Other documentaries have made this point in grander, more artistic ways, but there is value in seeing this raw footage that accompanies an adolescence spent in front of the camera.

This is a horror movie the way the original “Ghostbusters” is a horror movie –– that is to say, not really — and like that film, there’s a “hanging out with friends” energy that gives The Blackening its charm.

Naked Lunch will undoubtedly bring pleasure, much of it perverse, to [David Cronenberg]'s many fans - and, simultaneously, confound and repulse a huge chunk of filmgoers. [10 Jan 1992]

It’s punctuated by the landscape of the demon slayers’ past, through their memories. Idyllic lakes and streams; gently falling snow; a small village. “Infinity Castle,” then, is a place of potential redemption and reclamation, of souls and reputations and a sense of one’s inner self.

Fascinating in its depiction of presidential leadership in action.

Occasionally exciting but carefully controlled.

A ghastly sequel to a charming animated film.

Among the film's more intriguing revelations is the key role California's almond crop plays in the nation's bee industry.

A hard, funny and realistic movie about the future.

In a variety of forms, Slither excels in imaginative gore and shows that first-time director James Gunn has learned much about the joys of linking humor and horror.

With her first feature, "Manny & Lo," writer-director Lisa Krueger reveals a distinctive style. Though employing no surreal devices and remaining within a realistic convention, Krueger takes the story of two young sisters on their own and somehow makes it seem unreal, strange, outside time.

There are great movies every year, but every so often there’s a movie that’s not only great but new, that advances the form a little, that pushes movies to a different place. Such movies get remembered as the thing that happened in cinema that year. The thing that happened in 2018 is Vox Lux.

Witty and lively, with a soul to it, as well.

It’s imaginative and even brilliant at times, and then it starts to cave in. But then we think no, maybe not, maybe everything’s going to be made right . . . until it collapses completely. A cynical, smart movie about the dangers of mass culture gives way to a sentimental embrace of the very thing it’s criticizing.

Quintana brings a stunning visual flair to his film, and Sheen has a fine moment when he ponders the thin line between miracles and tragedies. But we keep waiting for the film to wash over us, and it never quite does.

There’s a mood, a feeling about life, that pervades Nocturnal Animals, one that’s expressed in visual terms.

The smarter way to make this movie would have been to edit out everything extraneous to the story of Xavier and Wendy. They're the soul and heart of the movie, while everything else is pretty much dead weight.

By the time the credits roll, we don’t achieve a much deeper sense of who John DeLorean really was — only a better understanding of why this complicated figure continues to befuddle screenwriters. DeLorean probably would have preferred it that way.

It's doubtful that audiences go to animated features to hear movie stars talk. They go because a film sounds like fun and something their kids and maybe they themselves might enjoy. Bolt is all that and more.

The Well Digger's Daughter is old-fashioned in the best sense, almost cozy in its conventions.

No, T2 is not a great film, but its pleasures are great — and so rare and accomplished that they raise T2 to a level approximating greatness. There is something to be said for a movie this enjoyable. T2 is great enough.

In the end, “My Old School” is a well-made documentary that succeeds in most ways but that starts to crumple in the face of a single question: Who cares?

Showcasing three individuals whose spiritual and physical journeys are both repellent and mundane, the film is just a long and pointless slog.

Given the number of real-world cults that have ended in major bloodshed, there's some irony - and no small narrative coquetry - in any drama on the subject that ducks out so pointedly at the finish.

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.

One of the most effective thrillers in years, Attraction did an excellent job of mixing its suspense with trendy issues of sexual paranoia and monogamy. [27 Dec 1987, p.19]

Steel City makes a valiant attempt to add some new tweaks to the genre best described as life-sucks-growing-up-in-a-mill-town.

Overly long and not especially enlightening film.

Occasionally brilliant, profiting from Fellini's distinct and unmistakable way of looking and seeing. But it goes in circles and wears out its welcome, except for the most hard-core enthusiasts.

