A fine bilingual cast, haunting period detail and a provocative approach to a twisting story carry the day.

Yes, the movie gets off the ground when it gets off the ground, and who better to provide the lift than director Carroll Ballard. [13 Sep 1996, p.C1]

Just as it is possible to make a compelling doc without telling an entire life’s story end to end, Lost Girls proves that you can make a substantial thriller that doesn’t rely on a comforting real-world conclusion.

Yang’s deeply personal, imaginative work is very much its own creation, just as much as "The Farewell." Or any other movie whose producers knew that audiences are hungry for diverse stories. That representation matters as much as story and style and performance. All of which, by the way, Tigertail has in spades.

Unlike Brian De Palma, Lynch is not a natural conversationalist, so the result is a stiched-together narrative that is as curious and occasionally frustrating as the man himself.

Surprisingly touching and funny.

As he did with "Once," Carney with the somewhat autobiographical Sing Street mixes hardscrabble realism with highly charged romanticism, filmed on a low budget with mostly unknown talent.

For those who have read the book, this contemporary adaptation of a once avant-garde story feels exactly right.

The Absent-Minded Professor, from 1961, starred the late Fred MacMurray in one of his best-remembered comic roles, as a scientist named Brainerd who discovers a substance he dubs "flubber" (for "flying rubber," since it enables people and objects to fly). [08 Jan 1993]

Somewhere between profound and ludicrous, kind of like a cross between "Waiting for Godot" and "Dude, Where's My Car?"

All the signs pointed to a major movie achievement...And it does -- sometimes, and dazzlingly so. But the dazzle doesn't add up to the sustained act of brilliance I'd been expecting.

A tough, effective, socially conscious melodrama in the old Warner Brothers tradition. [15 Feb 1982]

Even in death, Kato has been harassed. In one of this movie’s many unsettling scenes, a pastor interrupts his funeral to condemn the dead man to eternal damnation.

Subtly crafted and compelling, but it suffers from a case of split personality.

Compared with the recent spate of blockbuster sellouts, Severance is a worthy package, and fair compensation for time spent. Best to watch on the big screen, of course.

The voice that jerks out from Levy's throat suggests Lazarus waking from the dead.

The actors are superb at impressing some humanity onto this ugliness. Their civility is in the details: a morning shave, a cheerio and “one small pipe” before jumping the trench and heading into the German line of fire.

Korean-American actor and former model Yune (who played a similar role in "Die Another Day," the last Pierce Brosnan James Bond film) makes a colourful villain – handsome and insufferably assured, and also an unchivalrous sadist who kicks around the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo in a pageboy wig) as though she’s a hacky sack.

It is, to be sure, a Jaws ripoff, but it has enough sidelong wit and head-on scares to guarantee its revival as a classic cult item long after more expensive, ambitious efforts like Altered States have been forgotten. [13 Apr 1981]

Carter himself ties a bow on the film, noting that music is a galvanizing force and that what will unite mankind is a shared respect for truth, God, freedom and democracy. That and a righteous Allman Brothers jam.

[Nolan is] back in the fine engineering business, crafting a story as intricately designed as a magician's lock, tightly packed with tumblers of deception and issuing a fun challenge to any volunteers in the audience: Just try to pick it.

The story is simply told: the rise, fall and comeback of a lesbian trailblazer and soul-crushed singer. Chavela the person is more fascinating than Chavela the film – a tequila-sunrise love letter to an unknown icon.

Like Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" or James Gray's "We Own the Night," The Town is a deliberately old-fashioned melodrama that echoes the pulpy mix of violence and romanticism of gangster films of the Thirties and Forties.

The focus of Invictus is less on Mandela's psychology than his willpower and political astuteness.

Yossi is an early spring breeze of a film – too delicate to be substantial but definitely holding the promise of warmth.

There's fun to be had in watching these losers drift without a compass.

It's a good film. But its exotic allure may lead some to mistake it for a great one.

