The smarter script and stronger range of performances than most high-budget blockbusters clogging theatres these days make you wonder why the live-action feature isn't already obsolete.

A thought-provoking film that examines women’s limited choices in a patriarchal country reeling from the contradictions of rapid modernization.

While not a remotely pleasant viewing experience, the sensation of watching Pattinson and Dafoe drive each other to the brink is difficult to shake off.

The result is a beautifully designed, lyrical fable of a movie, full of God's-eye shots from on high, placing the characters against the Italian scenery and medieval architecture.

Never the most subtle of directors Oliver Stone brings a jackhammer brutality to Born on the Fourth that the material no longer needs. [22 Dec 1989, p.C1]

Fortunately, Sisters doesn’t collapse into total absurdity in the same way that many house-party movies do – the film is slapstick and at moments teeters on the edge of too much, but it quickly snaps back before losing its audience.

Takes a kernel of truth and roasts it into a popcorn movie. There's terrific fun to be had, and much wry comedy too. What's missing, surprisingly given the subject matter, is any real sense of gravity.

Though Three Monkeys feels conventional compared with Ceylan's other work, it maintains its auteurist imprint, especially the rich colour palette and suggestive HD camerawork that helped Ceylan take the best-director honours at Cannes this year.

In a franchise rife with missteps, this sequel does not dishonour its source. Hats off (and heads off) to the film’s creators.

All four characters are rendered as layered, believable humans, and I especially love how each resulting relationship – Cami and Rachel, Rachel and Aster, Cami and Tallulah – has its own arc and rhythm.

As for Daisy, her inflated role is problematic. Although at the periphery of the action, the woman stands at the centre of the film, doubling as the compromised love interest and our voice-over narrator. But even Linney can't bring her to life.

Inside Llewyn Davis only really kicks into gear at its 55-minute mark. Unsurprisingly, this occurs with the arrival of Coen venerable John Goodman, playing an acerbic jazz hipster who has little truck with the folk idiom but a large appetite for heroin.

Crude, rude, nasty fun.

As film, the results are often fabulous. They begin with a deft use of flashback from the action’s dark conclusion; they continue with wonderfully detailed and lively camera work that catches the sparkle in Annette Bening’s eye as she plays the actress Irina dominating her many dependants, and follows the seduction of the ingénue Nina (Saoirse Ronan) as it moves out onto a rowboat in the middle of a lake.

Predictable but highly entertaining.

Be prepared to exercise the same patience and forbearing as the Trappists, because the pacing here is all Grecian urn – so much "silence and slow time."

Good Night, and Good Luck may be simplified history, but it's almost consistently well-crafted.

With Corbett's laidback persona nicely countering Vardalos's authorial performance, the picture radiates a pure affability that's awfully attractive. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a very slim movie that succeeds on its own modest terms without pretense or apology.

Silkwood is a friendly, kooky and caring film. [09 Dec 1983]

Despite the occasional stumble, the doc never falls, thanks to the sheer strength of its subjects' undaunted and indomitable character.

Along the way, director Jonathan Kaplan (Over the Edge, Heart Like a Wheel) deftly extracts from Virgil's predicament rivers of the milk of human kindness and encourages excellent performances from Broderick (Ferris Bueller is old enough to smoke and drink beer legally in this one, but he still looks like a kid) and Helen Hunt, Virgil's Wisconsin trainer. [20 Apr 1987]

The overwhelming sense of physical and moral decay could be taken for social commentary, and if Graceland has a flaw, it’s that Morales gradually starts to overstate his case as the movie goes on.

This is Romero at his best - a set-piece of sustained chills all precisely shot and rhythmically cut, good enough to make us forgive (if not forget) the cast that is merely competent, and an ending that is downright tepid. But even at half-throttle, Romero can quicken the pulse. Worse than it could have been, Monkey Shines is still better than most. [29 July 1988]

Heist movies usually focus on the crime; road movies on the road. American Woman flicks at those genres, but its focus is somewhere else – on the relationships that develop in the liminal spaces between moments of intensity.

Apart from its star, though, Emma may be the least convincing Austen adaptation so far.

Glowicki and Petrie are immensely committed and often fearless performers – so much so that you can see them frequently bouncing against the constraints of the story surrounding them, the actors seemingly confident that if they pushed themselves just past the brink, the movie’s half-untapped potential might burst wide open.

The beauty of a film such as Dog is that it is one of many, omnipresent in its ordinariness and commonplace in its undertaking – a brain holiday, if you will. It’s another notch in the filmography of a crowd-pleasing A-lister, another run-of-the-mill movie to emote with when we can’t feel much else.

[A] fascinating documentary.

Obviously, this is no easy sell, but give writer-director Siddiq Barmak full credit for portraying his country's social catastrophe with restraint, concision and some real beauty.

Cleverly structured and popping with realistic dialogue, The Climb is a bromance comedy of uncommonly high aspirations.

