There's an aspirational pleasure in seeing Cruise, now in his mid-50s, jump through these hoops. He knows we prefer him when he shades his easy charm with self-doubt, and Barry has a pleasingly sweaty desperation.

Ultimately a disappointment – this is a movie easy to watch and even easier to forget.

The film hums to tepid indie-pop and is sentimental to a fault, but the cast is a soulful bunch (including Toni Collette and a wonderful Ted Danson) who breathes life into a film that is all heart.

It's a decidedly odd, down-beat story and yet, if the sexes were reversed, we would think nothing of a young woman swapping the role of lover for that of nurse when her much-older partner fell ill.

Always stylish and occasionally thrilling and never thoughtful.

It takes you on an emotional, uplifting journey across many countries and through civil unrest, with music ultimately winning out over dark forces that would otherwise challenge and limit free expression and art.

Adapting a great short story, like Carver's "So Much Water So Close to Home," into a movie poses a dilemma: How to flesh it out to feature length without destroying what made it great in the first place?

It simultaneously operates as a symbol of the tension between private life and patriotic duty that is at the core of the man's disagreement with the military.

A supernatural winner.

The movie is dramatically limp, running out of narrative steam long before the set decorator runs out of colours.

In the end, the power of Minervini’s pseudo-fiction gives way to a much blander version of pseudo-reality.

Martin Scorsese, meet Djo Tunda Wa Munga, because you obviously have a lot in common. Viva Riva! is nothing less than the Congolese Mean Streets, oozing sexual heat and brute violence and powered by a locomotive's worth of raw kinetic energy.

This half-throttle documentary might better be called The Fast and the Uneventful.

There are occasional moments when the film is so close to feeling like it is accomplishing its goals – to be seen as a sharp and comedic critique of the cost of storytelling, with a fun little whodunnit at its core – but it never quite gets there.

Only Seyfried truly understood the assignment that Feig handed her, the actress oscillating between two modes – intense and freakishly intense – with finesse.

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.

It’s quite a film Stephens has made.

For the most part, it's simply a pleasure to watch a smoothly made and underplayed film about attractive, nice people without a hint of violence on their minds. [25 Apr 1997, p.D8]

More heart-breaking and action-packed than one imagines from a monastery travelogue film.

It may not be a pretty picture, but A Tale of Two Sisters is definitely a satisfying piece of less-is-more cinematic horror.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus takes us deep into the imagination of Terry Gilliam, which once was a splendid place to visit. And might prove so again. But not here, because this film is less a coherent exercise of imagination than a haphazard lecture on its importance, a lecture that eventually dwindles into self-indulgence.

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]

Overall, The Salt of Life has more bite but less charm than "Mid-August Lunch."

The many stumbling blocks, setbacks and eventual (spoiler alert for a three-quarters-of-a-century-old war) triumphs of Operation Mincemeat are handled by a deft crew of real-life stiff-upper-lip types played by the finest U.K. actors working today.

The Runaways captures the sleaze and innocence of the era and has some still-relevant things to say about the conflict between girl-rocker empowerment and exploitation.

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

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.

It adds nothing to our understanding of "Howl," and the movie is exactly what the poem isn’t: ordinary.

Conducting another symphony in action, Spielberg seems a bit bored – always competent but never inspired – and who can really blame him? He tries to fire his interest by swiping a few tropes from the fifties pop bin, not-so-sly allusions to teen-trash movies and those McCarthy-era horror flicks. After that, there's really nowhere to go but inwards, which is when Spielberg starts looting Spielberg.

For all its action thrills, Salt is relatively humourless fare.

It is almost criminal, though, that the end of this otherwise game-changing franchise full of bloodthirsty and complex women concludes on a painfully trite note – the strides made by all four films are undercut by Part 2’s underwhelming and hokey epilogue.

It's a turning-the-tables story a five-year-old could appreciate -- except for the confusing crowd scenes and haphazard camera work. Technically speaking, Waters' skills haven't improved much over the years.

La Bamba may in many ways be a catalogue of cliches, but they are cliches that Valens was able to live for his people for the first time, and they are cliches that Luis Valdez has been able to film for his people (for all people) for the first time.

What's missing, in the direction no less than the script, is any real sense of dramatic urgency.

Though credibly performed and photographed, it's hard to care about a film that proposes as epic tragedy the plight of a callow rich boy who is forced to choose between his beautiful, self-satisfied 22-year-old girlfriend and an equally beautiful, self-satisfied 18-year-old mistress.

Dirty Dancing is "Flashdance" with a triple-digit IQ.