On the whole, the film slays in all the right ways: killer cast, killer one-liners, killer kills. But there's a distinct sense that the story is stitched together from other, hastily discarded plot lines – even the simple manner in which some characters get from Point A to Point B is messy.

Given Paine's penchant for B-movie-sounding titles, let's hope he gets to make it a trilogy that concludes with The Electric Car Lives!

It's definitely a Diablo Codyesque cut above the norm – the wit can sometimes feel contrived but at least there's wit to be found.

Doff has created a film that bursts off the screen more often than not, albeit in that ultra-extreme Joseph Kahn kind of way. Your mileage may vary, but it’s a good enough game to play these waning summer days.

Jenkins creates many remarkable scenes, particularly as the male characters discuss the racist realities with which they live.

McNaughton's film, which has been described as "too arty for the blood crowd and too bloody for the art crowd," is an exercise in revulsion by an often skilled filmmaker. [8 Oct 1990]

It's one helluva movie that makes Ashley Judd look ugly and demented, while turning Harry Connick Jr. into the most frightening screen thug since Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast."

A film of deceptive narrative wisps and intricate thematic curls.

Indeed, like all bureaucracies, the educational version is a bit of a bully itself. In Sioux City at least, the official response to bullying is to recognize its existence but to deny it's an "overwhelming issue," and retreat behind the comforting bromide that "kids will be kids."

Like the blues, you feel it first, and think of the meaning later.

Funnier than "Nacho Libre," more fashionable than "The Devil Wears Prada," able to deliver more revengeful thrills than "X-Men: The Last Stand" in a single scene, My Super Ex-Girlfriend may sound like a midsummer mash of "The Break-Up" and "Superman," but it's more clever and emotionally resonant than that.

With a track record that stretches from "Monster's Ball" all the way to "Finding Neverland," Forster is clearly a director at ease with a wide range of material. He's found confection-land here, setting his beater on ready-whip and mixing the dough just fine.

Intended as food for thought, but all we really get is a light snack -- the kind that's heavier in presentation than in substance.

Funny, heartbreaking and, yes, uplifting, The Long Walk Home takes the audience into a past that is always threatening to become the present; that it was made makes the future seem a little less threatening. [09 Feb 1991]

This is a formula film with panache.

A sprawling personal journey, filled with an array of fascinating characters, through the world of wine.

A sweet if predictable tale about teaching and learning and parents and kids, it's all made easier on the eyes by Grant, whose trademark suaveness never allows him to quite slip into the role of bedraggled father of five. [19 Nov 2005, p.9]

Is there an admired British thespian who hasn't toiled in Potter's field?

The story in Japanese Story grabs you precisely because it's so wonderfully hard to define.

As a political testament, the result is revealing and important. Yet as a documentary, it wanders here, there and everywhere – long on intensity but short on focus.

Are the creators and lead actors of the quirky indie comedy Before You Know It all women? Three words: lighthearted menstruation humour.

Like circus acrobats who bounce up smiling, the characters end up on their feet, and you realize in retrospect that they survived because somebody, finally, stopped to think. A final thought on Go: Go.

Wahlberg, whose dim-bulb act was over-exposed in Pain and Gain, fares better here in a more heroic role. Stig is a hothead and a narcissist, but he’s also just a little bit smarter than he looks. The same goes for 2 Guns as a whole.

The margins of the movie are so curious: there is an entire graduate thesis to be written about how a film starring a one-time Miss Israel features a subplot about Egypt magically erecting a giant wall within its borders, or how its 1980s aesthetics are inexplicably paired with modern moviemaking bloat. But the overriding keyword of Wonder Woman 1984 is “conventional.”...Which is fine, for now. Let’s watch these superpowered gods rumble amongst themselves. We can worry about our mortal world tomorrow.

