Amazingly, the filmmakers claim that no CGI was used in the film. The cast of dogs are all real (none was harmed in the making of the film), a tribute not only to Mundruczo’s unique vision and filmmaking skills, but also to animal trainer Teresa Ann Miller, a Hollywood veteran.

Gainsbourg's character seems too sweet to be true until she tangles with her onscreen director over nudity. The fire Gainsbourg brings to the scene suggests she's had similar battles.

It's stupid but glorious -- Dominic (Vin Diesel) and his crew of high-spirited street racers are hired by an FBI agent to hunt down an international terrorist in London. Ridiculous and entertaining from start to finish.

A must-see.

Rhys Ifans is an engaging protagonist, playing Marks as a passive and seemingly unflappable character whose iron nerve and ability to keep cool in a crisis get him out of more than one desperate situation.

Some of the dialogue in Made was improvised, and the comic invention at work here -- Vaughn's and Favreau's -- make Made into a rough gem.

Fascinating, obnoxious and poignant.

While Pick of the Litter can’t be described as innovative, it still creates a solid emotional punch when we see several of the five now-grown dogs finally matched with grateful humans. It’s quite moving to hear the recipients detail how liberating it is to have the assistance of one of these amazing animals.

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.

The Kill Team serves an essential function by illustrating in agonizing detail not only how easily morality can be subjugated to hate, but how important it is for people of conscience to do the right thing. It’s deeply uncomfortable viewing at times, but it’s no less necessary a story to experience.

A charmer, a movie whose embrace of cinema is so passionate it could be mistaken for an embrace of life.

Stylized and visually arresting, with intense sex scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is an immersion into another time, place and mentality.

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever goes a long way toward humanizing the Venmo multimillionaire best known for pumping his teenage son’s blood plasma into his own veins.

Doesn't rank as a great film, but it's difficult to take your eyes off it, as you wonder what impossibly bizarre thing might happen next.

Bound to be talked about, debated and eviscerated far more than it's understood.

This complex, fascinating documentary breaks new ground by focusing on the legal types who have administered, and justified, the occupation over the decades.

The strangeness, humor and melancholy of aging are deftly explored in this film.

Tells the story of Leo Tolstoy's last year from a refreshing new perspective.

The film spends an excessive amount of time on Ruskin’s psychological abuse of his wife, which makes Effie’s eventual redemption feel rushed and out of the blue. But Thompson has once again proved herself to be a talented wordsmith, imbuing Effie with generosity of spirit and intelligence.

After a slow start, this is the rare film that gets better as it goes along. The story, about two scientists working in a post-apocalyptic New York, deepens and builds an intense rooting interest. The action sequences are too much out of a video game, but this is intelligent science fiction -- and it benefits enormously from Tom Cruise in the lead role.

While the format as such doesn’t allow for a critical push-and-pull, that’s not a debit. This is about time well spent on a life well lived. A series of pieces adding up to much more than the whole.

Stettner approaches this material with a playwright's incisiveness and structural sense. His dialogue is cutting, often surprising.

Accomplishes the impossible, maybe the unimaginable -- it makes golf entertaining.

Those of you who don't work for a newspaper may also be interested in what it's like on the inside - how stories are generated, how editors and writers interact, etc. For what it's worth, it's an accurate portrait.

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

In addition to being the best of the sequels (with all the jumps, gore and quips we’ve come to expect), the new Scream is very much a movie for this moment, tapping into the vogue for legacy revisitations, and its own privileged status as an elder statesman on the horror scene, to show how the familiar can feel both comfortable and terrifying at the same time.

A character study hiding in cowboys’ clothing — and even if its pacing could use a little more giddy-up, it delivers an inspired ending that makes the brothers’ longish journey worthwhile.

Waititi adopts a tone that’s wild enough to accommodate all possibilities, so that even while we’re laughing, we’re in a state of anxiety.

Full of vitality and music and, at the same time, is a little wobbly, meandering and too long.

Nickel Boys offers a different way to understand horrors based on true events not that far in the past by plunging viewers into its characters’ humanity.

Exhilarating for Lynch diehards.

It's funny, clever and marginally educational.

Jack Frost starts out with sweet promise, then loses steam and gets a little too strange for its own good. It also gets cloyingly manipulative, but its heart is in the right place.

Aims to do nothing but please, and it accomplishes its modest aim with charm and intelligence.

