After his hit-and-miss starring role in Purple Rain and the so-bad-it's-funny Under the Cherry Moon, Prince has come into his own as a film maker by doing what he does best: putting his consummate musical and performance talents into a vehicle that smokes from wire-to-wire. [29 Dec 1987, p.3D]

Hail, Caesar! is maddeningly hit-and-miss.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles puts on the miles without many smiles. The journey hardly seems worth the trouble. [27 Nov 1987, p.6]

Christine is a movie as bleak and withdrawn as its protagonist, with Hall making the most of her best role in years, a slow death spiral that's hard to look away from.

Yes, this one is even better: funnier, brawnier and ingeniously constructed for appeal to both devoted fans and reluctant converts.

Whatever definition of "dope" you prefer, it applies to Rick Famuyiwa's movie of the same name.

It's irreverent about cancer and that could be inspirational. And it's surely one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen all year.

A movie of here-and-now thrills, goosed by judicious CGI effects that never overpower the humanity of the situation.

War Horse takes time reaching its full emotional gallop with a late sequence combining man, beast and barbed wire. Yet it remains a technically magnificent ride throughout, and a checklist of visual influences from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "Gone with the Wind."

Screenwriter Bert V. Royal takes the oldest adolescence hook in the book - losing one's virginity- and turns it inside out.

While The Stepfather doesn't transcend the limitations of most slice-and-dice movies, it comes close. And has fun trying.

Shame smears the lines between daring and taunting, and art versus indulgence. When it ends there's the urge to take a shower, and not a cold one.

A nice balance of solemn myth making and genre irreverence lifts Doctor Strange to Marvel's first tier of movie franchises.

For all of its movie-of-the-week mechanics, this is a deeply moving dramatization of what Alzheimer's does to mind and spirit, anchored by the finest performance, male or female, from any 2014 movie release.

Directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud craft a fun stretch run, wrapping the story with warm, fuzzy funnies and nothing to suggest a sequel, which is probably wise.

Director Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female) has the proper foreboding drive in his technique to make every minute of his movie hum with fascinating dread. [21 Apr 1995, p.2B]

Like the genre's top filmmakers - the Coens, Polanski, Hitchcock - Capotondi builds dread with wicked winks at the audience, dropping subtle surprises along the way.

It's a familiar, straightforward story, carried from start to finish by Winstead, who makes Kate an interesting study in contradictions.

Cumberbatch radiates such intelligence — with Sherlock and this, egghead Benedict is his speciality — that gaps are easily excused. From sets and costumes to Alexandre Desplat's musical score, The Imitation Game is everything classy that Hollywood wishes it could be.

Rudy and his wonderful story could make even an FSU fan genuflect before Touchdown Jesus. [13 Oct 1993, p.6B]

Anything goes in The Big Lebowski, and you roll right along with it. [6 March 1998, p.3]

The movie is something of a shaggy dog hangout film, albeit one that literally features a shaggy dragon.

Monkey Shines is just humdrum theater fodder that exploits the problems of quadriplegics for a cheap buzz of fear that it can't even deliver. This movie could make the apes sorry that we're related. [29 July 1988, p.9]

It may overwhelm and confuse, until you start tracing the mesmerizing route Ward lays out for his audience. [14 May 1993, p.6]

Tangled would be a satisfying adventure on plot and 3D sensations alone.

Edge of Tomorrow may be the best video game movie ever made. Which is strange since it isn't actually based on a video game.

Always lovely to observe, Wonderstruck never entirely grasps the magic of the coincidences it requires. Themes are emotional yet Haynes’ obsession with visual detailing can drain their meaning.

It feels disingenuous to celebrate Doss' moral code by vividly pretending to demolish it. Nobody disputes the notion that war is hell. But maybe this particular war movie didn't need that.