Under the guise of a Socialist parable about the economic determinism of personal behavior (class interests determine sexual choice, etc.) the writer-director, Lina Wertmuller, has actually introduced a new version of the story of Eve, the spoiler.

Jones gets everything--the gestures, the generosity, the mean streak, the bending of the ear to recitals of woe, whether across a lunch table or a prison cell. He even nails the voice, like that of a chorister caught running a racket with the incense.

It’s not just a blast but, at moments, a thing of beauty, alive to the comic awesomeness of being lost in space.

Cassavetes films Rowlands, his wife, with self-deprecating adoration; the demanding man likens himself to the defenseless boy, and both are saved by this gloriously burdened woman who would kill for them.

You cannot help being stirred by the reach and depth, the constant rebuffs to sloppiness, of a strong ensemble.

Jacky is not merely beefed up. He is a Minotaur in the making, and that, surely, is why his story becomes such a labyrinth. [27 Feb. 2012, p.87]

There's so much going on you can't take your eyes off it, but none of it means anything.

The story fits together too neatly and the characters remain ciphers, but scenes of news reports of the high-profile deals—in which the protagonists see themselves—evoke an eerie air of plausibility and alienation.

The result is an evasive, baffling, unexciting production - anything but a classic.

Observant and true. The pleasure of it lies not in its emotions, which are distinctly on the tepid side, but in the intimacy of its reporting. [28 July 2003, p.94]

The whole thing became amorphous and confused. Paramount did rather better by the romance than the politics; Ingrid Bergman is lovely and affecting as Maria.

The pictures is an almost total drag, though Agnes Moorehead, as the villainess, has a sensational exit through plate-glass windows.

It's a shame that the movie whose coattails these wonderful actors are attached to is such an empty suit.

The premise of this Hitchcock thriller is promising, but the movie, set in Quebec and partly shot there, is so reticent it's mostly dull.

This unapologetically grown-up movie about separating is perhaps the most revealing American movie of its era. Though the director, Alan Parker, doesn't do anything innovative in technique, it's a modern movie in terms of its consciousness.

A genial, messy comedy of marital discord and mismatched lovers.

In short, Peter Berg has done it again. You come out shaken with excitement, but with a touch of shame, too, at being so easily thrilled.

Lamb preens and strains to be admired even as it reduces its characters to pieces on a game board and its actors to puppets.

Is it conceivable that Holland’s bleak, murky, and instructive film could prompt a change of heart in the current Russian establishment, or even a confession of crimes past? Not a chance.

Ayer should have dropped the movie-within-a-movie, which is confusing in an unproductive way -- we share the men's point of view without it. [24 Sept. 2012, p. 98]

That is the thing about Gibson, fool that he is in other ways: he has learned how to tell a tale, and to raise a pulse in the telling. You have to admire that basic gift, uncommon as it is in Hollywood these days.

Low-grade horror.

Tintin is exhausting, and, for all its wonders, it wears one out well before it's over.

What matters most about The Homesman, which Jones co-wrote and directed, is how willingly, and movingly, he cedes the stage to Hilary Swank, as Clint Eastwood did in “Million Dollar Baby.”

In truth, every performance in Everything Went Fine is nicely judged—too much so, I suspect, for many filmgoers, who will be praying for someone to explode. Yet the movie is anything but bland.

A classic screwball fantasy - a neglected modern comedy that's like a more restless and visually high-spirited version of the W.C. Fields pictures...Set in the world of competing used-car dealers in the booming Southwest, this picture has a wonderful, energetic heartlessness; it's an American tall-tale movie in a Pop Art form. The premise is that honesty doesn't exist; if you develop a liking for some of the characters, it's not because they're free of avarice but because of their style of avarice.

The stage of Early Man, though, is stuffed with men and women — on the Neanderthal spectrum, it’s true, but propelled by needs and greeds much like our own — whereas the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air are reduced to the role of extras. It pains me to say so, but Hognob is not enough.

The movie is often absorbing, and skillfully played, but, along with its snarling hero, it doesn’t have much time for ordinary folk. By the end, like Marianne, we are left gasping for air.