Foley's screenplay and direction constantly require viewers to re-evaluate the trio and their relationship with one another. This works as long as the dialogue is tolerable, which isn't long enough. [07 Sep 1990, p.6]

The Dark Knight Rises declares its importance with each scene but seldom backs up the claims. It is a climax more fitful than fulfilling, solemn to a fault and begging the Joker's question: "Why so serious?"

Garland's original screenplay brims with intelligence, unafraid to let characters speak over our heads. Yet it remains a pulpy delight, due largely to its uniquely mad scientist.

The movie is too unwieldy and densely packed. The superb performances by Snipes, Sciorra, McKee, Turturro and Jackson can't overcome its sprawling nature. [7 June 1991, p.6]

Good intentions don't always make for good movies. Case in point: Zootopia, a Disney film with more on its mind than animated fun and fuzzies. So much, in fact, that it loses track of what audiences expect, what they're being sold.

There are occasional missteps. The movie's pacing is uneven. The scandal is overblown...But the performances are excellent, and the sentiment is honed to ugly perfection.

Much Ado About Nothing is simply a fun time among Whedon and his friends, and for the most part it's contagious.

For all its eccentricity Logan Lucky too often reminds us of movies Soderbergh or someone else made before.

The mortal in me is increasingly certain I'll never live to see cinema's most astounding achievements. The kid in me is happy to be alive right now. [13 Apr 1996, p.5]

Finding Dory is a good sequel to a great film, and perhaps that's all fans could hope for.

As the story lumbers on, the noose around Farrell's neck tightens and No Way Out gets funnier. Not by design, however. [14 Aug 1987, p.1D]

The Gift is B-movie melodrama at its lurid finest, and worth a look.

Forget the last hour of Pearl Harbor. LeRoy's depiction of Jimmy Doolittle's air raid has all the excitement and patriotism that Disney's publicity machine couldn't buy. [13 Sep 2001, p.13W]

To borrow just a few of Aleichem's words that are ingrained in Jewish culture: "It could be worse."

Stand and Deliver does what it promises. It delivers. [30 Mar 1988, p.1D]

Personal Shopper is wildly imperfect, wandering like Maureen through surroundings matching her dark, curious mood. Dead ends abound with scenes running long then abruptly dropping their subjects. Thrills aren't part of the bargain unless Stewart's intense vulnerability counts. Now more than ever, it should.

If he made The Ghost Writer under a pseudonym, it might be roundly hailed as the classy white-knuckler it is. But it's Polanski's name above the title, with his own ghosts haunting each frame.

The Jungle Book could use better lighting and less of John Debney's musical score insisting each moment be melodically underlined twice. Still, it's a movie to thrill and perhaps inspire kids to play Mowgli games again. Not outside, of course. Now there's an app for that.

This is a story to make blood boil and change demanded, so future waves of incoming freshmen — even that term is male-centric — won't have their dreams ruined.

What is off limits to steal when everything is available, not only in a digital age but clacking through a projector? Isn't fame always at someone else's expense? Even Baumbach borrows, notably from Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. Fair, and funny enough.

Director Jean-Marc Vallee dutifully progresses from one obvious scene to the next. Solid work but unspectacular, perhaps figuring the boldness of his characters' words and actions can be artistic enough. And it is, in the hands of a temporarily reformed sex symbol and his unexpected leading lady.

Craig Gillespie’s hysterically accurate biopic I, Tonya sets up the punchline she became. Harding’s spiteful rise and spectacular fall would make fine comedy even if they weren’t true. I, Tonya scores on higher degrees of difficulty, making these tabloid antics relatable and strangely sympathetic.

Nunez handles Ruby's fragile personal growth with a loving concern that might escape most male filmmakers.

Calvary becomes a lurid Agatha Christie yarn with something important to say about the church and Ireland that McDonagh can't fully articulate. Pulp keeps getting in the way.

Philomena is simply one of those small, true stories that astonish in print and inspire good movies.

Get Low is a pleasant yarn, well-acted and dutifully mounted with period designs. There isn't a false note among the actors.

We are "there" although Detroit squanders that sensation on revulsion, a gut punch needing to take more shots at our heads.

It continually finds some added depth and shading to its familiar setup and it's hard to not appreciate a movie that's content to be a solid, unpretentious genre entry, especially for a first outing.

James Mangold's Logan is an uncommonly mature comic book movie, practically from another universe unto itself. It's a movie demanding and deserving to be taken seriously, an elegy for a mutant.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is how to make a sequel, when it gets its head out of the clouds.

Whatever Career Girls lacks in polish or ambition, it compensates with three memorable performances and an unwavering filmmaker working on nobody's terms except his own. [5 Sep. 1997, p.3]

Franco doesn’t ask viewers to reconsider bad art but to respect the artist behind it. Sage advice from someone who, after a few career disasters, can still shape a movie this good.

