After dipping its toe into thriller cliche, Simple Favor dives in, with crosses, double crosses and “twists” one can anticipate a mile away. Yet, there’s always just enough of a wink apparent that the film remains highly involving throughout.

Directed with restraint by Craig William Macneill, Lizzie never quite gets to what made Lizzie Borden tick, but it’s possible no film ever could. But it remains an entirely watchable drama thanks in no small part to the charisma of its two lead women.

When the film is funny, it's terrific. When it shows what it really wants the audience to take seriously, it threatens to come apart. But mainly, it's a comedy, and mainly it's a lot of fun. [21 Aug 1992, p.C1]

It's a ton of fun, a totally irresistible tale of gambling, greed, love and violence. With gorgeous actors, designer clothes and thrilling action, it's fast-moving (even at 2 hours, 20 minutes) popcorn entertainment.

At 80 minutes, this might have been a delight. At more than two hours, it's so much of a good thing that it starts to become a bad thing.

Bouncy, informative and funny documentary.

Miyazaki is arguably at the Kubrick/Polanski level, where his lesser films still yield great rewards. Even during the moments that don't soar, The Wind Rises continues to satisfy.

Cinema is not about special effects, but about human emotion and a face in close-up. For those in doubt, Locke is the proof.

Eschews cliches and cuts to the truth.

The only way to enjoy Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy is to savor the performances and behavior quirks, and release the notion that plot is essential.

Wry and sometime bitter movie about love.

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.)

The desire to go back in time to change things -- or just to visit -- is so central to the experience of being alive and stuck in time that Timecop has a built-in power. It's a power the film, a satisfying science-fiction thriller, takes full advantage of.

The movie is as modestly unpretentious as David O. Russell's "Spanking the Monkey."

Aronofky gets exactly what he needs from his top-notch cast. Lawrence is appealing and never allows herself to be reduced simply to a howling victim. Bardem, Harris and Pfeiffer are menacing in their own varying ways, with Bardem capable of turning on the charm at key times that makes us wonder if we haven’t misjudged him.

What results isn’t a straight autobiography, obviously, but rather the autobiography of a career and, most importantly, the autobiography of a spirit.

Kazan's writing in Dream Lover is spare and evocative, but here in his first film he also makes a case for himself as a talented director. It's hard ever to feel safe during Dream Love'; even during stretches when nothing bad happens you just know something will. Individual moments may be clear, yet everything in the film has an uneasy ambiguity hanging over it. Characters seem to connect, but they don't quite. [5 May 1994, p.E4]

Although the war in Ukraine is still raging, 20 Days in Mariupol is already a historical document. So much has happened in the war in the 14 months since these events, and graphic, front-lines reporting is now ubiquitous. However, Chernov’s team was among the first to document what many say are war crimes by Russian troops, and it provided an early window into the conflict for Western news media.

It isn't a long journey. Kisses clocks at 72 minutes, which feels something less than feature length. It's long enough to include a few cliches and nagging questions, yet it's short enough to leave you wanting more.

Slam, directed by Marc Levin, is schematic but effective as it makes its points about African Americans caught in the Washington, D.C., criminal justice system. It's got a wonderful eye and, for a film, ear.

Directed by the Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska, The Other Lamb is slow-moving but never dull, because the world of it is so distinct and odd.

Here is a culture in which female strength, having no outlet, must become distorted or lethal. In Therese and her aunt, we find two manifestations of the same disease.

A privileged glimpse into people's private pain, a drama shot with the simplicity and immediacy of a documentary.

So The Fabelmans is entertaining enough, but perhaps what’s best about it is that Spielberg got it out of his system. After this, he won’t ever need to make a film about himself or his parents again.

Based on the novel by Robinne Lee and adapted by Jennifer Westfeldt and director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”), the film is smart, realistic and emotionally honest.

Salinger, who died in 2010 at age 91, probably would have hated this movie. If Jones doesn’t quite pull it off, it is at least a film of many pleasures and a thought-provoking look at American literature’s most famous loner.

