By hiring James Earl Jones to narrate, Disney has prepared youngsters to understand that man is equally capable of heroism and villainy.

However you feel about commercial dog sledding, Fern Levitt’s Sled Dogs is bound to rankle – either because of the material itself or the filmmaker’s take.

Sumptuously designed, brightly costumed and shot with an eye toward epic grandeur, the new film is simply gorgeous to take in, no matter the size of the screen. Less pretty is the script, which took four screenwriters to conjure even though there’s perfectly good source material just sitting there, waiting for a photocopy machine.

The documentary camera has made repeated trips to occupied Iraq, but never to such raw and honest effect as in The War Tapes. The reason is surprisingly simple: This time, the lens is being pointed not by embedded journalists, but by the American soldiers themselves.

Like the film's punishingly gory set pieces, the storytelling itself is meaty.

Like "Rebel", directed by Nicholas Ray, this film excels at capturing the nervous posturing of adolescent boys marking their territory by pissing on each other's shoes.

Invites viewers to think critically about such weighty concepts as justice, atonement and personal accountability.

It is still by no means a great film, even compared against the standards of contemporary superhero cinema, which is bleeding any sense of individual artistry and purpose each passing year. But it is a wild, invigorating experiment to experience.

First-time feature director Tim Miller has created a work that’s both aggressive and not aggressive enough.

Apparently, the faith that can move mountains is detectable in the microscopes that can track electrons. If so, the metaphoric is real and, to me, that thought is as scary as it is thrilling -- but what the bleep do I know?

While Williams isn’t quite as adept as Cody’s other all-star collaborators, her debut film is funny, cinematic and memorable.

More entertaining than Mission: Impossible or the last Bond film, Goldeneye, it brings back the humour and sang-froid that makes the genre work.

Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick are perfectly caste as two naive waifs who stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter after car trouble on a rainy night. The supporting cast is appropriately, well, let's say idiosyncratic, but for my money it's Tim Curry as the mad doctor who steals the show. Surely he stands as the most charismatic transsexual Transylvanian ever. [1 Dec 1990]

In a smartly written, evenly wrought drama, the newly discovered wunderkind Rod Paradot stunningly portrays a troubled youth who makes Eminem’s 8 Mile protagonist look like a boy scout in comparison.

Julia Jentsch offers a brilliant example of what actors call "not playing the ending," and the awful suspense of the piece is watching as she realizes, in increments, that this is all much worse than she thought.

The ending can be read as conclusively upbeat or as corrosively ironic. Still, Youngblood is never less than fascinating, and it's a bit like the game it explores: the times you don't want to look at it are the times you can't look away. [31 Jan 1986, p.D1]

It is a slight, charming, filmic oddity, well acted and intelligently written

Tasty and sweet, if a little on the mild side.

I like the way McLeod handles the genre. The easiest thing to do would be for her to write Feore’s Elon Musk-y space-or-bust character as a villain, thus making it impossible not to root for her protagonist (who warns of a potential load-bearing problem with the space-plane’s runway). McLeod resists that urge though.

Although no single documentary could give a comprehensive account of the Roma’s culture and history, Yeger’s doc offers a sobering, often harrowing understanding of a people and the workings of genocide.

The considerable charm of Mad Hot Ballroom can be traced directly to its choice of subjects. They happen to be 11-year old kids, and the lens loves every precious one of them.

Normally, this would be an easy way to undercut a documentary, but the powerful filmmaking duo of Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker somehow turn Wise’s quest into a compelling and noble tale, no matter what your thoughts are on the views presented.

Is The Trip to Italy the second Godfather of comedies, or a retread? Neither, exactly. The concept is no longer fresh, but the scenery on the Amalfi and Sorrento coasts is more transporting, and their convertible Mini Cooper is a more amusing vehicle. Finally, the fact that the only singalong CD for the drive is Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is an unexpected master stroke.

