The movie is unexpectedly disciplined and enjoyable.

Still Alice is being called a career performance for Moore, and although it may be one of her most poignant roles (it has earned her a fifth Oscar nomination), the part barely scratches the surface of her ability.

Simple but engrossing.

The wry observations of precocious pal Mary (Lena Dunham) and fierce Lunch Lady Lorraine (Susan Sarandon as a gruff optimist) make for a charming – and occasionally gruesome – disaster movie.

It's silly, it's serious, it's outrageous, it's mundane, it's blowsy, it's lovely. Yet this fickle film has a constant heart - warm and very likeable.

If the cinematography lacks the up-close-and-personal drama of "Blue Crush," it's still adequate to the occasion -- after all, like any star worth her salt, the ocean has yet to meet a camera she doesn't like.

Mulan is another competent effort, but it's a disappointment for anyone hoping the studio would raise the standard of the animated feature to a new level.

The effect is Chaplinesque if Chaplin had the latest in gadgetry, because the entire picture is also shot in 3-D that, for once, puts all 3 of the Ds to imaginative use.

Aloners manages to delicately infuse what otherwise seems like a slice-of-life drama with shots of mystery that keep us invested in Yu Jin’s otherwise humdrum life.

The performances nearly save the film from itself.

With The Shrouds, the filmmaker – not only one of Canada’s greatest creations, but cinema’s, too – has delivered what might be his career-defining masterpiece.

Although director Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female, Reversal of Fortune, Barfly) does a workmanlike job of stirring in the grimy New York atmosphere, the picture only surges to life when Cage strides on camera. [21 Apr 1995]

Jamie M. Dagg's new film, Sweet Virginia, is a lot to take in – too much, really. It's a revenge movie, a crime thriller, a gentle and low-key romance, and a dusty drama about the pains of leaving the past behind. It doesn't succeed at being any one of those things, too muddled is the script and too unsteady is the direction.

Yes, Mikhalkov has set himself quite the agenda, but in the end the film is too much of a piece with its topic, intensely fascinating yet seriously flawed. The verdict? Guilty, with extenuating circumstances.

As the film progresses and positions itself closer and closer to visualizing what Adrian might look like, it also becomes more cartoonish. Adrian comes to be rendered almost as if he were a comic-book villain, which severely undermines the weight of the story.

Grimy, slick and genuinely frightening in true horror-movie fashion, Reeves’ new film reassembles the best elements of Batman lore into one overwhelming and epic-length package. Almost everything here works – not despite our current overload of Batman culture, but because of it.

This remarkable analysis of a decade when American society lost its moral compass is both brutally honest and lyrically compassionate.

The actor offers an incredibly committed and determined performance, but by the film’s end, you wish he’d be able to get back to doing what he does best: eating.

A quick and clever thriller as nasty as a piece of shrapnel snapping the sound barrier, 48 Hrs. is as violent as it is funny. It is very funny. [03 Dec 1982]

Real Genius is great, the freshest, most insouciant Hollywood inspiration since Risky Business. Director Martha Coolidge was handed a fleet cast and a well- oiled screenplay and she plumb took off. The darn thing works so well it fairly sings. [12 Aug 1985]

There is much to appreciate about Definition, Please, including its indie aesthetic. It’s a welcome addition in redefining the diasporic experience.

When it comes to exploring with dignity and humour the choices a woman must make for her family, Tuya's Marriage is the clear winner.

Compared to many of last year's documentaries (Pina, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Cave of Forgotten Dreams or The Interrupters), this film is distinctly minor league. But it does provide the thumbs-up emotional lift of a bumper-sticker message on game day.

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

If you had to be an alcoholic, you'd want to be like Kate, the young drunk played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the new movie Smashed.

As a thriller, it's only fitfully suspenseful, and despite the ticking bomb premise, meanders a good deal in its plot convolutions. As a portrait of the absurdity and humiliation of life under occupation, the story is heartfelt but predictable.

Always engaging and often compelling.

The wonder is that the cast -- a terrific ensemble with talents honed on such hallowed stages as the Abbey Theatre -- brings it off with far more verve than the slight tale deserves.

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

Land of the Dead is a horror flick, but not a screamy one -- the booming soundtrack pumps up the drama, and the gore induces squirms, but zombies more titillate than anything.

Von Trier's proficiency at the quicksilver business of comedy comes as a surprise, given the grinding seriousness of earlier films.

Using Toba Tek Singh as a recurring narrative device is sublime, for those who understand the reference and the burden it carries.

The film is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, who also shows up as an interviewee, and in a Sesame Street clip, which frankly feels odd. Worse: the script she has to work with is often lacklustre.

