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]