Flawless is a fictional tale, but something in director Michael Radford's conscientious, methodical presentation gives it the feeling of true history.

Hawke is half-assed throughout, showing passion only when he's screaming like a little girl when something scary happens. The visuals have a dingy, unfocused quality, especially in the muddy visual-effects-enhanced backdrops. And some of the plot turns are awful. The vampire "cure" is so stupid, you'll want to walk out of the theater, even if you normally like this kind of movie.

The subtitle of Hardy's novel was "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," and that's the approach taken here.

Even with its floating hookah smokers, this movie feels far more grounded than most shows that grapple with the divine.

Doueiri sprinkles Lila Says with moments of humor and violence -- a mix that keeps the film fresh and unpredictable.

Credit Freyne for ambition — he’s trying to make a zombie movie with a certain amount of discretion, and evoke sympathy for at least some of those who’ve perpetrated unspeakable actions. But he’s juggling too many themes here, and manages to lose us somewhere along the way.

Isn’t bad, but it seems unnecessary. It’s even a little bland.

This is a well-made, well-plotted and sensitive movie.

The filmmakers have wisely turned it into a comedy, and a wickedly entertaining one at that.

Even if it's too self-conscious, "Going All the Way," set in 1950s Indianapolis, nevertheless has a mix of the sweet and the forlorn that somehow works.

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.

If this is an example of Australian live-and-let- live, it is very likable.

An unusually cheerful depiction of prostitution. You've never seen such wholesome hookers.

So good it's scary.

Osmosis is really an occasion for the brothers to take their culture- debasing scatology to a PG crowd.

The Laundromat finds director Steven Soderbergh in a playful mood, but this time he’s a little too playful, and the result is a scattered and seemingly trivial movie about a serious subject — a lighthearted, jolly expose of international money laundering.

The Zookeeper’s Wife achieves its grandeur, not through the depiction of grand movements, but through its attentiveness to the shifts and flickers of the soul.

Ezra is an opportunity for Bobby Cannavale to show his abilities as a dramatic actor, but his performance is hampered by one thing: He plays an idiot.

It may not be as perfectly clever or uproarious as it was in Tap’s heyday, but we all get old and neither need nor want humor as loud as we used to.

The important thing is that Dreamland accomplishes its main intention, which is to make us invest in this strange love story.

This movie is not recommended for people who need to know what's going on. The Woman in the Fifth, an English and French language film from the Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, is watchable and enjoyable, but it's fairly impenetrable, and it gets more peculiar as it goes along.

A thoroughly satisfying, completely entertaining film that's also, rather surprisingly, an emotionally full experience.

This movie reverie has an almost laughable '80s tone - a yuppified style and even language - that practically buries Costner. [21 Apr 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop has to be the loopiest, most unexpected remake ever.

It’s a deliriously demented LGBTQ+ riff on “The Parent Trap” about accepting love in all forms, repairing broken families and finding your true self, but it accomplishes all of that in the raunchiest way possible.

There are some nice moments and beautiful scenery, but the film is often slow and the dialogue is overwrought.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a lovingly made, gorgeously realized, meticulously crafted failure. It has big names, a big budget, big sets, a big, thundering score and even big hair. But it doesn't do it. It doesn't excite or fascinate but just lies there on the screen. [13 Nov 1992, p. C1]

The performances are the best part of this uneven film.

A vital, sexy and touching movie that goes to the heart of what human caring is all about.

Often hilarious mockumentary.

Starts off with a burst of energy but becomes tedious midway through.

Some of the elements in the film are inexplicable and some are undeveloped, but there are a handful of nicely crafted set pieces.

A crappy 3-D conversion job mars this otherwise competent, energetic and cheerfully hambone Marvel adaptation from director Kenneth Branagh.

Ben Stiller seems the perfect actor to play Hollywood writer- turned-junkie Jerry Stahl in Permanent Midnight. He's got that bitter humor, the intense eyes betraying an inner life of pain. And he comes off as pathetic. The trouble is that it's hard to care -- even though the film is well-acted, artfully shot and at times haunting in its bleakness.

Lacks, a story that makes it feel personal.

Like the best noirs, The Wedding Guest is an efficient crime thriller that clocks in at around 90 minutes. It’s a B movie with style — the stuff that dreams are made of.

So disturbing it makes you uncomfortable watching it.

Antlers is a very effective, chilling film. It doesn’t have the franchise flash of Halloween Kills or the bizarro artifice of Lamb, but there’s authenticity to this movie that’s so effective and, at times, emotionally overwhelming

It's a nightmare fairy tale that can be very difficult to watch.

Funny, very clever and still packs some cover-your-face bloody thrills that top any "Saw" or "Hostel" movie.

Because Gyllenhaal is a more complicated actor than Swayze, and more comically adept, the new “Road House” has more humor and more attention to the peculiarities of the central character.

The Grand Seduction slowly brings its story into focus and then sneaks up and becomes quite funny.

It's gimmicky Saturday-morning cartoon wackiness in your face -- funny, but brain-deadening.

This is like any other Edward Burns film, except for one thing. It's unmistakably better. This is the movie I believe Burns has been trying to make since "The Brothers McMullen," 11 years ago.

A pretty ugly movie in its own right.

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]

Little Buddha is ambitious, sincere and squeaky clean -- a dose of spiritual eyewash that skims the surface of the Buddhist religion and leaves us wishing for more. [25 May 1994, p.E3]

Extremely pleasurable and well worth seeing.

Fascinating and distinctly politically incorrect.

