A quirky character study of the four-man team, led by Sam Neill as the crew leader who seems surrounded by an aura of sadness but is so dedicated that he's not above lying to Houston to buy time when something goes wrong.

(Washington) raises it to the level of importance with an acting job that's one unbroken chain of intense emotion.

People who see it may feel like dancing out of the theater afterward. Go for it.

It's clear by the end that one Ruth Gruber is worth more than 100 pundits fighting about partisan politics.

What stays with the viewer is a sense of a man unraveling from his own mistakes and weaknesses.

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

Byrne is the furthest thing from being a manipulative filmmaker. But Raising Bertie is moving nonetheless.

Joy Ride feels like it easily could have been better, but it’s certainly good enough, and it might be remembered as an early milestone in some significant careers.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the best movie so far this year about a kung-fu fighting panda.

In every way, Cryptozoo is a more ambitious achievement than Shaw’s coy but pleasing first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2016). And while its hippie-era setting and hallucinatory imagery give a nostalgic kick, the film’s darker conflicts speak to dire issues of today.

The depth of [Thorne's] characters, brought to life by a terrific cast, and tactile world building are what set 40 Acres apart. The setting feels authentic; you could imagine yourself living on this farm with this family.

The end result is flawed, but also funny, heartfelt and inclusive movie making.

Ultimately, the film is carried by Skarsgard in yet another triumph in a Norwegian film.

Ultimately, The Duke tells an enjoyable real-life story.

Ultimately, the film does its job with skill and heart.

The Secret Garden unfolds like a richly illustrated storybook. It's an enchanting film, full of visual surprises and a story so simple and wise that it makes most ''children's'' entertainment seem gaudy and facile and overly explicit. [13 Aug 1993, p.C1]

Somewhere in the translation from stage to screen, The History Boys has become an intelligent misfire. What's left is a literate but listless film.

They fractured Greek myth but slapped mountains of comic muscle on the hunky hero in Hercules. What fun! The great old Greek is turned into a '90s-style athlete who gets endorsements, sandals named after him and a chance to stand tall among nymphs and muses after whipping the villainous lord of the underworld, Hades, personified as a Hollywood movie mogul type.

Heart-wrenching film.

Bucking the lava tide of computer special effects gushing out of Hollywood this season, the makers of Breakdown use old-fashioned ingenuity -- plus a compelling star, a fast- paced mystery and a deadpan villain -- to come up with a sizzler.

Whatever one’s politics, it’s hard not to be charmed by Ivins’ feisty demeanor and, by extension, Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins.

For baseball fans, it delivers the high heat. For the non-fan, there may be a little too much inside baseball.

Sir! No Sir! is far from a dry rehashing of what may seem for some like ancient history. Driving guitar rock and lively editing add to the film's urgency. The voices of the veterans alone, however, make this an important and poignant film that can speak to any generation.

The film starts off akin to a tongue-in-cheek “Twilight Zone” episode, then becomes a meditation on fame before transforming into a scathing satire of several things at once: Gen Z, cancel culture, and even the people who complain about cancel culture. Written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, it’s bleak and funny and provides Cage with his most satisfying role since 1997’s “Face/Off.”

It is quite simply one of the great “making of” documentaries of all-time — a short list that includes the George Hickenlooper-Eleanor Coppola documentary “Hearts of Darkness.”

Consistently absorbing as the amazing Deneuve reveals, scene by scene, new facets of a fascinating character in a mercantile war that involves equal parts greed and vanity.

It's never less than worthy and entertaining, but the importance of Invictus doesn't broaden as it goes along. It narrows.

This easygoing movie fully captures the couple's charm and offers a unique look at the '60s and '70s New York art scene.

The visuals are splendid. Even close-ups of face and hair are something to marvel at.

Will & Harper works best when the serious issues that confront trans people are openly discussed, from acceptance to mental health issues and the simple problems of daily living.

Great to look at but not much fun to watch… An emotionally uncommitted picture that's smirky and mawkish, by turns, and at heart, empty. [14 Dec 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

The result is a deeply moving experience, alternately funny and sad.

