Surprisingly good as a quirky triumph of human spirit.

The possibilities of Jenna's confusion are exploited for full comic effect. Garner, who turns out to be a charming, abandoned comedian, makes Jenna's incredulousness and innocence very funny and occasionally even touching.

A crisp and entertaining documentary.

Audiences looking for a nonstop laugh riot may be disappointed, but the big laughs are there, and they benefit from the movie's underlying sincerity.

The only weakness of the movie is that, because it’s a true story, it can’t rearrange the order of events for maximum drama. Thus, what is essentially the climax of the film comes about three quarters in, and the rest of it, while never less than interesting, feels like falling action. The good news is that Sweeney and Kirby get their best scenes, respectively, in this last section of the movie.

Haunting in its charm, Children of Heaven opens a window on both contemporary Tehran and the hopeful heart of childhood. This lovely, amusing film deserves a big audience -- especially families. It touches on the innocence of children with tremendous affection.

The movie belongs to Rodriguez: A gorgeous woman with a powerful body and the face of an Aztec princess, she's also a natural talent who instinctively understands the importance of economy in good acting.

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

Paradis, an actress and pop singer, is sensational.

A funny and appropriately skewed comedy.

First-time director Tony Goldwyn (scion of the family that started MGM) brings a freshness to an old story.

A triumph of simplicity, innocence and goofy jokes.

A real surprise. It seems to promise an exploitative genre movie, about gangsters and drug deals, and it delivers on that, but it’s something more. Director Catherine Hardwicke and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocet have taken a Mexican thriller, with a female victim at its center, and have turned it into an intelligent feminist film.

Bong has an original vision and a distinctive style that’s not to be dismissed. He’s our era’s Terry Gilliam, where hope pushes through the tragicomic nihilism.

Underscores that choices in love are rarely clean and easy, and more often than not, are poignantly funny.

Visceral and strong.

It’s a funny movie, but it’s also one in which Schumer becomes truly legible, as someone who could be headlining comedies for the next decade or more.

Defamation tries to give all sides a full airing, but it's not hard to guess the director's own feeling. At the end, he says, "Putting too much emphasis on the past, as horrific as it has been, is holding us back."

Harry Brown has more to say, about aging, about old-school courtesy in collision with blind stupid violence, and about how sometimes pensioners on a fixed income get stuck in neighborhoods that turn dangerous.

A snapshot of the festival, one that radiates good cheer and offers moments of true, godly goodness.

In style and structure, it mimics an old-style studio effort, a culture-clashing comedy of manners that's tinged with melodrama and filmed in a smart progression of medium shots.

Works more often than it doesn't.

The best glimpse yet of what it's like to be in Iraq.

Bergman has not gone soft, not emotionally, philosophically and certainly not artistically. This is as tough a film as he has ever made.

Columbus' schizoid approach works more often than not.

It takes just the first shot to get sucked into Breaking News, the latest bit of destruction from mayhem master Johnnie To, and it's a doozy.

Either Shelton knows this world well, or he's such a great bluffer it doesn't matter.

One of the most original thrillers of the 1980s. It's a lurid, twisted film that brings you into its world and completely works you over.

A smart and literate effort with a few weaknesses.

There's nothing dark about Arthur: It's as bright and twinkling as a Christmas tree, decked with warmth and humor.

The resulting film has some wrong notes and touches of preciousness, but mostly it's a moving and effective presentation of life under Nazism, as seen from an unusual angle.

Plan B is ultimately a gross-out sex comedy that has more than sex on its mind. It seems odd to consider a film with such familiar beats radical, but the word fits here, in the best sense.

Along with the awkward romantic exchanges that always seem to find their way into Smith's movies, there's also a sweetness that you don't often see in films that average multiple f-words per minute.

Like a Christmas present you didn't know you wanted but are delighted to receive.

The Chuck Wepner story is a compelling one — and the performances ensure its place as a sports movie contender.

At heart this is a thoughtful, well-made movie about something serious.

A marital comedy as perceptive as it is delectable.

It may not be as perfectly clever or uproarious as it was in Tap’s heyday, but we all get old and neither need nor want humor as loud as we used to.

Features convincing, often soaring, performances by a savvy cast that must have gotten adrenaline shots administered by Stone himself.

At times quite powerful.

Don't believe the weak coming-attractions trailer. The inspired pairing of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy makes for a successful action comedy.

A solid network effort about heroism in a most immoral world.

Damning.

The film offers a fanciful, lush urban setting, unusual for Disney animated features, and a couple of good songs, Once Upon a Time in New York City performed by Huey Lewis and Perfect Isn't Easy sung by Midler.

What makes the film emotionally satisfying, beyond the stirring music, is that we witness the healing and enlightenment of chorus members, some of them bearing scars from their oppressive red-state upbringings.

There’s real artistry to Ferdinand.

A smart, nicely paced crime drama, with colorful characters, compelling situations and an assured style. [17 Apr 1993, p.C3]

They Cloned Tyrone can be heavy-handed times and runs a bit long, but the committed performances of its plucky triumvirate of stars go a long way toward the fun.

The film is merciless in showing the obstacles faced by a down-and-out couple in strip-mall Florida, but there's a modicum of hope in the genuine love the characters share.

Assuming you can appreciate the high level of gore and assorted sadistic weirdness, the action is satisfying.