Parents might get more of a kick out of the voice-casting and darker corners of the story than school-aged children. But Vancouver’s BRON Animation studio provides a strong, often beguiling sense of tyke-hypnotizing flair to the visuals, and the zippy, synthy score by Wes Anderson favourite Mark Mothersbaugh should keep kids bouncing up and down, in a good way.

What's before our eyes suggests we share the planet with some amazingly strange beings.

Is it much of a movie? Not really. It’s more of an experience – a passive sort of virtual reality – that uses a bare-bones narrative as a vehicle for a big-time body count.

The stars are of the first magnitude, the direction is sharp as a scalpel, the premise (vampirism sans fangs, garlic and other Transylvanian paraphernalia) is only semi-silly, and the visuals are suitable for exhibition in a gallery specializing in high gloss S & M. [29 Apr 1983]

What a graceful movie this is.

Lumet uses every claustrophobic camera angle in the book to make the viewer feel as trapped as the characters. [04 Nov 2000, p.12]

The action is grim and not without gore. Heebies, jeebies and even willies will be left on theatre floors like so much stray popcorn and spilled soda. That being said, the victory of What Keeps You Alive is not its heart-thumping (and a little too long) second act, but the question of survival versus vengeance the film raises.

The strengths of Fugitive Pieces are its fluidity and subtlety. Emotional repression may be one of the most difficult conditions to portray honestly, and Dillane's performance of Jakob is a study in the art of creating sympathy by not asking for it.

But while first-timer mistakes abound – everyone except the three leads deliver performances so stiff I wondered if they were deliberate – Selah and the Spades is more than just a slick calling card. It’s impassioned, informed and sometimes furious work that could find Poe being name-checked herself not too long from now.

“Who would we be without museums?” Aleksandr Sokurov wonders as he narrates this challenging philosophical essay, and sifts materials back, forth and around in the Louvre’s history.

The portrait of the ailing artist is bittersweet, but when Helms sings or plays, the look on his face is pure joy.

This is a fine, funny, humane film.

Eraser may lack the chameleon wizardry of the the "Terminator" duo, or the imperious mechanics of "True Lies", but the bang-for-the-buck ratio is high enough to appease even the thinnest wallet.

Woody Allen’s first Stateside production in nearly a decade is a sharply observed, post-economic crash comedy-drama that boasts a formidable performance by Cate Blanchett and addresses such pertinent real-world concerns as class, gender and corporate criminality in urban America.

In recounting this conflicted tale, director Rachid Bouchareb displays some valour of his own, resisting what must have been a strong temptation to deal in aggrieved agitprop, and instead, quietly but powerfully, confining his attentions to a small group of indigenous soldiers.

White Hunter, Black Heart is a beautifully made elaboration of a thesis that has thankfully lost its antithesis to time. [15 Sep 1990]

Bausch's work, as performed by her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal, is shot exactingly by Wenders, who captures everything from the largest gestures to the subtlest facial nuances in ways impossible in 2-D – and of course in far closer detail than seeing the dances performed live.

A lot of things are said; a lot is not. It was a dark and stormy night. An audience walks into a film – and stays for the whole 90 minutes, because it is worth it.

Every now and then, Jackman dips into Serious Acting exercises but seems so visibly uncomfortable placing himself in such situations that he feels a micro-second from jumping out of his own skin, when he should instead be sinking into someone else’s (see The Fountain, Prisoners, The Front Runner).

Mother symbolically doubles as Mother Korea, devoted to her land. But is she blindly and uncritically devoted, too quick to forgive and forget sins that should be redressed, to treat any flaws in the national character as simply intrinsic to the country's nature?

Writer Tesich, previously responsible for Four Friends and Breaking Away, serves Irving's material straight up - the adaptation is thorough and four-square and seemingly unconscious of the bizarre nature of Garp's odyssey through modern mores. The strategy works. [23 July 1982]

Because it's a well-crafted and superbly acted sweet little tearjerker, we're content too -- it's a mild pleasure to watch.

