Vengeance is unexpected and, in the best way, weird. In his first film as a writer-director, B.J. Novak takes familiar elements, but puts them together in ways that are original and unexpected. Even when the plot turns go off the deep end, it’s impossible not to appreciate Novak’s audacity.

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

The film urges decentralization and bottom-up decision making as tools in remedying problems of global warming, food production and the like. The tone is more upbeat than you might expect, and there’s a certain glossiness to the movie that’s a refreshing change from some of its more dour documentary siblings.

Transfixed is proudly personal, which is its strength.

It's one of the most violent, shocking and bitterly funny movies ever released. In terms of body count and graphic violence, it rivals ''Reservoir Dogs,'' ''Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer'' or, going back several years, Sam Peckinpah's grisly ''Straw Dogs.'' But that's half the story: Man Bites Dog also has method in its mayhem. By spoofing the trashy ''reality TV'' phenomenon -- a soul-numbing entertainment form that's found even greater popularity in Europe than the United States -- the film exposes the desensitizing effects of television violence, and questions the extent to which the media not only feeds the public hunger for violence, but ultimately creates it. [15 Jan 1993, p.C9]

There is no rage here or Michael Moore-like bluster. Instead, Deadline is a straightforward, compassionate look at a volatile subject.

It’s low-key in tone and not a splatter fest, even remotely. You Should Have Left is horror for a thinking audience.

Sr. is elegiac in tone, often moving, with moments of irreverence and humor.

The acting is immaculate; the editing is seamless; the imagery is blunt.

Connects so often and so persuasively that its shortcomings -- the movie goes slack from time to time -- really don't amount to much.

This is almost Mel Brooks territory: The frontiersmen think the Chinese are Jews, while the white settlers think it's the Crow Indians who are. Whoosh!

The fine quality of the new film is good news for anyone disappointed by "Star Trek Generations," which got the new "Star Trek" feature film series off to a shaky start two years ago.

Uses loneliness and alienation as the primary emotional colors on a surprisingly expressive canvas.

Self-satisfied -- an undisciplined brat of a film.

Hand it to directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, who could have made the story into a black-hat/white-hat affair. Without soft-pedaling Cobb’s noxious ideology, they implicitly raise questions about how Leith responded to the perceived danger.

What lingers in the memory is the impression of having experienced a frolic, a ride through the park on a bright winter day.

This is history of a personalized and meditative sort, and you ought to give it a chance.

You might hope for a bit more depth on the kids Dellamaggiore profiles - perhaps she could have homed in on, say, two of them - but this is really nitpicking. The film is well made and genuinely inspirational.

To's smooth, balletic style, noirish lighting schemes and compositions are made for the big screen, and because his work is (sadly) not distributed well in the United States, take this opportunity to see it in a theater.

This is a handsome, conventional biopic, as fluent and polished as its subject matter.

Argentine filmmakers Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (who wrote the film in collaboration with Duprat’s brother, Andrés) direct Official Competition with a sophisticated understanding of its tone, which is essentially realistic and deadpan. The world isn’t crazy, just the people in it.

Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer's, and you'll get an idea of this film's misplaced focus.

Poysti’s subtle, layered performance conveys Tove’s complex dilemma with sweetness and pain. This is a portrait not of a lady on fire, but of a woman struggling to strike the match.

In his quiet, sad stoicism, Boyega at times seems to be channeling Denzel Washington. He embodies the dignity of suffering.

We see the tormented, limited and potentially dangerous man underneath.

A wild ride through nonstop visual effects yet a warm wallow in the cinema of the dumbed-down.

Offers enough glossy good cheer to appeal to everyone.

Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything begins as a fawning “greatest hits” collection. Then, in the second half, it deepens.

The film is mentally graphic, not sexually graphic.

Antlers is a very effective, chilling film. It doesn’t have the franchise flash of Halloween Kills or the bizarro artifice of Lamb, but there’s authenticity to this movie that’s so effective and, at times, emotionally overwhelming

A must-see for Mamet fans.

It's an audacious little comedy with bursts of hilarity and a certain giddy energy.

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

An often tender and revealing documentary.

The music is hit-and-miss, and the movie sinks into as many cliches as it avoids. But the characters are appealing, and the storytelling is just unconventional enough to keep an audience guessing.

This is kid stuff, but such well acted, well made stuff that inside 15 minutes you're sitting there like a teenager yourself wondering which girl Keith will wind up with. [27 Feb 1987]

The soundtrack, full of jazz standards, is an enjoyable feature, though in the context of the movie, audiences will mostly feel anxiety hearing them. The amount of work required to sound breezy and effortless is daunting.

A mostly amusing, appealing family comedy about going from pretender to contender, in life as well as pingpong.

Port Authority is never in a hurry. It often feels like it’s being lived as you watch. That won’t satisfy viewers who need a tight narrative with recognizable beats, but if you’re looking for an immersive love story that takes you places you might not know, that challenges your conception of what romance looks and feels like, Port Authority is a great place to stop.

The videos speak for themselves — and provide a worthwhile time capsule of a turbulent era.

After a slow start, it moves.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be there - to actually be there, man - this movie gets it.

What happens to the twins won’t be revealed here (those with overriding curiosity can find the Wikipedia page about them), but Smoczynska, Wright and Lawrance find the humanity and empathy in their story, if not the complex psychological reasons behind their unique lives.

Nostalgia, as mentioned, is a factor. But the key to its success is its focus on family and hope.

Sharp and irresistible, and there's no other movie like it.

A crime drama in a special class.

The antics that prevail along the way, and the character changes the pair undergo as L.A. grows nearer, are memorable.

Riveting.

