The Ref, not just about a premise but about people, is the rare good comedy that actually gets better as it goes along. [11 Mar 1994, p.C1]

Even when the movie is bad -- it's addictively so.

Talk about disturbing.

Unlike "Pirates," Stardust is anything but a wretched mess. It's a charming and smartly plotted fantasy.

In thematic terms, Cassandra's Dream could be looked at as a rebuttal to "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

A compelling and visually arresting drama.

Breezily bounces back and forth from Baja to Los Angeles, and it’s a pleasant diversion, on both sides of the border.

Drop is the kind of film that separates the real movie lover from the conditional movie lover. It is manipulative, fundamentally ridiculous, obvious, far-fetched, gut-level in its appeal and irresistible. As such, it embodies the true soul of movies.

The great strength and slight weakness of “How to Have Sex” is that it’s just like being there — except you might not want to be there.

The humor's a little strange, and the action's a little frenetic, but all of it whooshes past in a swirl of tropical color and pseudo-South American bonhomie. Gorgeous scenery meets oddball characters and mild ethnic stereotyping.

As the documentary shows, while it lasted, it was really something.

If there’s a weakness to The D Train, it’s only in the filmmakers’ ultimate choice to stop the pain right before the finish, as if any good might really come to the characters they’ve created. Perhaps the assumption was that, by then, audiences will have suffered enough. But some misery you really can’t get enough of, especially when it’s happening to other people.

If you can weather some slow patches (and there are plenty), this boldly original, oddly affecting meditation on the afterlife will reward you with moments of profundity that will linger in your consciousness (or subconsciousness) for a lifetime (or lifetimes).

Though this film's considerable warmth derives from dalmatian puppies and other animals who take charge of their fates, Close steals the show.

The richness of characters make this movie shine. It's just that, somehow, a certain sense of fire is missing.

This time it’s not too big. Thor: Ragnarok has a lot of human appeal and a spirit of silliness that it never loses and yet always carefully manages, so that the silliness remains an ongoing source of delight without ever undercutting the impact of the action.

As Mister Rogers, Tom Hanks does something very important, besides looking and sounding enough like Fred Rogers that we can accept him in the role. He captures the supreme self-confidence it takes to be that nice and giving.

On the surface, this may seem like a bleak film, because it's so raw. But ultimately this is a movie about the mysterious ways in which we find a path toward healing, and its beautiful final moments stay with you.

Captures the flavor of putting on a show on Broadway.

At its most compulsive, this is the only action flick you'll need this summer.

Totally absorbing even when it, too, strays.

The self-consciousness that made the director's "Love Actually" a love-it-or-hate-it film is dialed way down. About Time is more of a love-it-or-like-it proposition.

A gentle comedy, offbeat but never cute, never lewd and never going for shortcut laughs that might diminish character.

A first-class genre entry stacked with dandy performances and some crackerjack action to boot.

An action blockbuster extravaganza that's sadder than sad and never pretends otherwise.

Red Rock West' is filled with delightful twists of plot, and the twists start coming early -- so we'll leave off talking about the story. [28 Jan 1994, p.C3]

The convoluted plot will leave viewers with some unanswered questions, should they pull at its threads, but it’s a good bet they’ll likely leave well enough alone after being so entertained.

Wenders structures the film episodically, so characters, such as a goofy co-worker, a homeless man and a suddenly appearing relative, come and go from Hirayama’s life. Thus the story relies on Yakusho to carry this movie, and that he does.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of First Position is the relationship between aspirant and teacher.

It's all very melodramatic, but the Jouberts accompany this story with incredible visuals, with an exceptional level of access. Considering how close they get to the animals, it's a wonder none of the filmmakers got mauled.

It's fascinating.

It's an intriguing portrait, but it makes no pretense at objectivity, erring on the side of hero worship.

As good as family entertainment gets.

It's probably the only love story you'll see this decade that will make you half-expect the camera to swerve and pick up the sight of Rod Serling, standing there in a black suit.

There's an Impressionistic feeling to all this, and sometimes it plays like a travelogue -- Bush is trying to do an awful lot at once. But the material is so compelling that we keep watching.

The movie is long, and here and there it seems to meander. But when it arrives at its anguished last scene, there's no doubt that Eustache knew where he was heading all along.

