Smile is an immensely well-crafted horror movie.

It's an amazing actor who can carry a movie by simply sitting calmly in a chair. That's what Christopher Walken does in the comedy-thriller Suicide Kings. He's so good, one hardly blinks.

A first-rate historical drama.

It is stark, realistic and resolutely downbeat. Yates' work is lean, and he has a nice way with action sequences. [17 May 2009, p.R28]

It’s impossible to resist a film that has such rich characters, and makes a complicated subject both enlightening and entertaining.

As a runner, the robber is dogged; as a robber, the runner is efficient, explosive and fast.

McQuarrie devises a film that’s a succession of riveting sequences, filmed in a way that’s active and yet elegant. The camera keeps moving within shots, but not in a subjective, jittery way, but rather like a third person narrator calmly emphasizing the essential points.

This is a different kind of girls' movie, and certainly not a pretty one, especially its horrific head-scratcher of an ending.

The film takes its time detailing his mundane activities, often withholding the kind of information audiences usually expect, and it's Puiu's talent to transform it all into a highly disturbing portrait - both of an individual and a society.

The beauty of Soul is that, just as animation is finding more being demanded of it, Pixar is answering that demand. It is making the case for animation as an ideal vehicle for exploring the grand, the general, the universal.

Glorious moments aplenty despite director who's just in the way.

The plot twists in Little Secrets sustain the movie when it gets a bit too schmaltzy. This excess of cuteness and sentimentality won't be a flaw to moviegoers in the mood for it.

It's not a film for children, and it's not even something children would like. It's challenging and disturbing and uncanny in the ways it captures the nature of dreams -- their odd logic, mutability and capacity to hint at deepest terrors.

The plane crash in Flight must go down as one of the strongest single scenes of 2012: It's extended, detailed, technically and emotionally realistic, and beyond that, it reveals character.

A delicate film - not flimsy, but fragile - that holds together on the strength of Efron's physical presence and performance.

Though the dialogue is laced with the colloquial, the film has an inviting tone that even stuffiest of old fogies may find refreshing. Everybody gets put down, but with affection.

Overall, Dolphin Reef is spectacular. The filmmaking team does an excellent job of detailing the delicate ecosystem that supports these creatures. Although Echo and his fellow dolphins are the stars, there is a vast supporting cast of humpback whales, sharks, razorfish, sea turtles, mantis shrimp, parrotfish.

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.

I won't tell you Taken is great, but it's great fun.

I hope casting agents and other industry types see Fourteen, because I want them to see Norma Kuhling (of the NBC series “Chicago Med”), who plays Jo. She takes this strong role, by writer-director Dan Sallitt, and hits it exactly right.

If nothing else, you'll surely relish the extravagant rhetoric used by Ali Mahdavi, the club's artistic director, to describe what is basically a tasteful nudie revue.

A crackerjack combination of live action, special effects and recycled footage.

This beautifully shot film (kudos to cinematographer Paul Yee) could have easily been an incoherent mess, but Holmer keeps her lyrical movie under control at all times.

A hauntingly lyrical study of sexual awakening.

It's amazing how far a movie can go on nothing but speed and directness.

Though “It Ends With Us” ultimately lands in the zone of social commentary, the experience is mainly one of witnessing life as experienced by one woman over the course of years. And it’s worth the journey because of Lively and her simultaneous and contradictory mix of pleasantness and cold discernment.

Has two main flaws: the emphasis it puts on German bassist Alexander Hacke, the film's ostensible narrator, who shows up in too many scenes, and the fact that it doesn't identify many of the film's performers until the very end. Even so, Crossing the Bridge is satisfying to watch.

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.