Just to re-emphasize, Relic is not a documentary about dementia, or a medically accurate look at the disease in the way that films such as “Away from Her” with Julie Christie or “Still Alice” with Julianne Moore were. It is a film that springs from the id, from deep-seated fear of a disease we don’t fully understand.

The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things.

Carrey goes boldly where no funnyman has ventured before, and it's simply amazing to watch him do it.

There’s an absurdist edge, but with nothing of the smart-aleck about it. Rather than use wit as a way of bypassing thought and emotion, Bujalski’s concerns are serious, and his attitude toward his characters is warm without being indulgent.

It's a distinctly French feeling -- an air of caprice and light expectations -- and a perfect prologue to a delightful film.

It’s a probing, searching movie by one of the medium’s best American directors whose reach, like his protagonist’s, exceeds his grasp.

A first-rate action movie, slickly done and with so many imaginative bonuses that, for a time, it feels like a classic in the making. It's not, but it's still solid and entertaining [1 June 1990]

If you can lighten up for an hour and a half, the film delivers one good laugh after another.

Basically, No Hard Feelings is everything you like about Jennifer Lawrence, brought together in one movie and then magnified: her down-to-earth irreverence, her comic timing, her idiosyncratic naturalness and her unexpected sensitivity.

Byrne makes Amanda compelling from the first moments of “Tow,” a moving if also obviously low-budget and occasionally corny underdog story.

The chief virtues of Parkland are journalistic in the best sense.

Clearly a minor classic, mainly for reasons besides its crime story plot -- namely, the urbane fatalism of its cast and the overall mood of inevitability that hangs over every scene.

A complex story.

It's a movie about a scrubwoman who paints - so don't expect lots of sex scenes or car chases. Just expect a great performance by Moreau, who will convince you that she painted every one of those paintings - and lived them all before she painted them.

Will wring some laughs out of anyone but the most humor-impaired.

It wonderfully explains elements of life with autism, offering a primer for the uninitiated, while profiling a family that was rewarded for its willingness to approach an obstacle with patience and love.

Sarandon and Portman work beautifully -- together, negotiating a range of emotional keys that blend comedy and drama in the same moment.

A deftly layered drama.

It's got unpredictable plot twists and unexpected laughs coming out of dark corners. The sharp-edged film also looks terrific.

There is no point in discounting smart, engrossing entertainment like The Ides of March, though it's hard not to notice when a film that could have been great falls short.

The movie saves most of its modest number of jolts for its last quarter or so, which makes them all the more intense. They stick in your craw - and be warned, they're not for the squeamish.

Haunting psychological drama.

Although the odds were against anyone being able to register the legendary charismatic presence that was John Huston, Eastwood succeeds to a surprising degree in White Hunter, Black Heart. [21 Sep 1990, p.E1]

Pool captures the crazed urgency of first love -- the feeling of a passion so fierce that even a disapproving society can't crush it.

Farmers may wonder what the big deal is, but Gunda is quite a cinematic achievement whether you’re familiar with the livestock or not. Plus, the piglets, whom we see grow from birth to adolescence, alone are worth the price of admission.

Wildly romantic.

A subtly rich performance by Dillane and a fine supporting cast make this Holocaust drama worth seeing, even if you don't think you can bear another one.

It's hardly possible to overstate what a welcome change of pace The Shipping News is for admirers of Kevin Spacey.

It's refreshing to see a film about nothing but human emotion.

Think of The FP as the occasion for a party. You need to find a room full of people who get the joke and see this movie there, because audiences will be laughing so hard they'll be screaming.

The movie maintains interest throughout and it’s ultimately satisfying, though with one qualification: The last minutes treat the story as though its whole purpose was to illustrate a social and political issue. It’s actually, for 98% of its running time, the story of a person — and it’s better that way.

A heartfelt tribute to both the player and the man.

Ultimately Maiden is very much a feel-good movie, a tale of underdogs finding their strength, combined with a character study and a sprinkling of social history. After the Maiden, women in sailing had to be taken seriously.

