A clever, heart-pounding thriller, and a welcome return to form for the director.

The goal of this review - why not just say it? - is to disclose as little about the story as possible while instilling a ravenous and even rabid desire to see Love Crime immediately.

For pure, uncomplicated enjoyment, it's the movie to see right now.

Infectiously energetic.

So while Fuqua’s The Guilty is not much different from the original, his direction is crisp, Gyllenhaal’s performance grows on you and Riley Keough (Zola), as the voice of the woman who is abducted, is terrific.

The picture... is simple, sweet and elegantly written, and it benefits from the presence of Marlon Brando.

Obviously, director-writer Billy Senese didn’t have a ton of money to work with, but The Dead Center wisely eschews gore and special effects in favor of setting a dark, malevolent mood.

The magnificence of Weisz’s performance — yes, it’s another magnificent performance from Rachel Weisz — is that she is never hiding anything, beyond what a 19th century woman might conceal out of polite reserve. In her every moment on screen, she is an open book. We’re just not seeing all her pages.

A smart, juicy entertainment, but it's the kind of straight-up legal drama that hinges entirely on crafty storytelling and across-the-board solid performances.

Taken as a whole, the movie is far-fetched and even faintly ridiculous; and yet, in the moment to moment, it's compelling and truthful.

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.

The movie explores the real essence of determination, and it’s not what people imagine as they recite affirmations to themselves. Nyad shows us determination almost at a level of pathology, as a single-mindedness that could be considered sick, except that Nyad wasn’t delusional about her capacities.

Screenwriter William Monahan has fashioned an intelligent and highly topical epic. Director Ridley Scott has brought it home with banners flying.

In some respects, this feels like two movies, and the filmmakers couldn’t decide which story should be the focus.

Funny, original, occasionally poignant and almost all of it too dirty to repeat in a newspaper.

Cronicas has a cracking good plot, a central moral issue and John Leguizamo speaking Spanish. What more does a film need?

Wildly imaginative, humane, playful and deflating of all pretense.

Weisz’s conviction, passion and galvanizing outrage drive Denial. For a Jewish academic, this was no intellectual exercise, and Weisz lets us see it. Between the frames, Weisz likewise assures us that Denial is no routine movie for a Jewish actress.

Lévy gets expectedly strong work from the veteran Devos and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

A sweet, unabashedly sentimental tale.

It succeeds, occasionally.

It shambles and ambles, seemingly without focus or pattern, from one thing to the next. Yet at the same time, it's predictable, not from moment to moment, but in its outlines.

What Ritchie is able to convey is the terrifying nature of this kind of small-scale combat, with the enemy coming out from nowhere and from every direction. Even if you’ve never experienced anything like this, there’s something about what Ritchie does here that feels authentic.

As of today, this is the most delightful movie out there.

The acting is splendid. Fellowes’ dialogue may not be subtle, but the actors are so familiar and at home in these roles that they make up for whatever is lacking.

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]

The director is clearly an admirer of Francis (both the saint and the pope), and was able to conduct extensive and exclusive interviews with the pontiff.

At times The Game is frustrating to watch, but that's just a measure of how well Fincher succeeds in putting us in his hero's shoes.

Wise and wondrous.

Although the documentary is ostensibly about these girls and their friendship, training and school life, a healthy chunk of it is a portrait of the two families.

A mostly fabulous, though thinly plotted, ode to the glories of hand-to-hand combat, Euro ’80s music and the good/bad old days of the Cold War.

Vitus is likable enough and definitely suitable entertainment for young people willing to read subtitles.

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.

Movie cliches are supposed to be bad things because they make the movie too predictable. But you know, there are times when they actually work in a film's favor.

You know there is something seriously wrong with Anna Karenina when you start rooting for the train.

Director Curtis Hanson gives the film a slow, European pace and a cold, slick look. The sound-track is made up almost entirely of internal noises -- a buzzing fluorescent bulb, music from a record player. Everything contributes to an ominous atmosphere. [09 Mar 1990, p.E1]

Given the juiciest plotline, Tamblyn goes for it, turning in a hard-boiled performance that's a needed contrast to her co-stars' tendency to go for sweet.

Now that she's past 50, can we all stop holding Michelle Pfeiffer's looks against her and just admit that she's a great actress?

The takeaway on Friends With Benefits is that mores change, styles change, the rules change, and even humor changes. (There are two jokes involving apps, of all things, that are pretty funny.) But people's emotional needs remain the same from era to era.

Embellished but triumphant.

There's poignant drama in this brash, sometimes overstated film, and Muriel's transformation is truly touching.

Satan is optional in The Last Exorcism. This is the rare horror film that would have been entertaining even if nothing scary happened.

Along the way, this funny picture does exactly what a satire should: It irritates everybody. At least it runs that risk.

Ambles along and has a feeling of randomness about it, but, in fact, it's tightly plotted. Every moment, however seemingly haphazard and casually presented, is keyed to the progress of a young man from lost to not so lost.

The Beach Boys is a breezy CliffsNotes version of the band’s ups and downs and cultural relevance and should interest established fans — even if they know it all already — and younger music enthusiasts who are looking for a window in.

The development of the GoPro camera has revolutionized extreme sports photography, but even so, the 3-D images of extreme surfing in Storm Surfers 3D feel groundbreaking.

Not sure we need to know this much about his family life.

Fortunately, there are many concert sequences to keep the film from being more than one awkward silence after another, and onstage the Pixies still sound great. But watching the movie is not as much fun as listening to the old records.

The result is a film of passion and ambition, but one whose success is intermittent at best.

It's the kind of fun and quirky film that you don't see very often in art houses this time of year.

