Though inspired by a real incident, the movie is an opportunistic political allegory about an economy that's out of control and industries that are weakened by layoffs, under-staffing and corporate callousness.

Brave feels like a merely good-enough children's movie.

An unlikely Irish-Cuban co-production, Viva is, like its central subject, beautiful to look at but ultimately lacking depth.

Undercover Brother is very much a hero of our time. After all, the character began not in the 1970s, but three years ago as a cartoon on a Web site.

Strange and beautiful and transfixing and confusing, it's quite the sight - martial-arts fans may find themselves disappointed, but Wong Kar-wai addicts will be delighted.

It’s a fine yarn spiced up with moments of hip hop, animation and pop culture references, all packaged nicely in something like the hot-pink doughnut boxes that the cruller maestro Ngoy supposedly invented.

Some might find the characters written with heavy cynicism. I’d rather see their desperate pursuits as poignant and comically human, even if the film’s tone is dark. These are lonely people seeking love. It’s not that complicated.

Though Revolutionary Road is a less stringent work than Yates's book, it also feels like a more tolerant and humane one.

In the moments at his disposal, Smith almost steals the flick. He's so wittily government-phobic that I found myself hoping for a climax that would blow Bruce Willis away and promote Kevin Smith to saviour-of-the-free-world. Now that might be a sequel worth rooting for.

The filmmaker assumes that aping the cheap aesthetics of the era are enough to establish style, and that making Enid a mystery amounts to layered characterization. It all leads to a climax that is nasty for all the wrong reasons.

The Dead Zone, from the book by Stephen King, a horror novelist whose prolific output is the scariest thing about him, is academic filmmaking all the way, a crafty Establishment tour de force. [21 Oct 1983]

You'll laugh, though you might hate yourself in the morning.

Well-spoken but humorously self-deprecating, Berg admits that, between the hours spent writing, rehearsing and performing, she spends more of her life as Molly than she does as herself.

The trouble with Body Double is not that it sets "new lows" in the treatment of women or anything else, but that a stunningly original talent has willingly hitched itself to a derivative vision. The person De Palma really degrades is himself. [26 Oct 1984]

Time After Time is jolly good escapism. [01 Oct 1979]

First-time Australian director Garth Davis offers sweeping cinematic shots, with a soundtrack that is pleasingly epic, but the second act is a bit skimpy, script-wise.

For all its ballyhoo'd full access to Vogue's inner workings, the movie's cinéma-vérité approach feels perilously close to advertorial.

With the notable exception of Martin Scorsese's opus, most boxing flicks suffer form a certain amount of raw-boned sentimentality, the sort of easy melodrama that pits naive underdogs against corrupt overlords, or age against youth, or purity against prejudice. Even the recent "Million Dollar Baby" succumbed in the final act. But this one, where "Rocky" meets "The Waltons," has us reeling under its saccharine weight.

I Went Down is also a showcase for the directorial talents of Breadnach, who frames the actors and the action with polish and assurance against an unpretty Irish landscape rarely seen in the movies. If you liked Trainspotting and are looking for a quick and dirty cinematic romp, this is just the ticket. [24 July 1998, p.C5]

Writers Cecilia Frugiuele (who also produced) and Desiree Akhavan (who also directed), working from Emily Danforth’s source novel, capture the fugue state that is teenagehood, then refract it through the extra-weirdness of the camp.

Rocketman is Broadway razzle-dazzle of the best kind.

It's a comedy, it's a romance, it's a gangster flick. The Cooler is all of that and much, much less. This is a movie without a compass, switching pace and direction as haphazardly as a caffeinated SUV driver on a cellphone.

By turns raw, naturalistic and indebted to John Cassavetes, both stylistically and thematically.

Eating Raoul is often very funny, but it guns down its targets (hot tubs, taco stands) without revealing anything new about them - it's broader than parody, less pointed than satire - and it crudely manipulates the audience into congratulating itself on its own hipness. [15 Oct 1982]

Finally, there's a sports movie for people who are caught between admiration and fear of athleticism. Neither a triumphant underdog like "Rudy" nor a total weepie like "The Pride of the Yankees," Head Games also deals with the illnesses and premature deaths of talented players.

En route, despite some clumsy exposition and the reduction of heavyweights like Mary McCarthy and William Shawn to fifth-business caricatures, the film does manage one impressive intellectual achievement of its own: rescuing that “banality of evil” phrase from the banal cliché it’s become and, by providing the full and daring context, giving it real meaning again.

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.

Filmed in Nova Scotia and featuring both English and Mi’kmaw, Wildhood beautifully captures the beauty of the landscape and its community as well as moments of humour, even as it treads some bleak spaces.