Sometimes demure, sometimes funny and other times flat-out crazed, Wuornos was effusive and confrontational when Broomfield filmed her just before her 2002 execution in Florida.

This is a solid suspense thriller that's fun. These stars have put it together in a spirit of playfulness -- as in playacting.

It's a simple story, reminiscent of the Iranian film "The Wind Will Carry Us."

Even his wife barely knew him, recalling for her son the peculiarities of raising a family amid Daddy's cloak and dagger - and if she's baffled by his behavior, what hope is there for anyone else?

Bachelder’s fly-on-the-wall approach reveals great details, and she picked compelling subjects.

The idea of a worldwide calamity returning with a vengeance is an awful prospect that audiences, at this moment in particular, might find dreadful. So, it’s especially easy to sympathize with the characters in these early moments. Yet after the opening, A Quiet Place II doesn’t show us anything new, and soon the movie’s energy flags.

Beguiling.

In performance and rehearsal clips, Heymann’s saturated cinematography captures the raw physicality and emotion of Naharin’s work, and the way he cajoles, demeans and seduces his dancers.

A charming, aimless film about the aimless. It plays like a nuanced MTV reality show (an oxymoron, perhaps, but you get the idea).

It's an assaultive work about an assaultive fellow.

It’s a potent and timely slice of Americana.

The resulting film is neither better nor worse than the Swedish film, but it's more cinematic.

Bergman fans will love this film, but the great thing about Searching for Ingmar Bergman is that budding cineastes who are curious about his work will find much value in it as well.

Yet despite the interchangability of some of the characters, the last half of The Outpost — in which the two-day Battle of Kamdesh is condensed into an hour of horror — is a technical marvel, as the soldiers come under an attack as relentless as a tsunami.

The story of an elaborate con game and the wholesale betrayal of an innocent man, it's also an unusually cold film that ends with a feeling of hollow soullessness.

Inhuman though it may be, this is far-and-away the most humane of “Predators,” expanding rather than skimping on the series’ blood hunt fundamentals. That kind of daring and intelligence makes “Badlands” the coolest science fiction adventure seen in eons.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the subliminal appeal of the dragons — why these animated creatures look adorable on screen and not menacing at all — here’s why: Their movements, behaviors and expressions are based on cats. Once you know, it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It's no masterpiece, but it's real.

The Wonder is no fun at all. It’s not even fun in the way it’s not fun. Even for a movie about starvation, it’s not a nourishing experience. The more the audience finds out about what’s actually going on, the less compelling the movie becomes.

It’s funnier than most Austen adaptations and more visually beautiful, and then there’s the movie’s odd tone, which combines a rigorous attention to period detail with an arch and seemingly modern sensibility.

With The Nomi Song, Horn does more than simply pay homage to a late artist. He uses his subject to revisit the euphoria of artistic and musical culture at a crossroads, and in the process brings it, briefly and poignantly, back to life again.

It's the versatile Miranda Richardson (the terrorist in ''The Crying Game,'' the repressed housewife in ''Enchanted April'') who gets the juiciest scene. Shattered by the news of the affair, and by the tragedy it precipitates, she beats her face with a knotted towel, and then vents her rage on her foolish husband...It's one more triumph for an actress who has no trouble channeling a kind of supernatural intensity in her work. If anyone's looking for the perfect Lady Macbeth, they needn't look any further. [22 Jan 1993, p.D1]

Intelligence and beauty -- and teasing romance -- shape Mansfield Park into a gorgeous, enchanting experience.

Too self-indulgent.

There is no rage here or Michael Moore-like bluster. Instead, Deadline is a straightforward, compassionate look at a volatile subject.

Both actors are so appealing, you root for the inevitable meeting to happen somewhere in the vicinity of Wonderland.

Moreover, what the film lacks in temporal credibility, it amply makes up for in sheer rawness -- the rawness being literal.

Kurzel and three screenwriters have figured out a way to make Macbeth boring. Now that they proved it can be done, no one need ever do it again.