Hits a bulls-eye.

A bit icky yet full of charm, the engaging documentary Rodents of Unusual Size introduces us to the nutria, a furry antihero that’s a cross between a huge rat and a beaver — and that has been damaging Louisiana’s delicate wetlands for decades. The film serves as both an environmental cautionary tale for other states (including California) and an interesting slice of Cajun life.

On its own terms, the movie succeeds. Like a fable, its meanings are unspecific but haunting.

Goes nowhere.

A film with no theatrical core and no integrity in the writing, acting or storytelling.

Darkman is big, stupid and wonderful -- an absurd, grand-scale adventure and a vicious comedy rolled into one nasty, unpleasant, hard-to-resist mess. [24 Aug. 1990, p.E1]

The heart and the luminous intelligence of Vincent van Gogh are deadened in Robert Altman's coolly distanced Vincent and Theo. [16 Nov 1990, p.E13]

A grounded and unusually matter-of-fact adaptation.

An honest, fair and quite voyeuristic look into avatars and the real-life humans who control them in Second Life.

This makes Hostiles something of a slog, but a movie-literate slog containing some impressive scenes.

It’s cute and easy to watch, though we can’t overcome the feeling that it’s an unambitious film about an ambitious topic.

Because he made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), there will always be high expectations for a new film by Michel Gondry. But while his new movie The We and the I, is intriguing in fits and starts, it isn't in the same league.

Sharper works like a machine, and so it seems unfair to complain that, by the end, it feels too mechanical. It’s fun. It should have been more fun, but take the fun where you can get it.

An audacious, messy and sometimes inspired look at an out-of-work poet struggling to find his way in post-Communist Russia, plays like a metaphysical Moscow version of "Mad Men" - on acid.

This laugh-out-loud comedy is set in the world of daytime television and is reminiscent of the sex farces that were popular in the early and mid-'60s -- except that Soapdish, unhampered by a desire to be perceived as sophisticated, is actually more sophisticated and much funnier than the movies that were around then. [31 May 1991, p.E1]

Rylance is always good, but director Craig Roberts, to use a golf term, lays up instead of going for the pin. In other words, he plays it safe.

[Harris's] craft is shaky, and the actors she's assembled, with the exception of Johnson and Ebony Jerido as Chantel's best friend, are one step above Amateur Hour. Just Another Girl looks and feels like a first-time effort. [02 Apr 1993, p.C5]

Still, those who meet the movie on its own terms and don't expect a masterpiece may appreciate the commitment of Wright and the actors. Blanchett goes out of her way, for example, to be repellent here.

If this is the best we can do in terms of movies - if something like this can speak to the soul of audiences - maybe we should just turn over the cameras and the equipment to the alien dinosaurs and see what they come up with.

Suffers from some of the deficiencies common to first features. It is sincere and earnest but the product of an assumption that the milieu itself is compelling enough to command an audience's attention.

Because there’s nary a situation that seems reality-based and uncontrived in this movie that has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, filled with over-the-top cardboard characters that seem sneered upon by their creator. If Mirabella-Davis doesn’t believe in his characters, why should we?

It's a compelling minimalist drama about spiritual evolution, with strong performances and exotic locations.

Does a beautiful job of capturing that mood -- the exuberance and wistfulness of one man's last year of youthful irresponsibility before joining the rat race.

One of the best war movies of the past 20 years.

This one is a long, archetypal journey that screeches to a halt a few stops short of its destination.

When the action is extreme, GoldenEye is supercharged with spectacular, thundering, brain-numbing fun.

Nostalgia, as mentioned, is a factor. But the key to its success is its focus on family and hope.

Though each of the plotlines in “June Zero” stir up ethical questions, its primary approach is to look at people living their lives while an extraordinary event comes to its climax. That leaves the movie open to multiple, marvelous interpretations, as a decades-later coda suggests history will do anyway.