It feels like living inside a pressure cooker with one particular family — experiencing their turbulence as if from the inside, while always a little glad to be watching from a safe distance.

The movie doesn’t just suffer by comparison to “High and Low” (itself adapted from Evan Hunter’s novel “King’s Ransom”); taken by itself, its pace drags, its tone staggers and its ideas are muddled.

The movie's satisfactions are subtle, but they run deep, and there are many.

It does not follow the usual pattern of a Hollywood film. It goes to places that are desperate and irrevocable.

No one emerges unpunished.

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.

Levinson's sure touch keeps audiences smiling and manages to maintain an aura of good nature in a film that, at heart, offers a caustic, almost bitter vision of American institutions and contemporary politics.

A movie unlike any other.

Half of one song is performed with a speck of saliva on the camera. More casual fans will twist in their chairs uncomfortably, wishing that a roadie would walk up and wipe it off. Neil Young die-hards will cherish the spittle.

The movie is entertaining, although true Trekkies will probably find out nothing new about the man with the pointed ears.

Perhaps the greatest gift of Tick, Tick … Boom! is that it rejects the false narrative of the artist’s one big shot, the make-it-or-break-it moment. Jonathan might keep hearing a timer ticking down in his head, but he has to learn that the singular event of his arrival as an artist is a myth.

It isn’t exciting, because such movies never are. Rather, it is consistently, calmly and compellingly interesting, not the story of a crime but about the process of revealing it.

The writing, by Rapp and Catherine Dussart, is exquisite, and the performers, including Francois Truffaut's old colleague Jean-Pierre Leaud as a magistrate, are all first-rate.

A deftly layered drama.

Isn't about rock music or even the people who make it; it's about people, period, and the myriad ways they mangle themselves and each other.

Sentiment, the kind bordering on schmaltz and easy tears, is found in Shower, a well-meaning generational drama.

Has an odd mix of quickly grabbed handheld shots and scenes of striking beauty.

Director Duncan Jones achieves a strange and winning amalgam, a gripping action film that also works as poetry.

Even if it has B-movie trappings and the tension wanes in the second half, it’s a stylish psychodrama.

Everyone comes out of Little Woods looking good, and DaCosta comes out with a directing career.

As Wade, Gary Poulter is the most authentic-looking old drunk you'll ever see onscreen - something I thought before I knew the story of his casting: Poulter was a homeless man who was recruited by a casting director. He'd never acted before, and yet he's remarkable in this.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is provocative and irritating — and intentionally so. That makes it particularly annoying, because even as you’re provoked and irritated, you are also aware that writer-director Radu Jude wanted you to feel that way.

Sparrows is a kind of cinematic fable. At times funny, sad, poignant and suspenseful, Sparrows is a showcase for Majidi's masterful storytelling - and Naji's superb acting.

Sounds like silly fun -- and Linda Linda Linda is -- but it is also an extremely well-written, emotionally complex coming-of-age tale that has a John Hughesian respect for teenage angst.

An informative and valuable documentary about the past 30 years of messy times in Peru, but it is also frustrating.

Shot on the streets of New York and offering vistas of the city before all the glass and steel skyscrapers, The Naked City, which won Oscars for cinematography and editing, boasts an impressive pedigree. [04 Jan 2004]

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.

Irrespective of what the future holds in terms of gun control, the movie is a striking portrait of a married couple who expected one kind of life, got another, and are making something useful from their misfortune.

It seems like a bizarre move for Disney, releasing a film that combines elements of "Blue's Clues" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau."

The movie is predictable at times, but also winning, with a thumping soundtrack and smartly written characters. Ortega, with his Peter-from-“Office Space”-deer-in-the-headlights look, is the movie’s appealing center.

The story, based on a real incident, may be simplistic, but that's the nature of fables.

Essentially, this is a two-person picture that falls flat.

Hanssen is such an enigma that any attempt to explain him has inherent interest. Breach expends too much energy on a minor functionary, but it is still worth seeing for its fleeting looks into a heart of darkness.