Certainly, this imagineered version of P.L. Travers’s life provides an orderly drama, but it’s uncomfortably reductive. It may be a small world, after all, but it comes in a lot more shades than Saving Mr. Banks suggests.

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]

This time out, with a few exceptions, the inspiration feels solid and earned, not saccharine and contrived.

And, in a pointless riffing on the title, there are ginger kitties galore -- this flick has enough cats to launch a Broadway musical.

Disney’s live-action revival of the Beauty and the Beast franchise is nothing if not lively, albeit occasionally overwrought: The dinnerware’s number, Be Our Guest, turns into a hallucinogenic sequence worthy of Busby Berkeley.

That's partly why X-Men: First Class is such fanboy fun, as the script departs from official Marvel lore to invent a whole new "origin story" for the mutant ensemble.

While there’s plenty of footage of Polunin executing multiple pirouettes and twisting acrobatically through the air, real ballet fans will lament the lack of evidence of emotion and artistry in his dancing.

Director Barbra Streisand does justice to the popular book until the two-thirds mark of the film, whereupon the script abruptly changes from a psychic history to a gauzy romance. A Prince of a movie, until the end. [27 Dec 1991]

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.

The new film is intended to act as several things, none of them particularly admirable. It is a sequel to the underperforming and largely confusing "Prometheus"; it is a prequel to Scott’s own 1979 classic "Alien."

Perhaps Nemes was hoping to let the precision of his intricately staged images artfully clash with the absurdity of a chaotic plot. But the result is more tedious than tense.

The background designs are beautiful and there are plenty of lively sight gags, but magic isn’t in the cards.

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

However, for me and my two kids (aged 10 and eight), this dive into the deep sea wasn’t as thrilling an adventure as we’d hoped for.

There are immense, leisurely pleasures to be found in The Courier, which presents a familiar spy-versus-spy drama in a familiar way. Which is fine: So long as you’re not expecting subversion or surprise, you can gently sink yourself into director Dominic Cooke’s intentionally, pleasantly lukewarm waters and come out the other side refreshed and squeaky-clean.

With Men, the British filmmaker is stubbornly needling his audience with a never-ending barrage of pointy-ended questions that he has neither the inclination nor intention of vaguely addressing or even thinking through on his own terms. Men is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, all scrawled in crayon.

The filmmakers even manage to introduce a tune as devastatingly ear-wormy as the original’s Everything Is Awesome, even though its title (Catchy Song) betrays the fact that everyone here is working both a little too hard, and not quite hard enough.

The best Brit noir since "Croupier" is a complex, marvellously twisty thriller.

Never as good as you'd hoped or as bad as you'd feared, The Matador is one of those of up-and-down experiences -- here a sharp pica of wit, there a welcome veronica of absurdity, but, now and then, just a bit too much bull in the ring.

The heart and mind of Maudie are always in the right place.

Dangerous Animals is like a bowl of shark-fin soup laced with a dollop of vegemite: not exactly good for either you, your taste buds or the environment, but strangely compelling nonetheless.

Bardem gives the kind of stately, anchoring performance that can just about make up for any shortcomings the film might otherwise face.

Generally makes good on its promise. There are shivers to be felt, especially in the early stages, and there's fun to be had, including the post-movie pleasure of detecting the soft spots in the plot. The result is an always-watchable picture from a director capable of more.

It falls short of the original but surpasses its sequels.

Like Wheatley’s 2011 film "Kill List," High-Rise switches genres effortlessly – black humour one moment, dystopic parable the next – until it becomes its own singular, horrifying, immensely captivating thing.

With compelling performances from leads Amber Midthunder and Taylor Gray, it’s impossible not to be invested in where they end up.

In the best picaresque fashion, there's wit here, and irony, love in its many guises, and even a glimpse of transcendent hope. Despite (or maybe because of) the specifically gay characters and themes, the film resonates far beyond its particulars - indeed, in many ways, it goes directly to the divided heart of contemporary, ailing America. [21 Aug 1992]

Despite the efforts of the talented director, Alan Rudolph (The Moderns, Choose Me), and his experienced cast, Mortal Thoughts is a formulaic TV-sized feature conceived to cash in, and put a feminist spin on, some of the emotions stirred up by Fatal Attraction; unfortunately, it seldom gets intense enough to stir up any emotion. [19 Apr 1991]

With its comic-book hues, crime-caper score, overly serious narrator, interior monologues and surreal touches, Wild Grass proves Resnais is still having fun with cinematic language.

