The screenplay by Seth Grossman and Israeli-American director Yaron Zilberman is old-fashioned and melodramatic but stirring in its portrait of people struggling with individual egos to produce something nobler than themselves.

Not just a 3-D novelty to amuse school groups, but also a memorial.

For a filmmaker who was frequently drawn back to the subject of suffering, and especially the anguish of the individual cast against the collective will of cruel, foolish authority, it’s a perfectly fitting farewell.

If Mel Brooks went insane, he would make Sausage Party.

Benefits from one standout performance: Timothy Olyphant ( Deadwood ) plays the part of Nick with ingratiating comic relish.

Wonder Woman may not qualify as a particularly suspenseful First World War movie and it may not feature enough globe-spinning special effects to satisfy hard-core superhero fans, but it certainly is an intriguing combination of the two genres.

Some may find Finding Vivian Maier invasive, since Maloof and co-director Charlie Siskel delved into its namesake’s past after her death, but their curiosity is genuine rather than prurient; this is the rare example of a documentary about an enigmatic subject that doesn’t pretend to know all the answers.

You’re unlikely to any time soon encounter a more thorough and energetic dive into the art of letting go. I look forward to Johnson’s next act, whilst I look over my shoulder.

For the most part he (Haney) lets the people and images of Coal River Valley speak for themselves – and that's what gives The Last Mountain its eloquent power.

The Impossible looks back at a natural calamity with unflinching honesty. It sees fear and pain, it sees fortitude and bravery, but mainly it sees this: In that raging instant when the sea becomes its own monster, there's precious little to separate the devoured from the spared – nothing but the thin wedge of luck.

The rugged emotional territory (and the Yorkshire accents) prove heavy-going in an uncompromising film that elicits a lot more admiration than enjoyment.

In revealing Cassandra’s interior life, Rozema lays bare the modern female condition in an epic battle that is by turns lacerating, soothing and heartbreaking.

The film Cloak and Dagger is like a visit to the midway; fast and noisy and a lot of unsophisticated fun. [10 Aug 1984]

The plot gives Brest a structure on which to build a minor, gentle, subtle miracle; he uses the hackneyed plot as the foundation for a restrained monument to the dreams of the elderly. Going in Style has many of the simple but considerable virtues of Best Boy - the epiphanies may be diminutive, but they linger. [27 Dec 1979]

YOU'VE gotta love the casting. Defying the skeptics, The Great Gonzo keeps his furious urges in check and transforms himself into none other than the prolific Charles Dickens, popping up on camera to act as our narrative guide through his Christmas Carol classic. For the feisty one, it's a remarkable stretch. [15 Dec 1992]

This is potentially compelling, but truncated flashbacks are far too crude a mechanism for exploring not only the intricacies of that tumultuous period in Kenyan history but also its ongoing legacy.

Ever so subtly, Schock gradually transports us beyond the exotic and into gripping universal storytelling, aided all the way by the evocative music of Tucson songsmiths Calexico.

The interactions between these adventurers, with their varied imperatives and world-views, are compelling and funny – all the more so for being set against such a dramatically blanked-out backdrop.

A well-layered film makes a fascinating case for forgiveness and a sharp rebuke of Bible-taught eye-for-an-eye revenge.

Entertaining and well done. Without losing its comic rhythm for a moment, it is also a withering spoof of black victimism and the corrupting effect of racial solidarity on the American legal system.

Too bad there's also a final 15 minutes that surely ranks among the worst endings an otherwise good movie has ever received.

A middling documentary but a magnificent indictment.

Little Fish is a small film about one family and drugs, but it succeeds in standing for a larger social catastrophe.

A high-school talent show, no doubt, but, at its best, well worth glorifying.

It may not have the easy, feel-good family flick sheen to win over the box office, but it’s clever and compassionate enough to pay down a few big-ticket karmic debts.

The lows never last too long - something invariably jumps out to recapture our interest or prompt a chuckle.

For all its emphasis on doomed honour and grim death, Letters from Iwo Jima is also sentimental.