Exceptional.

To mildly respect Japanese Story is easy. To enjoy it would require an act of will.

By the finish, the movie is getting by on little but adrenaline and audience goodwill. Still, that goodwill runs fairly deep, because, taken all in all, 28 Days Later is a superior motion picture.

Nonstop crudeness, vulgarity and unpleasantness. It's without any redeeming social value whatsoever. And it's funny from beginning to end.

The complexity, richness and fullness of what Leo does here is acting at its most illuminating and useful.

The alliances of the characters are a tad confusing at the beginning, but you don’t have to be an expert in geopolitics to appreciate the finer points of director Zaza Urushadze’s intimate film, which was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar.

Torok juggles plenty of characters and themes — guilt, greed, Russian meddling, the Holocaust, justice — but he always remains firmly in control of his story. Every frame is meticulously crafted.

As for Murray, it’s just a shame he can’t make a Sofia Coppola movie every year. As in “Lost in Translation,” Coppola brings out all of Murray’s many colors, sometimes all at once — his flippancy, his authority, his warmth, his isolation, his expressiveness, his inability to say everything he wants to say.

Though not flawless, this is a compelling study, in Dogme style, of a wounded young woman who spends her working life spying on others.

This particular package has a lived-in quality that doesn’t just counterpoint the set piece mutilations but complements the franchise’s premise that death — or here, the never-seen personification Death — can come from anywhere, anytime.

Palm Trees and Power Lines feels like an honest story about grooming, which is not only valuable in and of itself but kind of crucial at a time when hate-mongers have perverted the concept for political ends. But then, why see a movie that’s good-for-you important and profoundly uncomfortable? Because its humanity and artistry never falter.

A big leap forward for Penn as a director and deserves to be one of the most talked about films of the season.

Miss Juneteenth, a Texas-shot film appropriately made available to stream on Friday, June 19 — the date of Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States — is a rich story of broken dreams, family struggle and emotional triumph that puts black Texas women in the center of the frame.

Shot in a glossy, appealing black-and-white and filmed in a single location, The Party generates a pressure-cooker atmosphere.

The visual style and lethargic pace can be frustrating -- at least if you're sober -- but the animated tragedy is still a success.

This isn't just a good throwback satanic thriller - it looks as if it was made during the era of satanist paranoia.

The picture, written and directed by Francis Veber, the screenwriter of "La Cage Aux Folles,'' is a complete success.

No, you don’t have to be a fan of fake wrestling to appreciate “Iron Claw.” A love for classic Greek tragedy wouldn’t be misplaced, though.

Anyone who enjoys stylized hyper-violence should be enthralled by this long, sweeping, murderously vivid dramatization of ancient Chinese warfare, circa A.D. 208.

A first-rate crime thriller and further proof that Soderbergh is one of our great contemporary film stylists.

A powerful allegory.

When the movie starts, its main characters seem outside the norm, unusual, “wierdos,” in the description of David himself. By its end, you see nothing at all of that; they’re just people.

A tough movie about tough people for a tough audience. So prepare to get roughed up a little.

The film is dazzling and bewildering in equal measure.

Eye in the Sky is refreshing in its lack of a political message. Mirren is chilling as the cold-blooded colonel.

A joyful film -- and hopefully one that will not slip away unnoticed.

This new film is exceptional and one of Ozon’s best.

The Val Kilmer we meet has been in the arena, realizes he has been lucky despite the hard knocks, and has now achieved what we hope is a lasting peace. His physical voice might be gone, but his inner voice still has much to say.

It’s a well-made film in many ways but also frustratingly skin-deep for a news junkie like me.

Requires some patience. Once you get into its rhythm -- including the long flashbacks and intermittent use of the screen as an Internet chat room -- the movie becomes a heady experience.

Robin’s Wish, of course, can’t lessen the tragedy of Williams’ death, but it helps us better reconcile the suicide of such a joyous, irrepressible soul.

Opens up a world of words.

The director takes an unpromising premise - the switched-at-birth plot - and gives us something that's touching and unexpected.