Patterson's verite style is bettered by the work of cinematographer Eric Koretz, who surrounds the bleak characters with beauty and color.

Has a shameless B-movie exuberance.

Surprisingly, Potter takes what seemed like a recipe for embarrassment and excess and delivers a film that's sweet and understated and devoid of diva posturing.

Its story is paint-by- numbers...But it's funny, and funny covers a lot of sins.

It may not sound funny, but there's a bleakly comic air about the story, and a bit of surrealism, suggesting the most caustic side of the Coen brothers.

One-half of an unremarkable war movie, followed by a touching story about the importance of animals in people’s lives. Fortunately, the stronger part is saved for last.

Pike’s own commitment is wonderful to witness. Radioactive is a good movie, a bit more imaginative than most (at several points, the movie takes a quick leap into the future to show the various ways radioactivity has been used, for good and for ill), but Pike makes it something to see, simply by giving it everything.

Unique.

Epic in sweep and scale and packs in enough incident to cover two "Godfather" movies.

A study of middle-class, middle-aged disappointment in its varying forms, a sober look at different life choices.

Maren’s direction is tonally right, full of warmth and touches of humor; he makes it an inviting film to watch.

It blends an intriguing concept with a suspenseful plot, and the result is a gripping 103 minutes at the movies.

A thriller that presses all the buttons: parental love, childhood terror, fear of Vince Vaughn.

Philomena is a wiser movie than it seems, with much to say about justice and forgiveness and the healing of wounds over time. Actually, it says next to nothing about any of those things, just implies its messages with a light hand.

Reprise has a smart and knowing script and will compel audiences to reflect on themselves at that age.

It feels both big and little, concentrating as it does on the small movements in people's lives and the huge tides of history.

Does about as good a job as any film could be expected to.

The picture looks like it cost about 3 cents to make, but it packs a nice punch, with tense moments, unexpected turns and a hot performance by Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. [30 Oct 1989, p.F3]

Though there are political elements here, to be sure, Pray Away has more the feeling of witnessing multiple spiritual journeys. These journeys are, by their very nature, moving.

A movie for adults, of a kind that usually isn't made in America,

Of course, DaCosta’s restraint keeps its interesting. There’s an elegance to her storytelling, always giving us just enough to keep us moving forward without signaling too much of what’s to come.

Austin Powers sounded like a silly idea, but it turns out to be one of the best comedies of the year.

Your Place or Mine has a feeling of old and new about it. It’s an old-fashioned romantic comedy in that it depends almost entirely on the charm of its principal actors, Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, yet it comes up with a new way of telling its story.

Crown Heights is a challenging film with long treks between uplifting moments. And there’s no question the film earns every moment of grace.

In the end, it’s the ideas at work in The Matrix Resurrections, much more than the action, that keep us contentedly in our seats for well over two hours.

A full-out action movie - and a sober rumination on the nature of existence. It is both things, effectively and sincerely.

Adams, a six-time Oscar nominee, is likely headed to a seventh for an admittedly showy but nuanced turn that manages to bring Bev’s humanity bubbling to the surface even as her ugly side dominates — as Thoreau might say, a life of not-so-quiet desperation. Close is terrific as usual.

Fright Night isn't quite a classic vampire movie, but it's refreshingly straightforward and self-deprecating.