As always with Anderson, the comedy is neatly embedded in the jaded banter, where the insecurities and rivalries bubble up -- here, all within the bell jar of that shared sleeping compartment.

George W. Bush is hammered for doubling the debt load with his high-spending, low-taxing ways.

This wildly black comedy says that in Hollywood, death becomes everyone. [03 Aug 1992]

Perhaps the movie might have made more sense if the actors could have taken each other's roles: Pitt always seems light and ageless, while Blanchett never seems to have been young.

The film's bitter exposé of life under a theocracy is unforgettable

It’s a long film, and the payoff might not be enough for some. But as a moody story about moral dilemmas and moving beyond the past, The Survivor outlasts its 129 minutes.

Propelled by a perfectly cast trio of stars whose eccentricities shine in singular character roles, Bernie is a charmer.

De Palma's visual acuity tends to blur into mere gimmickry without the benefit of a resonant script. He got one in Carrie and another in Blow Out. Here, Mamet makes do with a text that is always shrewd but never intelligent. Still, when shwrewdness meets style, smoothing the curves and polishing the twists, the ride becomes a bonafide crowd-pleaser. The Untouchables is the cheering people's happy choice. [4 June 1987]

The result takes the audience on a screwball odyssey that mixes engaging twists with off-putting turns -- often fun, always watchable, but never quite as good as it could be.

The artistry of the storytelling, the visual approach and Gosling's performance in The Believer make us believe that Danny's path was the only choice for him, a truly disturbing and fascinating revelation.

A satisfying adventure story with allegorical manifest-destiny allusions, The Hidden World reminds us that if butterflies were the size of horses, humans would surely ride them. And wouldn’t that be an awful thing? ​

Sin City gives sin a great name -- it's never been more plentiful or looked so gorgeous.

Death and the Maiden never fulfills the evocative promise of those initial frames...Beyond that, you have to settle for a craftsman working with more precision than inspiration. But Polanski at half-speed is still hard to beat. [27 Jan 1995, pg. E.1]

Waitress is sweet, uneven and, ultimately, a heartbreaker.

Henry & June, a portrait of two pioneers in prose, accomplishes its own kind of pioneering on screen and not merely because it's unapologetically erotic: it effortlessly pairs that oddest of all couples, sexual desire and cerebral activity. It is, as a friend commented in a phrase Nin and Miller would have loved, "an erection for the mind." [05 Oct 1990]

There is too much dead weight to this particular game – and there's an extremely queasy undertone of Sorkin-penned daddy issues that lace Molly's motivations.

The movie is absolutely not your grandparents' beloved book. But like Peter himself, you learn to grow with this update. Because this is a new generation's version of Peter Rabbit: one that honours the original while still being itself.

Employing a bizarre love triangle as its base, and blessed with occasional flashes of brilliance, this melodramatic film leapfrogs among the defining moments in China's turbulent past. [29 Oct 1993]

Yes, there are many splendid reasons to see Snow White and the Huntsman – enough, maybe, not to care that neither Snow White nor the Huntsman rank high among them.

What we learn from the enjoyable punditry of siblings, art-world associates and former lovers is that the gorgeous provocateur was consumed with fame, and that everything and everybody was a means to that end.

It's a fascinating babel, and Nair, using the unfolding ritual of the wedding as a centre point, captures the competing sights and sounds with her own unique mix of cinematic borrowings -- think Robert Altman meets Bollywood.

With its grainy images, amateurish acting and homemade sets, there's nothing slick about Neil Young's new movie. Then again, that's the beauty of it.

The Company of Wolves is a trifle long, but the sequences of bona fide scariness and beauty compensate for the occasional longueurs, and it's great to be a kid again, as the artists behind the film know; they also know it can scare the hell out of you. Always cry wolf. [20 Apr 1985]

This is a piece engineered to run on the high octane of clever dialogue. It's chatty, it's wordy, but a passion for the well-written word lies at the thematic heart of the thing, and cinematic flourishes would only clog the arteries. Purists can rest assured -- there's no clogging.

