A meandering, slow journey with a fairly bland leading character. Director Kirsten Tan, who is from Singapore and based in New York, must be admired for the audacity of casting an elephant as a co-star in her feature film debut.

Anyone can make a bad movie, but it takes a good filmmaker to make one as bad as I'm Not There.

Wham! tells a sweet story, but also a goofy and entertaining one, because these guys were more ’80s than anybody, more even than “Miami Vice” and Duran Duran.

A spellbinding Australian Western.

They are naturals at acting, not because they're good at lying but because they can't be phony.

This nasty, provocative comedy comes from a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Moretti's performance is low-key but detailed. He makes the psychiatrist a fascinating guy, rather austere and restrained, a Northern Italian, not an expressive Neapolitan.

Nicely photographed and beautifully scored.

The Coens' plotting, with its suspense and reversals, is a source of amazement and delight.

Almost everything that made "The Bourne Identity" refreshing -- the wit, the irony, the suspense, the novelty of its premise -- is gone in The Bourne Supremacy, and what's left is the spectacle of Matt Damon, with perfect posture and senses primed like a cat, making his way through a routine action thriller.

To put it into a larger perspective, if Creed III were a “Rocky” movie, it would be up there — nowhere near the original “Rocky” and a little worse than “Rocky II,” but certainly better than the rest of them.

Fueled by exquisite performances from Tony winner Erivo (“The Color Purple”), as Elphaba, or the Wicked Witch of the West, and Grammy winner Grande as Glinda the Good Witch, “Wicked” is the best movie musical in years, representing a rare instance when performances, visuals and songs are of equally high quality.

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.

Climate change is never explicitly mentioned in the documentary The Biggest Little Farm, one of the year’s best films, but it hangs all over the deep, rich story of the Chesters, a pair of hardscrabble idealists who move from the concrete jungle of Santa Monica to start a 200-acre, sustainable farm from scratch.

Like George Bailey, and the Cartwright family from “Bonanza” and other fictitious families, the real-life story of the Sungs is one of loyalty and adhering to their code, even as they face losing everything.

The movie suffers from two fatal ailments -- a dearth of vitality and a story that's shapeless and uninflected.

Now, thanks to A Most Wanted Man, we discover that it's really boring - practically sleep-inducing - to be an international spy.

After watching Spaceship Earth, which was completed before the coronavirus pandemic, one can’t help but think about the current experiment conducted by Biosphere 1. As smog clears across urban landscapes due to stay-at-home orders, the vision — and the warnings — laid out by Biosphere 2 remain relevant.

Features an exceedingly dapper Richard Gere in a series of nice suits and handsome close-ups that serve no purpose other than to remind us how exceedingly dapper Richard Gere looks in nice suits and handsome close-ups. The rest of the movie registers as a loss of: time, money, talent and logic.

This is the kind of small filmmaking that leaves a big impression.

The animation, sparkling and graceful, also ranks as the studio's best traditional work in ages.

The formula persists two centuries after Austen perfected it because it’s aspirational and satisfying at the same time: We want it to wreck our own lives, too. It’s durable precisely because it’s pliable, offering storytellers a template in which to explore their own era’s mores and ideals, questions and anxieties.

Has two main flaws: the emphasis it puts on German bassist Alexander Hacke, the film's ostensible narrator, who shows up in too many scenes, and the fact that it doesn't identify many of the film's performers until the very end. Even so, Crossing the Bridge is satisfying to watch.

Despite the terrific set design in The World to Come, the characters don’t feel at home in it; they do very little farm work, for example. Still, Waterston and Kirby do achieve an intimacy that operates as a warm fire warding off the chilliness around them. It’s too bad we were left out in the cold.

Burns has created an endearing gathering of people we all know, and every one of them is so much fun that leaving the theater at the end elicits a touch of regret.

Soft, evanescent and bittersweet.

Rarely does a movie come along that captures an aspect of everyday consciousness that has not yet made it onto film.

Full of drama, poignancy and some heartbreaking moments.

One of the year's most fascinating flicks.... Brilliant performances by Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith and a newcomer named Ray Liotta give sparkle, and shadows, to Something Wild. [7 Nov 1986]

Takes a fascinating look at the origins and impact of a ballad that's been called "one of ten songs that changed the world."