I am, admittedly, its ideal viewer – I own enough books to last me several lifetimes – but that doesn’t change the fact that The Booksellers is a lovely documentary – contemplative and captivating. I finished the film and felt compelled to turn off the screen and pick up a book.

Not often does a film double as a literary critic, but this is the Northrop Frye of docs. Essentially, it revises and sharpens the blunted reputation of a great writer.

This is the story of the diminutive Coco before she became the fashionable Chanel – in other words, the whole movie is one long first act.

The racer turns out to be a contender, but the small-time syndicate is the real story, an inspiring tale heard, as it were, straight from the horse’s mouth.

There's a line near the end of Without Limits that's meant to sum up the tragic flaw of the movie's hero: "He insisted on holding himself to a higher standard than victory." The same might be said of the movie itself, which refuses to adhere to the basic success formula of the sports bio-pic -- the familiar arc that moves from early success through character-forming struggle to eventual triumph. [25 Sep 1998, p.D9]

The film is a respectable, claustrophobic and slick piece of work, and cinematographer Nestor Almendros' color strategies - Rembrandt-like light at night, lemony tones during the day, desaturated sepia at Auschwitz - are arty to a fault. [14 Dec 1982]

The acting is superb, the settings are beautifully recreated, the dialogue crackles with occasional wit, but where's the juice? Although lovely to gaze upon, the whole thing feels a bit precious and porcelain, more teapot than sexpot.

Profound, and profoundly affecting.

While We’re Young is more commercial and less innovative (or whimsically self-indulgent, depending on your tastes) than Baumbach’s last feature film, 2012’s "Frances Ha," though it shares some common ground.

Liman makes the most of what most would assume are flaws. He leans into the simplicity and familiarity of Road House’s premise, keeping the space open for big personalities to make it cartoonishly good fun.

If there were an ounce of pretension in this, it would be unbearable. But it is clear that nobody in the film takes it seriously, and that everyone is having fun, and you just can't help having fun with them. [28 June 1991]

Not nearly that bad, hardly that good - just an amiable, good-natured, fun-loving flick with moments of low comedy that will be remembered for . . . well, hours, maybe. [20 July 1990]

Gets under your skin as another thought-provoking wake-up call about the power of studios and the corporations that back them.

Comparisons of Janis: Little Girl Blue have been made to Asif Kapadia’s touching 2015 documentary on singer Amy Winehouse, but in Amy we don’t see a subject as remorseful as the Joplin presented by Berg.

Victory, the new film by 74-year-old John Huston, is a civilized, professional, old-fashioned entertainment about men in groups. The picture is being hyped as a story of human spirit, prevailing against impossible odds, but it's a lot more low-key and a great deal more enjoyable than that. It's the story of the wake left by a great director sailing smoothly at half-mast. [31 July 1981]

Red Army ends with Fetisov back in Russia, as a politician. Despite the sometimes shabby way in which he was treated by an authoritarian hockey regime, he says he “never had more fun than playing with those five guys.” Once a comrade.

A feisty domestic comedy about a curmudgeon with a heart, looking back over his misspent life.

A surprisingly effective work of family entertainment that hits all its marks, and then some.

Jordan and Foxx take the little material they’re given and play it as deep as possible, turning in memorable, eventually gut-punching performances.

Walter Hill, who directed Charles Bronson's Hard Times, puts the action sequences (that's a euphemism for head-bashing and crotch-gouging) together with panache and this exploitation picture strolls right along. [10 Feb 1979]

It doesn't quite succeed, in spite of a playful, self-consciously unreliable narrative that mixes flashbacks and fantasy solutions to the case.

The ever-reliable Hanks sympathetically personifies all in America that is worth fighting for, while his British colleague’s surprisingly comic version of Rudolf Abel portrays the Russian spy as a man quietly steadfast in his loyalty to a different cause.

Suffused with clever lines, characters with neurotic tics and a pervasive, jocular black humour, The Savages is more about craft than art, but the craft, especially in the writing and acting, is at a high level.