The sequel to Twister – which pluralizes the title, while following the same beats as its predecessor – is serviceable. But it also misses what made director Jan de Bont’s disaster spectacle such chaotic fun to begin with.

Despite all the wonder that Strange World has going for it, the film cannot help but land with the softest of thuds.

In the end, the commercial necessity of wrapping up a family comedy in less than 100 minutes seems to have trumped anything real about Dan's life.

What’s missing in Get Him to the Greek are the supporting characters that made "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" so engaging.

One of the more ingenious and fresh surprises of the summer.

The film’s calm brutality is effective. Plot-wise, some punches are telegraphed, while others are not. The satire is a spinning wheel kick I didn’t see coming. Black belts all around.

There's almost a perverse pleasure in watching occasionally weak performers mar an essentially sound screenplay. That's the saving grace of Saving Face -- Wu gets the hard part right.

Anyone who likes pop music or wonders how bands like the Rolling Stones got rolling will enjoy the ride.

It's not Smith's fault that the movie can't quite pry apart the man from the myth from the metaphor. The three may well be inseparable by now and, at this point in his history and ours, that's surely the way we prefer it.

Begins audaciously but goes to extremes to assert conventional wisdom about grownup life, that what is called "normal" is about just holding on.

Spike Lee's Crooklyn is a charming little movie. [14 May 1994]

Alice, Darling does so much right that it is acutely painful when it goes wrong.

Director Christopher Landon injects the entire affair with so much stylistic verve and narrative propulsion that, like the best kind of first date, it whips by almost too quickly.

Like Majors’s chiselled physique, which is almost a special effect all its own, Magazine Dreams takes unironic pride in flexing its themes so nakedly and frequently that there’s little left to the imagination.

Feels a little like the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- a similar wet fizzle of a sequel for sequel's sake -- but what do we know?

Tetro is Coppola's best film since Apocalypse Now because the filmmaker has abandoned conventional drama – what for him had become a straightjacket – indulging in a collage style that allows him to honour favourite filmmakers.

Ultimately the film struggles to balance its various commitments, with a screenplay that never seems sure of whether it wants to be a pure comedy, a lore-packed adventure or a peppy children’s film that shuffles kids straight to the toy aisle.

The Black Phone is an enjoyable watch, for sure, but it lacks a certain agility, which keeps it from being as great as we want it to be.

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.

It's your standard coming-of-age tune set to a top-40 beat. [24 Oct 1997]

Mainly the film is a tightly focused and tightly filmed neo-noir, as the script, which Akin co-wrote with Hark Bohm, neatly picks off parents and friends to leave Katja isolated enough to make her desperate actions believable.

While the new doc was spurred by Roher’s own existential anxiety about what kind of AI-dominated world he would be bringing his unborn son into, the resulting film feels so determined to walk the middle road between doom times and boom times (hence its cheeky title) that its message cannot help but land as something almost algorithmically mushy.

It's intriguing, appalling, savvy, nasty, grossly unsettling -- you may not like what you see, but you'll definitely be affected by the sight.

The question subtly, craftily documented in The Swell Season is whether the fans or Hansard himself want to see the singer cast in this new role of success.

The result is a magnificently off-the-rails poison pill of a film, one that skitters from paranoiac thriller to reactionary satire to something far more caustic and unnerving. It is the cinematic equivalent of long COVID – lingering, haunting, and demanding rigorous, skeptical investigation.

The Israeli film works best in isolated spots early on as a series of intriguing character studies. Upon reaching to become a lesson to the world, however, Walk on Water goes off the deep end.

The principals are superb, with Mullan and Colman doing a masterful job of inhabiting their separate but equal prisons.

Listen carefully, and you can almost hear the enjoyably comic and nasty tone Harpoon was likely going for – before it drowned in a flood of unwatchable idiots.

Clearly, Oppenheimer is an ambitious and courageous filmmaker – his chilling documentaries alone are enough to ensure his place in the pantheon. But so much of The End prioritizes purpose over execution, with the result stretched out over interminable lengths.

Nothing in this explicit display is remotely engaging. That's because the sex is a metaphor here. In fact, most everything is a metaphor here. Or a symbol -- the picture is a veritable cacophony of jangling symbols.

Somewhere along the way, Respiro just seems to run out of breath.

And despite the technically impressive quality of the soundtrack, the movie, directed by Karel Reisz, misses the music. [4 Oct 1985]

With his debut feature Dim the Fluorescents, Toronto filmmaker Daniel Warth has created an astonishing calling card – an earnest and entertaining celebration of process and performance, not to mention a tremendous showcase for two homegrown actors on the cusp of greatness.