I Care a Lot is notable for its colorful supporting and featured roles — Chris Messina as a mob lawyer, Peter Dinklage as a Russian mobster and Eiza Gonzalez as Marla’s girlfriend. But the main attraction is Pike, who doesn’t try to make us like her. She commits to the character’s nature and holds us with her honesty, her intensity and her unmistakable pleasure in getting to play someone appalling.

Much as she did in "Little Miss Sunshine," Breslin imbues Kit with joy.

Fundamentally, though, “My Dead Friend Zoe” is a tricky story told exceedingly well. It earns our attention — and a few salutes.

An experiment that rarely works this well.

It's a lovely film that grows along with the characters. At first, it seems like a pleasing but inconsequential comedy. But it deepens as their connection deepens and opens up into a place of poignancy and insight.

Unforgettable may have a generic title, and it may be a train wreck, but it’s a watchable train wreck throughout.

It’s a wail of grief, an expression of love, a testament to the body. Cronenberg puts it all on the line here, and he gets his actors to put it all on the line with him. If you don’t feel its visceral charge, you’re not paying attention.

Hyper-violent yet emotionally powerful.

The new film by documentary editor (“RBG”) turned director Carla Gutierrez distinguishes itself by using the artist’s own words — largely taken from Kahlo’s illustrated diary — to tell her story.

One can argue the movie's finer points, but in the end, there's no escaping its creeping pile-up of evidence that Mother Earth is critically dehydrated - and we need to do something, fast.

Jurassic World is an intelligent action movie that’s saying something simple but true: Yes, people are that stupid.

Has some faults, but it manages to keep its audience either angry or jumpy from start to finish.

Richly inventive.

It's a one-of-a-kind experience -- dark, bleak, twisted carnival noir.

With a movie like this, we know what has to happen. The fun is in seeing how it happens. Ryback is an explosives expert, so there are some delightful bomb interludes. He makes a bomb for the microwave, takes a missile apart and puts it back together and comes up with original ideas, such as rigging a hand grenade to a door so it will explode when the door is opened. Under Siege is a lot like Die Hard moved to a battleship. [09 Oct 1992, p.C3]

More in the tone of the big screen "Friday Night Lights" than "Rudy" or "The Blind Side," it succeeds as mainstream entertainment without relying on a conventional storybook framework.

It’s a solid first step into the magical world of the familiar. Escapist entertainment for crowds that prefer to know their destination in advance.

There’s still plenty of laughs left over for the audience, and the aggressive randomness of the script fuels some genuinely inventive comic moments. Although the writers of this R-rated cinematic binge frequently lose their focus, they never lose their sense of humor.

No one will be bored with the feature film... but everyone who knows the show well will have a nagging feeling that something is missing.

It's the versatile Miranda Richardson (the terrorist in ''The Crying Game,'' the repressed housewife in ''Enchanted April'') who gets the juiciest scene. Shattered by the news of the affair, and by the tragedy it precipitates, she beats her face with a knotted towel, and then vents her rage on her foolish husband...It's one more triumph for an actress who has no trouble channeling a kind of supernatural intensity in her work. If anyone's looking for the perfect Lady Macbeth, they needn't look any further. [22 Jan 1993, p.D1]

It’s hard to imagine a more original movie, or a more unfiltered vision from the mind of its maker.

Very good at pointing out the social difficulties surrounding the Dickens-Ternan relationship, the power dynamics within it and the lasting effects of it.

An impressive and imaginative fantasy.

True History of the Kelly Gang may not be history as recorded by historians, but it’s history as recorded by a director with verve and vision. In this case, that’s enough.

A charming and thoughtful movie, about people making a charming and thoughtful movie.

In The Chaperone, Brooks is something of a fixed entity, a fully-formed force of nature already heading toward her peculiar form of glory. She has stuff to do all day — studying by day and partying by night, while Elizabeth McGovern as Norma has time to look inside.

The Crush is the latest in the growing ''from hell'' genre, about all the fun things that happen when a ferocious, precocious 14-year-old girl develops an intense crush on the nice-guy journalist who rents a guest house from the girl's parents. Things start innocent. Get worse. Get horrible. Get ridiculous. You know the formula. Working within that formula, The Crush isn't bad.

The High Note begins well, ends well and even has a good middle, but there’s one extra plot turn, about 15 minutes before the finish, that’s one too many. It doesn’t spoil the movie, but it adds an unwelcome touch of sentimentality into a story that is otherwise fairly tough throughout.

The Beekeeper is the purest stupid fun I’ve had in a movie theater since “F9: The Fast Saga” in 2021.

