All the movie’s finer points — of audience response, of interaction, of the dances between people — are conveyed with a specificity so expert that it seems offhand.

The photography is strong, the performances sympathetic and the sex plentiful.

2 Days in the Valley is skillfully made. The beginning introduces a handful of disparate characters. It juggles their stories and then deftly starts bringing them together through some surprising and unexpected turns.

The Circle is very much a plea for the preservation and sanctification of privacy, but it’s nicely constructed in that no one character expresses the film’s distinct point of view.

Smile is an immensely well-crafted horror movie.

It's an amazing actor who can carry a movie by simply sitting calmly in a chair. That's what Christopher Walken does in the comedy-thriller Suicide Kings. He's so good, one hardly blinks.

A first-rate historical drama.

It is stark, realistic and resolutely downbeat. Yates' work is lean, and he has a nice way with action sequences. [17 May 2009, p.R28]

It’s impossible to resist a film that has such rich characters, and makes a complicated subject both enlightening and entertaining.

As a runner, the robber is dogged; as a robber, the runner is efficient, explosive and fast.

McQuarrie devises a film that’s a succession of riveting sequences, filmed in a way that’s active and yet elegant. The camera keeps moving within shots, but not in a subjective, jittery way, but rather like a third person narrator calmly emphasizing the essential points.

This is a different kind of girls' movie, and certainly not a pretty one, especially its horrific head-scratcher of an ending.

The film takes its time detailing his mundane activities, often withholding the kind of information audiences usually expect, and it's Puiu's talent to transform it all into a highly disturbing portrait - both of an individual and a society.

The beauty of Soul is that, just as animation is finding more being demanded of it, Pixar is answering that demand. It is making the case for animation as an ideal vehicle for exploring the grand, the general, the universal.

Glorious moments aplenty despite director who's just in the way.

The plot twists in Little Secrets sustain the movie when it gets a bit too schmaltzy. This excess of cuteness and sentimentality won't be a flaw to moviegoers in the mood for it.

It's not a film for children, and it's not even something children would like. It's challenging and disturbing and uncanny in the ways it captures the nature of dreams -- their odd logic, mutability and capacity to hint at deepest terrors.

The plane crash in Flight must go down as one of the strongest single scenes of 2012: It's extended, detailed, technically and emotionally realistic, and beyond that, it reveals character.

A delicate film - not flimsy, but fragile - that holds together on the strength of Efron's physical presence and performance.

Though the dialogue is laced with the colloquial, the film has an inviting tone that even stuffiest of old fogies may find refreshing. Everybody gets put down, but with affection.

Overall, Dolphin Reef is spectacular. The filmmaking team does an excellent job of detailing the delicate ecosystem that supports these creatures. Although Echo and his fellow dolphins are the stars, there is a vast supporting cast of humpback whales, sharks, razorfish, sea turtles, mantis shrimp, parrotfish.

To watch Nowhere Boy is to appreciate anew both the anger that drove Lennon and the strength of character it took for him to overcome it.

I won't tell you Taken is great, but it's great fun.

I hope casting agents and other industry types see Fourteen, because I want them to see Norma Kuhling (of the NBC series “Chicago Med”), who plays Jo. She takes this strong role, by writer-director Dan Sallitt, and hits it exactly right.

If nothing else, you'll surely relish the extravagant rhetoric used by Ali Mahdavi, the club's artistic director, to describe what is basically a tasteful nudie revue.

A crackerjack combination of live action, special effects and recycled footage.

This beautifully shot film (kudos to cinematographer Paul Yee) could have easily been an incoherent mess, but Holmer keeps her lyrical movie under control at all times.

A hauntingly lyrical study of sexual awakening.

It's amazing how far a movie can go on nothing but speed and directness.

Though “It Ends With Us” ultimately lands in the zone of social commentary, the experience is mainly one of witnessing life as experienced by one woman over the course of years. And it’s worth the journey because of Lively and her simultaneous and contradictory mix of pleasantness and cold discernment.

Has two main flaws: the emphasis it puts on German bassist Alexander Hacke, the film's ostensible narrator, who shows up in too many scenes, and the fact that it doesn't identify many of the film's performers until the very end. Even so, Crossing the Bridge is satisfying to watch.

Casadesus infuses Margueritte with a lilting quality, underscored by the sadness of someone who knows she is the last person standing and inhabits an alien world.