Unfortunately, Encounter is the kind of small film that could get lost in the holiday cinematic shuffle. But Ahmed’s performance is one that’s worth unwrapping.

Owen is a magnetic, sensitive presence at the center of a movie that doesn't deserve him and that barely deserves to be seen.

Some will say this film is overly ambitious, but what the hell. The man put five years of his life into making this epic mystery. We can surely give it two hours of ours.

Does have a certain classy charm because of its upscale setting. One could wait for the video.

The always fierce Bassett is a little too fierce here, reacting with unwarranted emotion to each romantic twist and turn.

The possibilities of Jenna's confusion are exploited for full comic effect. Garner, who turns out to be a charming, abandoned comedian, makes Jenna's incredulousness and innocence very funny and occasionally even touching.

Ultimately, the film works because the doctor's relationship with the general - and both of their relationships with the doctor's young boy - is just as complicated as the action-packed coup.

Margot Robbie plays Tanya, Kim’s best friend and professional rival, and it’s a real asset to have someone with that kind of a star wattage in a supporting role.

What makes Chemical Hearts so good is it’s unafraid of its feelings. It tackles complicated emotional issues such as depression, suicide, sex and love with a straightforward honesty. For once, a film about young people is completely free of snark and irony.

A sweet, innocuous romantic comedy.

Snyder served as his own director of photography for the first time and, aided by terrific effects makeup and digital production design, he’s created a sprawling graveyard Vegas of detailed, decaying awesomeness.

Drama is as much about perspective as it is about events, and the angle provided by How I Live Now turns out to be self-defeating.

Really, the only thing kinky about this movie is its title.

For almost an hour, it keeps us off balance. But once we find that balance, the movie seems to coast.

Wexler gets tired of his own movie near the end of it. The viewer will get tired in 15 minutes.

The action ramps up so much toward the end that there’s really no time to care whether it makes visual or logistical sense. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches.

The movie gets bogged down in the formula conventions of romantic comedy, and in the process, it loses all honesty.

For all its depiction of a descent into drug addiction, Candy is filled with surprisingly sweet moments and goes down more easily than seems possible given the subject matter.

The results are often comical, but Pickering who made the film in tribute to his mother, the real Linda White - imbues them with faith in something, maybe dignity, maybe love, maybe just the simple human urge to keep on moving.

The best-case scenario for a movie based on a soft-drink advertisement. It is a disjointed and inconsistent comedy, shoddily filmed at times, while occasionally abandoning storytelling effort altogether.

The Fourth War, which opened yesterday at the Alexandria, is about two knuckleheaded army officers, one American and one Russian. They deserve each other. We don't. [24 Mar 1990, p.C3]

As it stands, her music gets under your skin and makes you feel good - and the movie makes you feel good about Katy Perry.

Director Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused") should have taken a cue from the music -- the film needs a lot more snap.

Gritty, bleak and sexy, the movie is also, between the lines, a strong feminist statement.

The performers don't really seem at the top of their game here.

Feels a bit too much like six hours of movie packed into 113 minutes - imagine if New Line had made Peter Jackson cram the entirety of "Lord of the Rings" into one film.

Though the movie drips and aches with good intentions, I do wonder how lesbians may feel about seeing lesbianism presented as a mere traumatized distortion of female heterosexuality.

Fortunately, Arbid didn’t want to make a movie about crazy people or about people going crazy, so she pursued a third option: She made the woman interesting. So “Simple Passion” is a movie about something that, sooner or later, happens to lots of people, but the fun of this story is that it happens to someone we want to watch.

A big-hearted celebration of the we're-all-in-this- together American way.

Falls victim to a fatal lack of narrative drive, suspense and drama. Kidman and Hopkins are wrong for their roles, and that, combined with a pervading inevitability, cuts the film off from any sustained vitality. The result is something admirable but lifeless.

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

The experience of Southpaw is rather like seeing the truth behind the cliches, revived in all their pain and power to surprise.

The sequel is even more enjoyable than the first, with action sequences that are as good or better than anything you’ll see at the theater.

The “Happy Death Day” franchise isn’t going to revolutionize filmmaking. But the uplifting vibes — and occasionally absent slasher — haven’t come close to overstaying their welcome.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

Suffused with a golden glow, the movie looks and sounds like a fairy tale.

A Burton film that mines the romantic fable elements of “Edward Scissorhands,” while pushing the disturbing limits of a film that seems to be marketed for small children, even if it isn’t really intended for them.

In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.

When you strip away the novelty of it all, we’re left with little more than a kids-meal version of “Scarface.”

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

This remake of the 1981 horror classic starts well, but it soon degenerates into tiresome shock gore that overstays its welcome, despite the film's modest run time. Jane Levy as a heroin addict going through withdrawal is the one bright spot.

This is a deluxe French film, longer than usual, with strong performances by French cinema mainstays Catherine Deneuve and Guillaume Canet and a movie-stealing turn from relative newcomer Adele Haenel, who has become a major French actress in just the past couple of years.

Most of Thor: Love and Thunder is a mess, pleased with itself and tonally everywhere. As bad as one of the better “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but that’s still pretty horrible.

Madagascar isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.

Dreamland has vitality and emotional truth underlying all its interactions. And the young women, Agnes Bruckner and Kelli Garner, are superb.

There's a way to love City of Ghosts, and that's to watch it not as a story that should add up to something, but as a series of little episodes with their own specialness and integrity.

One of the year's sweetest surprises. It sneaks up on you, disarming you with its modesty and tenderness, its remarkable lack of self-infatuation.

The film's constrained style keeps the drama from reaching a full boil.

A film of audacity and total gut-level appeal.