Oftentimes da Vinci is pleasantly lost in the cosmos of his mind, what Willy Wonka called “pure imagination.” The target audience of “The Inventor” will surely relate.

A special film.

At its simplest, "Fire" tells of Mikael's efforts to exonerate Lisbeth. At its most baroque, it explores a vast web of sex trafficking and deep-rooted conspiracy that goes back decades and touches on Lisbeth's inflammatory background.

Instructive as a portrait of activism.

The Trip to Spain, perhaps isn’t quite up to the series’ opener (“The Trip,” 2010), it’s certainly a healthy cut above the second film (“The Trip to Italy,” 2014).

This doesn’t have the budget or the marketing push of “Pet Sematary,” the other horror film out this week, but The Wind has a boldness and imagination that transcends such limitations. This is indie horror at its best.

The Dutch thriller Borgman gets credit for being original, but not for being original in a compelling way.

A well-deserved 2003 Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.

If it happens to hit you right - that is, if you happen to catch its wavelength of tear-and-a-smile whimsicality - the movie will speak to you.

A richly satisfying and darkly funny movie.

Tricks with the camera sully an otherwise informative documentary.

A compelling documentary.

It's fascinating.

Her direction is weak, her dialogue is cliched, and her acting lacks energy and focus.

Has enough wit, energy and geniality to please everyone.

Has its moments, and Schwarzenegger is as buff and tough as ever. But there's a flat feeling about this effort that's unmistakable and inescapable.

A pleasant but conventional film.

Pelosi in the House is a one-of-a-kind document of one of the most important women in American history.

Few movies are as delightful as Julie & Julia.

The subtle ironies of Austen's novel are rendered obvious, and the book's social satire gives way here to more straightforward romantic comedy.

Supercharged and lifeless, frenetic and stone-cold dead, a barrage of action scenes that look fake, yet make you wonder if fake is the new real.

What distinguishes Cap is his humble backstory, which involves neither hairy gods nor hot-dogging test pilots but a kid from Brooklyn who just wants to fight for freedom.

One is haunting and wonderful, one is very good, and one spoils the fun.

The visuals are excellent, featuring a refreshingly small dose of forced cuteness, and plenty of the animals' natural movements.

You needn't have colorful Italian relatives, like myself, to enjoy this boisterous and warm-hearted film, which sidesteps cliche while embracing the hope and love in loony dysfunctional families everywhere.

By the time “Missing” reaches its truly terrible ending (which makes you wonder if the movie was all just a stealth Apple promotion), the feeling is one of programmed exhaustion rather than catharsis.

The moments between the characters are absolutely full. It's a pleasure to watch such consummate professionals.

Most audience members will probably want more.

The smartest thing director Steven Soderbergh did in the making of The Girlfriend Experience was to cast Sasha Grey.

Sausage Party is definitely not for everyone. Its well-earned R rating guarantees that. But what might prove the often hilarious and startlingly intelligent film’s greatest bar to blockbuster status is the very thing that sets it apart: its ideas.

The more an audience member sees the beauty left in the Buddhist leader’s wake, the more it becomes clear that his influence has the power to continue generations beyond his passing.

She is a great talent, a legend, someone who has made enduring classics, and just the fact that she’s still working at 86 is a gift. But somehow none of that makes The Life Ahead, coming to Netflix on Friday, Nov. 13, an experience worth having.

It's one of the least scary films that he's made - but still entertaining, and very, very gory.

Peterloo, despite top-notch set and costume design, is this claustrophobic, interior movie. And despite the wall-to-wall dialogue, there is little character development — everyone seems to be a “type” rather than an actual person. So when the massacre does come at the end of the film, it is oddly underwhelming.

Although the odds were against anyone being able to register the legendary charismatic presence that was John Huston, Eastwood succeeds to a surprising degree in White Hunter, Black Heart. [21 Sep 1990, p.E1]

This is a mature film from a mature director who gets more assured with every outing, even if this contained character study does not rank among his most ambitious efforts.

A particular strength of Alan Partridge is that the writers (Coogan among them) don't trade entirely on the audience's familiarity with the character, but rather come up with a flashy, eventful story in which Alan can be showcased in a variety of contexts.

Take Every Wave remains entertaining because of Hamilton’s awe-inducing skill on the ocean, and his determination to ride the waves as long as his body will allow.

Heart-wrenching.

