The results are comical and unexpected -- and just a bit eerie.

Some people may be put off that For Your Consideration lands in a serious place. But I see it as evidence of an expanding vision, of continued artistic growth.

What makes this movie work is the charisma of Crudup and that Macy and Co. don’t dwell on the events that led up to the shooting. Rather, they use the son’s death as a launching for Sam’s journey into accepting the loss and getting on with his life.

There's no joy and little playfulness about this caper comedy, which, despite a lighthearted script, has a sober undertone to it, almost a melancholia.

It weds all the winning aspects of the Neeson formula to a ticking-clock plot, full of tense moments and gripping sequences.

This is Almodovar's stab at serious drama, and the result is bizarre and affecting but also unsettling in ways that the filmmaker may not have intended.

It isn't elegiac, but enraged. It doesn't look back with sorrow, but forward in dread. And it's made with a clear intention - to stop the Iraq war.

Revelatory as well as unsettling.

Promised Land is a fine place to start appreciating Matt Damon, who always makes it seem as if everybody else is acting and he's just going through the movie being natural.

Ordinary Angels has some of the feeling of an after-school special because it’s a heartwarming movie in which everybody is nice. But it’s more well-made than most. It hooks the audience from the first scene and then builds in tension over the course of its almost two-hour running time.

When all's said and done, it turns out to be quite sweet-natured. OK. I laughed. So sue me.

At once ambitious in its global reach and modest in its simplicity.

At its simplest, we have here a performance showcase for O’Brien’s artfully restrained sniveling and, especially, for McAdams’ miraculous shape-shifting abilities. Essentially “Send Help” is “Cast Away” if Wilson the volleyball were a misogynist tool.

A modest documentary, small in scope and ambition, but it achieves one of the higher callings of art in that it forces viewers to look at a something in a newer, deeper and more humane way.

Although the director’s multipronged approach may dilute the impact of Intent to Destroy, there’s no denying the film’s value as an introduction to a major piece of history that continues to inspire debate of the most intense kind.

With impressive clarity and sweep, The Rape of Europa recounts the Nazi theft and destruction of European art and architecture.

A lustrously shot, well-acted and immensely moving romantic drama.

This is a remarkable performance, remarkable not only in its force, but in its strength and precision. Oyelowo is reason alone to see Selma, and if you need another reason, there’s Carmen Ejogo, as a lovely, strong and haunted Coretta Scott King.

Man on a Ledge doesn't aim high, but what it aims to do, it does. It grabs the audience's attention, engages its anxieties, stokes its resentments and, at the finish, sends people out saying, "That was good."

A fun afternoon for preteen moviegoers that has just enough charm, humor and game- for-anything actors to keep parents halfway interested as well.

What joy it is to watch the man (Douglas) slime himself on camera.

No film biography can capture or explain or add to the magic of Chaplin at his best, because these screen moments are perfect in themselves. But Chaplin, with dignity and some vitality, does what it can -- it holds up a light and points the way. [08 Jan 1993, p.D1]

This is smart, inspired, no-fuss entertainment.

Perversely fascinating.

Over the years, the Velvets’ slim but potent catalog has been elevated into the pantheon of classic rock, but only now Haynes has appropriately enshrined their deeds in a rock documentary as dark, dizzying and decadent as the band itself.

Mate swapping is so '70s. But Alan Rudolph, who wrote and directed Afterglow, avoids making it seem dated by presenting the menage a quatre as accidental.

It's a film of tension and spectacle, with a singular point of view behind it. It grabs the viewer thoroughly, even as it invites audiences to watch it with a cold, careful eye.

A modest but charming romantic comedy.