Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

A rare spectacle on the big screen.

The concluding image of men silhouetted against the dying flares of explosives, as they march to the raucous refrain of the Mickey Mouse Club theme, is masterly, but leaves a viewer curiously discomfited. Whereas "Platoon" shattered civilian complacency about that war, Full Metal Jacket is merely numbing. [26 June 1987]

The movie has the wisecracking quality of a Sturges screenplay, but it's warm and heartfelt, too. [13 Nov 2016, p.Q16]

Sexy and intoxicating.

The end result is something like the best blues festival anyone could have thrown last year, although Lightning in a Bottle falls a fair piece short of its own lofty goal.

The incident depicted in Warfare may have happened nearly two decades ago, but the film seems as fresh as today’s headlines.

Each element combines to make Glory one of the few Civil War movies that reach into the very guts of that conflict. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

The resulting film is nobly ridiculous and ridiculously noble, doing everything in its power to subvert the dross it's fooling around with.

Wonderfully original comedy.

This is warts and all, with the emphasis on the warts.

This may not be Martin Scorsese's most sophisticated film, but it actually takes a smart filmmaker to understand that, with a subject like Fran Lebowitz, the best thing you can do is let her talk.

One of the great movies -- a triumph of storytelling and character development, and a whole new ballgame for computer animation. Pixar Animation Studios has raised the genre to an astonishing new level.

Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]

A movie about an obese Harlem teenager who's raped by her father and abused by her mother. It's depressing, devastating, harrowing and repulsive. But there are lyric flights of hope interspersed among that raw naturalism, and that's what makes this movie amazing.

A film one can admire, but it is not "likable," per se, nor does its director wish it to be.

Wang, the director, is smart to spend much of the camera’s time lingering on the young star’s expressive face as his wide, inky eyes take in the world around him.

Hand it to directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, who could have made the story into a black-hat/white-hat affair. Without soft-pedaling Cobb’s noxious ideology, they implicitly raise questions about how Leith responded to the perceived danger.

With “After Yang,” the distinctive filmmaker Kogonada has made a movie that is at once ambitious yet timid, asking big questions but providing no answers, not even clues. It’s a thought experiment, but a thought that meanders.

Price has given us Yelchin’s most complete performance: himself. It is a cinematic gift to contemporary film fans everywhere.

The silence captured in this documentary -- a meditative look at life in the Carthusian monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps -- may be the most eloquent you'll ever hear.

Blanchett in Blue Jasmine is beyond brilliant, beyond analysis. This is jaw-dropping work, what we go to the movies hoping to see, and we do. Every few years.

There’s just one big problem here: It Comes at Night is about as enjoyable for the audience as it is for the people in the movie. On both sides of the screen, misery reigns.

The talented fantasy filmmaker and heir to the "Lord of the Rings" throne gets the tone right throughout Hellboy 2, and the hip retro charm alone is enough to merit recommendation.

Though I wish Please Give were a little better, there aren't enough American movies like it.

A handsome film, filled with lavish costumes and set designs and told in a series of exquisitely composed images. But even with its visual polish, it's a chilly, largely unaffecting film about an unsympathetic man.

The film feels like bare- bones docu-fiction, though, resisting the attendant drama until the bitter, grisly end.

Under Fontaine's direction, family dysfunction is an intense experience with unexpectedly positive repercussions, even if the steps between are painful and potentially deadly.