It’s a quiet film that almost slips by without notice.

Will serve mainly to reassure his countless admirers that Ai has recovered his defiance and ingenuity: a heartening message, but one that may be lost on those still unacquainted with his true case against the Chinese state.

The tone of The Killing of a Sacred Deer is the best thing about it and the hardest to describe. You might call it skewed, except that what often is called skewed is extreme and outlandish, while this movie is quiet and precise.

An impressive effort and an impressive result that opens up a world that most of us have never thought about and renders it with sorrow and vividness.

Air might not quite be in the class of “Gone Baby Gone” or “The Town,” but it’s old-fashioned in the best sense: solid, confident, simple, straightforward and entirely entertaining. It’s the work of an intelligent classicist.

This is not comfortable comedy.

The filmmaker makes ample use of Ungerer's drawings and existing documentary material, but sensibly lets the man tell most of his own story, which lends Far Out Isn't Far Enough a raconteur's charm rare among film studies of artists' lives.

For those who just come for the music, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” hits the spot, covering most of her best songs, from “Chihiro” to “Everything I Wanted” and “Bad Guy,” while providing a limited yet fascinating window into Eilish’s workaday world.

The superhero part of the movie will leave audiences with a flat feeling, thanks to computery-looking special effects and a sagging story line.

The difference is that Iain Softley, who directed Wings of the Dove, and his screenwriter Hossein Amini, who wrote the overlooked "Jude," are keen observers who bring a wealth of ambiguity and mystery to the surface -- and release their characters from the cliches that easily could have swallowed them.

It’s like combining the anything-can-happen excitement of playing a slot machine, with the grace of a ballet, and the prolonged and escalating violence of a good gladiator battle. Reeves has sustained his career through consistently trying 20 percent harder than most of his contemporaries.

Iko Uwais is not exactly a household name, but the Indonesian heartthrob appears to be well on his way with The Raid: Redemption, a clever, action-packed film that showcases his movie-star looks, low-key charisma and breathtaking martial arts skills.

Sonatine eliminates the one virtue American action films can legitimately claim -- vitality -- and replaces it with fake- existential claptrap wrapped in an inept narrative.

This is a timeless, and nearly plotless, look at the day-to-day life of a nomadic Mongolian shepherding family. Yes, it moves deliberately, and impatient viewers will find it intolerably slow. But those who can get in track with its serene rhythm will be rewarded.

An exquisite tale about coming of age and coming to terms.

Sounds great and if nothing else should help diminish the stereotype, blasted by the film's subjects, of Gypsies as little more than pickpockets whom travelers need to be wary of.

This Belgian crime thriller makes compelling viewing out of a "you can't be serious" plotline.

It's an ambitious film -- but also a scattered, unfocused one.

Shepard always keeps things on track, and his well-paced, beautifully scored film makes us see San Francisco in an atypical light as welcoming and beautiful, yes, but also bewildering, lonely and intimidating. Indeed, though all the refugees make varying degrees of progress, we can’t help but feel that a rocky road still lies ahead for them.

Writer-director Harry Macqueen puts the fate of his film on the shoulders of his two leads — Colin Firth as Sam, Stanley Tucci as Tusker — and both actors deliver some of the best work of their careers.

It's a kind of "sex, lies and videotape'' in suburbia.

As a work of art, the movie is merely on the bright side of OK. But as a vehicle for an emerging star, as a platform to show one actress in a variety of modes and moods, within a sympathetic and glamorous context, it couldn’t be better.

It's astonishing that so much money, talent, technical expertise and visual imagination can be put in the service of something so stupid.

The film documents how Lucy used her clout to get her husband cast as her co-star. It was a way for them to see each other. The rest is history, but a really interesting history.

If one person survives and 6 million are killed, or one person gets out and 3,000 are crushed, it's not really a happy ending - or even an adequate representation of the larger event. This is precisely the challenge that The Impossible faces and never quite overcomes.

There are some heart-tugging scenes, but overall, this is the cinematic equivalent of a blissful weekend at the spa, a relaxing respite from the stressful news cycles of our times.

