Disco scholars convincingly analyze lyrics and fashions as presenting bold expressions of sexuality and democratic hedonism, while Kastner doesn't skimp on the vintage clips, which range from unintentionally hilarious to surprisingly impressive.

In many ways, a smashing success. It's built not only on a casually clever script but on two expertly balanced performances.

The Manson Family, with its attention to historical detail and chronology, is more effective and disturbing than those grade-Z shockers: It's a genuine look at unmitigated madness and evil. Needless to say, don't bring the kids.

Feels like a movie that wants to bare its fangs, but only manages a mild gumming.

Keaton offers glimpses of a directorial gift, but this odd little piece feels like a warm-up for something more compelling.

The star's innate vulnerability (and his ease with Dom's colorful but expansive vocabulary) makes the character more sympathetic than he has any right to be. And that, in turn, makes Shepard's film more entertaining than the Guy Ritchie ripoff it initially resembles.

Pacific Heights is the latest sort-of-Hitchcock film and a pretty good one better than most of Hitchcock's post-``Psycho'' output. [28 Sept 1990, p.G11]

The movie's fast pace, and the three gleeful central performances, keep I'm So Excited! mostly painless. But the rest of it has a whiff of the sort of desperation that can make an exclamation point in a title seem like a good idea.

Wide-eyed, deadpan and, more often than not, note-perfect.

Hanks is remarkable in one of the minor films in smarm-meister Spielberg's oeuvre.

Accuracy and realism are terrific, but if your film becomes boring, and your dialogue isn't smart, then you need to use more poetic license.

There's a certain bravery in Brandon's full embrace of the themes of Cronenberg père, who may be returning the favor with his next film, the Hollywood satire "Maps to the Stars."

Parts of “Spark” can seem like an ad for Burning Man, but the film digs deep enough into the pressures and challenges facing its organizers and attendees to be a worthy exploration of a unique phenomenon, even for those who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing just glitter and a thong in 110 degree heat.

Man of Steel has too many characters and too much plot, resulting in a movie that feels overstuffed and overlong.

Carrey’s Scrooge is deliciously pinched and credible. As, indeed, is this film -- that is, when it feels like Dickens and not a theme park ride.

It's a brave film, particularly on the part of Allen, and in many ways an accomplished film. But it's so bookish and clever that you can never fully embrace it, even when you wish you could.

But if the notion that Austen was more reactive than creative in her writing is troubling, so is the idea that she needed Lefroy to make her into a great writer. "Experience is vital," he tells her. We should be glad this guy never got his paws on Emily Dickinson.

It's a handsome film with a palpable core of piety, but it isn't as successful in depicting secular events as spiritual ones.

It's a handsome and spry movie, and it might even have managed to be a good one if there were even the least chance of believing that Wood, who can't weigh 145 pounds dripping wet, had the slightest chance of hurting anyone with one of his wee fists.

Somehow Lee fails to make it speak to us. His heart is in the right place, but like many of the crowd that swarmed Yasgur's farm, he has rather lost his head.

A hodgepodge of bits cribbed from such films as "Centurion," "Apocalypto," "300" and "Gladiator."

Hugely entertaining.

It has laser gun fights, forbidden love, and a rollicking group breakout from a fascistic old folks' home. What more could anyone want?

There's fun to be had in the re-creation of indelible screen moments, including several with Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins.

Clumsiness follows clumsiness -- the acting, the staging, the details of the plot -- until you reach the point of cool indifference. There's a lot more wrong here than can be corrected in a small space in the newspaper.

Unfortunately, the movie isn't a real success, as director Roger Michell ("Notting Hill") is both too ambitious in the story he tries to tell and not ambitious enough in the way he tells it.

'Bloodless' is the word for the whole enterprise.

The music is lively, loud, often powerful, sometimes raunchy, yet full of unexpected subtleties and nuances. The staging is frenetic but as perfect as the machines of the art can produce. This is first class music video.