Delightful as it often is, the picture suffers fom the same structural and thematic tidiness, even smugness, that it nominally opposes.

A funny, strange and wondrous little film. [31 May 1988]

Separate Lies is deceptive in more ways than it intends. Because the acting is so uniformly superb, we're almost fooled into believing that the movie is as good as the cast. It isn't, not by half.

Less an adaptation of its source material than a therapeutic response to it.

Much to an audience's discomfort, Ingrid's desperation to bond with the phony Taylor soon breaks the bounds of sanity – until the film rebukes her warped world view with a highly moral ending. The critique is clever but the limit is the one so common in satire: it's hard to care about the fate of a character this exaggerated.

No doubt, Blood Brother is narrowly focused on Braat’s needs and evolution, but in contrast to social-issue films filled with talking-head experts and bullet-point graphs, this is a portrait of a caregiver that goes to the core of motivation – in this case, the need to share love.

In RBG, a lionizing biography of the U.S. Supreme Court judge, Ginsburg emerges as a woman of remarkable intelligence and fortitude – who can get by on very little sleep.

A sprawling prison drama that seeks, by turns, to endear itself and then traumatize its audience.

The first half is exhilarating, and the rest is a tolerably honourable surrender to Hollywood conventions.

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.

There is both a sense of disappointment and relief when House of Sand and Fog crosses over into improbability, when the viewer can sit back, breathe easy again. All this trouble over the failure to open an envelope.

This is an adaptation that must have been hard to screw up, yet screwed up it has been. If the movie is far from dreadful, it's even further from the searing experience it could have been.

Euthanizer shocks from the outset, and nauseates by the conclusion. Exactly what fans of this gut-churning genre sign up for.

The performances are pristine in their theatricality, Raul Ruiz Anchia's lighting is neo-classical in its velvety richness, and the script (by Mamet and Shel Silverstein) is unfailingly intricate and consistent, for all its flamboyant use of coincidence. But it is the art of Don Ameche's courtly, charismatic characterization that lifts Things Change above the level of a crafty, enjoyable stunt.

The film will make highly informative viewing both for those who get it – and for those who don’t.

Mini-gems of comic editing grace the narrow, claustrophobic world created in Manhattan Murder Mystery. It's a safely escapist film that's vintage - albeit mid-level - Woody Allen. [20 Aug 1993]

A home invasion story that is as artfully terrifying as "Home Alone" was entertainingly hilarious.

There's an easy familiarity and charm in the creased, middle-aged faces of Nimoy, Shatner and DeForest Kelly (the perpetually irascible Dr. McCoy), all of whom now play their parts with an ever-present twinkle. Their behavior rarely has anything to do with the motives provided by the plot; rather, they wear their characters like old habits, as they boldly go where they've always gone before. [26 Nov. 1986, p.C5]

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.

So how does this documentary play now, a year into the scandal, when the urgency has cooled, at least in Hollywood, and the information feels familiar rather than shocking? Well, guess what, it’s still shocking, in its sheer volume and detail.

Part "Billy Elliot" and part Chadha’s own underdog hit "Bend It Like Beckham," Blinded by the Light is a feel-good coming-of-age movie that often feels way too good about itself.

What benefits the picture early on, giving it a casual air, becomes cloying in the later going, making it feel like a smug exercise in mutual admiration.

Baker proves himself a talented director; he manages the rolling rhythms of his waves and his story with skill – especially a montage around Pikelet’s sexual awakening, which is at once funny, steamy and poignant.

A taut, gorgeously filmed and enjoyably wicked cinematic treat.

Almost everyone is scum. The venality spreads from the slums or favelas, up the ranks of local militias, crooked police and pandering politicians.

This is a film that dearly wants to be important, that wants to do for Holland what Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Française" does for France - examine the German occupation through a prism of painful honesty. Yet the lofty ambition comes dressed in cheap attire; Verhoeven can't seem to stop himself from shopping downmarket.

There is no raunchier, more raucous, filthy and truly crass movie out this summer than Girls Trip – and I loved every minute of it.

A cinematic homage as flawed as its subject. Flawed, yet with a peculiar fascination of its own -- what we have is a genuine artist paying sincere tribute to an unapologetic mediocrity, and stooping awkwardly to the task.