A pleasure to watch - a spot-on story about the agony and ecstasy of adolescent first love.

The Jungle Book has been shaped into solid, not-quite-golden but effusive family-style entertainment with exotic settings, amusing animal characterizations, hair-raising adventures and a saccharine romantic theme that is played big but finally is the film's least interesting facet. [23 Dec 1994, p.D1]

Even at its silliest, it's a better picture than most, with surprises and inventive turns and performances that remain strong throughout. [14 Aug 1992, p.C1]

The female actors, particularly Hudgens and Ashley Benson, are game for the ride. And Franco is indispensable, bringing humor and pathos to one of the more repulsive cinematic creations in recent memory.

The problem with Fingernails is it takes itself too seriously. Co-writer and director Christos Nikou takes a clinical, dramatic approach to such a high-concept, over-the-top and ridiculous premise. He seems so enamored by the concept of the movie that he forgot that the movie was supposed to be about relationships and not the testing.

If you can buy the film’s unlikely core premise, you’ll be rewarded with persuasive speculative fiction in all its other aspects. Penna and company make it easy for audiences to do that, while putting four people whom they’ll come to really care about through all kinds of hell.

Bogdanovich takes a tale of old Hollywood and infuses it with velocity and enthusiasm.

A tale of yuppie conformity and domestic angst that quickly turns into a horror film.

Walks a sometimes-shaky line between tenderness and schmaltz.

The nagging desire to help these people underscores the involvement of the audience in this superbly told story. You can almost taste the saltwater, and the fear.

The humor's a little strange, and the action's a little frenetic, but all of it whooshes past in a swirl of tropical color and pseudo-South American bonhomie. Gorgeous scenery meets oddball characters and mild ethnic stereotyping.

Doesn't allow the story's considerable nostalgia and sentimentality to overwhelm it.

It’s still an unusually good picture and worth the time (though you could skip the last 30 minutes and still get all you’re going to get from it). But if only writer-director Ruben Ostlund (“The Square”) had figured out a graceful way to end his movie at, say, the 100-minute point. He’d have had something extraordinary.

A curious thing about "Revenge" is that auto executives who might have been portrayed as villains in Paine's earlier documentary are likable characters here.

In the end, Let Him Go is like a Southern Gothic, only set in the Northwest. It’s just a genre movie that delivers the goods, but the restraint and emotional insight of the direction and the quality of the performances bring it up an essential extra notch.

A compelling Irish drama.

The film is a fascinating look at how a true event can become a media event — and how courting the media can have good and bad results so mixed up that it’s hard to know where the good influence stops and the corrupting influence starts.

Outstanding in support roles are Alison Lohman, playing a friend of Jerry's, and John Carroll Lynch, playing a neighbor who befriends Jerry.

A compelling and visually arresting drama.

The new John Waters movie, Cry-Baby, which opens today at the Kabuki, isn't daring or even daringly undaring. It's a spoof of those dull, corny musicals from the '50s and early '60s and is just as dull and safe as the kind of movie it mocks. I fell asleep, and I haven't dozed off in a theater since ''Dream Lover,'' a Kristy McNichol effort from 1986. [6 Apr 1990, p.E1]

Exciting, truly harrowing and smartly directed apocalyptic thriller from Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball"). It's the scariest zombie movie in many years.

Maria, despite being occasionally slow, is a weird, good movie.

Though it has merit and is recommended for the curious and adventurous, Joe Swanberg's film wears out its welcome about halfway through its 83 minutes. I'd say it doesn't go anywhere, but that's the point of these movies.

The result is a comedy that's low budget in all the right ways - so hilarious, testosterone-charged and yet cringe-inducing to watch that the result is almost exhausting.

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.

An exceptionally perceptive film about what it's like to be 19 years old.

Always watchable, and occasionally great. And that’s probably more than even the most forgiving former Shyamalan fan ever thought they’d see again.

Like “Nobody” and “Nobody 2”, “Normal” is a satisfyingly amusing, get-in and get-out (all three films are about 90 minutes) piece of violent mayhem.