Whatever one’s politics, it’s hard not to be charmed by Ivins’ feisty demeanor and, by extension, Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins.

May hit a few wrong notes, but it strikes an emotional chord.

Succeeds despite that mismatch of artist and material.

The Shadow is more than just the product of the trend to make high- tech features out of '30s superheroes. It's adventurous film-making, genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely inspired. [01 Jul 1994, p.C1]

Tequila Sunrise is a sharp-looking, tantalizing romantic thriller whose assets overcome a labored plot and several lapses into L.A. hipness that result in sheer inscrutability. [2 Dec 1988, p.E1]

Keaton is fun to watch — fun and a little bit eerie. He plays Ray as all drive and no soul.

This is the movie for anyone who has ever sat around with friends and thought, "Someone should make a movie about this," a film that captures the tenderness and quick humor of hanging out. It's not an easy task. We may find our own friends delightful, but watching other people's friends is a dreary prospect.

Babygirl likely will divide viewers, but no matter what side one takes — and despite a bit of a shaky denouement — it is more than just a provocative talker.

In the moment, it's intermittently transcendent, heartrending and beautiful ... and busy, repetitious and boring.

Among the slapstick, there are musical numbers and a few surprise cameo appearances. In the end, the film leaves you in a dance-happy mood.

Girl Picture excels at showing how teenage life can be a sensory experience that’s exhilaratingly joyful and unbearably painful, sometimes simultaneously.

In the end, the filmmakers don't reveal a lot of new insights into Dahmer's character, or answer questions about how all these murders went unnoticed before Dahmer was apprehended. In some ways, we are left to fill in the blanks - and that can be a queasy experience.

It’s easy enough to have problems with Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It’s not nearly as truthful or as dramatic as it could have been, and it glosses over things that could have added those elements. But it’s hard to argue with a movie-length experience of listening to Whitney Houston’s voice.

Saved throughout by its inviting atmosphere and richness of characters.

In terms of dramatic tension, Best in Show is more compelling than a lot of formulaic sports movies.

Delicious but complex.

That the movie works so well is also due to the exceptional talents of leads Simonischek and Hüller, who hold nothing back — especially the former, whose Winfried is one of the oddest ducks in recent movies.

The result is smart and witty, with just enough obvious nods to the present to serve as a capsule of this unstable moment in media, much as the first film captured for the waning golden days of glossy publications.

Clocking in at a mere 79 minutes, featuring plenty of laughs and climaxing with a rousing chase, “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” is an impressive feat of clay, a winning choice in a competitive animated holiday season.

Knowing nothing about "X-Files" is no impediment to appreciating this for the well-acted, adult piece of work that it is.

Overall it's a remarkably eccentric work coming from a cagey old Hollywood hand who directed Bogart and Hepburn in their primes. [28 Jun 2009, p.Q30]

Rosendahl brings a wonderful innocence and burgeoning sexual awakening to the role, while still evincing inner strength and complexity. In her unconscious attempts to regain her soul, Lore pays the ultimate price as she discovers the stink of who she and her family and her country had become.

Captures an artist who has decided not to burn out, but to fade away with dignity.

Levinson's sure touch keeps audiences smiling and manages to maintain an aura of good nature in a film that, at heart, offers a caustic, almost bitter vision of American institutions and contemporary politics.

The most amazing act in the Gran Circo Mexico doesn't take place in the ring - it's the grind between performances.

But after two instant classics in “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Encanto” in 2021, “Strange World,” while pleasing, is a bit of a step down for Walt Disney Animation.

My Father, the Hero makes up for its lack of energy with a handful of bright moments created by Depardieu's sheer charm even in a galumphing part. He has to maintain incredulous looks through several long scenes and be the world's most befuddled dolt in others, but he pulls them off, mostly because he's such a likable lunk. [4 Feb 1994, p.C3]

This is a pretty good action movie that justifies bringing back the Superman franchise -- a dubious proposition to begin with -- by taking the plight of the superhero seriously. Henry Cavill is charismatic in the lead role, Amy Adams is an ideal Lois Lane and, as the villain, Michael Shannon does the best Michael Shannon impersonation you've ever seen.

An eye-opening documentary.

Final Destination 5 is irresistible, and the reason it's irresistible is that it speaks to us in the language we all understand, which is fear.

At its best, and it’s mostly at its best, Frozen II has an air of enchantment.