Audiences watch Summer Hours and then, a week later, remember it as though they've lived it.

By tossing out all these voices and opinions, Lee and screenwriter Reggie Rock Blythewood have created both a time capsule and a movie audiences will talk about.

With Pavarotti, director Ron Howard serves up a straightforward documentary about the great tenor’s life and career. It’s just a birth-to-death saga, featuring interviews with colleagues and loved ones and a catalogue of greatest hits, so nothing fancy here. But if you can find a better way to spend two hours, take it — I’ll stick with this.

There's just nothing artful about it, and it's Greengrass who deserves the credit. These nonactors don't act the way most people do when playing themselves. They act the way people do when they're being themselves.

The tribute to an aging parent is moving and gives this routine comedy an extra something.

The final frames, which hark back to an iconic TV show, are audacious, yet like everything else in this movie, they are skillfully unadorned.

It's a nightmare fairy tale that can be very difficult to watch.

One never knows where "Warm Water" is going and even though the film's objective feels a little fuzzy even at the end a parable on female sexuality? an ode to liberty? there's such a joy in the telling that it doesn't matter terribly.

Truth is a journalism horror story, something like “All the President’s Men” but with the wrong ending and plenty of blame on all sides. It is one of the most frustrating speak-truth-to-power tales ever put onscreen, because it dares to show how that usually works out: Power wins. Big.

It's a career high mark for Bacon, whose flashy smirk and stifled grimaces flesh out a character both scary and pathetic in this intimate, nostalgic film that delves into the art of the hustle.

The Lost Boys is a horror movie that's funny without making fun of itself and scary without trying to make you sick. [31 Jul 1987, p.86]

Less subtle than its predecessor, Tomboy is like a pint-size "Boys Don't Cry," and as such, it's practically unique.

This movie has a sweetness at its core.

I just don't know how all this sweetness and light will go down with a teenaged movie audience presumably gung-ho with Rambo - especially now that he's got the presidential seal of approval. And that's no joke, son! [3 July 1985, p.58]

Delivers laughs most of the way through.

The highly enjoyable documentary Obit finally gives credit to the storytellers who bring people to life one last time.

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

Capable of astonishing even the already cynical.

It overcomes some patchiness to turn into a rich emotional experience, ranging in degree from fire to ice.

In terms of story and atmosphere and overall feeling, Cars 2 is a brand-new experience - and a distinct improvement.

Although nothing really surprising happens (the film has no real plot twists), it’s natural and unforced, like real life. One can imagine that most pregnancies unfold like these, and Swanberg has crafted a universal story observed through small details.

Suffice it to say, the issues here are bigger than one woman's story.

Transamerica provides the frame and the occasion for one of the year's best performances, Felicity Huffman's as a woman trapped in a man's body who's passing for female while awaiting a sex-change operation.

It’s a satisfying drama that inverts the usual way of building interest and suspense. Instead of wondering what’s going to happen, we sit with the knowledge and wait for every character to react to what we already know.

Despite the fact that both protagonists are equally appalling, the screenplay seems to have a soft spot for the woman. However, this doesn't take away from the fun of watching the two characters tear each other to pieces.

A welcome throwback to family-friendly PG moviemaking.

As fascinating - and at times oblique - as the famous couple themselves.

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

This is warts and all, with the emphasis on the warts.

Though an estimable success overall, The Return of the King has several scenes too many and too great a concentration on battles.

All [Tarantino] has to do is trim a full hour out of "Vol. 1" and a half hour out of Vol. 2, combine what's left and he'll have something not just amusing and idiosyncratic, but outstanding.

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.

If there's one big difference between this version and the old, it's in the attitude toward violence. The new version may be more graphic, but it doesn't present violence as inevitable or necessary, just ugly.

From its first minutes, Mid-August Lunch establishes a special tone and quality that could only be Italian. It's a mixture of warmth and gentle farce, tender observation and absurdity.

The Space Race is an illuminating, absorbing film about an underreported storyline in our astronaut programs.

Although the mix of buffoonery and earnestness often doesn't work, it's priceless to see director Otto Preminger (who was Jewish) play a peevish Nazi commander who has his boots put on simply for a phone call to Berlin. [19 Mar 2006, p.32]

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

Bottaro finds ways to dramatize chess, and the environments are fascinating throughout.

Has a high-gloss, heightened style reminiscent of that of the film's executive producer, Joel Schumacher.

This is a solid suspense thriller that's fun. These stars have put it together in a spirit of playfulness -- as in playacting.

Heart-wrenching.

Above all, it makes one thing clear: This group was wickedly funny.

Some will say this film is overly ambitious, but what the hell. The man put five years of his life into making this epic mystery. We can surely give it two hours of ours.

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.

Teller’s work is the film’s soul, and he completely convinces us of Vinny’s affability, flaws and steely determination. The performance has intelligent touches, some of them comic — such as the hint that Vinny’s rehab battle is heroic but also a bit goofy. It’s the kind of thing that first-rate actors can pull off.

A solidly above-average thriller.

If you went by the coming attractions and the advertisements, you might expect a predictable romance pitched on the level of a TV sitcom. But Untamed Heart is a movie of rare sweetness. [12 Feb 1993, p.D1]

Offers another way into these complex indigenous people, through storytelling as haunting as their artwork.