Although sturdy enough in the middlebrow entertainment department, and handsomely mounted in a stiff upper-lip, prestige period-piece sort of way, The Imitation Game is ultimately a frightfully ordinary sort of seasonal ritual.

Once Rufus Norris’s film gets going, it quickly reveals itself as a vibrant, almost revolutionary work. Shame, though, that Tom Hardy is only onscreen for a single scene – though his intentionally nerve-racked warbles prove once and for all that he’s a master vocal manipulator.

Mrs. Brown will not overturn Queen Victoria's prim reputation, but it reminds us that there was more to the woman than that famous plump cameo that has become the symbol of a more modest era.

This Is Elvis could have been called This Is America: it's a portrait of a face full of wounds, warts and wonders. [09 May 1981]

Missing from Married to the Mob, written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, is the freewheeling structure, but everything else that makes Demme one of the friendliest of major U.S. directors is in glorious evidence. [19 Aug 1988]

It's adapted with charming dispatch from the Dick King-Smith story, and served up by the same CGI wizards who animated the critters in "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Narnia Chronicles."

Take Topper. Add a pinch of Pee-Wee Herman and a dollop of the Addams Family. Mix in Nightmare on Elm Street (any part will do), The Money Pit, and the lighter side of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The result will be unlike any movie ever made, and it won't begin to come close to Beetlejuice . [Apr 1, 1998]

The verdict? Green passes with flying colours -- his is a huge and hugely impressive talent.

Smart and sophisticated entertainment, whatever its shortcomings, and it deserves to be encouraged. Not the behaviour it portrays, of course; but the worldly common sense of knowing that most people have a secretly ambiguous view of sexual prohibitions, and that this is the fertile ground of great comedy.

Gareth Evans’s sequel to his surprise 2011 hit takes the original’s basic formula – lots of people pounding on each other in close quarters – and simply stretches it over a much longer running time.

Shang-Chi is a first, but it’s firstly fun to watch.

As you get immersed in the story, you’re also entranced by a lovely escape to a nostalgic Italian summer that’s inspired by visits to real-life places and rendered in a style akin to that distinctive Miyazaki aesthetic. I also want to get my hands on the original score – the music soars gorgeously.

Prey is exactly the type of late-summer nastiness that deserves to be enjoyed with fellow hooters and hollerers. But by this point, Predator fans are used to playing the victim.

John Frankenheimer created this eccentrically brilliant thriller, an exercise in mid-sixties paranoia. [12 Jan 2002, p.R25]

A clever twist-and-turn thriller.

An eat-the-rich satire that would go rotten without its supremely overqualified cast, The Menu is as much fun as it is ephemeral.

A movie that feels a bit like digging a hole in the ground -- an exercise that may build character but doesn't seem to accomplish much else.

A trifle compared to Robert Altman's great films -- But it's a very assured trifle, and an unusually good-natured Altman film.

It's a pinball arcade of a flick -- the Coens invent a bunch of wonderfully flaky characters, stick them into a Plexiglas narrative, and let them bounce off each other.

A slick and star-studded comedy trumpeting a glib libertarianism that talks a good game but is as woolly headed as the liberalism fixed in its sights.

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

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]

But at heart, the terrain mapped by Map of the Human Heart is emotionally shameless; it's a forties movie tossed into the nineties. It should find a lot of fans. [14 May 1993]

While Lawrence keeps the momentum steady – just like his contest’s most able-bodied walkers – and ensures that every few minutes delivers some kind of violent jolt, there’s just not enough meat to this particular roadkill story to keep one cinematic foot in front of the other.

The Good Girl isn't really the title of this movie at all. Instead, it's now widely known as The Movie That Proves Jennifer Can Act.

Mostly, it's a Coen brothers movie so slick, so careful in rationing its darkly perverse and personal elements, that it seems suspiciously sweet. Intolerable Cruelty feels like the Coens' peculiar new way of being cynical, by pretending they're not.

If you like movies in which fashionably dressed people spend a lot of time smoking and talking cryptically about sex in dark, overfurnished Paris apartments, you should put down your café au lait and run out to see this film right now. If not, you probably just don't like French movies.

Embracing such depths, Bukowski somehow made his art. Simulating them, Factotum just makes us queasy.

Tropic Thunder is an assault in the guise of a comedy – watching it is like getting mugged by a clown.

Both smart and shrewd -- it wraps that same comforting message in a thoroughly entertaining package.

What I can say, without angering (almost) anyone, is that Spider-Man: No Way Home is both a gigantic act of franchise-mad hubris, and a ridiculous amount of fun.