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

Fans of Les Misérables wouldn't have minded if the movie were different, but better, or just as effective. The screen version demanded some reconception, some vision to make sense of its existence. Instead, we're left with a film that is conscientious in all its particulars and yet strangely and mysteriously dead.

Most of its screenplay is far too vulgar to recount. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy, every word is an obscenity, including "and" and "the."

Enormously satisfying and fun to watch.

Feels like an extended skit stretched and stretched, maybe not to the breaking point, but to the sagging point.

The result is schizophrenic, an uplifting film that's truly depressing, a movie about cruelty that tries to be fluffy.

Internal Affairs gets inside of you so fast that it's hard to look for or notice its imperfections. There's no point in quibbling about a movie that's this good, this absorbing and merciless, this original and twisted. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

A disturbing film about grim subject matter, but the overall experience is more exhilarating than saddening. There's just something satisfying about seeing a movie so well made.

It’s hard to deny that Shyamalan remains one of our most prolific, longstanding filmmakers, and that his work continues to make an impression on our culture. His tense, never dull “Knock at the Cabin” makes us uncomfortable at times, and few punches are pulled. Perhaps he’s found a formula that will take him to new, interesting places.

Compelling.

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.

An often tender and revealing documentary.

A little film that makes a big impression.

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.

The film is partly a comedy, because no movie with protagonists this stupid could be a straight drama. And yet the film contains a lot of truth about its place and time.

As fascinating - and at times oblique - as the famous couple themselves.

Anyone who appreciates Sylvester Stallone or enjoys the "Rocky" movies will find moments to enjoy in Rocky Balboa and will leave the theater reasonably satisfied. It's just good to see the guy, and it's good to revisit the character. And that's everything good to be said for the experience.

Eventually the concept buckles under the heavy blockbuster treatment, becoming a monotonous, repetitive spectacle of endless shipboard sword fights and pirate ghosts in the moonlight.

While dinner and a movie is in theory a great idea, I'd avoid eating before taking in Lunacy.

A pleasant but mild-mannered experience.

Cliche piles on top of cliche to make a nearly two-hour film feel twice as long, simply because we see so many things coming that we feel as though we’re watching each section twice.

Has been called an exploitation of a tragedy, but in fact it's an expose of tragic exploitation.

Directed by Andrew Bergman, a sometime playwright (''Social Security'') and film maker of modest talent (''The Freshman''), ''Honeymoon in Vegas'' is lightweight, palatable stuff -- the kind of instantly forgettable romantic comedy that Hollywood made in the '60s with Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis. [28 Aug 1992, p.C1]

Watchable in spite of Greengrass as much as because of him. The story is good enough to make viewers want to ignore the photography.

A faithful portrait of a period in American social history.

Mike Cahill's King of California reminds me of those '70s-era pictures beloved of the counterculture about appealing rebels who go down in flames of moral victory.

Damsel is a misguided exercise, a 113-minute mistake and a waste of time, but it does have a good opening.

Philippe Blasband's screenplay is witty and economical, and the film's editing is crisp.

A feat of droll, refractive, melodramatic self-portraiture.

Scenes that should have been cut are included, so as not to disappoint anyone. What could have been a small, sweet and genuinely scary film is instead a full hour too long and many millions too fat.

The pace of Master Gardener is measured, but there’s nothing relaxing about it.

There's some serious food for thought here.

The film is never dull. And director Yony Leyser has come up with an ending that will take your breath away. Burroughs would probably be proud.

The River Wild may be the season's most exhilarating family entertainment. [30 Sep 1994, p.C1]

As Baby Boomers continue to dominate the culture through sheer numbers, you can expect more movies about demented parents. But a good rule of thumb for those who’d attempt such a story in the future should be this: If you want us to care about crazy old Dad, show us that he was once something more than an abusive sperm donor. Show us that he was once a decent father.

Unsane is Soderbergh in his best mode. As in “Haywire” and “Side Effects,” he takes what easily might have been a lowbrow genre entry and realizes it so completely that he turns it into something extraordinary.

Frothy and exuberantly entertaining - in part because of the sexual innuendoes - it's the best romantic comedy so far this year.

Loses momentum midway into the boys' journey.

A pleasure to watch - a spot-on story about the agony and ecstasy of adolescent first love.

The Jungle Book has been shaped into solid, not-quite-golden but effusive family-style entertainment with exotic settings, amusing animal characterizations, hair-raising adventures and a saccharine romantic theme that is played big but finally is the film's least interesting facet. [23 Dec 1994, p.D1]

Even at its silliest, it's a better picture than most, with surprises and inventive turns and performances that remain strong throughout. [14 Aug 1992, p.C1]

The female actors, particularly Hudgens and Ashley Benson, are game for the ride. And Franco is indispensable, bringing humor and pathos to one of the more repulsive cinematic creations in recent memory.

The problem with Fingernails is it takes itself too seriously. Co-writer and director Christos Nikou takes a clinical, dramatic approach to such a high-concept, over-the-top and ridiculous premise. He seems so enamored by the concept of the movie that he forgot that the movie was supposed to be about relationships and not the testing.

If you can buy the film’s unlikely core premise, you’ll be rewarded with persuasive speculative fiction in all its other aspects. Penna and company make it easy for audiences to do that, while putting four people whom they’ll come to really care about through all kinds of hell.

Bogdanovich takes a tale of old Hollywood and infuses it with velocity and enthusiasm.

A tale of yuppie conformity and domestic angst that quickly turns into a horror film.

Walks a sometimes-shaky line between tenderness and schmaltz.

The nagging desire to help these people underscores the involvement of the audience in this superbly told story. You can almost taste the saltwater, and the fear.