Guardians of the Galaxy is fun but forgettable, or perhaps Gunn crams so much onto the screen that memory is crowded out. Definitely worth a second look, just to figure out what in the name of Buckaroo Banzai is going on.

The images captured by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw are more dreamy than nightmarish as if his camera — like the children — doesn't fully understand the dangers.

J.A. Bayona's exquisite A Monster Calls blends pathos and sophistication, fairy tales and harsh realities into a small masterpiece.

Buck is a movie to be revisited again and again, like passages from a satisfying self-help book. Riding experience isn't necessary to realize how extraordinary this man and his calling are.

Exhilarating drama, and a triumphant return to glory for both Zemeckis and Washington.

99 Homes combines the insight of documentary filmmaking with a thriller's urgency, opening our eyes to a complex, real-life tragedy while keeping it entertaining.

Kaur and Khan, who was robbed of a IIFA nod, scarcely share a frame of The Lunchbox, yet the emotional connection of their characters is palpable.

A comedy that moves as slow and uncertain as a bill through Congress. [07 May 1993, p.8]

Jeff Nichols fashions three-quarters of a terrific movie with Midnight Special, a slow burn science fiction thriller. The rest is merely gripping, which isn't a bad problem to have.

At least the latest movie about the financial meltdown doesn't make the same mistake as the last one. It also doesn't prove that a fictional film can explain the downturn's causes and effects better than a documentary.

While the villains are standard issue evil, Wonder Woman is remarkable in the genre for its early 20th century setting and Gadot's galvanizing performance.

The Revenant is an action blockbuster with an art house soul, a headlong rush of motion with meaning. Pure cinema from Iñárritu and Lubezki, two undisputed masters working at their peaks.

Most of the time the film slides along on funky music, lively dance and snappy street-style dialogue. Other teen comedies feature more hair-raising plots and spectacular stunts; other teen comedies are far more sexually explicit. House Party has a wistful, almost naive, air that runs counter to the broad-based perception of young blacks as hardened and hopeless, one step away from doing hard time. [9 Mar 1990, p.6]

Green studies characters, allowing scenes more time to expand personalities and usually knowing when to cut. Stronger is his most conventional, audience-friendly material ever but is still a movie of such quiet intimacies.

Robespierre does a nice job of balancing the seriousness of this situation with the no-boundaries irreverence of Donna's comedy background.

10 Cloverfield Lane superbly shuffles what we know (and don't) and what the characters are experiencing.

A Dangerous Method is a movie believing the most formidable sex organ really is the brain.

Sounds depressing, although Rabbit Hole isn't, with David Lindsay-Abaire presenting a perceptive, subtly dark-humored adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

The Last of the Mohicans is grand entertainment. Romantic, exciting, though unremittingly violent at times, it is rich in frontier lore and in its respect for the land that the conquering settlers too often take for granted. [25 Sep 1992, p.5]

The movie has a caffeinated spirit worthy of its graveyard shift milieu, a darkness artfully breached by cinematographer Robert Elswit, who previously framed L.A.'s unstill life in Magnolia and Boogie Nights.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is movie escapism made with intelligence, and that doesn't come around often enough. As I sensed this movie ending I wished it wouldn't, and when it did I wanted the next one now. Take that, Bilbo.

Nothing much happens in Greenberg, yet Stiller and co-star Greta Gerwig make inconsequence tolerable with solid performances.

Rapace is a magnetic presence in a far-ranging mystery requiring such a solid character to orbit around.

Mistress America is certainly funnier and sunnier than While We're Young, mostly thanks to Gerwig, America's dizzy, dazzling new girl on the side.

Rango is wild, woolly and weird, and the first movie of 2011 that I must see again.

Writer-director Levinson returns to Baltimore (his home town) with a perceptive, rueful comedy called Tin Men. It is about male camaraderie and revenge, and it, too, uses its setting as a statement. Baltimore, circa 1963, represents hope, transition and a fading American Dream. [13 Mar 1987, p.1D]

The movie always fascinates thanks to Olsen, who'll never be just a semifamous sister again.

For all of its carnal frivolity, The Wolf of Wall Street lacks passion and purpose, qualities Scorsese at his best has in abundance.

The standout in Win Win is Alex Shaffer, a former New Jersey state champion cast as Kyle.

A Cry in the Dark reaches out from the screen to make an emotional connection that doesn't let go until the final credits. It is a wonderful film. [16 Nov 1988, p.1D]

Bridesmaids is a bit of a groundbreaker... Not exactly a banner for feminism but equal time is overdue.

Yes, Kermit does reprise The Rainbow Connection, surely one of the loveliest movie songs ever and, yes, it still brings tears to your eyes. Happy tears, realizing some marvelous things never change.

Gary Oldman may finally get that Oscar he has long deserved for Darkest Hour, a movie that seems constructed to do little else.