In the final act, cops and street children fight a desperate battle in an abandoned apartment block. It’s a metaphor, but it’s earned.

Although it has a few technical flaws, mostly in pacing and tone, these are more than made up for by an intelligently funny and unsentimental script, and several noteworthy performances. [24 Nov 1992]

The ironic twist at the movie’s end is a nice touch. The Invisibles, about humans as living ghosts, needs to be seen, and believed.

Actors Zhang Ziyi and Takeshi Kaneshiro are the kind of startlingly good-looking, glamorous stars that evoke classic Hollywood adventure films.

This is a movie that will make you scream – in confusion, in delight, in anger, in ecstasy. Sometimes all at once.

Even by his stylistic standards, Anderson has cranked up the artifice.

The concept and the laughs hold strong amid all the craziness because Seligman has such affectionate sympathy for her mendacious protagonist.

In a sometimes misguided narrative, their scenes together are right on track -- they add lightness, even a shimmering hint of humour, to a symbol-laden drama. Theirs is a unique romance that has a sparrow's frail beauty -- it beats with a trembling, fluttering heart.

There’s something to be said for a movie that manages to baffle and dazzle in equal measure. If Daffy Duck had taken up political and media theory, his brain might look like this.

It's impossible not to feel a strong sense of nostalgic amusement, if not sheer delight, at the comings and goings of all these characters.

Berg also creates one scene that should stand as an all-time classic: a residential street standoff between the Tsarnaevs and members of the Boston and neighbouring Watertown police departments.

If Lumet is travelling familiar ground here, the journey is still worthy because the ground is still muddy. And, as always, he travels it bravely - his Q's are many and far-reaching, his A's few and unsparing. [27 Apr 1990]

If Vice Versa becomes the hit it deserves to be - adults who accompany their kids will be glad they came along for the joyride - Reinhold may be able to flex artistic muscles that have been necessarily flaccid until now. [11 Mar 1988]

There are some genuinely witty lines, but The Hand is no comedy. In the end, it must rank as one of the more original efforts to find danger in mundane places. [18 May 1981]

As Blank City proves, the all-night, every-night party was fun while it lasted.

Psycho III, directed by Perkins himself, is years behind the Hitchcock original in quality, it's light years ahead of Psycho II. [27 June 1986, p.D1]

The payoff is the revitalization of Bond by making him closer to what Fleming envisaged: a sociopath who, fortunately, is on our side.

The film's greatest achievement is that it allows us to know Ray.

This is a mostly fun, over-the-top ode to the siege movie, as well as a love/hate letter to all things firearm-related.

The Trotsky goes down easily and, for what it’s worth, is better mannered than most contemporary youth comedies.

The climax, however, is far superior here, open-ended and ambiguous and neatly linked to this film's recurring metaphor: Teeth, of course, which "outlast everything," which survive the death of the body just as marriage can survive the demise of love. They both endure, yellowed and rootless.

What better casting than Al Pacino, whose own career, of course, has reflected all the seasonal changes in the gangster saga. Pacino takes the part and runs with it so boldly that he ends up in Arthur Miller land.

Jason Clarke is excellent as the complicated Kennedy, an unsure, insecure and not entirely decent man daunted by his brothers’ shadows and eager to earn a father’s respect that is not forthcoming. The supporting cast is top-notch, particularly Kate Mara, who portrays the doomed Kennedy loyalist Kopechne with a warm humanity.

An unabashedly schlocky, expertly executed blend of jack-in-the-box jolts and humour.

Titular ball scene, fancy dress makeover and lost stiletto shoe notwithstanding, the chaste nominal romance is less interesting than the fun, family-friendly Shakespearean shenanigans are.

A lark from start to finish. [1 July 1987]

Yes, at its best, Birdman soars, swoops and flutters with life and invention, but it parrots more than it speaks. You long for a writer as reliably, elegantly witty as Tom Stoppard, whose dramas are typically “backstage,” or if not Stoppard, at least a verbal speed-puncher like Armando Iannucci, or if not Iannucci, someone as relentlessly inventive and obsessive as Charlie Kaufman to make you feel like somebody is trying to say something, rather than a writing team filling in the intelligent-sounding words to support the boisterous performances and the virtuosic camera dance.

