More than a high concept stretched to feature length. This is a funny and extremely satisfying comedy, the best in a while.

If they handed out a best actor Oscar for documentaries this year, the striking Vikram Gandhi of Kumare would be a shoo-in. His performance of a guru is so spot-on that it fools every one of his new followers into believing he's the real deal, not someone out to prove that their faith in him is nothing more than a sham.

Haneke directs Benny's Video in a cool, dispassionate style that matches the austerity of his subject, but keeps us at a distinct remove. And even though he introduces a faintly optimistic note in the film's last moments -- a hint at possible redemption -- his film is mostly a grim, downbeat experience. [01 Apr 1994, p.C3]

The songs and a couple of strong performances are only good enough to make the film watchable, not exceptional.

Moving On is effortlessly intelligent in depicting the experience of being old. Even if you’re not there yet, you know intuitively that old age has very little to do with sitting in a rocking chair in perfect equanimity. It’s about living with the accumulation of things you did and things you didn’t do.

Isn’t It Romantic isn’t romantic, and it isn’t funny. It’s a bad idea stretched to feature length, a gimmick picture that never gets past its gimmick and never grows into something better. It runs 88 minutes and runs about 80 minutes too long.

In Hollywood, where integrity is rapidly consumed and careers defined by market value, there's trash and there's trash with a pedigree.

At its most compulsive, this is the only action flick you'll need this summer.

Buoyed by some sensitive performances and nearly tanked by insensitive filming.

Charming movie,

There's only so much Soderbergh can do. Gray's Anatomy is made up mainly of Gray, and there's a whole lot of Gray going on. The story is unremarkable. Gray's observations, pedestrian.

Woody Allen's incredible wit is at the heart of all that's wonderful in Mighty Aphrodite, and Woody Allen's incredible ego is at the core of its major flaw.

If you have any fear of heights, The Aeronauts is one of the most excruciating movie experiences since “The Walk” (2015), which replicated Philippe Petit’s high-wire stunt between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.

Even worse, Little Joe is a horror movie that, rather astonishingly, lacks a climax. The ending falls off a cliff. The result is not to make viewers ponder the unresolved and wonder what might happen next, but to question how they’ve spent the past 105 minutes.

Measured and somber, with few surprises.

This lushly photographed, brilliantly acted and wonderfully entertaining movie has its own claims to uniqueness. It's the most thoughtful of the three films, and its climax brings the entire series into sharper focus. [25 Dec 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Features some of Clive Owen's best work and a startling movie debut by the 15-year-old Liana Liberato.

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.

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.

It's a bomb - not the usual bomb, but a time bomb, despite a 20-minute stretch at the beginning that goes along nicely. [17 May 1991]

“Hobbs & Shaw” is witty and mischievous, full of surprise and invention, and a total blast.

Even within the rules of its own peculiar world - a world well stocked with talking savanna denizens and monkey-powered superplanes - the film is completely irrational.

Myers and Carvey bring a lot of goofy, adolescent charm to the party, but not enough to save an idea that's grown stale. [10 Dec 1993, p.C3]

Perhaps the humor has been lost in translation.

In its details, in its characters and their relationships, in the unfolding of its story, and even in the delicacy of its filming, Gifted rises above cynical expectation. Far from a canned piece of work, it feels sincere and inspired.

Lone Survivor, from start to finish, is a tale of disaster, of bad luck and bad communication, perhaps even faulty planning, though that's hard to say. So the movie loses the common touch of average folk trying to get by, while also losing some of the pleasure of watching a crack unit at work.

This is a quality movie, carefully disguised as a mediocre one. It’s a chore to get through the beginning, but builds a strong story, and leaves legitimate good feelings on the way out of the theater. Smallfoot is not a “The Lego Movie”-style surprise classic, but it’s better than most.

Taken as a whole, Bandits is a success, a two-hour entertainment that floats along, stumbling into various genres, discovering its moments.

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

Scott is having a remarkable year. To be exact, he’s having a remarkable season. Less than two months ago, “Last Duel” was released and it was Scott’s best film in years. Now the even-better House of Gucci is his best film in years — and it’s different from his previous work.

Sober and dispiriting, tense and morose.

The bottom line on Being the Ricardos is that it’s irresistible. It’s an invitation to go behind the scenes of the “I Love Lucy” show and to see what Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were really like. It’s also an invitation to travel back to the 1950s, with writer-director Aaron Sorkin as your guide.

You can’t make a raunchy comedy and a sentimental paean to motherhood at the same time. You have to choose either one or the other. Raunchiness or sincerity. Try to do both, and you end up with a flailing, unfunny wreck, like the mix of contradictory and self-defeating impulses that we find here.