I'll See You in My Dreams is a disarming romantic dramedy, constructed from "geezer flick" cliches, to be sure, yet lifted to another level by the performances, top-to-bottom.

One of the finest pictures released this year. [13 Nov 1987, p.1D]

This movie's balletic brutality, its relentless pacing and practical stunt work are breathtaking.

There's much more to the adventure, a deft balance of fantasy and teen angst that never loses its contemporary sense of humor.

More than any previous Marvel adaptation, Civil War conveys the comics' light touch amid somber circumstances. In a bold stroke, those circumstances are of the heroes' own making.

The film unfortunately does a poor job bringing any perspective to Monk's complex music and personality, but it is a remarkable record of his performance style and relationship with other musicians. [02 Mar 1990, p.12]

X-Men: Days of Future Past effectively passes the torch from one generation of socially segregated mutants to the next.

The pleasures of The LEGO Batman Movie are plentiful, especially its cockeyed reverence for the Dark Knight's past.

Appropriately, the best jokes in Trainwreck are unprintable, or too winding to describe. Schumer's sexual vocabulary and observational skills get a workout, surrounded by an occasionally surprising cast of foils.

The man is a movie star, underline it twice. Cruise is this young century's personification of what it takes to earn that title, a perfect storm of personality, drive and talent on delivery, incapable of irrelevance.

Frozen impresses by conveying coldness in all its frostbitten beauty, from northern lights and blizzards, to ice magnifying, refracting and reflecting light. The movie is a lovely example for animation enthusiasts to study.

This is among the funnier entries in the cancer-kid genre, flawed yet affable, with no fault in its dweebly charismatic stars.

Frankenweenie is stitched together with love and a bit raggedy, like Sparky the dog in question.

Radio had a mystical power that television never has been able to re-create. Its sound effects and faceless voices stirred the imagination and quite often the heart. Allen captures its essence with an anguished broadcast from the scene of an accident, an attempted rescue of a young girl wedged in a well shaft. [20 Feb 1987, p.1D]

A bit dated in its feminism, making some jokes even funnier. [08 Mar 2001, p.17W]

Even if their names were John and Mary, the two people soon to be a couple at the center of Southside With You could make viewers swoon. Richard Tanne's walk-and-talk slice of budding romantic life is that good at expressing those small moments when love begins taking hold.

This is a performance without ego or modesty, for a character without self-respect, played by Witherspoon as unvarnished as any pampered movie star can be expected.

Victor Hugo's classic novel gets the Disney treatment and turns out more vibrant and emotion-packed than anyone might have guessed. [21 June 1996, p.7]

A sensory and intellectual overload from start to finish, a brawny, brainy summer movie that may infuriate as many viewers as it enraptures.

Farewell is a solid telling of an obscure story and nothing more. The most effective scenes aren't cloak and dagger stuff but passages like Igor daydreaming of becoming a rock star like his idol Freddie Mercury of Queen.

The movie's finest performance is Daniel Bruhl's unapologetic bluntness as Lauda, and his subtle conveyance of jealousy the driver — whose resemblance to a rat is often noted — must have felt about Hunt's popularity and handsomeness.

Bully is no more incisive than a Dateline NBC segment on the subject, although with a PG-13 rating it now can be a classroom tool for discussion.

It's a lesson that African-American culture offers more inspiring stories than Hollywood has chosen to tell.

It's a quiet story, without many emotional outbursts and no villains. Parts of Higher Ground are dull, honestly. But the movie always feels honest about its subject.

The reclamation project that Ben Affleck calls a career continues with The Town, his second directing effort that would impress more if the first try weren't so terrific and visually similar.

At times the sewer dwellers don't appear worth saving, except for Socha's profiting. This can't be the filmmaker's intention but it's there.

There's no way to make this a feel-good movie, and admirably the Duplass brothers don't try. Cyrus finds its humor in dark places, through characters bringing out the worst in each other.

Hanks keeps things interesting with an array of concerned expressions and distant gazes. But there's no tension in faked suffering. The actor and Eastwood's movie are limited by the goodness of their subject, the flawlessness of his actions.

Thankfully in space, no one can hear you yawn.

Problems aside, The Secret Garden has many qualities that demand respect, especially the performance by Maberly, who captures the spirit of a girl hardened by bad fortune and worse parents. [13 Aug 1993, p.6]

Hercules isn't likely to be revered 30 years from now like other Disney classics, but it's smart, safe family entertainment. [27 June 1997, p.3]

For craftsmanship, fine acting and excellent direction, Them! tops practically all previous such fiction. It offers excitement, humor, suspense; also, romance which, however, is reduced to a minimum. [20 Jun 1954, p.11C]

Big Hero 6 is second-tier Disney/Marvel entertainment, fine for a day out with the children yet doesn't seem enough, after the creative advances of Wreck-It Ralph and the emotional heft of Frozen.