Niccol is too good a screenwriter (The Truman Show, Gattaca) not to know that Hollywood cliches are hell on a film's political bite. They muzzle it.

Craig Lucas’s prince of a play has been turned into a toad of a movie.

Polanski has great wicked fun with sex, love, cruelty, books, movies and, of course, himself. If you don’t go along with the joke, you’re in for rough sailing.

It's rare to find a movie that uses music to define love without sentimentalizing it. But Begin Again, with songs by Glen Hansard and New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander, is a wonderfully appealing exception.

The actors could not be better. Sarsgaard, Scott and the luminous Clarkson negotiate the film's razor-sharp laughs and bone-deep tragedy with resonant skill. Lucas' powerfully haunting film gets under your skin.

Even the film's missteps (the score, by Barrington Pheloung, is cringe-inducing) can't stop this meditation on love -- Martin calls it "Jane Austen for the twenty-first century" -- from melting into heartbreak.

Blethyn's solid-gold charm turns Saving Grace into a comic high.

Brad Pitt doesn't really act in Ocean's Thirteen, he just glides through the third chapter in Steven Soderbergh's heist-flick annuity on the magic carpet of his own unimpeachable cool. Don't knock it. Genuine star power is rare. Pitt has it in spades -- all aces.

Smash acting debut of Combs, who brings ease and charm to a crime lord.

The movie’s ambitions exceed its grasp, and it’s hard not to wonder if the ideas here might not have been better served in a shorter, tighter format.

It's Knightley who makes The Duchess a royal treat.

It is not only bludgeoningly nasty but also, viewed from a May 2021 standpoint, quite staggeringly un-prescient.

It’s a tough, achingly tender film that refuses to trade in false hopes or cheap sentiment. That truth is what makes Beautiful Boy hard to take and impossible to forget.

Maybe our expectations were too high. Maybe we should have said his name — Burton Burton Burton — three times, and the filmmaker who did that beloved original would reappear, grinning maniacally and giving us something a bit less undead and a bit more alive.

A recent showing of Burton's artwork at New York's Museum of Modern Art attracted long lines and critical brickbats. Maybe that's why Big Eyes, for all its tonal shifts and erratic pacing, seems like Burton's most personal and heartfelt film in years, a tribute to the yearning that drives even the most marginalized artist to self expression no matter what the hell anyone thinks.

Director Wolfgang Petersen puts such a fresh spin on the familiar that it all works like gangbusters.

The Gift delivers the lurid goods as a scary, sexy, twist-a-minute whodunit.

Macdonald uses the "Das Boot"-like claustrophobia for maximum tension, then deadens the thrills with flashbacks to Robinson and his estranged wife. Ah, jeez. Law and the scrappy cast work best when submerged and going at one another like beasts.

With Red, White & Royal Blue seemingly attempting to straddle the line between BookTok virality and on-screen sensuality, the film is content with being merely rewatchable.

Thompson never disappoints, nailing every nuance of a judge who lets the world in at the cost of losing her own judgment. This is acting of the highest order.

The dialogue is clunky, the A-list actors are slumming and, yeah, you've seen it all before. But Kong: Skull Island is a creature feature that's damn near irresistible.

Timely and smartly entertaining.

The gifted Myers lets his once and (I hope) future shag king get lost in an elephantine Hollywood franchise. The first time was the charm, baby.

The uniformly fine performances are a tribute to Washington, who plays the shrink with his customary command.

It's Bell – riding high with the Disney-animated "Frozen" and Showtime's carnal-fixated "House of Lies" – you want to follow anywhere. Bell is irresistible, and she makes us care.

The Doors is a thrilling spectacle - the King Kong of rock movies - featuring a starmaking, ball-of-fire performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison.

Despite Bates' mastery at bringing unexpected depth to unhinged characters, Dolores is a few pints low on chills and challenge.

At times director Lasse Hallstrom lets the film slip into an upscale version of Brett Butler’s Grace Under Fire sitcom. Even when melodrama threatens, Roberts’ steadying, sharply observed performance keeps things touchingly real. Khouri’s script has the buoyant wit to deal with Grace’s anger without turning her into a lethal avenger.