Midnight Special is a sincere movie, but sometimes sincerity is half the problem.

What's unforeseen in Unforeseen, a superior documentary by Laura Dunn, are the consequences of a certain mind-set about mankind's relationship to the world and, finally, to itself.

This small film's accomplishments are many, but not the least is its ability to take a human story and frame it as a parable, without losing a bit of credibility or irresistible heart.

Great pleasures.

It’s oddly worth seeing.

Imaginative and immensely engrossing film.

Tells the story of Leo Tolstoy's last year from a refreshing new perspective.

Until it becomes completely demented, The Guest is a perfectly respectable thriller, and even when it stops being respectable — even when it goes off the rails and becomes ridiculous — it’s still entertaining.

Chandor's writing goes to some darkly interesting places, and there's fun to be found in individual performances.

In essence, Sorrentino thought his way up to the middle of The Hand of God and assumed the rest would take care of itself. He started filming too soon. His screenplay needed work.

Listen Up Philip wants to say something meaningful about human relationships. But like a frustrated writer staring at a blank piece of paper, the words just never appear.

Wonder Woman achieves touching and powerful moments that are unusual for a movie of this kind.

An appealing Brazilian animated feature, and it’s conveyed in a handsome, expressive style that’s pleasing to watch.

Deeply affecting, "Blade'' portrays an oddly elegant way of life that will soon be like the era in that other movie, "Gone With the Wind."

An irresistible feel-good movie about love gone bad.

Totally original yet filled with familiar human frailties, "Everyone" leaps off the screen to become one of those rare movie-going experiences.

It takes one of the most gifted screen actresses of her generation and casts her out to sea with nothing to hold onto but a hideous script that’s all attitude without depth or understanding.

A melancholy, well-observed film.

I might be tempted to vote DiCaprio best actor — or at least to propose a new category be inaugurated, the acting equivalent of the Purple Heart.

Cassandro takes place in an inherently goofy arena — this is over-the-top, stagey fighting, after all — but the filmmakers avoided the temptations of cheap laughs and produced a satisfying dramatic story that will appeal to both fans and non-fans of this outlandish wrestling genre. That’s a rope move worth cheering for.

With House Party, the Hudlins have made a happy, harmless romp of a movie that, in its own minor way, manages to make a contribution to black cinema. There is a measure of social equality in the mere fact that black teens get stupid movies made about them, too. [9 Mar 1990, p.E6]

Even as everyone’s plans unravel, the film does not. The script, by Ed Solomon, is sharp, as is Soderbergh’s direction.

For all its flaws and vagueness, Safe is smart, challenging and provocative -- a film that gives you plenty to chew on, long after Carol's sad tale has wound down.

Stronger always feels right in the moment, solidified by an outstanding central performance by Gyllenhaal, and some wonderful ensemble work, especially the actors just below the top billing.

Beautiful in both its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film abounds in easygoing humor.

September 5 succeeds as a tense and involving film, at least partly because it makes the case that the tragedy, despite all its other consequences and ramifications, marked a signal moment in news broadcasting. It was the first time that a hostage drama played out on live television.

You don't walk out thinking or feeling anything in particular, except satisfied that you got your money's worth and maybe even got a little tired from laughing so hard. [2 Dec 1988]

Director Nancy Buirski not only is able to give rare insights into the dance world but a compelling tale of love, friendship and perseverance.

In At Eternity’s Gate, Dafoe often works in silence, but tells us everything we need to know with his face and eyes.

The Dance of Reality may not succeed, but it may hold some interest to cinephiles as a relic of a kind of extravagant, overheated personal cinema that doesn't exist anymore.

It's all very foul, and completely entertaining.

The pregnancy monologue isn't funny at all, despite cuts to audience members laughing it up. It's a small false note in a movie that's otherwise as honest as they come.

Catches magic on the screen -- a behind-the-curtain peek at some of the world's best-loved music, straight from the cats who made it happen.

Splendid.

The new movie eloquently dramatizes the unusual cultural conflicts between contemporary, violent urban life and an archaic rural community with pacifist convictions. [08 Feb 1985]

Very entertaining.

There's no getting around it. Though it's not without virtues, The Loneliest Planet may try the patience of even the most dedicated lovers of art film.