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]

The Disney cartoon roots are in there somewhere, but this is an oil painting come to life.

Wickedly funny.

A surreal comedy about sex that comes as close to charming as Greenaway ever gets.

It’s ambitious, and has a great ’90s indie feel.

Barbarella is a pure goof -- Vadim called it a kind of sexual Alice in Wonderland of the future -- and Fonda seems to have reveled in every sexy, campy moment.

Anyone who prefers Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Lopez is bound to regard Two Weeks Notice and not "Maid in Manhattan" as the better candidate for romantic comedy of the season.

More than most espionage movies, the film is about relationships, the men with each other, the men with their own disapproving wives, and governments with each other. Everyone courts someone.

Deserves to ride the wave of the latest, hottest micro-trend in pictures: the romantic comedy for guys.

There’s a French saying, “In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek,” and usually, the more interesting story belongs to the one doing the kissing. In A Secret Love, that’s Pat.

Huppert shows everything to us, and it's fascinating.

Truth or Dare is like a detective story. You try to infer the truth by looking between the frames. The picture we get of Madonna is a contrived one, but it's revealing anyway, because it's the one she wants to present. [17 May 1991, p.E1]

The murder plot is a cheap turn that says nothing about the nature of Suzanne's ambition. Without Suzanne's media-obsession as its focus, To Die For becomes just another fairly good black comedy.

Thought-provoking.

A suspense thriller of rare intelligence.

Is it possible to enjoy a movie musical while actively disliking its songs? It is with “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which proves the durability of a good story — and story within a story — no matter how many generic John Kander and Fred Ebb songs, weakly performed by Jennifer Lopez, come with it.

A glib satire with a slick surface, lots of snappy patter and nothing to sell but its own cleverness.

Dark, disturbing and audaciously original in a way only indies are given license to be anymore, the film never telegraphs where it's heading. But you don't need a pathfinder to sense the general direction is toward hell.

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 Peanuts Movie delivers genuine happiness with the door left open for woe.

It is an original and might give new parents a valuable reminder: Environment matters in child rearing.

It is old-fashioned in a good way, classical and well-acted, and that it has no surprises keeps it from being disappointing, even as it keeps it from being great.

For those willing to enter this world and pay attention, A Late Quartet provides distinct and uncommon satisfactions.

A deceptively simple but enchanting story about a father who bonds with his young son on the Mexican sea, accomplishes something quite complex: It provides a breathtaking sense of place, chronicles in intimate detail a way of life, and touches us with a relationship that develops naturally, right before our eyes.

Last time, Peele made a movie about the country. This time he made a movie about himself, and it’s even better.

Everyone comes out of Little Woods looking good, and DaCosta comes out with a directing career.

Esrick spent 10 years on the film, and the result is a comprehensive portrait.

In the end, probably the best way to watch Emperor is to pretend that the Supreme Command of Allied Forces in Japan after World War II was Tommy Lee Jones. If you do that, the movie works surprisingly well.

The character moments here resonate, and there are enough stakes to make the final scenes feel meaningful.

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.

The filmmaker works with economy and has a knack for creating a sense of foreboding, which is good because the plot is simply a working out of the old saw that violence begets violence.

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

It's a broad generality to say that French filmmakers have a particularly perverse sensibility, but it can be backed up by one import after another. The latest, La Moustache, is wonderfully odd in a minimalist kind of way.

Succeeds because of the cast's communal vibe of arrogant stupidity.

It's a straight-ahead adventure with the usual number of thrills, but with the added virtue of being smarter and more sober than one might expect.

Looking back over All the Old Knives, it might be more accurate to call it a spy romance, except that makes it sound titillating. Better to say it’s a movie about the consequences of trying to stay human while working in the spy business.

A pleasant surprise. What looked to be yet another science fiction movie turns out to be one of the year’s few romantic dramas, one which just happens to be set aboard a space ship.