Blanc is completely without vanity in showing the physical deterioration wrought by addiction. Her performance is as chilling as Lee Remick's in "Days of Wine and Roses.''

Doesn't have much to say.

A hell of a movie.

Beautifully shot and compelling blend of thriller and coming-of-age drama.

A cautionary tale as well as an expose on the power of the American fast-food industry. That the documentary comes across as more than a sermon has a lot to do with Spurlock's personality, which is outgoing and instantly engaging.

Captures the emotions of spousal charges, countercharges, defenses and pleadings ranging from brutally sarcastic to despairing.

Accessible, and often funny.

The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.

This film doesn't feel obliged to pick a winner or lob easy answers; it aims to observe, with humor and humanity, with penetration and without oversimplifying.

Creative and bizarre, maybe too bizarre, but since most action films adhere to a cookie-cutter formula, its quirkiness is most welcome.

It is wonderful to see how Sheedy gives shape to this performance -- her eyes, a photographer's eyes, carefully sizing everything up. [18 June 1998, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

Lek gives Love & Bananas humanity, but Bell’s personality and enthusiasm is contagious, inviting us into the film. We root right along with her.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

While Pixar doesn’t exactly alter the chemistry here, Hoppers is energetic and fun.

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.

This is what makes the distinctly unromantic Cold Mountain' such a breath of fresh air. Its battles are hideous bloodbaths.

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

“It’s not what it looks like” is both the marketing tagline for Emergency and an accurate description of this ingenious independent film.

Christian McKay who, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles"gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of an historical figure, ever.

It works well as a film and a lesson about, as one open-minded preacher puts it, what the Bible "reads" about what it supposedly "says" about homosexuality.

Rocket Science has the makings of either a tragedy or a crowd-pleasing underdog story, but writer-director Jeffrey Blitz instead takes the movie on a different, and ultimately more rewarding, direction.

Ultimately, “Mija” fails almost totally, and two main things tank it: (1) the lack of complete access to the subjects, who should have been grateful for the exposure, and (2) too much collaboration between the director and her subjects. There are documentaries and there are promotional films. A documentarian needs to keep those categories rigorously separate.

Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall have made as good a film as could be made from the substance of Kyle’s life and career. But greatness was never a possibility, not with a protagonist not all that interesting and with the surrounding circumstances making it impossible to go deeper and risk the movie’s critique of Kyle’s becoming overt.

An amusing trifle. [21 Dec 1988, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

That the film happens to be in 3-D, with digitized settings and backgrounds, doesn't detract from the timeworn charm of watching blob-like characters lurch erratically through harebrained comic pratfalls.

This documentary has no bells and whistles; Bill Haney, the director and co-writer (with Peter Rhodes), sticks to the facts.

The most heartbreaking, moving film in theaters right now.

Nye’s focus on work has had a deleterious effect on his social life. Some of Nye’s issues are no doubt the result of lifelong fears that he may be struck by a neurological condition called Ataxia that runs in his family, but which so far has not affected him.

The nonprofessional cast is convincing, especially Lacej, whose Rudina registers more strongly than Nik.

What a treat to find a movie so bright-eyed and true - without a trace of bathos - in its depiction of such a harrowing subject.

Occasionally, “All Things” gets stuck in a groove of industry and business minutiae — a 10-minute trim would have made this film even better — but overall, this is an assured effort: informative, bittersweet and appealing for both the young and the not so young.

A provocative, upsetting film.

A marvelous film.

A skillful exposition of the pain of pro wrestling, and the high price participants pay in terms of physical and ego injuries.

It’s coolheaded and incisive, a thorough and informative study of corporations, their origins and their place in the modern world.

It's an excellent movie for kids, because it is about how amazing children can be.

Best movie of the summer.

A tense, intelligent and sober film.

It’s written by six screenwriters, and it feels like it.

Swedish documentarian Johan von Sydow lets Tim tell the story, mixing plentiful musical performances with narration drawn from Tim’s diaries (read solemnly by Weird Al Yankovic), illustrating the details with animation and a feast of vintage stock footage.

This film is not the classic that Mockingbird has become, but it is still superior, sensitive storytelling. [04 Oct 1991, p.D5]

It’s a perfect package of whimsy, sass and sweetness.