Needs to be seen and savored.

May hit a few wrong notes, but it strikes an emotional chord.

It's that compelling sense of mystery, of the endless search and its undercurrent of loneliness, that sets this great filmmaker apart.

A compelling, sympathetic portrait.

An elegant-looking picture, carefully made and beautifully put together, but when the gloss wears off, you're left with an experience that doesn’t quite satisfy. [5 Oct 1990, Daily Datebook, E10]

Devotion earnestly tells that story in a stolid, straightforward manner, flying admirably high while knowing when to remain grounded.

The combative, off-putting Dark Horse features many of writer-director Todd Solondz's usual preoccupations: misery, complexity, stunted emotions, misplaced dreams.

Deliciously witty and entertaining… A first-rate thriller, one that's likely to generate as much word-of-mouth as “Alien,'' “Carrie'' and “Psycho'' did in their time. [23 Aug 1991, Daily Notebook, p.F1]

Creed II can’t be new this time out, but it does prove that the characters and relationships introduced in the first movie have staying power. People can keep making these movies and no one will mind.

What makes Ben Is Back different is that, even if this kind of pain is completely outside your own experience, you’ll feel some of it watching this movie.

Rush is dour, and its danger and its spectacle of mind-melting become humdrum. Still, the film is well-acted and is painstakingly accurate in details. [10 Jan 1992, p.C3]

At the end of the day, Wiener-Dog seems to be saying that life is mundane, then you die. It’s not the stuff of Hallmark cards, but Solondz has a way of making it palatable.

If you watch “Pamela, A Love Story,” you will probably discover a few things: that you like Pamela Anderson more than you realized, that she’s probably nicer than you think, that she’s an open book, that her sons are eminently normal and proud of her, and that she has some of the worst taste in men of any woman in public life. (She makes even Liza Minnelli seem lucky in love.)

Obviously, Barrymore is not ideally cast outside modern times, but her presence is so good-natured that she makes an audience want to work with her.

Keaton is fun to watch — fun and a little bit eerie. He plays Ray as all drive and no soul.

Mulan is a spirit lifter, and though it doesn’t arrive as planned, it could not arrive at a better time.

Sigourney Weaver is so daring and amazing, her veracity is at times painful to behold.

It's a movie for audiences who think exuberance in movies is more important than sense or logic and who can laugh at a movie and like it at the same time.

Sarsgaard and Jones are good actors, and both are fine. The real star, though, is sound designer Ian Gaffney-Rosenfeld and his team, who bring a depth and dimension to the story that sorely needs it.

It's a special movie that can make you laugh out loud numerous times at gross comedy and then make you think and feel something, too. There’s also something to be said for a movie that seems like the most fun these actors ever had.

Compared with other movies, Seven Psychopaths is clever and inventive enough to be considered a weak success or a modest failure, the kind of effort that usually gets damned with the faint praise of "not bad."

The script stays on safe, formulaic ground, but it’s effective — and somehow breathes new life into a franchise that had become a junk heap.

Perhaps the best teen date movie ever set in the year 1914, "Tuck" represents a brave leap against the tide. No sex, no car crashes and minimal violence. It just might be a hit.

His (Seidl) camera is shocking in its intimacy, his film surprisingly casual in its depiction of extreme behavior and the randomness of violence.

A fine example of how anime uniquely contributes to world cinema.

Phantom Boy has a cute, comic-book vibe to it, a visually pleasing style and a fast pace. It’s fun, for sure.

For a film that depends so heavily on talking heads, it has both a dramatic arc and a sense of character development.

One-half of an unremarkable war movie, followed by a touching story about the importance of animals in people’s lives. Fortunately, the stronger part is saved for last.

This is interesting, at least reasonably. But to a large extent, how you perceive the film will have much to do with how you see the story as relating to today’s headlines.

The experience of seeing Causeway isn’t what you’d imagine while trying to decide whether to watch a 92-minute movie about a veteran’s slow recovery. It feels more like moving in with her — invisible — for weeks, and watching as she makes a sandwich or stares into space. That isn’t drama. That’s practically audience abuse.

If you want to fall in love with Catherine Deneuve, don’t start with her youth. Start with her here, in her 70s, and then work your way back.

As a cop movie it's entertaining enough, but as a social commentary it comes up short, becoming self-conscious and preachy. [27 Apr 1990, p.E1]

A sleek, intelligent thriller.