Even now, I can’t decide if it was horrible or if I liked it and must conclude that both things must be true. It really was horrible, and I liked it, anyway.

Well-made and -acted, especially by Hawkes and Fisher, if it's not exactly gripping or noir-ish.

With a handful of blackly humorous jolts and some game performances by a good cast, Thin Ice is a watchable, if not terribly original, piece of Midwestern noir.

The film has a good heart, but its central premise -- that ignorance is an enchanted realm -- is too sentimental.

Anybody who talks about True Romance has to start with the writing. It's dazzling. In scene after scene, Tarantino surprises the audience even while coming up with dialogue that rings much more true than anything you could have anticipated. [10 Sept 1993]

This is one of those projects in which everyone on set seemed to have fun making a movie. That joy comes through, even if the finished film induces a good-natured shrug.

This film has a voice of its own. And at a time when the romantic comedy seems to be a lost art form, that's saying something.

While the movie can play like one big valentine to an adolescent’s adoration of metal music culture, it also nails the most important aspect of metal music in a teen’s life: how it can provide a sense of power to misfits who often feel like they have none.

Although based on a fictional story, it has the feel of truth and is a vivid reminder of the hell Mexicans put themselves through to live in the United States, even illegally.

It’s a preening piece of work, aiming to flatter and please, while masquerading as something hard-hitting and daring. And because of all that, it’s a bore.

I can’t imagine who would want to make a movie like this, much less who would want to watch this. It says nothing real about life or death, and it’s not as though it’s telling us something we don’t already know.

Sibyl is for people who like French movies even when they’re a little ridiculous.

There’s a difference between extending a story and deepening it. While this latest entry is thoughtful and stirring, it doesn’t exactly improve upon the elegant finality the series granted Tommy Shelby four years ago. Sometimes the most powerful ending is the one that understands when enough has been said.

Mortal Kombat the movie has everything a teenage boy could want: snakes that jut out of a villain's palms, acrobatic kung- fu fighting and a couple of battling babes. Everything, that is, but an interesting plot, decent dialogue and compelling acting

A millennial medley to the max.

Sometimes the story just lies there like an old cat in the sun.

It's unlikely that the whole cowboy town would really applaud all the queer goings-on, but it's a lovely sentiment in a lovely movie.

The action sequences are novel, the performances are slightly askew, and the camera work is vigorous and mostly effective.

Does about as good a job of simulating that terror as it possibly could, but it's no competition for what we create in our mind's eye while reading.

As for Beowulf itself, it's all about the visuals, which means that as soon as the novelty of 3-D wears off, the experience has been had.

A so-so movie you just might want to see more than once. It belongs in a strange category: a film that can’t quite be called a success, that has too many dead spots, that doesn’t quite hang together or satisfy, and that yet is more interesting and occupies more space in the mind than other movies that are ostensibly and even unquestionably better.

While there are entertaining segments, and even a couple of comedic touches, in the end the film isn’t convincing, and parts have a paint-by-the-numbers feeling.

While it is imminently watchable, it’s a movie that consists of mostly people sitting at tables with fantastic period clothing plotting and scheming, but sometimes barely moving at all.

Things get quite Gothic in the film’s final stretch, with genre add-ons that “Garden” purists may also find distasteful. The extra melodrama can feel unnecessary. However, it leads to moments of life-restoring beauty (core theme here again) and love.

Though it becomes flimsy toward the end, it's a ripping yarn.

Known for his visual images, Jordan outdoes himself in "Breakfast,'' a feast for the eyes.

"Spider-Man 2" was a textbook example of how to make a sequel: Deepen it, make it funnier, give it more heart and come up with a strong villain and a good story. Spider Man 3, by contrast, shows how not to make a sequel.

Woo's aggressive, cartoony attack in the film, which makes for its biggest delights, also wipes out whatever chance it might have had of making an emotional impact.

The movie’s one and only idea renders itself boring, with still half the movie left for the audience to endure.

Road to Nowhere, a neo-noir in which art imitates true crime (or is it vice versa?), is bound to be a thrill ride for some - and a head-scratcher for others.

Oristrell's comedic sense only seems to succeed in spurts, and he often burdens the proceedings with a theatrical and contrived air that undermines the humor.

One of these days, Angelina Jolie might very well direct a great movie. She has a rare talent and intense concerns and interests. But first she is going to have to suppress some self-defeating impulses that have now twice taken potentially effective films and rendered them ridiculous.

A sweet, bordering on saccharine, comedy.

