I Care a Lot is notable for its colorful supporting and featured roles — Chris Messina as a mob lawyer, Peter Dinklage as a Russian mobster and Eiza Gonzalez as Marla’s girlfriend. But the main attraction is Pike, who doesn’t try to make us like her. She commits to the character’s nature and holds us with her honesty, her intensity and her unmistakable pleasure in getting to play someone appalling.

There have been many movies about cops working undercover, but The Infiltrator is different. It shows the difficulty of it, the almost-second-by-second stress involved in having to be yourself without being yourself, and having to seem relaxed without ever relaxing. It’s possible to get nervous just thinking about this movie.

Any movie that features a character calling herself Fat Amy has a pretty firm grip on irony. It helps that Fat Amy is played by Rebel Wilson ("Bachelorette," "Bridesmaids"), my favorite eccentric Aussie practitioner of lip-curled comic timing.

What makes the film emotionally satisfying, beyond the stirring music, is that we witness the healing and enlightenment of chorus members, some of them bearing scars from their oppressive red-state upbringings.

The story doesn’t deliver. The songs are forgettable. And the magic never descends. Supposedly, Mary Poppins returns, but that’s not Mary. Emily Blunt stole somebody’s umbrella.

The Idol, a feel-good film about a Palestinian boy’s improbable ascent to pop stardom, takes place mostly in Gaza, a place not associated with feeling good. But out of the war rubble emerges one of the most irresistible movies of the year.

A tender, gently paced coming-of-age movie whose strength is its young lead actor.

One's enjoyment of The Fairy depends a lot on knowing why it's worth seeing. It's a comedy with two or three big laughs, but it's not side-splitting. Nor does it have a particularly compelling story. Its appeal is rather in watching people who have devised their own original style of comic performance and have taken it to a rare level of refinement.

Félix and Meira appears to be a simple movie about fitting in, acceptance and sacrifice. Yet it’s so elegant and poses so many sides that it’s actually a very complex film with very complex characters.

Vincente Minnelli's lavish and hugely entertaining adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert classic leaves little doubt that Emma (Jennifer Jones in an over-the-top performance that works surprisingly well) has found satisfaction for the first time in the arms of wealthy rogue Rodolphe (a perfectly cast Louis Jourdan). [26 Aug 2007, p.N44]

Like practically every other animated movie meant for mass consumption, the movie gets lost in the chase — the point where story flow is interrupted so that characters get lost as they try to achieve their objective and a manufactured villain is trying to keep them from their goal.

It may not be the greatest of cinematic exercises, and it often feels contrived, but this documentary somehow is enlightening, ridiculous, foreboding and funny at the same time.

A doleful melodrama. There are some intense, moving sequences, but too much emotional badgering and a general shortage of finesse.

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]

Potent.

It's not much of a comedy - even Steve Carell, as the therapist, plays it straight here. But it's very effective as a cautionary tale.

Unlike "Exit Through the Gift Shop," Catfish isn't able to make the leap from odd incident to an indictment of our times.

If you want lots of Will Smith and industrial-strength special effects, the movie delivers.

Succeeds anyway, by putting a poignant human face on the struggle for equal rights.

Inventive and intermittently amusing.

Flat and uninspired.

The documentary They Call Us Monsters tries, and mostly succeeds, at putting a human face on teenage criminals facing life in prison.

This latest, from director Bille August, is merely respectful and respectable. It never sinks, but it never really soars either, though here and there it hits a powerful moment.

One of 2005's must-see documentaries.

It's smart and good-hearted and boasts an amazingly good score, but the film is limited by the very private nature of the man it portrays.

The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants may not be the series’ most inspired cinematic outing, but it’s a likable one, buoyed by strong performances, a few inspired casting choices and just enough heart beneath the nautical nonsense. Sometimes, that’s more than enough to keep things afloat.

It’s a downer. It’s morally tangled. The characters are as depressed as the scenario, and Michael Giacchino’s music can’t make it better.

There was enough story here for an epic, but Napper chose to make a poem-like movie, one that sustains a tone of mystery and wonder from start to finish.

It’s not a bad film, just, strangely, not a good one.