It’s a stew so thick with brand loyalty that you just might choke on all the intellectual property and consequential commerce.

Now if that isn't an inspirational story, it's hard to know what is.

Not quite a comedy, not really a drama, Mad Dog and Glory throws your equilibrium but keeps your interest high. [5 Mar 1993, p.C3]

Sitting through Red Eye is like watching a master carpenter at work on a custom bookcase. No one would call the result art, but you're sure bound to admire the sheer craft of the thing, the clean lines and seamless joints and meticulous attention to detail.

It's a masterpiece of exposition and compression. An allegorical examination of a transitional period in U.S. history. [01 Sept 1988]

With its intricate design, sly humour and timely theme, Travellers and Magicians is a lot more than just a travelogue.

Beyond Thunderdome is a masterfully directed fantasy, convincing down to the smallest detail in its vision of an alternate existence, and it has gone beyond the relentless sadomasochism of The Road Warrior; Max has now taken up with children, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is suitable for them. [9 July 1985]

From the very first scenes of the Canadian documentary Eternal Spring, you’re thrust into a thrilling, all-consuming film that challenges traditional documentary tropes and finds a way to tell a winding, difficult story with brilliant ease.

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.

Great title, and the whiff of existential loneliness that it conjures up – brothers locked not in solidarity but in solitude – permeates the entire movie.

Chastain and Sarsgaard find all the pieces of Franco’s Memory worth saving, and proceed to connect with one another to build something that is new, remarkable, affecting. Hard to forget, even.

They really pulled out all the stops on this one.

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 film extends Jackie's fame beyond her allotted New York 15 minutes and keeps it alive 30 years later, thanks to a mixture of fond high-profile interviews and grainy archival clips.

Haynes and Selznick do get a bit too, well, wonderstruck by their own project, which blinds them to one central narrative pivot that is more annoying than awe-inspiring.

It is almost as if Gibson is daring his audience to turn away from his opera of barbarity – but perversely, his violence is the only compelling element of Hacksaw Ridge. Perhaps ironically for a war film, the rest of it is mostly a draw.

A serene, existential experience from the Canadian filmmaker Alison McAlpine, who takes to Chile’s Atacama Desert to look both skyward and inward.

It’s naive to blame the current cancerous state of American politics on a single carcinogen, but don’t let that stop you from pointing fingers at Roger Ailes.

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 concept might work for especially patient gamers, but rendered cinematically by director Genki Kawamura, the result is a frustrating and ultimately boring exercise in audience endurance.

In a series of mini-rants with insights that range from the ho-hum to the profound, the sixtysomething Žižek, paunchy, bearded and bobbing his hands like a squirrel’s paws, rummages through what he calls the trash can of ideology.

Plays precariously close to an unfunny sociopathic case study.

Postcards From The Edge, is long on witty one-liners but woefully short on coherent structure. [13 Sep 1990, p.C5]

What advance publicity has been powerless to suggest is that Personal Best is an exceptionally well-crafted, thoroughly accurate, emotionally galvanizing piece of filmmaking, easily one of the most intelligent explorations of competition on cinematic record. What's best about Personal Best is a lot more than just personal .[5 Feb 1982]

Of course, this is social satire and some bits are very funny...but the message is too obvious and the humour too gentle for the whole affair not to feel like so much white male whining.

You probably have a better chance of stuffing an octopus into a tea cup than capturing one of Dickens's fat novels in a two-hour movie.

Both shocking and beautiful, the film impresses itself on the viewer with the awesome scale of the imagery – and with the urgency behind it. We have entered an epoch in which human activity is shaping the planet more than any natural force. Anthropocene bears witness that something’s got to give.

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.

The portrait of the artist might be a bit uncritically rosy; still, this is a compelling dance film that captures the drive and passion of a key figure in contemporary choreography.

It’s a thoughtful, brainy, deeply considered and artful film that arouses the intellect and the passions and grapples with the problems of democracy.

Bronson is one of those “based on a true story” dramatizations where the theatrically staged drama only gets in the way of the more interesting truth.

Not too surprisingly, Fincher doesn't bring his auteur A-game here, though his crafty B-game is better than most. As well, the break-out performance of Rooney Mara as the semi-feral computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, gives the film a residue of authentic anguish.

Although Von Trotta skips around Bergman’s filmography a bit haphazardly, and touches upon his romantic proclivities in a frustratingly brief manner, there’s little room to go wrong when a film is seemingly 50 per cent composed of Bergman’s own footage.

Given that his movie never gives us an opportunity to understand who these men are, it is hard to mourn them beyond a superficial fashion.