There are painful moments in “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” and there are triumphs. But mostly, it is a film of grace and acceptance — a necessary portrait of a groundbreaking artist.

High-gloss trash but compulsively watchable.

Plays like a holy, erotic mood piece, steeped in so much subdued jungle fever that it practically runs on photosynthesis.

Although the reality of the America's Cup series is that it seems elitist and removed from the sweaty tumult of sports in general, Wind succeeds in turning the competition into one that is intense, pictorially compelling and intelligible in terms of basic racing maneuvers. [11 Sep 1992, p.C1]

The picture is more impressive as it goes along, revealing a symmetry of construction underneath the rudiments of a thriller.

Where the first half of the film had power and sweep, the second half is a bunch of Post-it notes.

Eubanks takes someone else’s screenplay, one that’s full of incident, and infuses it with his own sensibility. Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t a writer, either. Being a good director with a real point of view — that’s plenty.

While Stearns’ style is detached and clinical, he finds tender humanity in unexpected places.

Kaurismäki stalwart Kati Outinen, as the old man's silent and ailing wife, is the key to the movie, even though she appears only sporadically. Something in her timid, understanding and impassive gaze, which is Kaurismäki's gaze as well, lets us know that she sees things in the old man that we don't see.

Though the script and storytelling could have used more polish, Lapica's honesty provides the lasting impression.

One of the Coens’ most inspired, bizarre touches is to cast Tilda Swinton as rival gossip columnists, twins who hate each other. She’s quite funny — blithe and vindictive in one incarnation, insecure and vindictive in the other.

The movie’s sympathies are with Halla and against the climate-change deniers, but it also sees something slightly ridiculous in her David-and-Goliath actions. What sets the film apart is how it balances both this sense of irony and an abrupt plunge into serious personal matters stemming from a forgotten decision Halla made years ago.

Goes to all the places a sensitive character study might have gone, but more dramatically, convincingly and vividly.

Band Aid is her (Zoe Lister-Jones) first film as a director — she also wrote and stars in it — and something about her and this film is really appealing.

The level of sexual tension and general creepiness as Chahine's character becomes unhinged is more intense than one would expect from a movie made in the 1950s under a totalitarian regime. [04 May 2017, p.E7]

Best of all is Richard Harris as Paddy O'Neil, an IRA spokesman. With his deeply lined and very Irish face, Harris has a wonderful look for the part. [5 June 1992, p.D1]

Schizo offers not just the proverbial window into village life in Kazakhstan, but a panoramic view.

Watching the film one comes away feeling the bond that links these guys.

The ending takes an unfortunate detour that stretches the running time, but this is still quality Pixar work.

But that’s also the movie’s charm, painting a world where all you need is talent, a little luck and a couple of shoulders to cry on when things get tough. It’s a stripped-down “A Star Is Born” — without the rehab and suicide.

Known for his visual images, Jordan outdoes himself in "Breakfast,'' a feast for the eyes.

It is impossible to think of anyone but Costner in this role. His commitment and sincerity are never in doubt.

It's hard to follow, the characters are ill-defined, and the wide-angle shots used by Wong's perennial cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, are deliberately unflattering.

A play-it-safe, by-the-numbers kind of documentary - yet somehow it gets under your skin.

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

It's so bleak that it would play like a contrived neo-noir if it weren't so consistent, committed and obviously sincere.

At any given time, a different character will seem to be the movie’s focus. But as long as we recognize that love’s transformational power is the real subject, there can be no mystery about the movie’s intentions or how it’s unfolding.

This film is family.

The movie gradually works its way, with quiet intelligence and apparent conviction, until there's no turning from it. An hour in, and we're on that boat.

The multiple-story-line family drama is too cliche-ridden to be considered a great movie. But it's still a very good one, filled with excellent performances, entertaining writing and a final few scenes that are quite moving - even if you can see most of them coming at the end of the first act.

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.

It’s a testament to the skill of first-time feature director Atsuko Hirayanagi that these wild mood swings can co-exist without blowing the movie apart.

Takes viewers into a unique world. It's not just about air traffic controllers. It's about controllers in a specific place and from a specific social background.

Though overly long and difficult to digest, it's a feast you won't want to miss.

The film falters a bit near the end, when it dwells on the romantic fallout of the affair, but all in all, “Amina” is an enterprising movie that makes this Internet story cinematically engaging.

