It’s a lot of ground to cover, but if the movie fails to plumb the depth of Lear’s mystery, it succeeds in being an entertaining look at an influential figure.

There are odd comic moments, but this is a bleak, nighttime, nightmare world, where the couple seem to have about the same chance at a happy outcome as the accident victims.

Art makes the difference for the few kids who make it, and it also makes the difference for the films that stand out from the pack. The Hip Hop Project, a documentary by Matt Ruskin, is one of them.

Keeps you riveted through parts that might otherwise be difficult to watch.

Dark City grabs your eyeballs and squeezes.

It’s a mix of comedy that isn’t especially funny — offering something more like general high spirits, rather than laughs — and drama that isn’t really dramatic, except to the people on screen.

Unlike "Pirates," Stardust is anything but a wretched mess. It's a charming and smartly plotted fantasy.

This is a decidedly blue-state take on a red-state phenomenon.

Business intrudes on art.

It's that dilemma -- a commitment to Orthodox life, the refusal to deny one's sexuality and the fear of expulsion once that sexuality is revealed -- that director Sandi Simcha DuBowski illustrates so powerfully.

Kalashnikov is also smart enough to keep The Road Movie down to 67 minutes, which is all he needs to create this particular vision of hell. (And, by the way, he does so without showing bloody or mangled bodies.)

A movie for adults, of a kind that usually isn't made in America,

What’s fascinating about Kirby here is that even when she appears to be doing nothing, she’s worth watching.

Strange Days wants to say something about faith and redemption -- about the importance of maintaining one's humanity in a darkened world. That's a worthy intent, but Bigelow is so enamored of high-tech thrills, and so mesmerized by the violence she seeks to condemn, that her efforts at 11th-hour moralizing seem limp and halfhearted.

Decker proudly revels in Lennie’s scattered uniqueness, even as Lennie navigates the minefield of her choices and says some truly kooky things (“I wish my shadow could get up and walk beside me”). YA movies might not be your bag, but if they are, perhaps the NorCal vibe of “The Sky Is Everywhere” will strike a weepy chord.

Shows how a documentary can be as moving and suspenseful as the best narrative feature.

The colorful, character-rich details of Carlito's Way provide the fire and fun in Brian De Palma's latest suspense opera, which dives into a Spanish Harlem swaggering and swaying with macho and meanness. But it's a bloated picture, full of itself in the name film art. [12 Nov 1993, p.C1]

The uneven, misanthropic French comedy Slack Bay, one of the weirdest period pieces in quite some time, is an odd combination of “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” Monty Python, and “Laurel and Hardy,” with some cannibalism, incest and gender identity issues thrown in.

As the photographer, Baldwin tries to keep his chin up, but he's ultimately sunk by the built-in ludicrousness of the character he plays. But Hopkins -- through wit, luck and imagination -- emerges victorious from the barren wilderness of Mamet's script. He has only himself to thank.

This is the "Godfather II" of tasteless prank films.

This is Baumbach's best yet.

The submarine drama, which opens today, has everything you could want from an action thriller and a few other things you usually can't hope to expect: an excellent script, first-rate performances and a story that has more to do with individuals than explosions.

This eager-to-please documentary is short on story, but long on charm. That’s because the seven profile subjects embrace their age and celebrate their style as creative self-expression.

Even when it tries to be funny, there’s never any point of connection. The emotions in White Noise are neither real nor meant to be real. The audience is always watching from a distance — until, finally, it starts wondering why it’s watching at all.

Morro is a great character, and for the most part, the film is animal friendly and environmentally serious. In the end, Irving turns out to be a reliable narrator.

Roofman hooks viewers with its compelling depiction of a person too smart for his own good. It’s funny and moving, however close to or far from the real events it may be.

Koolhoven is able to strip away both visually and mentally our idealized cinematic notions of how the resistance fighters lived. It's a lonely existence. It's stark and it's scary. And it makes for a compelling movie.

Good in their individual scenes, Yakusho and Kusakari are magical together. They convey so much yearning -- not so much for each other as for that extra something to give real meaning to their lives.

Wicked fun with flickers of intelligence.

Swan Song, of course, belongs to Ali. He conveys Cameron’s vise grip of moral dilemma, fear of dying and concern for his family visually, often wordlessly, and it is a complex, layered performance. Let’s just say this is an unusual way to confront your inner demons.

Compelling parable from Canada that's open to a number of interpretations.

Unique.

It brings together several popular strains of contemporary moviemaking and combines them into one big, shameless, audacious, compulsively watchable, irresistibly likable piece of pure entertainment.

Littlerock could easily be described as the flip side of "Lost in Translation": Instead of Americans struggling to communicate in Japan, it's the Japanese who are out of the loop when they get stranded in the outer, outer fringes of the Los Angeles area.