Society would do well to remember that, in large part, the most effective redress to the tragedy of AIDS came directly from the people with AIDS. Lest we forget, director David France is intent on reminding us.

You don't have to go to the barricades for Hooper's film to appreciate it for what it is – a productive experiment, an epic-scaled weepie, an exercise in sincere kitsch, and, perhaps too easily dismissed, a rare modern movie about the wretched poor, a traditional subject of interest at this time of year.

Mainly, though, the film's strength is reportorial, sensitively exploring a theme that has grown ever more prominent with the globalization of sport.

What follows is excellent, uncomplicated and well-wrought house-of-horrors fun, complete with a message about self-blame and the real things that haunt us. Gary Dauberman is a first-time director, but don’t worry, Mom and Dad, your kids (and everyone else) are in good hands with him.

Felt like it was missing something. Something fun. Something small.

The Intouchables works as a crowd-pleaser not because it's true, but because it's a plausible enchantment.

Speaking of moves, A Better Life is an interesting one for Weitz, who produced "American Pie" and directed "The Golden Compass" and, ahem, "The Twilight Saga: New Moon." Whatever the reason (his grandmother was a Mexican movie actress), this film feels more personal that just a gig.

Mann (Comic Book Confidential) plays with archive, animation and music (hot soundtrack by the Sadies), illuminating another worthy counter-culture corner. Pure fun, fun, fun.

A modest and charmingly genuine youth movie. Mischief doesn't, to be sure, fall squarely into the latter, uncrowded category that includes Diner, The Flamingo Kid, and Puberty Blues. But it has a lot more going for it than Porky's.[9 Feb 1985]

By turns brutal and tender, Rust and Bone is a bullet train of heightened melodrama that refuses to derail.

This ranks among the highest concentrations of acting talent brought to any screen. But let's spare no praise for David Hare, whose superb script draws heavily on his playwrighting skills.

Unclassifiable and wildly original, it is almost wordless but teeming with sound.

Things play out as sentimentally as expected, while scratching the surface at something deeper, exploring the relationship people have to music, and how that can either change or stay frozen in time.

Beirut is as solid a film as Hamm is a performer. The movie is not a flashy affair, but it does hit in unexpected ways and uses its pretty faces (Hamm, but also Gone Girl’s Rosamund Pike, another performer who should be ruling the world) to deliver something you will likely expect, but nonetheless appreciate.

Doesn't quite reach the heights of the original film, which found surprising pathos in Doug's tale of sweet good guy to brutal goon. But it delivers on nearly every other scale, including standout performances from returning players Scott, Alison Pill and Liev Schreiber, as well as some bits of comic gold courtesy of series rookies Wyatt Russell, T.J. Miller and Jason Jones.

While Rhys Ifans chews scenery as a scruff-faced foreign correspondent, Knightley plays it taut and believable, and, as we know, nobody walks on cobblestones better than she. The end result is a professionally made film that is whistle-blowingly relevant, starring an excellent actress who successfully comes in from her Pride & Prejudice past.

Its mystery elements are infused with a uniquely Feig-ian sensibility, equal parts broad comedy and ironic winks. The genre-meld shouldn’t work as well as it does, but Feig wrangles all the disparate elements under his control.

Polanski has always inspired comparisons to Hitchcock, back to Cul-de-Sac and up to Rosemary's Baby and beyond, but this is the first time he has intentionally set out to replicate the thrills, chills and laughter of Hitchcock's best work. He succeeds, but with a difference: the last half-hour, at once improbable and horrible and self-referentially satiric, is pure Polanski. [27 Feb 1988]

Christmas on the Square lets the viewer kick back and indulge in all things Parton.

A 75-minute tour de force that's often fascinating, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding. So be patient -- the payoff will come.