It’s a complicated situation despite how morally straightforward it appears. Scout’s Honor deserves some kind of merit badge for trying to untangle the knotty, awful mess.

Nothing groundbreaking, but there's an easy charm in the movie.

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.

Girls of the Sun has an air of authenticity and grit that’s convincing, and Farahani, an Iranian-born actress, makes us care.

That's why the more you like the Judy Garland film, the more you might appreciate Oz the Great and Powerful. Appreciate. Enjoy. Admire. Be glad to see. Have fun with ... But as for love - well, love will be harder to come by.

Yet something's missing in director Mira Nair's treatment -- specifically, a point of view about the material, a compelling reason for this historical excavation beyond the fact that Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing Becky Sharp.

With apologies to George A. Romero and the impending zombie apocalypse, The Eclipse may be the most realistic film where something dead comes to life and tries to feast on human flesh. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/15/MVST1CTGJ4.DTL#ixzz0lDuetYGS

A mostly compelling documentary about that rarest of breeds, an appealing politician.

The film's ambitions are laudable, and it manages to be touching, funny and true to life. It seems ungrateful to ask for anything more.

Leigh doesn't sentimentalize these tragic, dead-end lives but allows his characters to be ugly and stupid, to make horrendous mistakes. Sometimes they're laughable, and yet there's never the sense that Leigh is mocking them.

The party scenes are entertaining fantasy, but the insider-business end of the picture is occasionally interesting in its own right.

The characters are beautifully drawn in this bittersweet melodrama written and directed by Mark Herman.

A skillful exposition of the pain of pro wrestling, and the high price participants pay in terms of physical and ego injuries.

The glimpses of religious life bumping into secular passion are touching and warmly comic.

Jolie has crafted an intimate epic about a tough war subject that probably would have gone unmade without her humanitarian influence and star power. First They Killed My Father is a much more assured film, even if a bogged-down middle section prevents it from greatness.

Abominable delivers all the notes you expect from family-friendly animation these days. And, thankfully, a little bit more.

Does not end well. But there's a lot of pleasure in getting there.

Everything Melville shows us, he shows us for a reason, and these reasons are never obscure but are rather pertinent to the action and to the moral movement of the world and the characters.

Captures the effervescence and playfulness of Johnson's novel, even as it attempts to shoehorn a tangle of characters and situations.

Taken as a whole, these films constitute one of the greatest uses of cinema a documentary filmmaker has ever devised. Like the other films in the series, 49 Up is alternately touching and mundane, part soap opera, part reality show and part anthropological study.

One doesn’t expect that kind of intensity in a sedate British murder mystery, but Pfeiffer brings it. On her own, she helps Branagh make the case for his remake over the original.

The suggestion that Peter O'Toole is playing some version of his real self in Venus adds a bittersweet poignancy to this quietly affecting British drama.

Prospect has a lived-in, working-class vibe at odds with so much of the gleaming, brave new world that is the science-fiction cliché.

In all, it’s a relaxed portrait of a likable fellow.

A handsome film, filled with lavish costumes and set designs and told in a series of exquisitely composed images. But even with its visual polish, it's a chilly, largely unaffecting film about an unsympathetic man.

Fascinating stuff.

It is bearable, in every sense of the word, and that's worth something for parents looking for G-rated entertainment.

Moving.

Details the group's raucous history with humor and a minimum of hero worship.

The film is full of low-key but telling observations, mostly about Gianni's plight but also about modern life in general.

The stunning and mostly uncompromising visuals more than compensate for the frequent corny turns of phrase.

With The Nomi Song, Horn does more than simply pay homage to a late artist. He uses his subject to revisit the euphoria of artistic and musical culture at a crossroads, and in the process brings it, briefly and poignantly, back to life again.

Chunhyang is an extravagantly beautiful movie that many viewers are going to love and others are not going to be able to sit still for. That's their problem.

A fascinating guide to its subject and her work, but the emotional wall Kusama lives behind remains unbroken. She is a loner and a mystery.

About five times as funny as "Scary Movie 3."