The obvious thing to expect here is that writer-director Christian Petzold is using the Undine”myth as a metaphor. But no, he’s doing the actual myth.

There have been many adultery movies over the years, but Leaving has some aspects that make it different and interesting.

Darkman is big, stupid and wonderful -- an absurd, grand-scale adventure and a vicious comedy rolled into one nasty, unpleasant, hard-to-resist mess. [24 Aug. 1990, p.E1]

The sum is difficult to watch. But this isn't a film against Islam or religion in general: A clear distinction is made between Allah's more vicious followers and the mercy of Allah himself.

For a thoroughly fascinating, true glimpse into the horrors that vanity and self-delusion can wreak, take some time to see The Baader Meinhof Complex.

Old is, at times, clumsy and obvious, but it’s different and weird, and it taps into something essential. It might be a distant second to The Sixth Sense, but it’s the second-best movie Shyamalan has made.

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.

Things get quite Gothic in the film’s final stretch, with genre add-ons that “Garden” purists may also find distasteful. The extra melodrama can feel unnecessary. However, it leads to moments of life-restoring beauty (core theme here again) and love.

This isn’t just a good horror film. It’s a good film, which just happens to fall in the horror genre.

To the extent that this difficult but ultimately rewarding film has a message, it's that you can't run away from who you are.

Funnier, sunnier and even more violent than its predecessor, “Nobody 2” ups the ante in the cinematic action department as well.

Efficient action thriller.

Quietly unsettling.

One of the few big-fish horror films that still has the power to surprise.

A gripping story of one teen's rebellion against his peers' sadistic abuse.

What Ritchie is able to convey is the terrifying nature of this kind of small-scale combat, with the enemy coming out from nowhere and from every direction. Even if you’ve never experienced anything like this, there’s something about what Ritchie does here that feels authentic.

Wildlife isn’t dazzling entertainment but an intelligent, low-key and satisfying film with a rare respect for every character.

People who go into Hot Shots! Part Deux knowing what to expect will not be disappointed, and people who stumble in unawares won't be too sorry. At its best, ''Part Deux'' is very funny, and at its worst, it's a complete waste of time -- with the balance about even between the strong and the weak sections. [21 May 1993, p.C1]

Dreamland has vitality and emotional truth underlying all its interactions. And the young women, Agnes Bruckner and Kelli Garner, are superb.

What's Love Got to Do With It isn't the best musical biography of all time, but it's an unusually satisfying one, and a tremendous showcase for the splendid Bassett. [11 Jun 1993, p.C1]

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

Certain to nauseate a portion of its audience.

An irresistible movie about a guy who goes on a journey, the kind an audience can't wait to take with him.

Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa) makes a fine comeback after his fall with High Spirits, by directing with as witty a touch as the Mamet script requires. [15 Dec 1989, p.E1]

A shrewd thriller that takes the time-honored plot about an innocent man wrongfully accused and gives it a film-noir twist.

Aselton gets a lot said in 78 minutes. I think the main thing she says is something never overtly spoken, that life is essentially a lonely experience - even when we're surrounded by activity, and even if we never shut up.

It’s a sci-fi action movie that spoofs the form to strong comic effect, and yet it profits from every good thing about the genre it’s mocking. It tries to have it both ways, and it succeeds.

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.

The resulting film is a rich mix of movements and cultural phenomena that occurred not only in the United States, but several European countries.

The Thursday Murder Club is solid entertainment, as sweet and sugary as one of Joyce’s irresistible cakes.

It’s a lot to cover in 83 minutes, and you might wish for a little more depth in the girls’ back stories. Then again, the brisk pace is part of what makes the movie a crowdpleaser.

Has slow patches and requires a generous suspension of disbelief. But it's also sweet and optimistic -- a welcome antidote to gloom.

A paranoid, prurient sexual nightmare.

The movie works by stringing together many small observations to develop a portrait more quiet and revealing than many overwrought films that strain to address hot-button issues.

The actors have enough appeal to keep it moving over the speed bumps.

It looks like a low-budget film, but in this case that just adds to the charm. Croghan's only false move was to divide her film into segments, each one introduced by a quote from a famous writer.

Beautiful in a girl-from-the-neighborhood sort of way, Carano inhabits Soderbergh's elaborate frame with wit, physicality and just a hint of ironic distance, the suggestion of someone who's not overawed by the opportunity or taking herself too seriously.

The movie examines the possibility of maintaining one's humanity in a truly oppressive society.

The director’s skill pushes what could have been the same old song into a likable testament to the saving powers of young love and rock ’n’ roll.

I don't see Edge of Darkness as a great movie, or a particularly exalted one, but I do see it as one made by people who know where the buttons are - and who know how to press them. Hard.

Compelling.

A faithful portrait of a period in American social history.

A must-see movie that could have used a sharper edge.

Told so simply and powerfully that it seems to carry echoes of earlier, timeless tales.

The Assistant isn’t a particularly enjoyable film, but its message and quiet power linger for days.

It is 140 minutes long and repetitious beyond belief. Yet for all its weaknesses - unconscious contradictions, travelogue simplicity and mix-and-match spirituality - Eat Pray Love is, like its central character, on a genuine quest.

Does nothing to elevate the form — and yet it doesn’t disappoint.

Dumb Money is a tale of 2020, and the movie captures that 2020 feeling — gray, depressed, anxious and almost comically miserable.

Grossman does a workmanlike job with the film, but his direction and script don't really offer any great insight into Darby's tortured soul.