Not just a documentary about Internet privacy, but a non-fiction horror flick for anyone who blindly agrees to user licensing agreements online (a.k.a. everyone).

A Bond movie is all about delivering on expectations: to enjoy it you have to be pleased rather than frustrated by its predictability. In that regard, Spectre, Daniel Craig’s fourth outing as Bond and the second directed by Sam Mendes, can be deemed a solid success: not as darkly stylish as "Skyfall" but not as stupidly grim as "Quantum of Solace" either.

The trouble here is that neither Bryan Sipe, who wrote this highly original script, nor Vallée, remain true to the bitter whimsy with which they began.

Hook's cast is admirably adept at getting across what little boys are made of. [22 Mar 1990]

When it came to describing what was happening to him, Ebert was forthright, clear-eyed and admirably free of neurosis and self-pity.

Catch a Fire paints the period with a double-sided brush that gives yesterday its due and puts today on notice.

We don't get a good look at a painting until 35 minutes into the film biography of Séraphine de Senlis, the early 20th-century French painter discovered by German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. The film Séraphine is not about paintings.

Running at about three hours, The Aviator is long, and the momentum occasionally flags. The depiction of Hughes's first mental breakdown feels a little obsessive-compulsive itself.

There is a different kind of pleasure in watching ultracivilized people struggle to contain their clammy self-loathing (in Joe’s case) and fury (in Joan’s). And if you think the themes of this story are nestled comfortably in the past, think again.

Both a cathartic and a creative family entertainment.

Happily, the climax races to our rescue... Beyond the grasp of most directors, this is tour de force stuff -- definitely meriting the price of admission and almost worth the three-year wait.

The theme could be trite or maudlin in lesser hands. Here, through the Dardennes' judiciously stylized way of telling the story, there is a real exhilaration in the film's ability to capture Igor's emotional dilemma. [6 Mar. 1998, p.C8]

The sequel isn’t a masterpiece of children’s entertainment by any stretch, but it is sufficiently bizarre and thrilling enough to turn the head of any kid, parent or – judging by my curiously populated press screening the other night – fully grown and childless adult around and around till the room resembles a Looney Tune.

More about Ali as media star and social figure, less about the quicksilver athlete.

In recounting the protests and sit-ins against the institutionalized racism of a past era, it offers a visual field guide to what activism looks like in a community that, for some, is not traditionally associated with speaking truth to power.

Very well crafted and superbly acted. Whatever you may think of the idea, its execution is admirable.

Herman's House is conventionally produced, but it does right by its two uncommon subjects.

The superiority of the musical sequences, and laziness of the writing, creates a dynamic where you find yourself wishing the characters would shut up and dance.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. is unabashed advocacy filmmaking. In spite of improved mortality rates and scientific advances, few women in the film will acknowledge that pink-ribbon-financed research has done any good at all.

This is a show that adults can more than merely tolerate; I am happy to binge-watch it with my nine-year-old.

Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, is decadent, overpoweringly erotic campiness coupled with soft-core pornography - blood, breasts, buttocks and big teeth. It's daring and those with a taste for the sexily sanguine will find it delightful. But it's not for the prudish. [13 Nov 1992, p.C1]

Director Michael Apted's Thunderheart is a fleetly-paced murder mystery cum conspiracy thriller marred only by an 'inspirational' Hollywood ending at odds with the trajectory of the plot. [3 Apr 1992]

The details are astounding. During "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own," the camera is in so tight that you can see Bono's hand tremble around the mike as he belts out a long, sustained note.

That level of acting-without-words demands the likes of a Bruno Ganz or a Klaus Maria Brandauer, not a Clooney. Even when flashing his bare derrière in a sex scene, he isn't revealing nearly enough -- his work is just skin deep.

Tuned in to the anarchic wisecracks and slapstick humour of traditional Warner Bros. cartoons. In contrast to the computer-generated characters and slick script of a movie like "Shrek," Lilo and Stitch still feels like a cartoon aimed at kids, not their parents.