Koolhoven is able to strip away both visually and mentally our idealized cinematic notions of how the resistance fighters lived. It's a lonely existence. It's stark and it's scary. And it makes for a compelling movie.

Costner and Lowther are a winning pair, and Eastwood, an elegant director, takes his time telling the story, seasoning it with frequent humor and avoiding the logistics of the manhunt. [24 Nov 1993, p.E1]

Devotion earnestly tells that story in a stolid, straightforward manner, flying admirably high while knowing when to remain grounded.

The action scenes are imaginative and elaborate without seeming fake. Nothing is belabored, and the stakes never stop escalating.

This movie is not recommended for people who need to know what's going on. The Woman in the Fifth, an English and French language film from the Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, is watchable and enjoyable, but it's fairly impenetrable, and it gets more peculiar as it goes along.

Smart, sedate and well acted.

What Sweetgrass lacks in context it makes up for in voyeuristic camera work that reveals a gritty beauty in the landscape, along with the human and livestock characters.

Ends up musing perceptively on the American dream of wanderlust and its unintended consequences.

A balanced examination of the reasons for the electric car's disappearance, reasons that include corporate collusion and greed, governmental spinelessness and oil company propaganda -- but also consumer indifference and the limitations of the vehicles themselves.

Freeheld is formulaic, but some formulas are good if you do them right, and it helps knowing that it all really happened, or most of it.

The cutest darn thing in Hotel Transylvania is the way Count Dracula spazzes into a brilliant red devil-face when provoked. The second-cutest thing is his annoyed response to being misquoted by idiot humans.

A similar blend of comedy and a grumbling skepticism about the essential goodness of human beings makes Ira & Abby feel, at times, like one of those great stage comedies of yesteryear transferred to the screen.

By end of Cha Cha Real Smooth, you feel like you’ve met some people, and you liked them all, and it all felt true. For a 24-year-old filmmaker, that’s not bad.

The story of an amazing life.

What makes this film special and memorable is the character of Danny Green, who is not the usual neighborhood hoodlum you see in movies.

What it means in practice is that, with a Dardennes movie, nothing much seems to be going on - until everything seems to be going on. We watch events at a remove, and then, at a certain magical point, we are in the story, and we don't quite know how they did it - again.

Both Parsons and Aldridge surrender to the material, and we are moved as Kit and Michael come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of their love for each other.

Doff is a music video guy who’s made a deceptively well-crafted feature debut here. While Get Duked! may lean on stupidity too much for some tastes, it’s nevertheless that rarest of movie creatures: a smart dumb comedy. Perhaps they can only be spotted in the Scottish Highlands these days.

The Grand Seduction slowly brings its story into focus and then sneaks up and becomes quite funny.

The Art of Rap was made by a hip-hop fiend for hip-hop fiends. I fit the description, and it's difficult for me to approach the film as an outsider. But if novices can make it through the barrage of interviews with artists they don't know, they'll learn plenty about a craft still grossly misrepresented by the mass media.

Two things to know about Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: It is appalling. And I haven’t laughed this hard at anything in months.

The period footage shows all the principals, including Neal Cassady, who was only 38 but looked 52. Ken Kesey emerges as the film's hero - he is presented as a great American adventurer, the psychological equivalent of Lewis and Clark. Maybe that's not as ridiculous as it sounds.

A stunning directing debut -- is anything but sentimental about old- country customs.

If “Dead Man’s Wire” has a weakness it’s that it doesn’t create an intense desire to find out how it all turns out. It compensates with dark humor and with a central performance by Skarsgård that’s fascinating.

A captivating 86-minute film by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who is married to one of Vreeland's grandsons.

What makes the movie smart is its refusal to cast Troy, a difficult role well-played by Epino, as strictly a villain. Instead, Mendoza delves into the cycle of violence that can be passed down through generations.

To their credit, To All the Boys films haven’t shied away from serious topics. They’ve been good at teasing out the way teen drama can actually harm young adults (cyberbullying, social anxiety). The films have also engaged with trauma, as the death of Lara Jean’s mother — who represents the sisters’ connection to their Korean heritage — is always part of the films’ focus. But earlier films began and ended in high school, with a smaller scope for character growth, and Always and Forever really wants us to look forward.

Just funny enough.