A semi-autobiographical tale of addiction, anger and domestic violence, Nil by Mouth is as blunt and unsparing as a fist to the gut.

Once the focus switches to Venus, whatever is going on with Richard becomes secondary. In her scenes on the court, Sidney is able to convey the double quality of a killer in embryo and a vulnerable kid.

Though there are political elements here, to be sure, Pray Away has more the feeling of witnessing multiple spiritual journeys. These journeys are, by their very nature, moving.

Shirley is slow and uneventful, but intermittently interesting, and Moss is great. In the end, what tips Shirley into the realm of recommendation is that Moss will be the only thing anyone remembers of the movie. That means that, even if it’s only an OK experience, it should last as a good memory.

The stories are harrowing, and because they are delivered by living, breathing witnesses, they move us in deep ways that the archival footage, for all its horror, cannot.

Aronofky gets exactly what he needs from his top-notch cast. Lawrence is appealing and never allows herself to be reduced simply to a howling victim. Bardem, Harris and Pfeiffer are menacing in their own varying ways, with Bardem capable of turning on the charm at key times that makes us wonder if we haven’t misjudged him.

Buscemi eschews the conventional and ends "Trees Lounge" on a stranger, more tantalizing note.

An inspired and funny vampire comedy, one that’s more than just a smart premise but that remains fun and inventive from beginning to end.

Self-consciously bleak.

At one point, this movie had me so on edge that I had a fleeting impulse to run out of the theater. It might be weird to say that and mean it as a compliment, but good thrillers work that way sometimes.

Instead we get Knightley, who juts her chin, quakes, shakes and bugs her eyes, but nothing about her pain calls out to us, because nothing in it seems real.

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

Mamoru Oshii's direction deftly merges gritty realism with a dreamlike quality. The only problem is that the characters reel off their existential speeches with such harried deadpan that it's hard to tell whether the angst is serious or tongue-in-cheek.

As a viewing experience, the film is by turns heartrending and stultifying, but mostly stultifying.

The most Stillmanesque Stillman movie yet. It's about a mood, part wistful, part sardonic. It's about a time of life, about repartee, about the vivid character saying the unexpected thing.

Call it Buñuel meets Blumhouse, a film that is flawed but so full of ideas that it doesn’t matter.

Ridley Scott gives it the grand treatment, 157 minutes worth, but in the end, it doesn't stack up as the portrait of an era (the 1970s, in this case) or an important tale of a criminal mastermind.

Things isn't linear, and it isn't all that lively. But it captures the experience of some modern women, and it feels from the heart.

Might have been about the rise and fall of a family of gifted children. That would have been the typical way to approach the story. Instead, it's something rare -- a movie about people who have already fallen, whose best days are behind them.

There are moments that are too macabre and outlandish, but Gilroy steers the movie just this side of farce, just this side of Chayefsky, and keeps it all within a realistic framework. At times watching, you might wonder how he’ll keep the story going, how he’ll top himself. But he does.

Sure, it’s overly simplistic and not altogether historically accurate but if anyone is looking for a well-made, action-fueled popcorn movie, “The Woman King” sure beats a Wikipedia page every day of the week.

Well made, but it's a talkfest that wears its stage origins on its sleeve.

Often the most exalted of filmmakers — like Terrence Malick, Ingmar Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock — have the ability to communicate their consciousness, so that you get the feeling that you’re inside their head, or they’re inside yours. Anderson has come close to doing that before, but this time he really does it.

These people seem real, even if their primary motivations are ideological. Perhaps more than they intended to, Goldhaber and the actors make the political personal. That’s a triumph of craft over appetites for destruction.

Best in its first hour, when it concentrates on the politics and the specific horrors of Panem. It becomes more conventional in the second half and loses steam, but it's always heading somewhere.

Ayoade is well known to British viewers for his role as a coddled nerd in the sitcom "The IT Crowd," so it's fair to expect laughs from his directorial debut feature. But much depends on your mind-set; U.S. audiences could have trouble with the movie's less-than-sunny worldview.

As Marguerite, Frot is a completely open vessel, ready to receive the muse that cannot come. She has a childlike quality here, but she also seems (and this is both funny and sad) very much the mature artist.

Violent, disjunctive and exhausting, it's a dark fable that illustrates with startling images the strong, seductive pull of evil.