The Shallows is a very earnest woman-versus-shark film. It delivers the requisite thrills, including a surprisingly satisfying resolution. The heroine is capable; and the writers, who trap her on a rock for half the film, find ways to make her situation seem interesting. But the most important parts, the ones involving the shark, don’t feel genuine.

Disturbing film.

Structurally, this becomes a little monotonous because there's just no denying that some kids are more interesting than others.

Both women are excellent, and they, as much as the movie's whodunit elements, hold the viewer until the finish.

The film is built to quaver and buckle along with its victims and martyrs. In an almost soulful way, it bespeaks the reality lingering when the final fantasy ends.

It's a movie about an idiot in the grip of something common place. He starts off as a garden-variety idiot and progresses to a big idiot.

One of the most powerful romances of recent years, it is as generous as they come.

The picture is also the story of one character in particular, Bobby, and when it comes to Bobby, A Home at the End of the World is sappy and bogus.

It's not all bad. It's just part bad: It suffers from cliches and corniness, from the same kinds of scenes played over and over, and from more false endings than the last "Lord of the Rings" movie.

Harris' impressive channeling of Ludwig is diluted by the decision of screenwriters Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson to put the copyist front and center, possibly to distinguish their feature from "Immortal Beloved."

Though the ambitious Outlaw King doesn’t always fire on all cylinders, moviegoers deserve this chance to see it on the big screen, before it starts showing on a laptop near you.

This film never had any business being stretched into a feature, much less one running 106 minutes. At that length, Biosphere is soporific and repetitive and puts viewers in the position of always being two steps ahead of it.

Aims to make epic drama of Algeria's battle for independence, but there are moments when you would swear you're watching a "Godfather" knockoff.

Better Than Chocolate is smart, funny adult entertainment -- the sex scenes are bold and convincing -- with a love story that is touching and surprisingly cheerful.

The Bay Area filmmaker’s Sundance Prize-winning film achieves much on a relatively meager budget (it has an impressive futuristic visual design), and the last half hour is so irresistibly creepy that it’s sure to invoke discussion after the screening.

The movie’s intelligent respect for that which is unknowable allows it to cover an enormous swath of ground in just 85 minutes. Sarah Silverman is very good in I Smile Back, and the movie is even better.

If you went by the coming attractions and the advertisements, you might expect a predictable romance pitched on the level of a TV sitcom. But Untamed Heart is a movie of rare sweetness. [12 Feb 1993, p.D1]

It does provide audiences with the satisfaction of seeing and hearing an important truth expressed, and that's better than making you feel good. That's making you feel something.

As Bilbo, Freeman is a pleasure to watch to the extent we get to watch him. His timing is brilliant — he gets the movie’s only laughs. He has tremendous sensitivity and an ability to seem like he’s about to say something — and then convey it without saying it. He could have made a great Bilbo. Instead he’s the one thing that has made this trilogy bearable.

What happens to the twins won’t be revealed here (those with overriding curiosity can find the Wikipedia page about them), but Smoczynska, Wright and Lawrance find the humanity and empathy in their story, if not the complex psychological reasons behind their unique lives.

Nobody into lush melodramas dripping in sex should miss this pulsating Italian import.

Army of Darkness has good moments and shows traces of wit right up to the end, though these moments wind up coming fewer and farther between. [19 Feb 1993, Daily Datebook, p.D1]

It's dreadful, but it's a special kind of dreadful -- the kind designed to appeal to intelligent people on principle.

Sarandon and Portman work beautifully -- together, negotiating a range of emotional keys that blend comedy and drama in the same moment.

It's a glamorous revenge romp, a "9 to 5" mixed with "Auntie Mame," and it gives each star the opportunity to do her best work in a long, long time.

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.

There was an interesting idea at the heart of Judy & Punch, but the execution is disappointing. This feminist visit to the world of the old “Punch and Judy” puppet shows is tonally off, shifting and swerving when it should be precise and then turning earnest and explicit when it needs to be subtle.

The Manor establishes itself as a solid piece of paranoia horror.

It’s a visually pleasing, vibe-rich diversion that is as enjoyable as flipping through a well-laid-out fashion magazine, or perhaps perusing through Coppola’s accompanying coffee table book on Jacobs of the same name.

A humorous yet unfocused romp, so unwilling to settle on a single theme that hyperactivity medication should be handed out with the 3-D glasses.

Sweet and deeply moving.

If you’re looking for scenes of big, awful creatures fighting each other and knocking over skyscrapers — and for the spectacle of people scurrying below, running from the huge stomping feet — you will find little to dislike in Godzilla vs. Kong. It does its job. It’s a monster movie.