Truth be told, the latest Darren Aronofsky film, which Oakland native Charlie Huston adapted from his own novel, is well made and contains terrific performances. It is a true original. But it’s also depressingly soul-killing and nihilistic, with a plot twist that fairly deep-sixes it for this critic.

The film’s depiction of loss, isolation and reconciliation, and the rewards of friendship, grows more touching as the story builds to its highly emotional conclusion.

Nicely performed by a quintet of actresses, but nonetheless it drags.

Richard Jenkins gives the standout supporting performance, worthy of Oscar consideration, as Josey's father, a miner unable to conceal his anger at his daughter for having a child out of wedlock and, now, creating dissension at his workplace.

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.

If you can get past the ridiculousness of the setup - easy to do, because the posters make it clear this isn't a Woody Allen movie - it's pretty much impossible not to have fun.

A smart, arch and rather cold-blooded comedy.

Back in Action is no comedy classic, but it’s a better than average excuse for getting back on the Cameron Diaz train.

Except for Patekar, the main actors are nonprofessionals, which works nicely here.

This isn’t the first film to try to deal with the horrors of the Holocaust from a child’s perspective, but it’s tricky material, and this one succeeds because it is direct and forthright.

A lot of what takes place in Roadie feels overly familiar, and the film could have been a wallow in pathos except for the performances, especially that of Eldard.

The latest Audrey Tautou film, Delicacy, is sensitive and well acted and fits under the general category of "good movie," and yet it would be hard to get excited about it.

Awesome, awesome action. Skimpy, skimpy plot.

Some of the movie probably will mystify viewers not steeped in Middle Eastern history and culture, but a good deal of the humor can be appreciated by anybody.

A thinking person’s action movie - as long as you don’t think too much. Even if it has its share of preposterous moments, it crackles with nonstop tension, combat scenes and double-crosses.

An argument could be made that too many bad things happen to the good members of this sisterhood. The movie does occasionally teeter on the brink of soap opera, but then, so does life.

A John Hughes-inspired comedy-drama — think “The Breakfast Club” set in rural Korea — starring a group of teenagers coming to terms with the passionate feelings and issues that evolve with impending adulthood.

There's no music to tell you what to think. It's just three good actors and one director's merciless powers of observation.

Isn't vicious. It's just cheerfully mocking as it courses the canyons and flatlands of Los Angeles.

The subtitle of Hardy's novel was "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," and that's the approach taken here.

Decker proudly revels in Lennie’s scattered uniqueness, even as Lennie navigates the minefield of her choices and says some truly kooky things (“I wish my shadow could get up and walk beside me”). YA movies might not be your bag, but if they are, perhaps the NorCal vibe of “The Sky Is Everywhere” will strike a weepy chord.

It's a maddening, satisfying, junky, enjoyable picture.

Passionate visual indictment of the perilous state of our high-tech world.

Though the movie has a handful of shots that are downright gross to witness, what makes The Orphanage scary is not what it threatens to show but what it suggests about life.

The Coens, with this film, are like people who fly all the way to Paris on vacation and then eat at McDonalds every night, because that's what they know. Why bother making the trip at all?

Although much of the footage is unseen, perhaps the freshest part of Apocalypse ’45 is hearing the veterans debate whether the U.S. should have dropped the atomic bombs, and how America has progressed in the decades since.

Karyo -- a big star in France but little known in this country -- has Steve Martin's knack for keeping his dignity while doing outrageous slapstick.

Kill List has a slow build, but don't be lulled into complacency. This is one of the most violent and disturbing films you'll see in an art house.

It’s not a sin to tell a one-sided story, Hoover seems to be arguing, when there is no other side.

Screenwriter William Monahan has fashioned an intelligent and highly topical epic. Director Ridley Scott has brought it home with banners flying.

Dark and beautifully directed melodrama about the strange intersection of racism and emotional need.

The humanity Snyder’s cameras capture is stirring as these young people work past their issues and together on shrewd political strategies.

There was enough story here for an epic, but Napper chose to make a poem-like movie, one that sustains a tone of mystery and wonder from start to finish.