Scores big as a study of small-town life where characters collide and are forced to get along for the good of the community.

Funny and sweet enough to delight kids and inventive enough to satisfy adults.

Some of the segments are more successful than others, yet all of them have the haunting quality of a completely insignificant event that someone might remember years later. Night on Earth tries to stop the clock and cast a net over the whole mystery, and while the film never loses its humor, the wistfulness, yearning and deep affection at its heart is are unmistakable. [29 May 1992, p.D1]

The Jungle Book has been shaped into solid, not-quite-golden but effusive family-style entertainment with exotic settings, amusing animal characterizations, hair-raising adventures and a saccharine romantic theme that is played big but finally is the film's least interesting facet. [23 Dec 1994, p.D1]

Barbie is an impressive and original work of the imagination. Its story holds up most of the time and for most of the way, with the unifying through line being Barbie’s existential crisis.

Gladiator II coasts: never good, never terrible, always a little disappointing, with speeches that fall flat and gladiator battles that are like watching the World Series when your team isn’t in it.

Like “Nobody” and “Nobody 2”, “Normal” is a satisfyingly amusing, get-in and get-out (all three films are about 90 minutes) piece of violent mayhem.

Worth seeing just to admire how Argentine writer-director Marcos Carnevale avoids so much as a whiff of condescension.

Mamoru Oshii's direction deftly merges gritty realism with a dreamlike quality. The only problem is that the characters reel off their existential speeches with such harried deadpan that it's hard to tell whether the angst is serious or tongue-in-cheek.

Criminal depicts a compelling situation, made rich and entertaining through its extreme characters.

The Lunchbox is better as an experience than as a memory. When you're watching it, you can still believe it might actually be heading somewhere.

The overall tone is awed and laudatory, which may rub some viewers the wrong way. Willem Dafoe delivers narration taken from Robert Macfarlane’s “Mountains of the Mind,” which occasionally strays in the direction of the trite or overwrought.

Manages to be affectionate without drawing too deeply from a well of sugar and schmaltz.

Best of all, there's just the pleasure of seeing something that's both fantastic to the eye and emotionally dimensional. This is how to make action movies.

Can and should be appreciated as a work of delicate and unmistakable beauty.

Toback presents specific characters dealing with specific problems and, through their stories, somehow manages to take the temperature of the times.

Like many films that attempt to be inspiring, Heavyweights uses the sound track like a rubber hose to beat the audience into submission. The movie is so honest and good-natured that it's hard to stay mad at it for long. [18 Feb 1995, p.E1]

Indian director Shekhar Kapur, who returns to film after more than a decade, is known for “Bandit Queen” (1994) and “Elizabeth” (1998), so this may be considered among the acclaimed director’s lighter films. But the Academy Award-winner’s skillful steering of characters allows the movie to showcase a diverse milieu rather than become a narrow East versus West portrayal.

When the screenplay sticks to the tricky business of living - trying, then screwing up, then stumbling forward anyway - it hits its mark with confidence, and the big ensemble cast responds with tight little performances of affecting vulnerability.

It expertly capitalizes on the emotional associations Americans have with Pearl Harbor and renders the battle scenes with an excellence that goes beyond proficiency and into the realm of art.

Despite any weaknesses, the movie still does what Morris does best. It digs deep into the details of how some terrible idea was mismanaged in execution.

Instead of settling for a tour de force from McKellen, Soderbergh goes for something better — a fascinating give and take from start to finish.

Mamet finds an angle just new enough to be fresh.

The movie doesn't aspire to be art, merely to entertain adolescent girls, which is practically guaranteed by the luminous presence of Anne Hathaway.

The joy of discovery is at the heart of Penguin Highway, a delightful new anime that is about the mysteries of life, both scientific and personal. Oh, and it’s about penguins, too.

Look, I Know What You Did Last Summer is fun, recapturing a ’90s slasher film vibe. It’s no “Bring Her Back,” the Aussie horror chiller released around Memorial Day, but it’s not meant to be...But kids, if you ever run into trouble on the Fourth of July, just call 911 and file a police report. You’ll be OK.

Matches a dingy urban setting with a compelling situation and throws in an ensemble of interesting characters who become even more interesting under stress. This emphasis on character -- in a sense, the movie's underlying humanity -- is what especially links it to the 1970s.

Late in the picture, Sobieski has some line-readings that are so emotionally full, strange and truthful that really nothing more need be said.

Bloody good.