For pure laughs, for the experience of just sitting in a chair and breaking up every minute or so, Superbad is 2007's most successful comedy.

The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil.

Deneuve has fun with her best role in years.

Taken together, “X” and “Pearl” make for a compelling double-feature showcasing blood-spattered homages to different eras of film.

At any given time, a different character will seem to be the movie’s focus. But as long as we recognize that love’s transformational power is the real subject, there can be no mystery about the movie’s intentions or how it’s unfolding.

The film is so pitch perfect and realistic, it seems you are there with these people, watching their lives unfold before you as it happens.

The film is energized by the naturalness of its characters and the way in which it plays a game of mixed signals and double illusions.

This thriller is so expertly -- and perversely -- poised that audience members may find themselves secretly rooting for the duplicitous Ripley.

[Streep] isa pleasure to watch -- and to marvel at -- every second she's onscreen.

Not so much a documentary as a rambling interview, almost all done in animation.

The film’s strongest point of view is that big-time football has become a precious way of life and induces a religious fervor that can warp the judgment of even well-intentioned people. It’s not a groundbreaking thesis, but we still get a fascinating tour of a town that may never be the same again.

In a sense, Jacobs has made a movie about sex that’s not about sex at all. We often hear about “sexual sublimation,” but The Lovers depicts the reverse, which is probably more common, in which sexual adventure becomes the most available substitute for cherished lost dreams.

Uncertainty is a genre trope this director is particularly gifted at manipulating. So many horror films are incoherent due to a lack of good writing; if anything in McCarthy’s script isn’t fully clear, it’s in the same manner that life itself fails to make sense.

In the end, the power of Final Account resides in the way it shows how human nature reacts to lies, propaganda and state-sanctioned atrocity. Some people, looking for an excuse to do evil, will jump right in. A very tiny faction will risk all to fight against them.

Sound City is Grohl's first effort at filmmaking, and if it doesn't break any ground as a documentary, it's a heartfelt testament to a place he considers among the most hallowed halls of rock.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Baumbach's wife) appears in two scenes, as an ex-girlfriend of Greenberg, and she's quietly brilliant, as always.

A potboiler but entertaining enough to rise above its flaws.

It's a bleak, fatalistic tale about rootlessness and the changing moral order in the machine age, but the wondrous details of the film trump any grand thematic concerns.

Women’s sports owes a debt to Shields. She finally has a movie that gives her deserved flowers.

If there is any suspicion that PBS is trying to butch it up for the Bush administration, this film's thoughtful and heartbreaking depiction of the hell and loss of war is an eloquent counterbalance.

A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.

Every character, even minor ones, is well thought out and cast; the eye-popping visual design is not only inspired and mesmerizing but also functional; and memorable songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and others complement the story perfectly.

A documentary that is often told in adages, riddles and poetry.

Ashkenazi is a terrific actor, commanding and grand-scale in his aura, but with an unmistakable warmth. And Gere, cast against type, couldn’t be better. In a career of only good performances, this is one of his best.

A further, captivating extension of Oshima's marriage of the oblique and the erotic.

Mamet finds an angle just new enough to be fresh.

A liberating experience.

It is, all in all, off its rocker. But it's gorgeous.

It’s a crime movie, but as the title suggests, it’s a personality study, a detailed one that grows in dimension. It’s fascinating to watch Plaza fill in those details. Her face is almost blank, but only almost. We always know what she’s thinking.

In recreating the fantastic adventures of Solomon Perel, director Agnieszka Holland not only shows a lively appreciation for his anguish and his adolescent desires, but she also illuminates the mentality of mass ideological movements -- both fascist and Communist. That is a large order and Holland, a Polish-born, Paris-based director, carries it out with acute, ironic flair. [03 July 1991, p.E3]

Easy Money takes its time telling us how all the fortunes of all three men intersect, and the movie's failing - or at least its significant imperfection - is that when the stories and lifelines do converge, the results just aren't satisfying.

Gorgeous animated film.

Neeson is a delight and seems to be having as much fun as the audience. But the surprise here is Anderson, who was sad and plaintive in “The Last Showgirl” and now reveals herself a skilled and self-aware comedienne. Anderson is having a moment right now, and I’d like to see it continue.