A superior adventure film with a poetic heart.

The big screen -- with that 3-D depth charge -- captures the strange magic of the "big top" Cirque in visual gulps.

Loses steam only when it strays from the sisters and attempts to depict their parents' loveless marriage.

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.

Even if a quarter of what Boreman claimed was true, she had a lot more coming to her than a sympathetic hearing and much prettier actress playing her onscreen. She practically deserved an apology from the male sex, and that, in a way, is what this movie is.

This documentary is not just interesting, but timely.

If you love the “Fast & Furious” franchise, you will like Fast X. If you merely like the series, the new movie will leave you indifferent. And if you’ve never seen a “Fast & Furious” movie, Fast X is not the place to start. It’s a middling installment, a big step down from the stupid-wonderful “F9: The Fast Saga,” but with just enough of the crazy stunts and chases that you can’t find anywhere else.

In this pitch-perfect documentary about the very real rise of air guitar competition in the United States, and two of its top performers, stony thoughts will arise as to whether one is suddenly trapped inside a satire that got wrapped in a reality. Or vice versa, man.

Yet as ridiculous as Hefner's life sometimes seems, he has been an exemplary citizen, as this documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman spells out.

Although based on a fictional story, it has the feel of truth and is a vivid reminder of the hell Mexicans put themselves through to live in the United States, even illegally.

A look at lives and hopes that are part of our American culture.

Stays funny despite rickety gags because Ben Stiller and 81-year-old Eileen Essel are old pros at playing it straight.

Deserves plenty of credit for exploring racial issues story in more realistic terms.

A sleek, intelligent thriller.

Life Stinks will never stand with the classics -- it's basically a diversion -- but its plea for economic equality is well taken. And Brooks, after years of lousy movies, finally seems back on sure footing. [27 July 1991, p.C3]

The Baxter is just an OK movie, but Showalter's performance is the gem to take from it.

Enthralling, entertaining feature.

Cate Blanchett has the title role, and she does wonders with it, bringing a degree of passion but also suggesting something essentially unevolved in Charlotte's character.

Despite some weaknesses, a sense gradually emerges in this film- not just an idea, but a strong feeling mixed with an idea - about the dance of good and evil over time.

As good as the film is in conveying the feeling of the walls closing in, it has to be said that the script won't win any prizes for subtlety - the director seems to relish ham-fisted ironies.

The emphasis here is less on cuteness and romance and more on the "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-style adventure.

Like its lead characters, Going in Style just grooves along nicely, until the credits roll and you realize it was time well spent.

Even at its silliest, it's a better picture than most, with surprises and inventive turns and performances that remain strong throughout. [14 Aug 1992, p.C1]

Toy Story 4 is genuinely gripping for most of the way, with just a couple of minor dips. But it arrives at a lovely place, with an embrace of life in all its danger and uncertainty.

Although it takes something of a slog to get there, this thriller finally comes through where it counts.

An entertaining and perceptive film with one big problem.

Succeeds as both education and amusement.

The screenplay is deceptively tight, even as the main characters seem to be buzzing aimlessly through the proceedings. Like the most successful films of the drug-hazed genre, this movie only appears to be going off the rails.

Delicately flavored as much by the inherent appeal of its classic Cinderella-like story as by its pictorial beauty, The Scent of Green Papaya is a lovely experience in the dreamily exotic.

Blackthorn imagines a scenario for Butch's later years and gives us a different kind of Western - somber, reflective and set in the elevated plains and salt flats of Bolivia.

Lilting works because of the superb performances from its two leads, especially Whishaw, whose tortured gloom offers a striking contrast to the cool, unflappable “Q” role he presented in “Skyfall.”

The stories are harrowing, and because they are delivered by living, breathing witnesses, they move us in deep ways that the archival footage, for all its horror, cannot.

A smart, funny and edifying documentary.

The film's subject, a whistle-blowing research scientist who played a key role in the fight to regulate tobacco, deserves to be celebrated.

Porter’s film is undeniably skewed to the pro-choice position, although she does interview antiabortion advocates as they protest.

Both actors are so appealing, you root for the inevitable meeting to happen somewhere in the vicinity of Wonderland.

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.

The achievement of Saved!, a very funny teen comedy set in a Christian high school, lies in its careful avoidance of obvious traps.

An eerily affecting domestic drama combining elements of "The Lost Weekend'' with "Lost Highway.''

Does what good horror movies do: It taps into the baser emotions.

Connoisseurs of straight-to-video mayhem will revel in the latest chapter of the "Universal Soldier" franchise, which manages to strike that delicate balance between over-the-top ridiculousness and well-crafted filmmaking. [28 Feb 2010, p.Q28]

An exceptionally perceptive film about what it's like to be 19 years old.

The film is likely to attract new readers to the book — and remind longtime fans why they were attracted to the writings in the first place.

Though the film makers would probably like us to regard Guncrazy as a commentary on alienation in the '90s, in the end the picture isn't about much more than its own style. But this commitment to style and the movie's peculiar emotional honesty make it more than a self-conscious genre piece. [05 Feb 1993, p.D1]

Washington, no surprise, is terrific, his sensitivity offset with touches of knowing, self-deprecating humor.

Just as essential is Seth Rogen, as Adam's best friend. Rogen isn't even 30 yet, but he is already an important actor - not just because he's popular but because he best embodies this particular comic moment.

Loneliness, mistrust and love keep turning the tables on each other in a terrific suspense thriller. [24 Aug 1990, p.E1]

A sweet, unabashedly sentimental tale.

Mostly, Super Troopers is plain goofy.

A pleasure to watch - a spot-on story about the agony and ecstasy of adolescent first love.