Joel Edgerton, who wrote and directed, co-stars in Boy Erased. Edgerton casts himself as Sykes, who runs the conversion program, and he couldn’t have found a better actor for the role.

The Miracle Club won’t rock your world, but it’s a nice movie. There’s always a place for nice movies.

Dinner for Schmucks is lumbering, inconsistent and about 20 minutes too long, but it's funny. It's funny from the beginning, and it stays funny, even as it beats scenes to death and overstays its welcome.

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

Sci-fi has rarely been so playful.

Until this film, these Shin Bet directors had never consented to an interview. Now that they've spoken - and have said the unexpected - we can only wonder if their words will have an influence.

The acting is good, particularly by Faour, who plays the naive, zaftig heroine as warm and appealing despite her troubles. It's also nice to see veteran Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass ("Lemon Tree"), who plays Muna's sister.

Despite some cumbersome moments, the film delivers a to-the-point message about how the sins of the parents can be visited on the children.

Though it is funny - at times, laugh-out-loud funny - this comedy is by and for adults.

The Fencer, directed by Klaus Haro, is basically a “Hoosiers” remake — a true story set in a 1950s small town, in which a coach with a mysterious past arrives to shape a rag-tag bunch of kids into tournament contenders (there’s even a halfhearted romance that seems thrown in at the last minute in both films) — but that’s OK. It’s a winner here, too.

Gentle, wacky, down-to-earth and romantic.

Masterminds delivers for the most part. Kate McKinnon, as David’s wife, does her usual frozen-face, crazy-eyed weird thing, but this time she’s funny.

There's a manic quality to the film that may wear you down. But at least you won't be bored.

With the aid of a charmingly offbeat story and a jolly good dialect coach, the stars leave you thinking, well done. Their spirited performances help cover up glaring holes in the plot.

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.

McCormack at first seems too light of spirit for the role, but she grows into it, and it turns out she's exactly what the movie calls for: Someone too wholesome-looking to be anything but a fine young lady.

If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.

It's all very foul, and completely entertaining.

Ricky Gervais, instead of resting on formula and on a familiar persona, uses his first opportunity as a big-screen actor-director to make an original comedy that expresses some real thinking and feeling.

I laughed hysterically, but in the interest of balanced reporting, I should add that the guy parked next to me at the screening - a boyfriend who was there under duress - emitted a series of low guttural noises suggesting profound psychological anguish.

It's moving, romantic, dreamlike, flawlessly acted and so engaging as to make you forget about euthanasia before it jolts you back into recognition.

By turns frightening, exciting and ridiculous, San Andreas is, in the end, more impressive than anything else.

It’s less about music and more about how hard it is — and how bad it feels — to be absolutely and completely on the outside. And though the movie is uncompromising on that score — and shows its heroine going through a series of humiliations that are almost as painful to watch as they would be to experience — it’s not self-pitying. It’s dead-eyed accurate, and that’s its ultimate redemption.

Features some disturbing clips.

The strength of the Coens is that they are so witty, skilled and smart, so in command of their medium, so fluid and agile, so capable of surprising and delighting from every angle, that they can make the grimmest story bearable, even palatable.

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.

The surprise is that Kindergarten Cop is delightful and entertaining, a cop movie with suspense, no blood and a lot of genuine warmth. The script is intelligent and plays to the unique strengths of Schwarzenegger as a star. [21 Dec 1990, p.E1]

In this case, it's considerably better, adapting the 007 template in a story of a crazed bald cat named Kitty Galore (voiced by a hissing, chichi Bette Midler) and her malevolent plot to conquer the world. It's brilliant in its simplicity

Twilight has a few gory plot turns - mostly offscreen - and one near-sex scene that may offend a few Amish people, but the rest is maybe 33 percent less wholesome than "High School Musical." It's almost certainly less risque than what you were watching when you were 14. (Cue the soundtrack to "Risky Business.")

The opening is hilarious, but it also sets the bar extremely high for whatever may follow.... The film doesn’t always hit that bar, but it comes close enough times to make “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” a holiday for viewers.

If you haven’t seen a Weerasethakul film yet, here’s a good opportunity, but leave your expectations at the door. There’s no one like him.

A notable, worthwhile picture.

Despite some missteps, this version of “Mean Girls,” especially in its reframing of Janis, promotes feminism and inclusion almost as fervently as “Barbie” — although its characters still only wear pink on Wednesdays.