Tremors gets its characters into a series of hopeless situations and then resolves these situations in unexpected ways. I tried to out-guess the movie and couldn't. The movie might be nothing more than light entertainment, but care and thinking clearly went into it. [19 Jan 1990, p.E1]

Last Night in Soho is full of color and darkness, and its melange of past and present evokes one of the world’s great cities. It never lets up.

Starts off as a comedy about an unlikely friendship between a white man and a black man who meet over a pick-up basketball game on a Los Angeles playground. Then it switches gears and for a time seems as though it's going to be a more serious look at these men and their world. Finally, it just falls apart completely, and the last hour is a chaotic, meandering mess. [27 Mar 1992, p.D1]

Some say all the great movie stars are gone, but I say we've still got Charles Busch. A one-man archive of vanished showbiz glamour and period acting styles, Busch has reincarnated the great ladies of stage and screen in such camp treasures as "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom" and "Psycho Beach Party."

Inky-black humor does strike on occasion, and when it does, it's surprising. So is the movie's star, who sweats and shrieks with game intensity and a capacity for discomfort that would impress a Byzantine saint.

It's a drama with elements of black comedy and suspense, European in feeling but American in attitude. Just for fun, it's set in 1949, an era of glamour, of Hitchcock and of husbands even more clueless than they are today.

I know this is heresy on a number of fronts, but much of The Love We Make is boring.

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

The tales are worthwhile, but it's challenging to find a common thread among them that goes beyond vague generalities.

Depressing. So is director Marshall Curry's avowal in the press notes that the film will leave viewers with "a more nuanced view of the world."

Tigertail, mostly a period piece that’s also a well-wrought portrait of a man closed off from life whose despair is etched in every line on his face, isn’t satiric or comedic in the slightest.

The film often stumbles in translation, trying to define too many characters in too little time.

With Body Snatchers you get a middling, respectable horror movie, one without any frightening unconscious echoes and with too much of a pedigree to try to scare you with something cheap, like gore. [18 Feb 1994, p.C3]

Complete with cliches and culturally cringe-inducing stereotypes — poor but happy villagers, sweaty villains — Peruvians will hardly use this film in their tourist advertising.

A particularly strong element is the story of Carlotta’s father, played with arresting intensity by Laszlo Szabo.

Stars at Noon has some interesting ideas, and a general fatalistic malaise creates a perversely appealing Le Carré-esque mood. But it’s so vague — perhaps because Denis doesn’t understand Central America as much as she does West Africa — that its impact melts in the heat of its near equatorial setting.

Like its singular central character, Before the Fall stands out from the pack.

There’s nothing unique about the setup. But Flanagan and Howard’s script has charming touches, wringing humor out of characters rather than gags. Even the retro opening title card foretells its self-aware sense of humor.

A nice idea for a movie, but has a mostly silly script and some of the craziest and most laughable casting imaginable. But the movie's main challenge is a simple one: It is very difficult, next to impossible, to build a movie around an inert, inactive character.

Sweet, funny, sad and profound -- the sort of film that becomes more remarkable when you realize it's based on someone's real life.

What matters most in this sad, sobering movie is not what anyone says; it's what goes unsaid for most of the running time.

Whatever it is, it’s the rare case of an intelligent disaster movie.

Absolutely the best single moment, beautifully presented, comes when the orphaned Harry looks in a mirror and sees his parents there. It is brilliant in its simplicity and very moving.

An inventive, black comedy.

An overwrought drama.

With this film, we see the Zinn who has changed thousands of lives with his work.

There is ultimately in Rain Man a soul that emerges. It's not the grand vision found in the great films, but it is a vision nevertheless. [16 Dec 1988]

Whenever Roberts is onscreen, Closer freezes and starts to atrophy. And when she's off, tender shoots of life begin to sprout.

For all its drive and passion, Favela Rising is an uneven, spasmodic film.

For the most part it is an effective, disturbing and - a rarity for Haggis - subtle exploration of the stateside war story.

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

The Providence Effect" is flawed, but it's still a moving film.

Along the way, My Best Friend offers insights into the emotional and psychological components of both friendliness and friendship. They're not synonymous, though both have value.

