a solo artist, but you probably can't listen to a classic-rock radio station for a half-hour without hearing one of them backing up Joe Cocker, David Bowie, Tina Turner or the Rolling Stones.

Is it a great movie? Maybe not. But it is a great step forward in moviemaking. Shrug it off if that makes you feel better, but starting today you live in a post-Avatar movie world.

Pina, so exquisitely made and filled with such powerful beauty, suggests thrilling new possibilities for the marriage of movies and dance.

Frightening stuff, and made all the more so because of how matter-of-factly by writer-director David Michôd plays it.

The performances are universally good, the 3-D is utterly gorgeous, and the nutshell history of the early days of movies is inspiring.

Like the toy it's based on, it's goofy and colorful and something adults and children can enjoy together.

Ladybird, Ladybird is a scathing indictment of a meddlesome social-service sysBased on a true story, and set in a large English city, it is wrenching viewing, guaranteed to make complacent audiences reconsider their attitudes toward social welfare, single parents and the lot of battered, state-dependent women. [27 Jan 1995, p.12]

Exciting spectacle of a master director reining in his abilities to create a work that is etched in acid, burnished in smoke.

One of this year's funniest movies -- and its most inspirational sports drama -- is a documentary.

Raimi as a filmmaker is clearly having more fun than he's had in years. So will his fans.

The octogenarian pianist Seymour Bernstein is the charming, inspirational subject of this appreciative, occasionally fawning documentary.

Every profile is fascinating, but certain ones stand out.

If you're willing to do the work, Triad Election pays you in tragedy.

For much of its going, Up in the Air moves with the same refreshing pace and attitude that marked Reitman's "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno" -- with the added frisson that the subject matter is so torn-from-the-headlines that it feels, in a good way, like reality TV.

It's a testament to Van Sant's way with actors that the performances are better than the lines and that the film tugs undeniably at the heart as the awful finale falls. But a lack of poetry and freshness in the writing nags.

While Tarantino's famous fight sequences are grisly, funny and genuinely entertaining, his love scenes are so tender, so fraught, you fear for the safety of your own heart.

In absorbing drama and staggering emotions, it renders an issue too often seen as black or white in heartbreaking gray.

The longer it goes on, the less your mind settles. You may not believe in a hell in which a lake of fire rages, but we live in a nation and at a time when many people have little lakes of fire in their heads and hearts. Kaye is determined that we never forget that truth or its price.

Fetisov is a jovial, imperious guide through an era of Cold War politics, when sports were a battleground between East and West and no sport was more important to the Soviets than hockey.

A picture so powerfully harrowing, its slight shortcomings are forgettable compared to the entire film's cumulative effect. It's that searing.

No other sporting figure has ever been afforded so much screen time for self-revelation: just another instance of Iron Mike's one-of-a-kind status.

Branagh's Henry is inevitably darker and more violent than Olivier's, but also even more youthful and energetic at times. He is generally far more direct, with fewer sly implications. [17 Dec 1989]

This was the first major film to depict a benign extraterrestrial visiting Earth since the postwar flying saucer phenomenon began in June 1947. Few alien visitation films have surpassed it for suspense, narrative economy, acting and a just plain good story. [09 Apr 2004]

Cronenberg has, as Guillermo del Toro did in "Pan's Labyrinth," crafted both a drama and a fairy tale -- and he's done it in an entertainment as cracking as you could wish for.

Lighting changes subtly from shot to shot within a scene to highlight a chin, a cheek, a profile, a shoulder -- whatever carries Von Sternberg's message. To sully this monochromatic beauty with electric colors would be a crime and a sin. [15 Aug 1990, p.E05]

The film works as well as it does thanks to Kimberly Roberts' magnetic screen presence.

Without a more coherent perspective, the movie remains a collection of genuinely scary scenes and not much more.

They've made a movie-movie of Sweeney Todd, and if you've got the stomach and ear for it, you'll be grateful.

The thrill, alas, is gone -- and Fellini seems to know it better than anyone. [11 Jun 1993, p.15]

It's a fascinating instance of a filmmaker working with self-imposed rules, but never forgetting that those restrictions are only worthwhile to the extent that they serve character and story. It's a ride well worth taking.

Talented, prolific, familiar with film, etc. Cave is a natural to push documentaries in a new direction, and 20,000 Days on Earth does it.

A hard and bright and tough film in all the best ways.

Creed is no "Raging Bull" -- it's a little too long and throws in an unnecessary disease to gin up the emotional content of the third act -- but it's surprising proof that iconic franchises that started in the 1970s can be revived in all the right ways.

The problem here is we never get much more than the pretty, the quaint and the comfortingly familiar. There's a place for such stuff in the world, yes, but that doesn't make it art.

Discreet, delicate, and cautious, Monsieur Lazhar takes you by surprise -- and that goes for both the movie and the man.

A man can be a treasure just as a work of art can be, and O'Toole is one of the handful of living film actors worthy of a museum of his own. Venus would make a brilliant final exhibit.

The performances, especially that of Regina Casé in the lead role, inject potent, lived-in humanity to the movie's flat political allegory.

The film is all the more remarkable because its actors are untrained and their lines are improvised. Clearly, they've lived this.

Before it traps Ralston, 127 Hours gives us ample evidence of his energy, zest and boyish charm and wit.

In the fine tradition of well-made thrillers, it's enough that it all feels solid at the moment, and the final revelations are unexpected and seemingly inevitable.

Simple enough for children, deep enough for adults, clever enough for cynics.

The End of the Tour can feel like a down-home deification at times: Like Einstein riding a bike, only it's Wallace going to the Mall of America. It's not sentimental, though, at least not until the very end, and is moving in beautiful, unexpected ways.

With this amoral business environment, it's not a question of if there will be another Enron, but when.

Reigns as the most assured, provocative film so far this year.

A rare movie that serves both the head and the heart. The issues it broaches are achingly real, brought to vivid life by a consistently excellent cast.

It's Cronenberg's most mainstream work, and yet it has all the power of his creepiest nightmares.

There's quality, wit and emotion throughout.

One of the most affecting true-life character studies in quite some time.

There are moments that stir, and it's always lovely, but it's generally too remote to gain hold of you truly.

Somewhat marred by Bruno Coulais' treacly New Age score -- as well as by Perrin's somewhat daft and repetitive narration. But the key word is "somewhat." In the main, Winged Migration is an unforgettable piece of moviemaking.

Isn't easy to watch, but it's beautifully written and acted, with a sharp eye for the small embarrassments of divorce.

Crowd-pleasing, feel-good stuff.

Full of life, wit, smarts, thrills and sheer gratifying entertainment that it launches the mind on a stream of merry somersaults.

Nair takes mostly low-key material about a traditional Indian family raising kids in America and turns it into something sensual, funny and quietly devastating.

It's visually appealing, but embodies the movie's (and Frances') problem: wanting to be taken seriously without putting in the real work required to prove you're actually serious.

It's one of the best and strangest films of Miyazaki's career.

An alternately harrowing and poetic take on the fatal 1982 hunger strike of Irish Republican Army prisoner Bobby Sands, Hunger is also one of the most impressive feature directing debuts in years.

As with many Iranian films, reality and fiction collide (the lead actor really is a pizza deliveryman), and the moral of the story is a surprisingly blunt critique of the growing inequality of wealth in the slowly Westernizing nation.

You can't help getting emotionally involved, and as the central outrage -- a case of judicial negligence that would seem unbelievable in a work of fiction -- plays out, you feel the pain and anger that Bagby's family and friends experienced. Then the story takes a final, horrible twist that's almost too much to endure.

A hilarious, touching, profound and inspiring film about art and dreams and self-belief and the goggle-eyed hope that you can will a miracle into reality through sheer effort and desire.

The Trip doesn't really go anywhere you didn't see it heading, but it's worth the journey.

Much has been made about the fact that the world's most popular fictional children are growing up and straight into that horror-filled no man's land of the human life span, puberty.

At once spare and dense, chilly and thrilling, literate and visceral, it feeds in gray areas, teasing ambiguities and conundrums out of shadows and making strengths of inconclusiveness and uncertainty.

Credit the great Bruno Ganz with creating a vivid Hitler: furious, unsteady, crushed and frankly cracking up.

