The Guard is guilty of being overly cute, but it brims with talent and a freshness that extends beyond the clever script.

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.

Blair is excellent in the lead, but the filmmaking is the true star here.

It is a heartfelt mediation on the creative process, with elegantly presented ideas on nature, music, mortality and things out of tune.

More than anything, NTBTSTM is simply hilarious – a furiously funny roller coaster of a film whose energy never, ever dips. It is difficult to imagine a better, sharper comedy coming along this year. Or the next.

Gripping and thrilling, Nanfu Wang’s debut documentary is a raw look at women’s-rights activism in China.

Ex Machina is a clever film with one indelible performance from Isaac.

This is a movie about draining, tenderizing and chopping up the audience emotionally.

With little dialogue to assist her -- just the strains of that wonderfully organic music -- she still manages to suggest the internal struggle, and to slowly reveal a fierce toughness that flies in the face of conventional morality.

It's a my-brother's-keeper drama, except when it's a violent comedy. It's a tale of There Will Be Blood-levels of greed, except when it's a high-ho adventure.

The movie's climax takes Harry Potter into territory that is much more like epic horror than most of what the series has seen before. There is more obvious religious symbolism and apocalyptic violence as Harry emerges into his role as “the chosen one.”

Zootopia takes the cultural practice of posing animals as human characters to queasy new heights.

The plot is bare-bones stuff, weak in story line and bereft of motivation.

This film is all shiny inspirational veneer. It leads you to issues but it won't let you think...It may be good for you, but it's not entertainment. And it may not be good for you: lurking at the penumbra of the film's sunny celebration of brotherhood is the faint but unmistakable shadow of anti-Semitism. [26 Sept 1981]

House of Games is so bad it seems reasonable to conclude that God was out of town and Mamet's muse was in a coma. [16 Oct 1987]

Sugar Daddy will be gripping viewing for anyone who wonders what it takes to make it – and whether it’s all worth it in the end.

Director Maria Schrader’s new sci-fi-tinged rom-com might be conventionally structured, but it is also smoothly crowd-pleasing work, tackling all the anxieties and neuroses of midlife romance with the fears and promises of next-generation technology.

The story is running a bit thin by the end, yet the almost comic character of the investigative detective is underused. Still, the unlikely presence of Guangzhou, steamy by day, gritty by night, and the shifting viewpoints on the accident add an engaging originality.

De Bont knows how to edit a pulse-pounding sequence, he knows how to keep the screen white-hot, and he sure knows how to blow things up real good. What he doesn't know is how to slow down - this premise is perfect for him.

It is a sadly out-of-touch tactic that recalls an old man yelling at the clouds (or, more accurately, cloud computing).

So what's the problem? Just that the plot seems a bit too schematic, the characters a little too pat, and the imagery altogether too convenient -- for a tale that means to explore the elusiveness of truth, Lemmons sure likes to sew things up neatly.

Despite its hastily tacked-on resolution, Mississippi Masala is still a lesson well delivered - flecked with humour and never pedantic. [28 Feb 1992]

It’s a pleasant surprise, therefore, to see what Whedon has done with the Bard’s timeless comedy Much Ado About Nothing.

Ruthless People is a farce rather than a satire and it's far less ambivalent toward the behavior it depicts than All in the Family was - it actively encourages the audience to tee-hee over people being horrible to each other. Dale Launer's script is often extremely funny, especially when Midler is around, but it's an extended sick joke that doesn't realize it's got a disease. [27 June 1986, p.D1]

The picture sings and inspires.

Uneven and erratic and far too busy, its flashes of brilliance dimmed by overambitious meanderings.

Beach Rats stands on its own merits as one of the boldest, most original films of the year. It does that incredible thing of making you miss it before it's even over, like fireworks that turn to smoke before you're ready.

Thanks to a superb cast it's great fun indeed. [7 Aug 1992]