Hearts and Minds, which gives no clue that atrocities were committed by the other side, and which allows Davis to cut from a rampaging football game, back home, to the Tet offensive, will be a lesson to anybody who thinks that Michael Moore invented the notion of documentary as blunderbuss.

There is certainly a trill of suspense to be had from these ideological heists, but Weingartner’s movie is never quite as keen-edged as it hopes or needs to be.

By the end of The Hateful Eight, its status as a tale of mystery and its deference to classic Westerns have all but disappeared, worn down by the grind of its sadistic vision. That is the Tarantino deal: by blowing out folks’ brains, he wants to blow our minds.

There's a total absence of personal obsession - even moviemaking obsession - in the way Crichton works; he never excites us emotionally or imaginatively, but the film has a satisfying, tame luxuriousness, like a super episode of "Masterpiece Theater."

Martin and Tomlin are both uninhibited physical comics. They tune in to each other's timing the way lovers do in life, only more so.

The extraordinarily imaginative new feature by Christopher Munch, The 11th Green, stakes out a genre unto itself: poli-sci-fi, a fusion of science fiction and the history-rooted political thriller.

People hadn't seen anything like it; that doesn't mean they needed to.

Directed by Bob Clark, this handsome Anglo-Canadian production features fine Whistler-like dockside scenes and many beautiful, ghoulish gothic-movie touches, but the modern political attitudes expressed by the writer, John Hopkins, misshape the picture.

Tsangari’s view of her world is blocked by her ideas; she is so concerned with what she has to say that she doesn’t see what she’s not showing.

You're entertained continuously, though you don't feel the queasy, childish dread that is part of the dirty kick of the horror genre.

The movie is sympathetic but simplistic, depicting an exceptional story with little energy or sense of physical presence.

Schreiber moves with bearish stolidity, even when boxing, and nothing is more poignantly delayed than Chuck’s realization that most of his wounds were self-inflicted.

For Your Consideration feels weirdly meek and mild, an unmighty wind that quickly blows itself out.

Ends with a burst of movie-ish mayhem, and then a burst of sentiment, but when Brewer, Howard, and Ludacris stick to the bitter texture of South Memphis failure and success they produce a modest regional portrait that could become a classic of its kind.

That the story is true (and based on an expertly written book by Jonathan Harr) doesn't make A Civil Action any more satisfying dramatically -- there's a streak of obviousness in the moral melodrama that dampens one's interest.

Housebound and fearfully lofty.

Damon may be too young, too unformed, to play an amnesiac. Gazing at that blank face, we can't imagine that Bourne has any experiences or memories to forget. [17 & 24 June 2002, p. 176]

No more than a shallow, style-mad entertainment, but it never flags or loses its balance, and, despite the theatricality of the staging and the acting, it’s precisely the materiality of the cinema--that makes us devour it with pleasure. [29 March 2004, p. 103]

The film, which kicks off in a flurry of visual tricks and narrative switchbacks, grows plainer in the later stages, and its concluding mood is surprisingly sad; these kids, who yearned to be something special, turned out to be anything but.

So rich is that visual yield, however, that it needs no verbal boost. Yet, from the moment that Margot says to Daniel, while sitting next to him on a plane, "I'm afraid of connections," the dialogue strains and grunts so hard for effect that it threatens to pull a muscle.

Yet the movie is not to be skipped. You should sample its mixture of bacchanal and gall, and revel in Farhadi’s dependable deftness, as he sketches and frames his collection of characters.

It’s the warmth of Gladstone’s presence that leaves a lasting impression and endows this remake—with all its reshufflings, inspired or strained—with a whisper of something authentically new.

Though with little in the way of directorial originality, character development, or social perspective to recommend it, “Hustle” manages to turn a clattery plot and a treacly sentimentality into a refracted self-portrait, a work of personal cinema.

As a performer, Morales is laughably smart, sympathetic, and engaging, and what’s so clever about Language Lessons is the deployment of that allure.

Richard Thorpe directed this package, shrewdly designed to give satisfaction to the new raunchy rock generation. The story ends happily, and the movie made millions, though Presley never begins to suggest the vitality that he showed in documentary footage.

The plot consists of bits: a fiery slugfest, a pause for bonding, a quick weep, and a patch of jokey repartee, before the slugging returns. Acts of sacrifice are dotted throughout, and we are urged to applaud the burgeoning fellowship of those who unite against Thanos, but, in truth, it’s every man for himself.

Maps to the Stars is at its most potent and beautiful by far when it becomes a ghost story — when the departed, not just Havana’s mother, return to quiz the living.

Desplechin and his co-writers have created an enticing set of characters who arouse a viewer’s curiosity not only about their connections to one another but about their relation to the world in which they live. But in “Two Pianos” there is no such world.