Much Ado About Nothing is side-show Shakespeare, neither vulgar nor memorable - it's a date movie for couples who read. [7 May 1993]

A sensitive coping drama after all, while still serving up that noirish heist flick with comic flourishes. That's some range, and in 99 succinct minutes too: Most pictures would be lucky to do half as much in twice the time.

Hopefully, after seeing this film, interest in places like Sea World will begin to decline.

Packs a wickedly satiric punch.

Even when the plots of sexual confusions, transgression and tragedy became absurdly complicated and arbitrary, there was always the mise-en-scène to die for.

The film, as entertaining as it is, doesn’t exactly further a genre that has been stale since the success of 2013 rom-zom-com Warm Bodies.... What’s promising about Scouts Guide, though, are its unlikely heroes.

While The Wave doesn’t quite match the saga of, say, The Impossible from 2012, it’s a film absolutely worth catching.

The complications of its story are found in the deep complexities of emotions and family relationships.

The detective plot is shaggy and never fully resolves itself, but the implications of the story resonate like a distant drum.

This means that Someone to Watch Over Me is a much more interesting movie (than "Fatal Attraction").[9 Oct 1987]

Perhaps the bravest thing here is Banderas’ reserved performance: Selfish, hypochondriacal and sadly cocooned, his fictional film director is not a flattering portrait of an aging auteur.

Superman returns, and he's far from inconsequential yet considerably less than super - just a demi-god content to forfeit our love for our like.

Like no other war movie you've ever seen.

Some will criticize the director’s choice to recount a collective struggle through just one individual, but Mulligan’s performance, coupled with a solid script by Abi Morgan, shows us just how much is at stake when a woman decides to wage war.

This three-hour opus, bearing only the eponymous title of Nixon, is an intriguing ramble through the social psychology of man and country alike. Indeed, the simple dialectics that both animated and marred Stone's earlier work are redeemed here precisely because they're invested in a single, complex personality - consequently, this film is more character-driven than any of its predecessors. [20 Dec 1995, p.C1]

Once again, then, impeccable visual detail and uniformly strong performances combine to create a polished, if slightly airless, result. [14 Aug 1998]

I Went Down is also a showcase for the directorial talents of Breadnach, who frames the actors and the action with polish and assurance against an unpretty Irish landscape rarely seen in the movies. If you liked Trainspotting and are looking for a quick and dirty cinematic romp, this is just the ticket. [24 July 1998, p.C5]

Watching 9 , we know how 8 feels. Sci-fi fans will find heaven in Shane Acker's feature-film debut.

In the hallowed Hollywood tradition of mindless flash, F/X turns the suspension of disbelief into airy entertainment. [7 Feb 1986, p.D3]

Adolph Green always said that they based the warm, maternal and loyal main character on Holliday herself; perhaps that's why she manages to more than save it, she makes it very worthwhile to watch. [21 Jul 1990]

The movie remains an embodiment of Spielberg's commercially cunning brand of clankingly retro filmmaking, despite the wit and charm brought to their Spiel-speak dialogue by the talented young performers, The Goonies is less a movie than an entertainment machine. [7 Jun 1985, p.E1]

Visually the film is a knockout. I'm not sure this will matter to the young adult audience, but the film is philosophically confusing.

The [final] battle is vast, and undoubtedly required thousands of hours of matching puppetry, robotics and computer code, but it is not without tedium.

The people behind Cocoon have taken many of the weariest of the cinematic cliches of the eighties and invested them with hearts and minds; from an unsightly chrysalis, a thing of beauty has been born. [21 June 1985]

The film's brisk pace is a bit wearing once the one-hour mark is passed, but the high energy and intelligence is quite charismatic over all.

Avenue Montaigne is not a film to be taken too earnestly, but it would be a mistake to miss its bittersweet undertones. The movie is as airy as a spun-sugar dessert, but Thompson's observations on the artistic life are both affectionate and knowing: Beauty and wealth, though inevitably compelling, are appreciated as means to humane ends, not goals in themselves.

When Malick reaches the end of Jaggerstatter’s story, A Hidden Life does reach something profound. Relief, maybe, that the film was over. But also a distinct pang that some filmmakers never change.

There's something genuinely exploratory and original here in the depiction of people being pushed into adulthood before they're ready.

The best parts of Sonatine reach into that space where the fear ends and death begins, and find there the music of life. [01 May 1998, p.C4]

The Hunting Party does a good job of illustrating Winston Churchill's observation, "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."

The screen, always Bergman’s supreme medium, is proof of the power of her magnetic and energetic presence. It shines through in even the grainiest, jumpy, out-of-focus home-movie footage.

All of the participating directors – save Balsmeyer and actor Natalie Portman – are known for features. So part of the interest is seeing how the short form puts their strengths, weaknesses, thematic interests or styles into sharp focus.

How do you make a movie about shallow people in a shallow culture and not end up with a shallow movie? For writer-director Sofia Coppola, the answer is to dramatize a story “based on actual events,” then to step back and present it as a case study in pure anthropology.

Gleeson and Wilson deliver tightly-wound performances, while the ending is more chilling, and perhaps perplexing, than audiences might expect.