For a little while The Client seems as though it's going to be a battle of wits between the two lawyers played by Sarandon and Jones. The interplay between the two is the best thing about the movie. [20 July 1994, p.E1]

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is a tough call to recommend for everyone. But for a goofy time laughing at stupid comedy with otherwise intelligent people, it might be just the ticket.

They don't make 'em like Land of the Pharaohs anymore, but you wished they did.

An edifying and forthright drama that aims to create a lump in the throat, and succeeds.

An appealingly quirky thriller from Brazil.

Polina is spare in dialogue; more is conveyed through painterly wide-screen cinematography by Georges Lechaptois.

All in all, the 3-D animations wow without gimmickry, Banderas purrs without peer - and it's a cheerful movie.

Any movie that celebrates the power of music, friendship, family and all of that scientific stuff Kid Cudi keeps jabbering about has got to be somewhat welcome at this particular point in the space-time continuum, right?...Oh, and stay past the closing credits for a little extra excellence.

This tale of a young rape victim further brutalized by officialdom never lives up to its potential.

The offbeat drama The Seagull's Laughter is the kind of movie I appreciate because it never announces where it's headed.

A one-woman show.

Even while we’re watching it, a funny feeling sets in. Lots of things happen in American Made, but it’s as if the frenetic pace is to keep us from thinking about what we’re watching.

Not Fade Away is a movie by a filmmaker who treasures his memories, cares about social history and relishes getting it right.

One of the nicest things about Hearts Beat Loud, and there are several nice things, is the way that Offerman and Clemons seem like father and daughter. This is the work of the actors, but also of the director.

Here and there, particularly in flashback, Bening gets a scene or a moment to invest in and shine, but for truly a surprising length of time, Bening plays a woman who is asleep, literally.

Its impression lingers in the mind, giving the film a longer half-life than it would otherwise deserve.

Superb new documentary.

The picture, for all its slickness and style, is empty, empty-headed and emotionally false… [It] has no more depth than "Pretty Woman" and occupies the same moral landscape. [5 Apr 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E11]

Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose.

Linklater never finds a way to sustain a drama from these characters and their situation.

Part road trip, part music lesson, follows virtuoso musician Béla Fleck on a trip through Africa to reclaim the banjo's roots. It's an entertaining journey, and director Sascha Paladino injects humor and pathos into the musical sequences.

Bogdanovich films Noises Off in long, unbroken takes. Though for the most part he doesn't give us the whole stage but moves in to follow the action more closely, the camera moves as one's eyes might, while following the play. Bogdanovich does what he has to -- he gets out of the way of Frayn's original farce. And the result of his thankless toil is a movie that doesn't quite feel like a movie, and that's not quite as good as the play, but that's pretty good anyway. [20 March 1992, p.D5]

This isn’t just a good horror film. It’s a good film, which just happens to fall in the horror genre.

One can admire it, but it's hard to get caught up in it.

Though the film seems less like a theatrical release and more like something that might play on an obscure PBS station at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, it's reasonably interesting as a personality study.

A fast-moving Congolese crime thriller loaded with graphic sex and violence - basically an exploitation picture. But it's hard to surrender to the gritty flow because the story is stitched together from such crushingly familiar bits.

For those willing to overlook its few slips into heavy-handedness, Corpo Celeste tells a compelling story of a 12-year-old girl thrust into a strange new world.

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.

Fortunately, the last 30 to 40 minutes of “The Housemaid” are so propulsive and unexpected that it makes up for what the middle lacks.

Wickedly funny.

The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.

This movie doesn't work unless the central relationship between Atafeh and Shireen works. It does, beautifully; whether together in a nightclub or alone in a bedroom, Boosheri and Kazemy find a delicacy and sensitivity that reinforces, not diminishes, their strength.

The film is kindly and well-intended, but it’s also sentimental and lifeless. Swan Song is a rare movie without a single good scene.

What this film desperately needed was another element in the script, something besides love and sex. Maybe something about art, something that put the lovers on the same team and back into those appealing bohemian clubs. As it stands, love jones is a smart setting in search of a story.

Forget the sometimes stilted acting. Forget the occasional scenes that are borderline cliched. Instead, focus on the message and the raw emotion.

By the end A.I. exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg.