It's an entertaining, depressing and ultimately hopeful movie about the times we live in.

Davidson’s appeal is essential to the movie’s success. If you know him only from “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll be surprised by him here. On “SNL,” he can be zany and annoying. Here he has a very particular quality that seems to be coming from a place of past pain. He has equanimity. Without making a fuss about it, he’s attentive to other people’s feelings. He just seems like a decent, thoughtful young guy, someone that you’d like to see come into his own.

Although I, Robot provokes thought, it doesn't exactly deliver thought, despite the occasional Cartesian reference to "ghosts in the machine."

Shock and Awe is no “All the President’s Men,” but it does present a nice balance to the earlier film’s ultimately rosy picture.

There's tremendous maturity and skill in Felicia's Journey but also a sense of impending horror that's bound to repel some audience members -- even though the violence is all implied.

Sausage Party is definitely not for everyone. Its well-earned R rating guarantees that. But what might prove the often hilarious and startlingly intelligent film’s greatest bar to blockbuster status is the very thing that sets it apart: its ideas.

If studios insist on remaking classic horror films, this is definitely the way to do it.

A genuinely affecting love story with something to say about such contemporary obstacles to affection as weird families, hot exes, addictions, anonymous hookups, homophobia, irony, gay two-stepping -- and the difficulty of connecting no matter what gender you go for.

Ryan's comic timing continues to delight, while Kline is touchingly heartfelt as a man doing what is evidently all too easy to do -- fall in love with Meg Ryan.

The hits just keep on coming in Muscle Shoals, a hugely entertaining, perhaps overlong, documentary about the renowned recording studios in the small Alabama town of the film's title. It's mandatory viewing for fans of the classic rock, soul and rhythm and blues of the 1960s and '70s.

For all its flaws and vagueness, Safe is smart, challenging and provocative -- a film that gives you plenty to chew on, long after Carol's sad tale has wound down.

Buoyed by an appealing lead performance by John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a smart, sharply written detective story that, though not without humor, plays it straight and tough.

A film that has unusual expectations from its audience -- and that's a welcome relief.

It proceeds, weirdly enough, from the truly annoying to the absolutely fascinating.

A little film that makes a big impression.

The drama surrounding the romance gets a little too precious -- though I loved it 15 years ago; maybe I'm getting cynical -- but everything else is excellent, including Jack Nicholson, who is subtle and sly in a small, key role. [18 Jan 2004]

The Great Escape is great entertainment. [06 Jun 2004]

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.

A richly satisfying and darkly funny movie.

Night Always Comes isn’t an especially ambitious movie, but it’s simple where it needs to be simple, and it’s complex when complexity is called for.

This is a tense film that builds in impact as it goes along, and ultimately, it’s riveting.

Though some of the acting has a stilted feeling, the emotional charge and unusual look of the film linger.

The impressive thing that Oslo, August 31st does is that it somehow relates what Anders is going through to the city of Oslo in general. Anders is not a metaphor for Oslo - that would be cheap and silly. Rather, he is just one more story in the naked city, and we see him against the backdrop of other people, having quite different lives.

The first half of White Palace is done so well that it's tempting to overlook the fact that once the picture gets its two lovers together, it has nowhere to go -- and it goes nowhere for the last 50 minutes. [19 Oct 1990, p.E1]

The film doesn't see any contradictions between the man and his work, which is folkloric, mostly upbeat, often humorous. Both art and artist are outsized and entertaining, and that's about all that Bel Borba Aqui has to say.

It is, for what it’s worth, a good documentary, though I imagine its true worth and true nature can only be revealed in time. At the starting gate of 2018, we can have no idea how this film will be perceived in 10 years, and maybe we don’t want to know. Then again, maybe we do.

A powerful, frightening look at America's delivery room.

The filmmakers succeed with an unexpected ending. It's as fresh as everything in the movie, which turns out to be about so much more than one youngster's resilience.

Hollywood warhorse Norman Taurog directed Elvis eight times and had a knack for dragging decent performances from the boy. [03 Aug 1997, p.34]

Sly Lives! may not provide definitive answers, but the fact that it even asks those questions puts it a cut above most films in its genre.

Hooking Up is a pretty good movie. I enjoyed it and could even imagine watching it again. But it’s also the movie that shows that Brittany Snow doesn’t have to be relegated to pretty good movies. She’s ready for better.

Trumbo is welcome just to bear witness to the severe consequences meted out to one man who dared to do the right thing.

Whatever your religious affiliation, you will come away thinking that if all this did actually happen, it probably happened something like this.

If you stare at it too hard, In Another Country, an exercise in drollery from South Korea's Hong Sang-soo, simply evaporates. But if you take the film as the bauble it is, you'll be entertained by its lighthearted wit, social observations and resolute sidestepping of profundity.

Real acting replaces re-enacting, and amazing cinematography pits the limits of human will against the unruliness of nature.

Concubine demonstrates that Chinese films are growing by leaps and bounds in their technical sophistication, but also reveals how much they borrow from the energy and style of American cinema. [29 Oct 1993, p.C1]

The result is a movie that, like the book, is episodic and has dips in energy but has more than its share of glory and illumination.

Sweeney gives the movie its extra spark, its sense of occasion.

When The Journey keeps its eyes on the road, it’s a nice little drive.

There should be more American family movies like Pete’s Dragon. Since there aren’t, we should get behind this one.

More depressing than liberating, but it's never boring.

The film's sense of intimacy, its closeness to real people and painful events, allows it to reach a deeper place than more conventional pieces of political rhetoric.

The movie's shockingly tasteless setup is also its secret weapon. Despite many scenes in The Ringer that could individually be viewed as politically incorrect, audiences will be laughing with the athletes most of the time.

Except for an ending that's so implausible it might have derailed a less solid work, Twelve and Holding is a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of what it's like to be young and confused

Just Mercy isn’t the best movie that could have been made from its subject, but it’s good enough.

Jennifer Aniston...doesn't have much screen time, but in playing this slightly insecure, affable young woman, she does her best film acting to date.

An engaging, revelatory slice of life.

The scale is small, but Jellyfish has deep currents.

What's interesting about revisiting the film today is that the elements that engaged people most at the time - the thriller plot and the glimpse into Soviet life - maintain hardly any fascination. But the love story - what might have been regarded at the time as the obligatory "romantic interest" - stands out as something of lasting appeal. [26 Mar 2017, p.Q41]

Triple 9 is terrific melodrama, but it’s melodrama all the same, and shameless.

It's that wonderful, totally unambitious yet satisfying thing, a really good movie.

A pleasant diversion starring the always amiable Nick Frost, with Chris O'Dowd relishing his role as a slimeball.

Is That Black Enough for You?!? is the noted film critic and author’s ode to Black contributions to American cinema — reaching back to the silent era but focusing on what he considers the apex of Black Hollywood, a wild and energetic period from 1968-78 that revolutionized the art form.

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.

When the action focuses on the battle lines in Mexico, the results are nothing short of spectacular.

An admirable film, not a great one -- yet. It drags a bit.[Restored version]

Lots of people will leave screenings of this movie in disgust -- and laughter is the last thing they will hear on the way out.

Consistently absorbing as the amazing Deneuve reveals, scene by scene, new facets of a fascinating character in a mercantile war that involves equal parts greed and vanity.

Ultimately, the film does its job with skill and heart.

Buscemi eschews the conventional and ends "Trees Lounge" on a stranger, more tantalizing note.

An outstanding effort that maintains the integrity and purpose that distinguished "The Fellowship of the Ring."

A powerful polemic leavened with moments of beauty and humor.

An excellent film noir.

Falters in its final 15 minutes, when the funny lines peter out and the flashbacks get fuzzy.

Does a beautiful job of capturing that mood -- the exuberance and wistfulness of one man's last year of youthful irresponsibility before joining the rat race.

A lean, mean, riveting back-to-nature horror film that flies through its thrilling 99 minutes.

At its best, the movie expresses an affection for dogs and is very much attuned to what is wonderful about dogs and what’s funny about them — their sincerity, their credulousness, their odd tendency to get nervous over nothing and yet to occasionally remain oblivious to real threats.

The movie is an ideal blend of character study, deceptively simple plot twists, inspired acting, and travelogue.

The movie turns from good to great as the layers are peeled away and director Hahn provides an insider's look at the creative epicenter of the studio.

A Rubik's Cube of a movie, an intriguing, layered puzzle that isn't easily solved.

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.

It's a film that, in its own peculiar way, forces viewers to question their values and ask themselves how much they're willing to sacrifice for a functioning society, and how much is too much.

How Yeon-hee became Frédérique Benoît and what it all means is at the heart of Return to Seoul, an ambitious, challenging and sometimes uneven character study by French-Cambodian director Davy Chou.

The movie’s biggest asset, aside from Buckley, is the set design. To look at the physical interiors of the houses is like stepping inside a Vermeer painting. Care was taken to provide “Hamnet” with the most realistic and detailed of settings.

They're great, every one of them, but the real joy of Little Voice is Horrocks: her impeccable evocation of a timid soul and that eerie voice that sounds so surprising coming out of her.

What sells this movie is the realistic attention to detail and the bravura direction of Fabrice Du Welz, who draws a gut-wrenching performance from Lucas, who cries, squeals and screams with the best of them.

Within limits, this is an excellent documentary. Even fans who think they've seen everything will see things here they haven't seen.

A poignant and insightful look into the human suffering caused by agricultural bioengineering, features an unlikely but appealing protagonist to tell its story about a global phenomenon.

Re-creates that chilling sense that comes when, in the middle of a pleasant conversation, one realizes the other person is off his rocker.

What happens is important, but more important is how it happens and whom it happens to.

Creating this kind of otherworldly mood takes exceptional talent, and this is a film worth experiencing.

Timeless.

Considering the fact that a young girl is picking her nose on the movie poster, The Croods is surprisingly evolved.

The Dark Half is another retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story, but King and Romero fail to work out the premise of the story. [23 Apr 1993, p.C3]

A potent and troubling meditation on the state of Western society.

Though hardly anybody’s idea of a jolly time at the movies — and not nearly the equal of Florian Zeller’s previous film, “The Father” — “The Son” provides an arresting and unsettling experience. It’s an interesting movie, and different.

A film that is at its best onstage.

Written by William Gibson, who adapted his own short story, and directed by New York artist Robert Longo in his feature debut, Johnny Mnemonic is inescapably a very cool movie. Running at a fevered pace, with laser and light explosions, it introduces a fantastic yet plausible vision of a computer-dominated age.

The laughs, including the big laughs, keep coming right up to the closing seconds.

Outstanding in support roles are Alison Lohman, playing a friend of Jerry's, and John Carroll Lynch, playing a neighbor who befriends Jerry.

A film very much of its moment, in ways both good and bad. But the important thing is that its virtues are extraordinary, while its flaws are easy to forget because they’re so common.

Aladdin, the live-action remake of the 1992 Disney animation, is more than a pleasant surprise. It’s a complete delight that stands up its own and is, in many ways, an improvement on the original.

An engaging documentary attempt to probe her mystery, and it offers some answers - she was secretive and stubborn, a hoarder of epic proportions who seems to have had fits of instability. She also wasn't always nice to her young charges.

An intense and affecting report on the experiences of U.S. troops in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.

Not as simple as it looks, though its appeal is simple: Robert Redford goes to prison, and James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos") is the warden. That's a movie worth seeing right there.

A gentle, pleasant film about people you genuinely like.

In its modestly comic way, the movie delves into the question of when it’s better to lie than tell the truth.

A solid family movie, "Fly Away Home" is a constant feast for the eyes, with rich photography by Caleb Deschanel.