Overall, it’s a film that is not great but just fine. Its biggest limitations are the ones it places on its own characters.

It's the sort of big thought that makes a small point, which is precisely the problem with Life in a Day. A documentary that looks to give this notion visual form, it strives awfully hard for depth but, more often than not, comes off too shallow.

An hallucinatory mix of the imagined and the real, all revolving around the mystery at the cold heart of the tale.

The movie has a great Duke Ellington score, and director Martin Ritt tries for a Beat sensibility that's not authentic, but is acceptable. [30 Dec 1995]

Musically, it's a mixed bag -- The concert remains more of an historical curiosity than a must-see rock film.

The problem is, the last section of the movie doesn't follow the career path of Greene: It traces the blander character of Hughes. Cheadle, who galvanizes the first half of the film, fades from view, and the best part of the conversation in Talk to Me goes with him.

Not super, but not bad, the teen comedy, Superbad, is another comic dance across the hormonal minefield of late high school.

Hitchcock unspools at that deliciously silly juncture where biography meets fallacy. Translation: Any director who could crank out Psycho must be a crackpot himself.

Playing a blonde with her roots showing, Beckinsale seems up for a scrap, but the film gives her nothing to do but get clobbered.

The documentary is an inspiration to women – not just in the Middle East – who are determined to rise to the top of their professions, despite the odds being stacked against them.

Festival in Cannes is definitely Jaglomesque, but can't get that tricky balance right -- the result is a picture as charmingly insubstantial as the world it invokes.

Dujardin and Efira are both charming and beautiful, and the film glistens in its breezy cobblestoned scenery.

Popped in the oven and marked with a predictable P, The Family Stone is the Christmas cookie of Christmas movies -- this thing is so pat it should come with the recipe attached.

Reiner is no Oliver Stone, but he does stir things up by presenting Bobby Kennedy in the villain's role as a serious jerk and crafty underminer.

The combination of DiCaprio's soulful, self-effacing work in Scorsese's "The Departed," and this unexpectedly complex portrait in a simple-minded movie, make it the best year of his career since the big boat crash of 1997.

What the protagonists do is simply wrong, and their attempts to fix it are first tepid, then unpleasant.

The problems with Damon's character are the problem with the movie: It's about plot mechanics, not heart and soul.

All this is engrossing. Stylistically and visually, Villeneuve flashes his talent to draw us in. However, narratively and thematically, he seems to be cheating. [18 Dec 1998, p.D10]

The international cast manage to acquit themselves fine enough, with Jagger in particular having a ball as an energetic rapscallion.

Speaking of that deadly finale, it's easily the best part of the picture. Beautifully edited, shot in fluid slow-motion, scored to a traditional Irish ballad crooned in a child's tremulous voice, the violence of the climax is anthemic. The whole sequence is undeniably moving.

This is a movie that works well when it works, and lazes around the rest of the time.

No political tract, but it can be surprisingly bold.

No matter how obvious the set-up – what if men and women of the cloth were … rude and sexy??? – the cast gives every scene just enough of a deadpan spin to sell it, at least for the first hour. After the final 30 minutes come and go, including a frantic detour into witchcraft, you may seek out a convent of your own.

There are two ways to look at Tightrope: as a Clint Eastwood Hollywood vehicle, or as a world-class movie that deserves to be judged with the best. By the first standard, Tightrope is an exceptionally realized thriller; by the second, it is an interesting failure, a movie that loses its nerve and resolves its contradictions in the slam-bang heroics of formula moviemaking. [18 Aug 1984]

Women deserve better women's pictures -- men too.

Ultimately, Sliding Doors becomes a victim of its own cleverness, shutting down all that early promise.

Fables should be succinct, and Konchalovsky lets his run on too long.

A beautifully shot, well-acted, and worthy-to-a-fault Second World War survivor story that only intermittently achieves the kind of emotional impact for which it aims.