Stir of Echoes is much more down and dirty (than "The Sixth Sense"), and the thrills are more visceral.

Director- writer Oliver Parker saps much of the juice from Wilde, slows the pace and directs his actors in an inappropriately naturalistic style.

Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

Die Hard 2 is a huge movie done right. [3 July 1990, p.E1]

The film, with Newman's riveting performance, is an exceptional portrait of an oddball politician who is equal parts scoundrel and folk hero, wielding power with a quirky, almost cantankerous charm, while also pulling strings in a loyal and powerful Southern political machine. [13 Dec 1989, p.E1]

A brisk, entertaining documentary that shows how the world of investment works.

Magician is worth seeing as a kind of curated tour through the movies and through Welles’ interviews. However, if you have more time and want to get into Welles on your own, an afternoon watching YouTube videos followed by a few evenings of watching his best movies might be even better.

Curtis makes an all-in return to the Strode character, and the filmmaking team builds a solid framework around her, in the propulsive and entertaining new Halloween.

The temptation to be emphatic about Synecdoche, New York is overwhelming but should be resisted, because the movie really is a mixed bag. A particularly odd mix.

Edge of Seventeen is sweet and affectionate, but it also has "first effort" stamped all over it. Director David Moreton never made a feature before this, and has yet to learn how to compose a shot or block his actors.

Clever and enjoyable.

If the movie packs a weaker punch than the original, it has less to do with the action sequences than the script (by Edmond Wong, son of Raymond, who wrote the first), a flimsy affair with subpar villains.

Questions of politics and policy, even urgent ones, seem pretty dry after watching Henry and the other elderly patients come to life. Those scenes are a revelation.

Although few would confuse The Nightingale with greatness (it’s just way too predictable), production-wise, everything is top notch, especially the cinematography of Sun Ming, who captures some almost epic images of rural Guangxi — makes you want to go there. Also, Li’s quiet strength as the grandfather grounds the film in a gentle, simple and appealing way.

As Zimbardo, Billy Crudup adopts an implacable facade, and for a while we don’t know what we’re seeing — a humanitarian on the brink of discovery, an ambitious monster who has found the winning ticket, or a young professor in way over his head.

The Little Stranger will satisfy a very specific audience: “Downton Abbey” watchers who thought that show would be perfect if only the manor were down at the heels and haunted.

That the movie largely sidesteps partisan politics will no doubt irk some viewers, but may just be its greatest strength.

Armstrong acted like a demon, but it becomes clear there were very, very few angels associated with the sport in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The documentary might not complicate the picture you already had of Miranda, Kail, Veneziale and their team, but it nonetheless offers a profound testament to the value of finding your artistic collaborators.

Based on the novel by Robinne Lee and adapted by Jennifer Westfeldt and director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”), the film is smart, realistic and emotionally honest.

In America, it might be called a mess, and at times this movie sags. But overall, there’s something about it that holds interest. “A Private Life” is an odd ramble that eventually arrives somewhere.

The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott, gives us the texture of life in 14th century France, so much so that we feel that we are there, in this place that’s desperate and foreign and yet human and familiar.

Perhaps the most promising thing in 2 Days in Paris is that Delpy shows that she can direct herself.

Juliet, Naked is very like a Hornby novel in that it’s irresistible and appealing and full of tenderness and idiosyncrasy, and yet when you try to tell people what was so great about it, you can’t do it justice.

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]

In trouble from its first minutes.

It's an intelligent movie about economics. As such, it would probably make more sense to have it reviewed by economists than film critics.

Unlike many documentaries about movies, it's neither underfunded nor perfunctory, but thoughtful and bracing.

In some ways, this is "The Graduate" gone to "Lord of the Flies."

Stettner approaches this material with a playwright's incisiveness and structural sense. His dialogue is cutting, often surprising.