Social critique isn't the main concern of director James Ponsoldt ("Smashed"). What he does is take us inside an unexpected, but not unrealistic, high school relationship and provide a splendid stage for two young and very promising actors.

It's one of the great horror films of recent years -- and a welcome antidote to the in-your-face sonic assaults that all too often pass for genre fare.

A mental workout of the most invigorating sort.

As numbing as the drumbeat of downbeat documentaries can be, as hard as it is to even be shocked at the depravities committed in our name, a film like this remains important, both as an indictment of the present day and as a warning to future generations that the ends don't always justify the means.

It's exhausting, impressionistic, and ultimately hollow, extraordinarily well-acted but not nearly as relevant as "The Social Network."

It may, finally, be the best and last word on the man, his music and his myth that we ever get on film -- an estimable achievement in itself.

The film verges on hagiography as one interviewee after another testifies to Dominique's positive influence on his nation, but in this case the cynical notion that there must be another side to the story is easy to tamp down.

Kaurismäki is a master of expressive stillness for whom inaction often speaks louder than words, and the performances he elicits are perfectly pitched, including young Miguel's.

The notions of sacrifice, patriotism, race and self-identity are compellingly questioned, and the battle sequences are realized with stirring intensity.

My Summer of Love, with its lush, sunlit landscapes, may occupy the opposite end of the visual spectrum, but it reinforces the sense that this director knows his way around the range of human emotion as well.

Though you get caught up in the criminal element (you really want these people to get away with it), you're also fascinated by who to trust. It's an unusual dance between the awkward and plain that becomes romantic and thrilling -- a subtly impressive feat to say the least.

The film is funny, odd and real. [18 Sept 1987, p.E18]

It's not a happy film, but it feels true.

Political machinations, emotional revelations, and a few well-choreographed fight scenes ensue, but Hou focuses less on the satisfactions of plot and action than on crafting, if not quite bringing to life, his auteurist vision of the past (both historical and cinematic).

Doesn't give off the same happy feel of the Indian arranged-marriage movie "Monsoon Wedding." Rather, it poses hard questions and leaves them unanswered.

The pace of this Oscar nominee may be a bit contemplative for audiences seeking "Yojimbo"-style action, but it's surely a more realistic and moving look at life in 19th-century Japan.

The pressure cooker atmosphere builds for almost too long, but when the resolution finally occurs, the sense of relief is that much more palpable.

An all-hell-breaks-loose, panicky fever of a story, all of it drenched in grainy, color-saturated cinematography.

With its wide-open setting and taciturn, macho characters, it's a film that earns the right to use the "Once Upon a Time" title that Sergio Leone made so perversely famous.

Stranger by the Lake is one of those vacations that’s all right while it’s happening, but the allure dissipates once you’ve gone back to your regular routine.

Despite dancing between a story and a story within a story, something seems simple and effortless about Ten Canoes. Director Rolf de Heer and his all-Yolngu cast offer a take on tribal life that's warm, funny and powerfully alive.

The film is somewhat sketch-like in its episodes and in placing Raquel within a larger world. But it’s very surefooted when it stays close in on her and her universe of chores, rituals and fears.

The violence is shocking, effective and soaked into the dry brown landscape.

Very good Leigh -- maybe even, given Manville's heroic work, great Leigh.

The well-chosen supporting cast — Anthony Edwards as a test subject, Jim Gaffigan as one of Milgram's confederates, and especially Winona Ryder as Milgram's wife — help tremendously to keep The Experimenter humming along as entertainment rather than dry docudrama.

Quick and charming and irresistible.

It’s a fascinating story about ambition and vanity and pride, and in Sheen’s performance and the atmosphere capture by Hooper it contains truly fine and rare things.

Georgia is one fine movie. Or maybe two or three fine movies.... Best of all, Georgia is a music movie, and a good one. [12 Jan 1996]

A funny and sincere indie about what happens when an acerbic teen finds herself "in a fat suit I can't take off."

It wallows in misery so much that the two-hour experience ends up being about as much fun as a real divorce.

Languidly paced yet not at all slow, Chocolat is a last, lingering, affectionate look at a comfortable, convenient life that may have been more a mirage than a memory. [12 May 1989, p.I13]