Smith is never more beloved than when she plays just this sort of curmudgeon. Happily for the movie, Bennett’s Lady is the cantankerous one the performer was most born to play.

Surprisingly funny yarn about a drug-addled cop in the Big Easy.

Easily the best scene of Nymphomaniac occurs in the first two hours, when Joe finds herself the other woman in a marriage breakup.

Foster, recovering nicely from her last directorial outing in the surprisingly unfunny "The Beaver," proves her smarts by managing to balance these different strands of humour while keeping the action ticking along.

In the Mouth of Madness may leave your spine a little short on tingle (any amount of irony always dissipates the scares), but it compensates by neither insulting your grey matter nor sparing your funny bone. In a genre more brain-dead than not, that's an awfully attractive trade-off. [03 Feb 1995]

The bond between Barney and Ron is clearly the reason this movie works.

As fine as Streep is, however, it’s Grant’s movie.

Abominable has charms to soothe the savage child.

The intrigue is high and the action is furious, but a sort of meta subplot is also at work: Sextagenerian action-film hero Chan against onetime 007er Brosnan.

Serkis achieves a careful balance with a film that tastefully covers some delicate territory (their sex life; his right to die), avoids the maudlin and injects some surprising if not entirely successful comedy into the mix.

An ultra-cheap movie, ingeniously promoted through the Internet -- is notable primarily as a model of guerrilla-style niche-marketing.

Energetic, eager-to-please culture-clash comedy.

And, make no mistake, this is a movie that is supposed to be seen from the perspective of a small child.

The film is also a chronicle of the sexual politics of the era – and the subsequent systematic erasure of LGBTQ history (under the guise of privacy and not “spoiling” the illusion) by the juggernaut industry that shaped our culture. That perspective on the proclivities makes Scotty as fascinating as it is poignant.

Ballets Russes should find a wider audience beyond dance aficionados. Like all good documentaries, the human element is the glory of Ballets Russes.

All in all, a fine evening of exactly what it purports to be: hot and heavy action, lightweight story-line, amusing dialogue and a nifty, science-fiction twist. [30 Oct 1987]

This is still a seriously entertaining horror movie, one that will please newcomers as well as fans of the original oddity. But by the end of the film, I was wishing the filmmakers had left us wondering about precisely who and what these critters were just a little bit longer.

Dragonslayer documents what happened when California stopped dreaming.

As for the implicit tragedy amidst the funny business, the swelling ranks of the unemployed, the movie has no solution but instead offers itself as implicit solace: Escape, ye wretches, into my clever humour and my nifty dialogue and my star's considerable charm.

If co-writer and director Ritesh Batra occasionally takes his sweet time getting from point A to point B, it’s equally true that he gives the audience a nice, comfortable ride.

It’s a tough watch, but inspiring.

The nerd’s coming-of-age is a well-established genre, as is humiliation comedy, yet Coky Giedroyc’s How to Build a Girl is different enough to stand out.

This remarkable concert film, beautifully shot by director Jonathan Demme over two days last summer, is all about legacy, a more-or-less conscious exercise in myth-making on the part of a musical giant facing his own mortality.

The Guard is guilty of being overly cute, but it brims with talent and a freshness that extends beyond the clever script.

Looper ups the ante like a poker player on speed. What a potpourri of genres we have here – noir again, but sci-fi too, and action and horror and psycho-drama with existential trimmings, the latter designed to invite the thinking viewer into the fray.

As the plot moves toward the climax, where each girl is forced to make a hard choice dictated by her unique "circumstance," that feeling of compression, of so many contradictory urges and needs vying for attention, grows almost overwhelming. Such is life among the young in present-day Tehran, up on the screen for all to see – all but those who most need to see it.

Cynical, hip, politically opportunistic and loaded with kick-ass comic action.