The cinematic equivalent of a "good read" - pick it up and you can't put it down; put it down and it's gone forever.

Though Babel lacks any tragic sense of inevitability, it almost compensates with a handful of vibrant performances and the palpable physical texture of the settings.

The interest here is about watching Hardy, bouncing off Gandolfini and the other cast members, as a quiet man who has turned being underestimated into his primary survival skill. And all the while we wait for the moment when Bob the puppy grows into Bob the pit bull.

Poison, low-budget but with all-human actors, is dark and funny and has something very powerful to say about society and how it applies irrational stigmas to those who do not conform to an often arbitrary status quo. [12 July 1991]

Arabian Nights is a remarkable achievement, but also an erratic one.

The film as a whole, beautifully drawn and gracefully set into balletic motion, teaches a few welcome lessons regarding ecology and racial tolerance. [19 Nov 1988]

Though Candy greatly underplays Jack Chester, a beet-red seer-sucker summer renter, his genial humor and collaboration with Reiner make Summer Rental a small pleasure. [12 Aug 1985]

For all its contrivance, it's lively and amusing and occasionally disconcerting in its reproduction of what life was like in the mid-to-late teens.

Labelling his film as a response to the impoverishment of ordinary people caused by the government-imposed austerity of 2013-14, Gomes explains his dilemma brilliantly at the start of Volume 1. How is a well-meaning filmmaker to effectively render the pain of the Portuguese with a documentary set in a town where the shipyard has closed just as alien wasps are attacking local beehives?

Whether Omar will ultimately serve to change or harden hearts remains ambiguous, though it’s a movie that’s entertaining enough to appeal to the kinds of ordinary kids we see in the movie.

Yes, it’s really complicated, life with the Rizzos. City Island probably has too many moving parts. Still, writer-director Raymond de Felitta (Two Family House) understands that a proper farce, like a good campfire, needs plenty of friction to get started.

A surprisingly tender look at San Diego Comic-Con.

Director Richard Benjamin has found a quintessential comic premise for young adults in the eighties: a couple purchases a house. The Money Pit is elaborately physical, but in the manner of Buster Keaton pictures, with some scenes reminiscent of those charmed moments when an entire wall would collapse on the hapless Keaton, but our beloved "stoneface" happened to be standing just where the opening for a door was. [26 Mar 1986, p.C10]

You might be ready to throw a rock through your screen. Now it would be cool if Gibney could turn his attention to how the Canadian provinces messed up, too.

The fluffmeister here is writer-director Ol Parker, and say this for young Ol: This may be his feature debut, but the guy is one hell of a smooth engineer.

At least by Hollywood's conservative standards, Mother proves that the wayward son is alive and well -- softer in manner but still a subversive at heart. [10 Jan 1997, p.C1]

Lawrence and Cooper have electric chemistry, and the director pulls off one of the most satisfying romantic Hollywood endings seen in years.

The movie could have used a further dose of the resonance Walken gives it, and a more intellectually adventurous director might have brought the theme close to home.

It’s not that Blaze lacks tension or focus – it’s simply that Hawke is more fascinated with passion than profile. And here, that’s more than enough.

Gomes believes we should all take responsibility for one another and sees austerity as a government abrogation of social duty that ultimately turns citizen against citizen.

The Water Man myth feels incomplete. What is magical, though, is the chance to root for a young Black male hero as he navigates a family crisis that’s both specific and universal, and not based on race.

The work is more muted than Miyazaki’s more fantastical films, but visually complex and gorgeous, from the rustic mountain scenes to the urban scenes and soaring aerial views.

If "The Great Wall" felt like Yimou was turning his greatest hits into something dispassionately bland, then Shadow takes the familiar and makes it feel startlingly new.

As usual, the Coens' visual elements are pristine. The contrasting colours in the fire-lit interiors are gorgeous, while cinematographer Roger Deakins keeps the camera close, resisting traditional panoramic views.

Give director Susanne Bier full marks: Her encasing parable is brand new and immediately provocative.

Call Jane delivers a striking and affecting message that self-autonomy is crucial to survival, and that the fight for reproductive health is one that we can under no circumstances back down from.

The film, like its subject, is more adroit with pictures than with words.

It's all a bit too schematic, yet the ambition is admirable and the message powerful: Today, no less than yesterday, the weak must be strong to survive, and their strength is endlessly tested.

All in all, a perfectly superior example of industrially fortified Hollywood fun, and as good a guarantee as Doug Liman can offer that we haven’t seen the last of him yet.

The result actually plays like a divine pronouncement, cosmic in scope and oracular in tone, a cinematic sermon on the mount that shows its creator in exquisite form.

Always engaging and often compelling.

The result is good dirty fun, flecked with enough wit to help you overlook the relatively barren characterization.

If you ever doubted the power and scope of silent film, watch The Way Home. The narrative arc is as broad as any chattering feature, the emotional depth is greater than most, and it's all achieved with virtually no dialogue.

It is at times extremely uncomfortable, but captivating and engaging all the same.