The kid is a charmer, the message is heartfelt - love your kids while you can - and, OK, the ending might jerk a few tears, even from a crank like me. OK, it did.

A half hour before the finish, Margaret loses altitude and starts looking for a place, any place, to land. Instead it crashes, in slow motion. But up until then, Margaret is committed and unusual.

This comic gem is as delightful as it is derivative.

Romantic and even silly -- a combination that makes Divine Intervention an almost irresistible work of art.

The script is full of off-the-wall lines that take you by surprise but are perfect. [21 Aug 1987]

The dialogue stretches are just pauses between the action scenes, where the director gets to show her stuff. [12 July 1991, p.F1]

If you partake of the Marvel universe, this movie is for you no matter what. And if you don’t, seeing it would be like going to church if you’re an atheist — an experience of spectacle unmoored from any purpose or definition. In the case of “Endgame,” we’re talking fine spectacle, to be sure, the best that money can buy. But all the same, this one is strictly for the faithful.

This film is the closest we're going to get to anything new by Williams, and it's a respectable effort.

At times you may be moved as by no other foreign film this year - and then 10 minutes later be leaning forward in the seat just to stay awake.

This is a movie in which the audience knows half the gags in advance, but thanks to director Dennis Dugan's timing and Farley's execution, the audience doesn't just laugh anyway, but laughs harder. Knowing in advance is part of the fun.

This is a film that would never work without brilliant casting of the child actors, and it’s a marvel to watch the interplay between the young girls, who don’t deliver a false note.

What makes this whole thing work is, first of all, Wilee's ride, an elegant machine that lacks any gears or brakes.

'Night' is the kind of horror movie where a zombie puts his hand through a window, grabs the hero's face with a decayed hand and fellows in the audience laugh, knowingly. The laugh I can understand. The "knowingly" part I don't even want to think about it...As horror movies go, it's a little better than average. [22 Oct 1990, p.F1]

This is a decidedly blue-state take on a red-state phenomenon.

As a whole, Turning Red succeeds in hitting all the right emotional notes — and its real magic lies in its unabashed celebration of the joyful chaos of girlhood within a proud Asian immigrant family.

I would gladly see the movie again, if just to see Smith do her trademark grumpy English thing.

Absurdity and poignancy merge in the carefully observed Czech film Up and Down.

An elegant and rather even-tempered documentary.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

In essence, the film is a series of reflections, but fortunately for us, many of them are thought-provoking.

The resulting film is nobly ridiculous and ridiculously noble, doing everything in its power to subvert the dross it's fooling around with.

Fascinating and distinctly politically incorrect.

A potent social allegory told with humor and mystery.

Fortunately, Arbid didn’t want to make a movie about crazy people or about people going crazy, so she pursued a third option: She made the woman interesting. So “Simple Passion” is a movie about something that, sooner or later, happens to lots of people, but the fun of this story is that it happens to someone we want to watch.

A lively, ultimately sad portrait.

For a good, straight-ahead noirish crime thriller, you could do a lot worse than A Walk Among the Tombstones.

Like a soap opera, but most of what glitters is gold.

If the movie ends too abruptly, it still gives plenty of screen time to its nicely screwed-up central character. And it's still a solid, assured feature debut from the latest brothers to watch.

It moves, makes us care and involves us in the genuine drama of two young people trying to heal themselves. The austere beauty of the locations doesn’t hurt either.

The Anthrax Attacks conjures the terror and paranoia afresh and, with the hindsight of 21 years, asks the viewer to consider how effectively the crisis was handled.

The documentary is not always fascinating, but Tuschi's ultimate thesis - that Khodorkovsky, who started out a shady businessman, ultimately emerged as a hero, willing to go to jail for his convictions - is a persuasive one. Clearly, the man is a political prisoner.

If some of the animation overdoes it, a lot of it is downright gorgeous. Few images this year have followed me home like the Ghost of Christmas Past, here imagined as a bright-flamed candle with the face of a child. It flickers. It whispers. It flies.