It’s short on personal details and instead focuses on the performer’s vocation. And when the concert footage slows the doc’s energy down, Mavis’s zest adds buoyancy to the proceedings.

The upside? Visually polished, credibly acted and competently directed courtesy of Ridley Scott, the film is always likable. The downside? Well, it's never anything more than likable.

What a strange, moving, puzzling, funny, frustrating and ultimately absorbing film this is.

A little gem of social realism that makes up in polish what it lacks in consistency.

Some of these scenes are masterful – and sometimes difficult to watch. But the real horror – mass revenge killings by the Nazis, including the obliteration of the entire village of Lidice – takes place off-screen.

The laughs just keep rolling as 'Weird Al' makes a movie. Overheard from a still-convulsing woman after a recent screening of Weird Al Yankovic's UHF: "I'm sorry, but that's funny." I'm sorry, but she's right. Yuks you feel obliged to apologize for are yuks nonetheless. And UHF prompts a lot of apologies.

Fiennes really shines here, with an electric-cocaine vigour and lust for life.

They deliver precisely enough guffaws to give you your money’s worth, with a couple of sweet moments about how daughters break their parents’ hearts tossed in. I guess they had to hold something back for "Neighbors 3: Suburbia, a.k.a. The Cat Catches the Tinfoil."

Not everything here is that vivid or uncluttered. Sometimes, the film betrays the circumstances of its making, shot hastily on location in Iraq after the fall of Saddam just as the extended conflict was beginning.

As many of the most memorable and darker thrillers have, Arbitrage plays with affinities in order to completely confuse the drawing of any clear lines between good and evil, criminal and executive, skilled pro and callous cad.

Redemption, not crime, is the real theme here, for this handful of courageous men and women who have rescued their own lives, and just possibly may help save the blighted neighbourhoods in which they labour.

A happy, healthy, bouncing baby of a movie. [23 Nov 1994]

In a well-paced two and a half hours, Berg's film is an ambitious mixture of summary and fresh investigation.

It's blackly comic - though the humour creeps up on you slowly, and you're seldom sure if you should really be laughing.

As expected, it has gaping holes where back stories used to be. Still, it's a historical war movie with impressive sweep, strong characterizations and the kind of idiosyncratic flourishes that made Woo such an irresistible storyteller.

We leave this movie hoping to see Miller and Lewis together again soon.

As confusing, horrific and unsettling as a nightmare can be, at least you wake up and the memory fades. Darwin's Nightmare, tragically, is not a dream, but rather a haunting, beautifully made reality check well worth waking up to.

As Herzog spirals from the achievements and dangers of the Net to topics such as communication with space colonies or the likelihood that solar flares will reduce the world to flood and famine if they knock out all connectivity, it is hard to know how much of this futuristic stuff to believe.

Essential to the film’s success is Murphy, clearly having his best time in a long time as Moore, who adopted a flashy pimp-esque persona that would eventually take the blaxploitation landscape by storm.

This is Canadian cinema as defiantly ugly and mean as anything churned out from the bowels of callous ol’ Hollywood.

The utterly bizarre story made national news when it broke, has since provided much magazine fodder, and popped up only two years ago adapted into a dramatic feature. Now it receives the documentary treatment and, in the devilishly manipulative hands of director Bart Layton, what a treatment it is – the weirdness just gets weirder.

The delight here is in the sheer workmanship. The performances, the direction, the plotting, they're just nicely engineered, usually with an eye to that most underrated of virtues -- refined simplicity.

Catfish shows that the need to dispel lies isn't nearly as important as how we respond when we finally uncover the truth.

And so you will get no Scorsesian tracking shots of firecracker trading floors, no giddy frat boy Champagne-shaking antics; this is a slow-boil thriller coursing with melancholy.

If the fate of the Furious series is to grow somehow both wearier and dumber with age, then the eighth film is proof of a mission firmly accomplished. And there’s no shame, Vin, in hanging it all up after a job well done.