The bottom line for this genre is that the guys are goofy and likable, the pacing is quick and there are a lot of laughs. In a dumb-California-kids movie, that's all you really need. [25 May 1992]

Voice cast member Lisa Hannigan, an Irish songstress who sings here in a Celtic-ethereal style, features on a soundtrack that is mystic, eerie and freeing. Yeats is whispered: ‘Come away, human child/To the water and the wild.’ Inviting? Very much so.

While the case could be made that Koreeda is merely replicating the world as the blinkered Ryota sees it, the disparity between the characters’ development still leaves you feeling slightly cheated, if only because you want to see more of what this truly gifted student of human behaviour might do with them.

A cornball charmer of a film with some beautiful birds and homespun wisdom.

A modest, winning comedy that overtly sneaks in its wisdom about life, worries and what really matters.

Ushpizin takes us to a fascinating place, and hands out the sort of brochure that tourists always need but seldom get -- the charming kind, fun to ponder and rewarding to browse.

These are not easy people to understand, nor to watch unravel, but they are urgent, complicated, captivating characters.

A charming oddity starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch, often feels like an al fresco stage play. It’s an intimate two-hander with lots of dialogue, humour and poignant revelations, set against a backdrop of rugged woodland beauty.

Titanic is awesome even when it's awful -- you can't take your eyes off the extraordinary thing.

One of the most compelling aspects about Paterson as a film about art is the effortless way in which it declines to ask its audience to judge whether Paterson’s poems are any good: their quality seems immaterial to Jarmusch’s point. It is the act of writing them, both expressing and amplifying Paterson’s sensitivity to his world, that seems important.

By hiring James Earl Jones to narrate, Disney has prepared youngsters to understand that man is equally capable of heroism and villainy.

However you feel about commercial dog sledding, Fern Levitt’s Sled Dogs is bound to rankle – either because of the material itself or the filmmaker’s take.

Sumptuously designed, brightly costumed and shot with an eye toward epic grandeur, the new film is simply gorgeous to take in, no matter the size of the screen. Less pretty is the script, which took four screenwriters to conjure even though there’s perfectly good source material just sitting there, waiting for a photocopy machine.

The documentary camera has made repeated trips to occupied Iraq, but never to such raw and honest effect as in The War Tapes. The reason is surprisingly simple: This time, the lens is being pointed not by embedded journalists, but by the American soldiers themselves.

Like the film's punishingly gory set pieces, the storytelling itself is meaty.

Like "Rebel", directed by Nicholas Ray, this film excels at capturing the nervous posturing of adolescent boys marking their territory by pissing on each other's shoes.

Invites viewers to think critically about such weighty concepts as justice, atonement and personal accountability.

It is still by no means a great film, even compared against the standards of contemporary superhero cinema, which is bleeding any sense of individual artistry and purpose each passing year. But it is a wild, invigorating experiment to experience.

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

Apparently, the faith that can move mountains is detectable in the microscopes that can track electrons. If so, the metaphoric is real and, to me, that thought is as scary as it is thrilling -- but what the bleep do I know?

While Williams isn’t quite as adept as Cody’s other all-star collaborators, her debut film is funny, cinematic and memorable.

More entertaining than Mission: Impossible or the last Bond film, Goldeneye, it brings back the humour and sang-froid that makes the genre work.

Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick are perfectly caste as two naive waifs who stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter after car trouble on a rainy night. The supporting cast is appropriately, well, let's say idiosyncratic, but for my money it's Tim Curry as the mad doctor who steals the show. Surely he stands as the most charismatic transsexual Transylvanian ever. [1 Dec 1990]

In a smartly written, evenly wrought drama, the newly discovered wunderkind Rod Paradot stunningly portrays a troubled youth who makes Eminem’s 8 Mile protagonist look like a boy scout in comparison.

Julia Jentsch offers a brilliant example of what actors call "not playing the ending," and the awful suspense of the piece is watching as she realizes, in increments, that this is all much worse than she thought.

The ending can be read as conclusively upbeat or as corrosively ironic. Still, Youngblood is never less than fascinating, and it's a bit like the game it explores: the times you don't want to look at it are the times you can't look away. [31 Jan 1986, p.D1]

It is a slight, charming, filmic oddity, well acted and intelligently written

Tasty and sweet, if a little on the mild side.