As entertainment, this approach might be questionable. As a service, it would be valuable.

An outstanding gangster film -- loaded with style and ambience -- that boasts one of Christopher Walken's finest performances. [28 Aug 1991, p.E3]

By now, fans of the studied loveliness of Merchant Ivory films savor that they aren't pat, slick or especially action-packed. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries is a fine example -- themes percolate and evolve into poignancy.

As in "The House of Yes'' and "Freaky Friday,'' Waters keeps it wild but real, and the result is not only a series of lively scenes but lively close-ups: The big-eyed, expressive performances are just fun to watch.

Transamerica provides the frame and the occasion for one of the year's best performances, Felicity Huffman's as a woman trapped in a man's body who's passing for female while awaiting a sex-change operation.

A hit- and-miss affair, consistently amusing but not as outrageous or funny as Cho may have intended or as imaginative as one might have hoped.

Anyone expecting a flashy Bond-style fantasy is going to be disappointed.

A movie so cheeky, aggressive and bursting with vitality that it can't help being annoying and exhilarating at the same time.

Forgiving its moments of melodrama, Philadelphia makes emotional power punches out of every smile, embrace and tear in its story of a regular guy contracting AIDS and getting booted out of the law firm that once lifted him to glory. [14 Jan 1994, p.C1]

At just under two hours, "Ultraman: Rising" is a bit longer than it needs to be, but buoyed by a strong voice cast and a unique point of view that blends elements of superhero action with heartfelt family drama, it's an effective reinvention of a franchise that's had more than its share of reboots over the last 58 years.

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

The Good Dinosaur has an original concept, disarming emotional heft and features the most impressive visuals in animated cinema to date.

Overall, this is a nice introduction to an amiably dour tunesmith who once wrote that "all art aspires to the condition of Top 40 bubblegum pop."

It's the supporting players who stand out.

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

It packs a lot in its 81 minutes, and does it well.

The result is that after two hours one gets the sense of having seen a panorama of human experience, of having witnessed a moment of time in all its true fullness.

With Pavarotti, director Ron Howard serves up a straightforward documentary about the great tenor’s life and career. It’s just a birth-to-death saga, featuring interviews with colleagues and loved ones and a catalogue of greatest hits, so nothing fancy here. But if you can find a better way to spend two hours, take it — I’ll stick with this.

The thing that may be most chilling about “Master” is how its three protagonists want and need to support one another but ultimately cannot due to internal as well as external forces.

A feverish, unremitting and grimly joyless film.

Results are all that matter, and the result here is that The Desolation of Smaug fails in almost every way, as a story, as an adventure, as a piece of art direction and as a visual spectacle.

In its most touching moments, the film achieves a kind of sad and waltzing rhythm all its own. In its least, it's precious and plodding; the metaphoric link between grief and housework drags like a mop on a bathroom floor.

This is one of those rare films nowadays that might have been helped with a few extra minutes. Yet at the same time, that’s a clear sign that Hill has created a world and a set of characters that have kept us engaged throughout.

Swimming With Sharks, despite its attempt to be wicked and hiply fun, is ultimately just tiring as it pits people against one another.

This is the second-best Spider-Man movie yet made. In the previous trilogy, only "Spider-Man 2" surpasses it.

There's not a single moment here in which Nixon is admirable, decisive or appealing. Nixon doesn't work as a drama, but with a little push it might have been a great comedy.

A dead woman tells her own harrowing story in the documentary God Knows Where I Am. It’s the kind of movie you need to be prepared for — its most intense moments have echoes of tragic literature.

What makes this whole thing work is, first of all, Wilee's ride, an elegant machine that lacks any gears or brakes.

Bursts with action, ideas and interesting characters.

Brower's legacy, however, is beyond question. Historian Starr calls him "an American hero," and though Brower was a prickly sort and a zealot, that judgment sounds right.

It is so narrowly focused on neurotic obsessions that the quest for finding that fundamental nature of ultimate reality is sidetracked. What kind of approach is that for a Buddhist? Ferrara takes the easy way out.

As played by Boseman and Gad, Marshall and Friedman are a complementary pair, like something you’d see in a buddy movie — one fit and one fat, one black and one white, one tall and one short, one calm and one stressed, but both Americans working together in a just cause.

For all its surface seriousness, Splice is a regulation monster movie. So however somber it gets, it's never truly thought-provoking, and however outrageous it gets, it's still always 20 minutes behind the audience. It's just too dumb to be serious and too slow to be entertaining. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/03/MVKJ1DOO26.DTL#ixzz0pqYvhKuF

Thirteen Lives deserves to be seen. The only question is whether audiences will be up for it. I saw it on a huge screen and had to occasionally remind myself that if it got really overwhelming, I could always close my eyes. It’s that intense.