The story is the story, and you’ll either connect with it or you won’t. But no matter how you react, Titane has the integrity of sincerity and the authority of a filmmaker’s real skill and vision.

Gook is at its best when detailing the interactions of the three in the shoe store, but it strikes a more urgent note when the riots break out and the store comes under threat.

Good story, great characters, a setting plucked from history - and a multiracial, multigenerational ensemble cast stacked with fabulous actresses. But the thing that makes The Help such a rousing crowd-pleaser is its generous helping of baked goods.

Mafia Mamma is a one-joke movie, but it finds ways to keep that one joke funny for 100 minutes.

Sometimes the film, even if it's a "mixtape," bites off more than it can chew, delving into the Attica Prison uprising, heroin addiction and the Vietnam War. But all in all, this film will give you a new perspective on the past - and the present.

Obviously, no one should wish all films were shot like this. But the approach suits this story and these characters, and that’s all it had to do.

Fire in the Sky doesn't look like it had an expensive budget, but it uses what special effects it has to good effect, and the scenes of Travis on the space ship are genuinely scary. You stop asking, ''But did this really happen?'' -- not a bad question, actually -- and start imagining what it might have been like. [13 Mar 1993, p.C3]

Marc Turtletaub’s gentle, winning comedy Jules is technically a science-fiction film, but it is actually about loneliness and aging, much like the classic ’80s audience-pleaser “Cocoon,” which this film often resembles.

A maddening film, maddening in a good way, but maddening nonetheless.

Chadwick Boseman commands every moment of this film, radiating probity and purpose, and it’s only later on that you realize that, with another actor, this wouldn’t have been a sure thing. The Black Panther is a superhero with lots of uncertainty.

Clearly, Peirce's motives are pure. She's not using the "stop-loss" issue as a wedge to make the government or the administration look bad. She's using it to dramatize an injustice and to advocate on behalf of the soldiers.

A minimalist drama that takes its mood from Turkey's wintry terrain and the uneasy relationship between two bullheaded cousins.

Intriguing and educational. For partisans of Bertolt Brecht, it's mandatory.

If there’s hope in these films, it’s in a reestablishment of human connection. As father and daughter, Del Toro and Threapleton (daughter of Kate Winslet), establish real chemistry as people willing to change for the better.

Germain and Brown open up the stage play with flashbacks, which are not nearly as effective as the two guys talking. But as long as they’re talking, and they talk enough, “Freud’s Last Session” is very much worth seeing.

Graizer takes his time and never feels the need to spell everything out, and The Cakemaker is a testament to what filmmakers can achieve when they trust the audience.

Much of the film is so wrenching there's no time for idle thoughts.

This is Merchant-Ivory's kind of showmanship, the unflashy adult variety of movie magic that they made their hallmark.

Holds our attention by dispensing information gradually, like a piece of fiction.

Black Bear Ranch's legacy of environmentalism (the residents were on the forefront of the anti-deforestation movement), and the endearing long-term relationships it engendered, endure.

The old “Shirkers” is gone, but long live Tan’s new version.

A "Rocky"-like tale of determination and long odds that will appeal even to those who are turned off by most rap music.

This is a sobering piece of advocacy cinema.

The two best things about this logic-challenged, predictable and overlong (110 minutes!) film are The Rock's performance - surely he's one of the more likable people in the movies, and here he handles physical sight gags with aplomb; and the parallel disciplines of football and ballet, which provide a way for father and daughter to understand each other.

Still, Elephant is affecting even on a small screen.

Bana is rock-solid throughout, able to convey sensitivity and moral probity through a not quite impassive facade — never overdoing it, never underdoing it — and yet fulfilling his duties as the movie’s locus of feeling and meaning.

Ultimately, Stone is a haunting film about what it feels like to be really and truly lost.

As for the story, it's in some ways inevitable, but it has enough barbs and curves to keep it new. The smartest touch is that the young lawyer is, as a moral entity, a work in progress.

Character consistency is fleeting, to say the least, but who cares? So many of these guys are gone now, just watching the cast having such a great time is half the considerable fun of the film. [28 Jan 2007, p.30]

Even with its floating hookah smokers, this movie feels far more grounded than most shows that grapple with the divine.

Often hilarious mockumentary.

White structures the documentary as an absorbing adventure tale, and that it is.

McNally adapted his Tony-award winning play for the screen, and for once a movie is an improvement on the stage version.