A tender, unforgettable comedy about a vanishing way of life.

What makes Rampage especially enjoyable is the way it sneaks up on the audience. Before casting off every shred of dignity and abandoning itself to good-humored excess, the movie passes itself off as a reasonably serious science-fiction movie.

Norman Bates is alive and well, and just a tad kinkier than you remember him.

Cop Land isn't a perfect piece, but it's sober, wise and adult.

The documentary is interesting as a human story. And anyone who loves the Kuchar brothers' films or underground cinema in general will take extra pleasure in it.

It’s not an exciting film, and it’s not a film with some wider social relevance. But it’s a film that’s wise about people in a way that’s rare. It also launches Dylan Penn, and someday that will matter.

This flick is a summer diversion, pure and simple, so don’t expect a deep message.

It all makes for a very different type of summer-movie experience, one far removed from superheroes and special effects. Best of all, you need not have read a word of Dickens to be captivated by the world that Iannucci has created.

Bound by mother-daughter ties that are complex, touching, ultimately so powerful they yield the kind of tearful joy rarely experienced at the movies.

Although we know the outcome, Silicon Cowboys feels like a suspense thriller.

Any movie with Meryl Streep is an occasion, but when you add Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hume Cronyn and Gwen Verdon, you've got an embarrassment of riches.

It's a life worth remembering.

The engaging HBO documentary Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, both a guilty pleasure and meaningful slice of queer history, delivers a loving yet irony-laced tribute to a closeted movie icon whose tragic death from AIDS changed the course of the epidemic and cemented his place in LGBTQ lore.

Presents an almost fawning portrait of the doctor-turned-surfer.

A spiritual successor to "The Pursuit of Happyness," but darker and more oblique.

It's still a spirited look - well written, beautifully acted, full of uplift - at lovably cheeky heroines on the march for a little respect.

Whatever it is, it’s the rare case of an intelligent disaster movie.

The film provides an intelligently imagined future world.

You also cannot help but think about what Baumbach has that Allen lacks: Empathy for his characters. Not insight into them, but empathy for them.

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

Downbeat but ultimately hopeful, it's a domestic tragedy that cuts clearly to the bone, finding emotional nuance among the family's knotty secrets and dense layers of subterfuge.

Has a wicked sense of humor.

Despite very little dialogue and only one actor with a speaking role, Arctic has a smart script. Something is always happening.

It’s not a question of believing it, exactly. Director Ridley Scott has simply made us want to be there, to wish we really were there, and to accept his illusion as the most ready answer to that desire.

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.

It's over pretty fast, just 75 minutes, but it has its grisly moments and a few underwater sequences that are pretty creepy.

It has action sequences that will appeal to people looking for the usual pyrotechnics, but the core of the movie - and the source of the audience's interest - is emotion.

A solid bit of fun in the straight-arrow family entertainment genre, Richie Rich, starring Macaulay Culkin, doesn't pretend to be much more than pleasant matinee fodder.

Take a cowboy movie, add space aliens. That's a gimmick that could easily have exhausted itself after 20 minutes, but director Favreau, a team of screenwriters and some well-cast actors keep it alive, and the result is a crowd-pleasing summer movie with more wit than most.

The result is a winning comedy.

This is a movie about power, and its spectacle is that of a woman losing all of it.

He )Robert Zemeckis) creates a movie that is old-fashioned in every possible good way, but that in no way seems passe or cliched.

Yet the personalities of the actors are so appealing here and the direction by John Badham (''Stakeout,'' ''Saturday Night Fever'') so filled with inventive comic bits and details that Another Stakeout plays much better than you'd think. It's a consistently entertaining two- hours-or-so at the movies. [23 July 1993, p.C3]

Considering all the possible ways BackBeat could have been really ridiculous, it's all the more impressive that it should turn out to be an intelligent, sincere and entertaining piece of work. [22 Apr 1994, p.C3]

Adams does offer quite a turn: Portraying a version of Disney's Snow White, she owns the character, down to every warble and twirl.

"Bombshell” tells the story of a triumphant and consequential life. And there’s more: Everybody interviewed on camera about her apparently really liked her, especially her children. That’s no small achievement.

When (and before) the end credits roll, you will probably feel a sense of outrage — and helplessness.

Hornby's humane and humorous screenplay is true to the film's title: In short order, young Jenny finds out important truths about identity, glamour and how adults really think and live.

The wordless, elderly Kiefer is enigmatic, and a bit intimidating. His work is impressive, though, especially in 3D.

Only occasionally does the film fall into the trap of making the prisoners cute, but it never falters in important ways.

A smart and unsettling atmospheric thriller.

It has a life and style that other buddy action movies lack

Gridiron Gang gives you a lot more to think about during the ride home.

The best of Jackie Chan's American movies, a pleasant little action comedy that makes one wonder how other filmmakers could ever get it wrong.

Lacks the marquee names and production values of big studio romantic comedies, but it connects on an emotional level most of them fail to do.

One can’t but admire the resilience of the film’s subjects, and when the story turns to the dedicated army of teachers in programs such as the Children’s Literacy Project (teachakidtoread.com), it becomes downright positive.

Superior animated film from Japan.

Tersely written and compellingly acted. But its controversial subject matter may make a lot of viewers so angry that the film's strong points will be disregarded.

Some of "The Shawshank Redemption'' comes across as outrageously improbable. Yet the film keeps pulling you back with its sense of striving humanity slowly turning the tables against evil.