A cautionary tale as well as an expose on the power of the American fast-food industry. That the documentary comes across as more than a sermon has a lot to do with Spurlock's personality, which is outgoing and instantly engaging.

Captures the emotions of spousal charges, countercharges, defenses and pleadings ranging from brutally sarcastic to despairing.

Accessible, and often funny.

The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.

This film doesn't feel obliged to pick a winner or lob easy answers; it aims to observe, with humor and humanity, with penetration and without oversimplifying.

Creative and bizarre, maybe too bizarre, but since most action films adhere to a cookie-cutter formula, its quirkiness is most welcome.

It is wonderful to see how Sheedy gives shape to this performance -- her eyes, a photographer's eyes, carefully sizing everything up. [18 June 1998, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

Lek gives Love & Bananas humanity, but Bell’s personality and enthusiasm is contagious, inviting us into the film. We root right along with her.

The Daytrippers is low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.

While Pixar doesn’t exactly alter the chemistry here, Hoppers is energetic and fun.

It moves, makes us care and involves us in the genuine drama of two young people trying to heal themselves. The austere beauty of the locations doesn’t hurt either.

This is what makes the distinctly unromantic Cold Mountain' such a breath of fresh air. Its battles are hideous bloodbaths.

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

“It’s not what it looks like” is both the marketing tagline for Emergency and an accurate description of this ingenious independent film.

Christian McKay who, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles"gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of an historical figure, ever.

It works well as a film and a lesson about, as one open-minded preacher puts it, what the Bible "reads" about what it supposedly "says" about homosexuality.

Rocket Science has the makings of either a tragedy or a crowd-pleasing underdog story, but writer-director Jeffrey Blitz instead takes the movie on a different, and ultimately more rewarding, direction.

Ultimately, “Mija” fails almost totally, and two main things tank it: (1) the lack of complete access to the subjects, who should have been grateful for the exposure, and (2) too much collaboration between the director and her subjects. There are documentaries and there are promotional films. A documentarian needs to keep those categories rigorously separate.

Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall have made as good a film as could be made from the substance of Kyle’s life and career. But greatness was never a possibility, not with a protagonist not all that interesting and with the surrounding circumstances making it impossible to go deeper and risk the movie’s critique of Kyle’s becoming overt.

An amusing trifle. [21 Dec 1988, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

That the film happens to be in 3-D, with digitized settings and backgrounds, doesn't detract from the timeworn charm of watching blob-like characters lurch erratically through harebrained comic pratfalls.

This documentary has no bells and whistles; Bill Haney, the director and co-writer (with Peter Rhodes), sticks to the facts.

The most heartbreaking, moving film in theaters right now.

Nye’s focus on work has had a deleterious effect on his social life. Some of Nye’s issues are no doubt the result of lifelong fears that he may be struck by a neurological condition called Ataxia that runs in his family, but which so far has not affected him.

The nonprofessional cast is convincing, especially Lacej, whose Rudina registers more strongly than Nik.

What a treat to find a movie so bright-eyed and true - without a trace of bathos - in its depiction of such a harrowing subject.

Occasionally, “All Things” gets stuck in a groove of industry and business minutiae — a 10-minute trim would have made this film even better — but overall, this is an assured effort: informative, bittersweet and appealing for both the young and the not so young.

A provocative, upsetting film.