Eye-catching and entertaining but less inspired than the original.

Even a mediocre David Mamet movie is still a David Mamet movie. That means there are lines to savor, partly because the lines are so good, partly because they are so Mamet.

Here, as in the "Friday" movies, the jokes are big and rude and vulgar and very funny.

A triumph for all involved.

Mothering Sunday is most likely a one-of-a-kind hybrid, a brilliant one-off.

Funny and intelligently made, a film for kids and adults that's both sweet and sardonic...Elf stays perfectly in balance, a pleasure throughout.

As Russell Boyd's remarkable cinematography emphasizes the dwarfing grandeur of the surrounding topography, Weir shows how the corresponding smallness of individuals is compensated for by the grandeur of their aspiration.

An argument could be made that too many bad things happen to the good members of this sisterhood. The movie does occasionally teeter on the brink of soap opera, but then, so does life.

It's probably the only love story you'll see this decade that will make you half-expect the camera to swerve and pick up the sight of Rod Serling, standing there in a black suit.

At times, Harriet is a little too romantic — never quite schmaltzy — but it feels like a movie perhaps a bit more than it should. Still, it’s effective and, at times, moving, and it has a major asset in Erivo.

The best thing about Scare Me is that, for all of its entertaining qualities and acute cuts at white male fragility, this is one excellent guide to writing and filming good horror.

Given its mad-dog subject, Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones as the raspy, snarling and seemingly demented Ty Cobb -- one of baseball's greatest players -- should have been a home run of a bitter, heartrending drama. Instead, this histrionic portrait of the most celebrated cur in sports history comes across like a fly ball that thuds on the ground.

It’s a solid first step into the magical world of the familiar. Escapist entertainment for crowds that prefer to know their destination in advance.

The best part about the movie is the way it shifts focus, starting as an observation of the animal and then subtly morphing to the point of view of Nénette, who passively experiences a jumble of voices that start to run together.

Directed by the Oscar-winning Domee Shi (“Turning Red”), Alameda native Madeline Sharafian and Adrian Molina (“Coco”), the visually appealing “Elio” moves confidently and delicately handles themes of isolation, grief, family strife and friendship.

The least offensive teen movie in ages.

A clever mishmash of Hitchcockian and 1980s and ’90s high school movie sensibilities, the Netflix dark comedy Do Revenge falters when it tries to grow a heart.

Timeless and tragic.

On the surface, Sweeney’s film is a playful examination of sexual fluidity, but underneath the gags, it’s really a universal, sweet movie about the modern complexities of finding a soulmate. It’s also a nice example of how independent films can breathe fresh air into genres like the romantic comedy.

In Mission: Impossible III, we find out whether it's still possible to look at Tom Cruise and not see a weirdo. The answer is yes, but a complicated yes, because it takes time.

What sounded like an embarrassing blunder -- the romantic pairing of Richard Gere and Jodie Foster -- turns out to be surprisingly entertaining and persuasive.

Maybe it's no mystery how they did it, considering the aggregate comic talent, but this bunch achieves peaks of sublime nuttiness.

Features a superb performance in the lead role, a strong supporting cast, very good cinematography and, most of all, emotional authenticity.

McNally takes a thin story and pumps it up, bringing in waitresses and busboys, all of them lonely, all of them broke. In the hands of director Garry Marshall, the material becomes deadly. He turns on the schmaltz, brings up the violins and shows them in their tiny apartments, alone and miserable but kinda cute, living their small, dull lives. This is the working class as viewed by the clueless wealthy -- condescension trying to pass as compassion. [11 Oct 1991, p.D1]

Sweet and insubstantial -- just like the French Christmas cake for which it's named.

This is a science fiction film, but like all excellent movies in the genre, the focus never strays from the human heart.

A smirky cleverness infects much of the picture, yet some scenes are so skillfully created that it's hard not to admire them, and Dominique Pinon's sensitive performance as a retired circus man gives the movie a soul. [10 Apr 1992]

Though many of Parker's well- known wisecracks make their way into the screenplay, Mrs. Parker ultimately does not give us the Dorothy Parker of legend.

After shooting lots of people and cutting lots of throats, Deadpool tries blowing himself up, something he probably should have done first. And with that, the movie shifts. Deadpool 2 becomes less violent and a lot funnier. It becomes a much better movie than the original “Deadpool,” not an action bloodbath with laughs, but a knowing spoof of the superhero genre.

Director and co-writer/producer Gavin O’Connor’s meticulous drama feels authentic all the way around. The basketball feels real. The high school kids seem real. Jack’s relationship with his estranged wife Angela (Janina Gavankar) is very believable.