Tilda Swinton's rich, compelling performance is reason enough to see this uneven picture, which devolves from a riveting romantic triangle to a morality tale without a moral center.

Precious and uninsightful but ends beautifully.

Jay Kelly is Baumbach’s best film and, from an artistic standpoint, his first complete success.

An absorbing, multilayered story about the search for a French girl who goes missing with her Muslim boyfriend, starts in a very un-French way: with cowboys, horses, a Marlboro Man-like billboard and country-and-western music.

A bit of a soap opera, but still compulsive watching. [22 Aug 1999]

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.

This conventional PBS-style piece intends to deliver the story behind the event without much more than the slightest nod to the music, which is shunted to the side in this telling of the already oft-told story.

As finely crafted as a great work of literature.

While “Fresh” is intentionally not for every taste, it’s an uncompromising feminist horror/thriller with a fantastic lonely girl/victim/heroine for Edgar-Jones to play.

Ultimately, Kink has an undeniably voyeuristic quality - it's a glimpse into a mostly forbidding world, and there's value in that.

Perfect Blue manages, through animation, to take the thriller, media fascination, psychological insight and pop culture and stand them all on their heads.

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.

Any Agnieszka Holland movie is worth seeing, even if Spoor isn’t up to the director’s best (“In Darkness,” “Europa, Europa”).

The scale is small, but Jellyfish has deep currents.

Long before the end, audiences will stop worrying about the characters and start worrying about themselves — about when they’ll get to leave.

This much is certain: The cover-up was grotesque.

For those willing to enter this world and pay attention, A Late Quartet provides distinct and uncommon satisfactions.

The casting, at least, is magical. Plowright shows both her character's strength and her heartbreaking vulnerability, sometimes at once.

An intense and affecting report on the experiences of U.S. troops in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.

This project is in many ways a nod to the films of the French New Wave, and even if the surprisingly unsexy A Faithful Man doesn’t quite measure up, it’s never boring and keeps moving at a brisk pace.

After 96 minutes with these people, you’ll care even less than you do now.

Delightful.

Exhilarating for Lynch diehards.

The audience, too, will be sorry to see this fleeting, beautifully made French film end.

You've heard this one before, and in an edgier way -- yet you still admire the old-fashioned storytelling.

Open Range veers wildly. It's a movie of beauty and sensitivity, and tedium and absurdity.

A horror “comedy” about a deranged 12-year-old boy with a script that feels like it was written by a deranged 12-year-old boy.

Davidson’s appeal is essential to the movie’s success. If you know him only from “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll be surprised by him here. On “SNL,” he can be zany and annoying. Here he has a very particular quality that seems to be coming from a place of past pain. He has equanimity. Without making a fuss about it, he’s attentive to other people’s feelings. He just seems like a decent, thoughtful young guy, someone that you’d like to see come into his own.

There is no point in discounting smart, engrossing entertainment like The Ides of March, though it's hard not to notice when a film that could have been great falls short.

The film, written by Tomine, remains largely faithful to the book, which was already filled with caustic dialogue primed for a slacker movie. Yet there’s a sense that Tomine’s world has become sanitized in translation.

Disarms with its sincerity and frankness.

Hawke is effectively brooding, which recalls his first collaboration with Almereyda, a 2000 adaptation of “Hamlet” set in modern-day New York City.

Compelling.

A frustrating film that feels cobbled together.

At its best, The Great Hack will alarm you, infuriate you, and — hopefully — activate you.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest has a creeping sweetness that sneaks up on the viewer. This musical animation gets off to a slow start, and it's just as slow in the middle. But by the end, it acquires an emotional impact, and later you really feel as though you've been somewhere new. [10 Apr 1992, p.C1]

More than just a nostalgia trip.

If the dialect is hard to comprehend, that soon becomes part of the joke. It's unlikely that even the British audiences who made Lock, Stock a big hit got it all.

A very effective primer of an underreported problem.