The movie's episodic view of a collection of interesting friends, sweethearts, and cliques often rings so true that it might be a documentary...It's so right, you might think Linklater has mastered time travel. [24 Sept 1993]

It’s entertaining and provides the tired vampire genre with a welcome infusion of fresh blood.

The biggest strength of the movie is the chemistry between Cumming and Isaac Leyva, a first-time feature film actor with Down syndrome, who does as much to make these scenes work as the experienced actors he's sharing scenes with.

Eventually comes into its own as a wacky commentary on the state of America in the fifth year of the Iraq war.

It’s a loving sampler platter full of big laughs and heart that will satisfy lifelong DC buffs, while serving as the perfect on-ramp to the universe for a whole new generation of young fans.

It is partly a failure, but mostly it succeeds, and the film's aspiration is so enormous that that's enough for a moving experience.

Succeeds in its modest goals of building tension slowly and generating a handful of legitimate scares. A few people in the audience were laughing during the first half of the film. No one was laughing during the long walk out of the theater.

There are times, not too many, when the movie drags. But when you consider all the pitfalls avoided, and all the laughs and pleasures it provides along the way, Dark Shadows is a satisfying and skillful effort.

Southside With You proves once and for all that a romantic film doesn’t rely on suspense. We know these people are getting together. What holds us to our seats is wondering how it will happen.

Everything about Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is striking and remarkable — except Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth. This is not to say that they’re terrible, because they’re not. They’re better than decent. If you saw them in a regional stage production, and you didn’t know who they were, you might go home saying you saw a pretty good show. But neither is quite up for their role nor quite right for it.

Cumberbatch fleshes out a portrait of uncompromised and resolute selfhood. In that way, he carries us and the movie over some long stretches of blue-screen emptiness.

Compelling and deeply disturbing.

The fortunate thing about for Inequality for All is that, for all its good information and useful insight, it also has an appealing person at its center: Robert Reich, the economics expert and Berkeley professor who was also the labor secretary under Bill Clinton.

A touching combination of fact and fiction makes The Unknown Country one beautiful road trip.

In the end, W. makes up in immediacy what it lacks in objectivity.

An exceptionally fine movie that plays out on a large and leisurely scale.

Cruise's undeniable star voltage makes it all palatable, and the film is gorgeous to behold and even to listen to, from the rolling green hills to the galloping horses to the "Lohengrin"-like theme music on the sound track.

It's not just a feel-good holiday movie, though audiences, especially youngsters, will certainly walk out of it feeling good.

Score it big-time inane but a load of fun.

Bernal is quite good as the young media specialist - it's always surprising to see how strong a presence he is in his Spanish-language films and how he all-but disappears in his American films. Is it a matter of the roles or the language? The jury is still out.

The director takes an unpromising premise - the switched-at-birth plot - and gives us something that's touching and unexpected.

The alliances of the characters are a tad confusing at the beginning, but you don’t have to be an expert in geopolitics to appreciate the finer points of director Zaza Urushadze’s intimate film, which was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar.

Sexy and intoxicating.

Retains the earlier film's ability to delight the viewer with surprise effects and flights of fancy, only now the effects are better.

The not-as-good news is that, like “Wall-E” and “Up,” Inside Out has a great opening, a satisfying finish, and something of a sag in the middle. But this time it’s only a sag.

Segues confidently from broad humor to tense drama.

Starts as a taut thriller, but loses some momentum before picking up again, and Klaussner’s fine performance keeps us on edge through most of the film, even though we know the result.

This has to be the first children's film to weave a Grand Theft Auto joke into the script -- and like most things in the movie, it's pretty amusing.

A sturdy and sophisticated crime drama from the Philippines that takes a pretty gruesome situation and enriches its presentation with lots of human detail.

Fabrice Luchini is one of the delights of world cinema, and in The Women on the 6th Floor he finds a role ideally suited to his odd mix of fussiness and sensitivity.

Scrooged doesn't pack the wallop of "A Christmas Carol" - you won't cry or walk out resolving to become a better person - but it's a funny and imaginative high-class effort. Best of all, it stars Bill Murray, who has only to raise an eyebrow to get laughs. [23 Nov 1988, p.E1]

Always watchable, and occasionally great. And that’s probably more than even the most forgiving former Shyamalan fan ever thought they’d see again.

Cage's great performance is matched by Shue, who becomes the focus by the middle of the picture.