These people seem real, even if their primary motivations are ideological. Perhaps more than they intended to, Goldhaber and the actors make the political personal. That’s a triumph of craft over appetites for destruction.

It is an exciting movie, full of crises and dramatic turns despite an aura of sadness that seems to pervade it.

The spellbinding power of this almost certain Oscar nominee for best documentary comes from its chilling subject matter.

Mainstream audiences will probably be confounded by Drive, while lovers of gritty filmmaking will defend every exaggerated shotgun wound as art. Know which camp you're in before you enter the theater.

Most of the right laughs in most of the right places and some unexpected ones thrown in.

The entertaining new film from Sony Pictures Animation is a nice surprise, and the rare mainstream American kid film.

Lorne makes it clear that nearly everyone in the entertainment industry who is known for creating laughs owes a debt of gratitude to the master.

Miami Blues is offbeat and fun. [20 Apr 1990, p.E1]

It's an amazing story, one that would seem too far-fetched if it weren't true.

When the movie is viewed with fresh eyes, the most captivating feature is this surreal Vegas -- its neon signs askew, as if reconfigured by Andy Warhol, and its preternaturally glistening streets a siren's call to an ever-new batch of suckers.

There is none of the drippy cuteness of ''Star Trek V.'' This is the best sort of adventure story, with good characters and excitement and lots of humor. [6 Dec. 1991, p.C1]

All this happens in an India that is both grim and beautiful: bustling, bureaucratic, colorful, harsh, full of cute children playing, full of downtrodden adults hustling for the next buck, full of life in general. It all feels very real. So does the ending.

In the end, Let Him Go is like a Southern Gothic, only set in the Northwest. It’s just a genre movie that delivers the goods, but the restraint and emotional insight of the direction and the quality of the performances bring it up an essential extra notch.

Miles Teller as Brendan McDonough is a standout, beginning as a dead-eyed drug user, then gradually turning into a responsible adult.

You can love or hate “The Chronology of Water,” but if you don’t come away from it marveling at the brilliance of Poots’s performance, you just weren’t paying attention.

A gentle fable, full of wit and charm.

The filmmakers have wisely turned it into a comedy, and a wickedly entertaining one at that.

Though not flawless, this is a compelling study, in Dogme style, of a wounded young woman who spends her working life spying on others.

The movie is directed by Anjelica Huston, and like a lot of actors who direct, Huston shows an ability to elicit strong emotions from her actors. But Huston also demonstrates a sense of where to place the camera. [13 Dec 1996, p.C1]

Still, despite Olsen and the appealing breeziness of Cumberbatch, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is what it is, a superhero extravaganza with too many fight scenes. But director Sam Raimi doesn’t overplay them, and the creative visuals keep them from becoming monotonous.

The result is not only entertaining but also refreshing, a shameless crowd-pleaser with a healthy cynicism about itself.

If it's ultimately a failure -- and I think it is -- it's still worth seeing, because it's the most ambitious and magnificent failure in recent memory. That, in a sense, qualifies it as a certain kind of "good movie."

At its best, Forrest Gump is a gentle, elegiac fantasy about love and trust.

A very effective primer of an underreported problem.

Original enough to keep an audience guessing most of the way. It has a strong plot that takes surprising and satisfying turns, and there's never really a dull moment. This is the kind of movie that, once you start watching, you have to finish just to see how it turns out. [08 Oct 1991, p.E1]

Provocative.

Sometimes demure, sometimes funny and other times flat-out crazed, Wuornos was effusive and confrontational when Broomfield filmed her just before her 2002 execution in Florida.

As the title suggests, she might as well be on trial for her life. That’s the absurdist but eerily true premise behind this provocative Israeli feature film, which takes us to the world of the Jewish religious courts, a place where only rabbis can decree a divorce — and where husbands wield stupefying power.

Watts is the movie's soul, thoughtful and deep-revolving.

The most compelling footage was taken during the uprising of August and September 2007, which put a bad scare into the government because a large number of Buddhist monks played a prominent role.

Colorful and visually pleasing, although there is nothing surprising in the rather predictable story.

The best scenes are of people talking -- and that's not just because the lines are so good. Roos doesn't seem to know what to do with his characters when they aren't blabbing.

It's scary. It's well-acted. It's filmed with a degree of flash and elegance.

Not the kind of movie anyone will remember at Oscar time. But no one who sees it will forget it.