If you don’t expect it to be something it isn’t, it’s hard to see how partisans of pop music could fail to enjoy Echo in the Canyon. For rock ’n’ rollers of all ages, it’s mandatory viewing.

SubUrbia is depressing comedy -- the more so because director Richard Linklater's satirical picture of youthful alienation rings painfully true.

Whether the role is small or large, the acting across the board is utterly convincing.

Between the lines, Scoop conveys, not only what Andrew most likely did, but what led him to assume that he’d get away with it.

Ultimately, Kink has an undeniably voyeuristic quality - it's a glimpse into a mostly forbidding world, and there's value in that.

Book Club was, at best, a pleasant diversion. But Book Club: The Next Chapter is something more. It’s a movie that proves that it’s possible to make an entertaining, full-length picture with practically no story.

The acting is uniformly strong, which says something about King as a director.

Director Le-Van Kiet and screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton succeed by making the action look real, by coming up with intriguing plot twists and keeping our heroine in danger at all times.

The documentary is exclusively about Ullmann and Bergman as human beings and about how they got along.

Suffused with a golden glow, the movie looks and sounds like a fairy tale.

Angelopoulos returns to the same poetic terrain he explored in Ulysses' Gaze and Landscape in the Mist. In place of "action" and conventional narration, Eternity deals in philosophical ruminations, slippery shifts in time and long, hypnotic tracking shots that seem to whisper to us, "Slow down, observe. Listen."

Director Sameh Zoabi relies on the old adage that we have more in common than not, but it’s a lesson that bears repeating — particularly when laughs come with it.

This British film also mocks the rave culture it celebrates, and it's charming in a way that is hip but surprisingly down to earth.

The movie is modest in its ambition and powerful in its reverberations.

Manages somehow to be gritty, delicate, in your face and nuanced at the same time. It's a beautiful, compelling, sometimes harrowing family drama, with excellent performances across the board.

While it's possible to have a great time with the movie without having any interest in Kiss, it should be noted that the band does make an appearance.

Everyone in the movie is excellent, everyone is tonally spot-on, and no one has a single bad moment – which is another way of saying that Clea DuVall, best known as an actress (“Veep,” “Argo”), is a real director. She has made one of the best Christmas movies of the millennium.

A gripping study of Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player ever.

For starters, it's a movie to make you happy to see the next movie written, directed and starring Lake Bell. She has an engaging presence and has a distinct comic sensibility.

It's not just for people who like rap or the rap atmosphere. It's a well-paced, light comedy that can appeal to anybody. [05 Jun 1992, p.D1]

Invisible Life is not an entirely fun watch, and its 139-minute running time is an investment and sometimes feels like it. But it offers something more than the usual experience.

Judas and the Black Messiah quietly announces its modern relevance by presenting as sophisticated a depiction of systemic racism as you could hope to see in a movie.

Neatly, and often humorously, summarizes a very unhealthy situation.

Muppet Treasure Island is an elaborate, juicy eyeful. The film is an impressive maze of visual scale and perspective that lets humans and puppets interact as a single species. The overall effect is a wonderful sense of the fantastical. But simplicity might have helped where the movie often stagnates with gimmicks.

Director Curtis Hanson gives the film a slow, European pace and a cold, slick look. The sound-track is made up almost entirely of internal noises -- a buzzing fluorescent bulb, music from a record player. Everything contributes to an ominous atmosphere. [09 Mar 1990, p.E1]

A lot of frivolous but genuine laughs.

Early scenes are unnecessarily horrific, and the final scenes falter from a disconcerting shift in tone. But this still leaves a significant stretch of beautiful acting, thoroughly engaging action and vital history lessons about the brutality on which some supposedly civil societies were built.

This is a beautiful film, full of gray-and white-haired men who grow in stature before our eyes.

Hardly perfect or fully successful, but it's strange and strangely beautiful -- a unique work of art.

A treat for anyone who's passionate about films or who's ever wanted to learn more about them.

This was probably Warren Oates' finest hour, and certainly one of director Sam Peckinpah's greatest achievements. [06 Mar 2005]

Clumsy and ineffective in its first half hour. But gradually, as her investigation deepens, and we see the true hideousness of what she is uncovering, the movie achieves urgency and clarity of purpose.

Slick, glossy, overblown, implausible. [15 July 1988, Daily Notebook, p.E1]