Much of the honest dialogue has the same feel as John Hughes' and Cameron Crowe's movies during their best years, while there's a half-serious hipness that recalls the first eight episodes of "The O.C."

For a movie that takes place mostly in the bowels of a sewer, Flushed Away has some surprisingly charming moments.

For all its depiction of a descent into drug addiction, Candy is filled with surprisingly sweet moments and goes down more easily than seems possible given the subject matter.

Bridge to Terabithia is a good movie, but it could become truly great with a director's cut that leaves the fantastic elements a little more vague.

This eager-to-please documentary is short on story, but long on charm. That’s because the seven profile subjects embrace their age and celebrate their style as creative self-expression.

Miss Sloane is one of the year’s handful of great actress vehicles, and Chastain takes this role by the throat, smashes it against the wall about ten times and then devours it while it’s still quivering. You want to see star acting on a grand scale? Miss Sloane is the movie to see.

It's a funny, mostly harmless and entertaining film with a bad case of dry mouth.

Adapted from a French play but never seems stage- bound.

Sound City is Grohl's first effort at filmmaking, and if it doesn't break any ground as a documentary, it's a heartfelt testament to a place he considers among the most hallowed halls of rock.

Big Miracle is not the most sophisticated adventure film, but compared with most family movies, it's practically something out of Noel Coward.

Drawn with the big-headed, big- eyed appeal that has made the TV show hot among the diaper crowd, the film has a satirical edge that won't be lost on adults but retains a sense of innocence and a joyful toddler's outlook.

The Duplass brothers keep making miniatures that contain universes. They seem to be casual, but they're dead serious. They seem to be stumbling around finding stories by accident, but their movies are thematically rigorous. They seem to be presenting matters of little consequence, but the stakes are always huge and life-changing.

An idiosyncratic document of sexual obsession and guilt, it alienates as easily as it mesmerizes.

As of today, this is the most delightful movie out there.

The rare David Spade movie that won't make you hate yourself in the morning.

There’s the sense here that living in a tiny community can either make you bigger or smaller, and in 23 Blast we see both types, from the petty to the stoic and self-reliant.

A rare spectacle on the big screen.

Truly a winter's tale.

So this is a good comedy, as bad as it can be and still be good, but good.

It helps that most of Creation is about the relationships - Darwin's with his wife and with his daughter. Even if we resist it, even if we don't want to be dragged in, the story of Annie becomes quite moving, almost unbearable.

Just to re-emphasize, Relic is not a documentary about dementia, or a medically accurate look at the disease in the way that films such as “Away from Her” with Julie Christie or “Still Alice” with Julianne Moore were. It is a film that springs from the id, from deep-seated fear of a disease we don’t fully understand.

The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things.

Carrey goes boldly where no funnyman has ventured before, and it's simply amazing to watch him do it.

There’s an absurdist edge, but with nothing of the smart-aleck about it. Rather than use wit as a way of bypassing thought and emotion, Bujalski’s concerns are serious, and his attitude toward his characters is warm without being indulgent.

It's a distinctly French feeling -- an air of caprice and light expectations -- and a perfect prologue to a delightful film.

It’s a probing, searching movie by one of the medium’s best American directors whose reach, like his protagonist’s, exceeds his grasp.

A first-rate action movie, slickly done and with so many imaginative bonuses that, for a time, it feels like a classic in the making. It's not, but it's still solid and entertaining [1 June 1990]

If you can lighten up for an hour and a half, the film delivers one good laugh after another.