Matt Damon's old-fashioned, brilliantly calibrated character turn as a corporate schnook-turned-whistle-blower; and Marvin Hamlisch's retro-groovy score. For the movie's first hour or so, the pair of them together make for four-star entertainment. The last half hour, not so much.

In the end, the most valuable aspect of “Cyrano” is that it shows that Peter Dinklage can do anything.

That Hossein Amini, in his first outing as a director, kept all three of these well-known actors in perfect balance suggests a filmmaker who knows how to steer a performance.

The movie becomes inventive in new ways and even cheery. It’s a true delight.

The young actors are adequate, but they’re not intrinsically interesting, so their interior movements hold no fascination. With that in mind, The Kid Who Would Be King should have been an hour long, but an extra 20 minutes, just to stretch it to feature length, would have been forgivable. But a full 120 minutes for this was just borderline crazy.

Sitting through Diggers is so tedious that you might find yourself envying the clam diggers. At least they get to be outdoors.

In the end, Crash lacks a cumulative impact. It takes audiences to new places, but we've all been to similar places, and we walk out knowing no more than we did walking in.

It’s obvious that this is a well-intentioned, sensitive labor of love, and Hooper’s strategy of keeping it safe is bound to bring in folks who might otherwise avoid such material. For the rest of us, we must settle for a film that is solid but never quite soars.

It’s not a movie that will make you tired, but lack of ambition can sometimes be a strength. This is a comedy-thriller made simply to please in the moment, and it does, for almost every minute of its 100-minute running time.

Don Jon deserves praise for wearing its message lightly and yet for daring to present such a lecture in today's Internet-drenched environment. Gordon-Levitt may be blithe in discussing pornography, but his movie nonetheless asserts that porn is addictive and destructive, that it intrudes on intimacy, and that it short-circuits the capacities for interaction and also, ultimately, for pleasure. That's a serious subject and a committed viewpoint, handled with wit and intelligence.

The first half of White Palace is done so well that it's tempting to overlook the fact that once the picture gets its two lovers together, it has nowhere to go -- and it goes nowhere for the last 50 minutes. [19 Oct 1990, p.E1]

The only scene that takes a stab at saying something about the root causes of the violence is the weakest. At a poorly attended community meeting called by the police to urge residents to speak up when they witness a crime, one black Vietnam veteran angrily mentions the lack of jobs. [15 Apr 1988]

A silly Hong Kong action flick from actor-turned-director Corey Yuen, fits nicely in the "bimbo fu" genre.

A must-see for anyone still coming to terms with the chaos in Iraq.

Routine, genial sports movie.

Charmingly quirky.

Thus, we find ourselves watching an ice-cold movie about competition that contains not a shred of rooting interest.

His affable, regular-guy shtick works well here, and he scatters the movie with such gleeful ads for his sponsors' products that, if his documentary work ever dries up, his next career choice is obvious.

A great movie was within reach with Judy — the new Judy Garland biopic starring Renee Zellweger — but the producers and creators made an epic mistake: They didn’t use Garland’s actual vocals. Instead, they let Zellweger pinch-hit for Babe Ruth and ended up spoiling the movie.

As prim and dreamily romantic as an old Doris Day movie -- and a genuine eye-pleaser photographically -- the new romantic comedy I.Q. is one pokey little film that refuses to get up and dance. Or sing. Or do much of anything but be mildly pleasant. [23 Dec 1994, p.D1]

The movie takes on a somber, fitful atmosphere of straining epic proportions. But it strays into an episodic bog that leaves it gasping for dramatic life.

Kung Fu Killer is like a roundhouse kick from the past, a satisfying, old-school martial arts film that has a ’90s feel to it.

In 2009, Kholoud Al-Faqih became the first female judge in the Palestinian Shariah (or religious) court system. As Erika Cohn’s fascinating documentary The Judge shows, al-Faqih has fought for justice for Palestinian women ever since.

The Art of Rap was made by a hip-hop fiend for hip-hop fiends. I fit the description, and it's difficult for me to approach the film as an outsider. But if novices can make it through the barrage of interviews with artists they don't know, they'll learn plenty about a craft still grossly misrepresented by the mass media.

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 serious subject handled with humor -- not the ha-ha kind, but the hard laughter that comes from recognizing parts of yourself in the Perelmans.