Crisp, acid-tongued and sharply acted, it's the sort of exercise in tangy Celtic cynicism that's become one of the Emerald Isle's most reliable exports.

The Ballad of Wallis Island isn’t a great film, and it is exceedingly predictable. But like its musician heroes, it plays its notes well, and in a movie landscape often pockmarked with violence and cynicism, it’s a welcome escape.

Bathtubs Over Broadway rediscovers the forgotten world of industrial musicals through rare recordings and film clips, and it is as smoothly entertaining as showbiz set piece, and at times flat-out funny.

The filmmaker works with economy and has a knack for creating a sense of foreboding, which is good because the plot is simply a working out of the old saw that violence begets violence.

Not only a portrait of a great artist, but a sensitive and engrossing depiction of the act of creation and its process.

A sci-fi movie that actually has intelligent things to say about science — that’s all too rare. It’s what we get in Ex Machina.

This nightmarish revenge drama from Korea is grueling, intense, cruel -- the very definition of extreme cinema.

Strange, moody film.

A character study hiding in cowboys’ clothing — and even if its pacing could use a little more giddy-up, it delivers an inspired ending that makes the brothers’ longish journey worthwhile.

Despite the weakness of Sciorra's character, and the lack of development in her relationship with Snipes, Jungle Fever is a fascinating movie -- consistently provocative, brilliantly acted and written, in most cases, with a number of moments that transcend anything you've seen this year in their wit, sexual heat and emotional intensity. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

A loose, amiable documentary tracking several decades in the life of this most unusual farmer.

The quiet intensity of “Blue Moon” is at times agonizing. Any more would have been too much.

This film is the sharpest since "The Prisoner of Azkaban." It is the most emotionally satisfying, blending spot-on comedy and adenoidal sexual tension, with scenes of gutsy vulnerability.

Throughout Zootopia, each bustling frame is packed with so much repeated-viewings-rewarded imagery that the screen must be sampled rather than taken in as a whole.

Noirish thrillers live or die by their plot twists and dialogue -- talk literally being cheap compared to action shots. Unfortunately, the script by first-time filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson fails on both counts.

From the standpoint of humanizing Sudan's continuing refugee problem, Lost Boys is a gem. It doesn't preach. It doesn't prettify.

In terms of dramatic tension, Best in Show is more compelling than a lot of formulaic sports movies.

The experience of watching it is rather like swooping down and catching people living their lives.

As a screenwriter, Lemmons is able to keep all the plot elements in place. But as a director, she is unable to keep things moving.

The film is honest enough not to exaggerate the beneficial results of Parvana’s courageous act.

Absurdity and poignancy merge in the carefully observed Czech film Up and Down.

Mainly for those who already know and like Jodorowsky’s work.

Bloody good.

The bold, masterful Beach Rats, one of the most exquisitely haunting LGBT coming-of-age stories ever told, takes place in the unhip fringes of Brooklyn, a land that time has forgotten. But nothing about this film is forgettable.

It's never cute for the sake of cute, never trivializes its characters; and even at its most ethereal, it keeps one foot grounded in the real passions of these men and women. Though smaller in scale and with its own unique spirit, it invites favorable comparison with the Merchant-Ivory adaptations of the Forster novels. It's a vivid and realized document of people in a particular time and place -- a nice time, a gorgeous place. [7 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Breillat is inviting us to really look at sex as it occurs in life, and to engage with it mentally, as a driving mystery of human existence.

A modest chamber piece enriched by its affecting human harmonies and overtones.

The concept is high, the humor lowbrow and the joy of experimentation evident in every frame of this wonderful picture.