It’s less about music and more about how hard it is — and how bad it feels — to be absolutely and completely on the outside. And though the movie is uncompromising on that score — and shows its heroine going through a series of humiliations that are almost as painful to watch as they would be to experience — it’s not self-pitying. It’s dead-eyed accurate, and that’s its ultimate redemption.

The humor manages to be simultaneously sophisticated, supremely silly and very dark.

It's a feel-good deal you can take the whole family to, or even better, a date. And this almost cuddly film, built on a farfetched case of mistaken identity, delivers plenty of fun.

It’s a sci-fi action movie that spoofs the form to strong comic effect, and yet it profits from every good thing about the genre it’s mocking. It tries to have it both ways, and it succeeds.

Other films about Marie Antoinette have had their moments, but Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen is the first to give a real sense of what it must have felt like to live inside that palace as the walls were caving in.

Deep Cover is a sleazy crime picture and a peculiar and twisted moral journey. It's also a terrific movie, and once you trace its lineage you begin to see why.[15 Apr 1992, p.E1]

Riveting from its first moments.

Don't expect an in-depth study or exposé in Carol Channing: Larger Than Life. But director Dori Berinstein does capture the essence of Carol as one of those creatures of the theater that when you see her onstage, you know you've seen something special.

Undergirding it all is a light but ever present tension between living up to the philosophy the men were taught as teenagers and making their way through the realities and compromises of American adulthood. Tran’s not preachy about that, but the filmmaker’s killer move is showing how his heroes’ souls can be as fragile as their aging bones, yet resilient when the situation demands.

Something about Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot keeps it from adding up to a satisfying movie experience. It has the feeling, rather, of a story you might hear about a friend of friend.

The great thing about Reality Bites is that each of the characters comes across as real, and not some glib concoction by a screenwriter who's watched them from a cloistered distance. Childress obviously knows their world inside out, and shares it with insight and a prickly, original wit. [18 Feb 1994, p.C1]

A play-it-safe, by-the-numbers kind of documentary - yet somehow it gets under your skin.

The material is ripe for black comedy, but Stewart’s screenplay, staying true to Bahari’s real-life experience, steers a middle course. It’s sometimes scary, sometimes funny, and sometimes absurd, but never any of those things fully, or effectively.

In a film that easily could have been cold or ironical, Ferrell provides the emotional thrust.

The melancholic, beautiful Cairo Time confirms two things that hardly need confirming: The Egyptian capital is a breathtaking metropolis, and Patricia Clarkson is one of the best actors in the world.

As the corpses pile up and the cocoons hatch, the spiders become more brazen and finally start invading houses. The last 45 minutes of Arachnophobia is a blast, with attack-of-the-killer-spider scenes coming nonstop. This is not great art, but it's a good time, and the climax is terrific. [18 July 1990, p.E1]

You can almost say it simulates an experience of brain injury in the audience: Nothing adheres, nothing connects. It's just nonstop cuteness, poses and emptiness - with nothing logically following from one moment to the next. It would be exaggerating to call it torture, and yet why split hairs?

The movie, directed and written by Gregory Nava ("My Family/Mi Familia"), is only so-so but Lopez, who appeared recently in "Jack'' and "Blood and Wine," is so vibrant that you almost forgive the movie's paint-by-numbers script and moldy formula.

It could be a deeply provocative tale, but the director seems reluctant to probe behind his artful facade.

As it stands, Wakanda Forever feels as lost and forlorn as the Wakandan people.

To watch Nowhere Boy is to appreciate anew both the anger that drove Lennon and the strength of character it took for him to overcome it.

The movie harks back to a time before state-of-the-art technology when writers and directors had to rely mostly on imagination.

A frustrating movie, a work of immaturity from a director who should be past the empty gestures and self-protective distance of his early work.

The Peanuts Movie delivers genuine happiness with the door left open for woe.

Ronin eventually becomes tiresome, but the pairing of De Niro and Reno never gets old.

Giamatti and Pike are backed by a strong cast, including Minnie Driver, lots of fun as Barney's Jewish princess second wife.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Amoo’s direction is strong, and his film moves in unexpected directions. Stil Williams’ cinematography is divine. Adewunmi and Ikumelo are excellent, and kudos to Pinnock, Tai Golding as young Femi, Denise Black as the foster mom, Demmy Ladipo as a gang leader and Ruthxjiah Bellenea as a potential love interest who shares Femi’s love for the Cure.

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.