As a movie, The Good Liar is just so-so, but as a master class in performance and star quality, it’s a pleasure.

This shocker from Hammer Films rival Amicus Productions stars horror icon Peter Cushing and includes a "werewolf break" for you to guess who the monster is. Sort of like Ellery Queen, but with a really hairy back. Damned fun. [31 Oct 2006, p.E1]

Kidman is the big deal here, and it is the frisky, introspective elasticity of her performance that sent me out of the theater on a feverish high.

Reiner's direction and William Goldman's script succeed on their own cartoonish level, and Kathy Bates, who plays the fan as if she were a close relative of Norman Bates, rips into the role with undisguised relish. [30 Nov 1990, p.24]

It’s not the best Dracula movie of all time, though it aspires to that. Murnau’s original still leads the pack. But it certainly is the most stylish. Eggers is a filmmaker with astonishing visual flair.

This stranger-in-a-strange-land mood piece has an appealingly serene pace.

All of this silliness is actually great fun, particularly the bantering chemistry between Johnson and Statham, who spend much of the movie squabbling and calling each other names.

The dialogue, the violence, the humor (largely provided by Grant’s character) and the intricacy of the storytelling make for a picture in which most everyone in it seems to be having a great deal of chatty, bloody fun.

Green Room is one nasty piece of work. And I mean that in a good way.

Turned out much better than one might have hoped, especially when the emphasis is off the chimp and focuses on the monkeys running the fictional UBC network, where most of the action takes place. [09 Nov 1995, p.G39]

While A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is charmingly filmed (I loved the animated depictions of the toy Neighborhood, and the way Heller switches camera formats to give a more old-school portrayal of Rogers’ TV show), it didn’t quite have the emotional wallop I expected.

The redemption here — if there may, please, please, be some — is in the celebration of his life, and in the fact that all the love for him clearly cannot do anything but continue on.

With a ruthlessly pared-down approach and compelling performer in Dynevor, who carries the film effortlessly, “Inheritance” is a throwback thriller that hearkens to the retro days of the Y2K era. And while its style eclipses its substance, it’s the style that makes this cinematic curio worth watching.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is as good as it needs to be, though like the other movies it’s probably a complete puzzlement to anyone not already familiar with the franchise, and creator/writer Julian Fellowes can’t resist having someone earnestly intone something about Things Change And We Must Change With Them every two minutes.

Novitiate is a fascinating, unblinking yet respectful look at a time and place — a women’s community where a visiting archbishop (Denis O’Hare) can act like he owns the place.

Damage is the kind of movie that risks unintended laughter for the simple reason that reckless passion almost always looks ludicrous from the outside. The filmmakers must establish just the right tone, which Malle, Irons and Binoche do for the most part, although occasionally they falter. It's hard to buy the final revelations about Binoche's character, which are meant to explain something that's probably best left alone. [22 Jan 1993, p.20]

Along with the kids’ sorrow, Barras works uplift and lightness into the story, and there are moments of great joy. In the end, it’s positivity that prevails.

Sky, despite its Hitchcockian beginning, is no thriller; instead, it’s a character study of a woman seeking a second act, and of a landscape that gradually transforms from foreign to welcoming.

It’s an artful, moving and often beautiful film, but be careful about showing it to young children; nightmares could ensue. (It haunted me, and I’m quite grown.)

With its well-drawn characters (a Linklater trademark) and mood of quiet restraint, Last Flag Flying touches the heart at a deep level.

Compelling epic filmmaking.

The result is a stylish, inventive film that kept me intrigued, even as its story twisted so mightily I feared it might snap.

The essence of the London story is retained, with stouthearted Buck being annealed by adversity, overcoming brutality, confusion and loneliness and then responding to the kindness of Thornton to become the leader of the pack. And all that is accomplished with a soft touch. What we have here is the call of the mild

What rescues “Diaries” and its grimy, cracked-glass look is its firm grip on Stephen’s incremental awareness that he and his misery are not the center of the universe.

What makes "Fly Away Home" worth seeing is Ballard and Deschanel's beguiling imagery: the geese devotedly following Paquin around the farm as she tries to speak their language; a wry shot of Kinney dozing off in front of a televised wrestling match as Amy sneaks off to tend her eggs; and those spectacular flying episodes, which are quite unlike anything else on the horizon. [13 Sep 1996]

It’s a film that effectively combines two distinct — and very different — pleasures.

You can see clearly in the final scenes where “Creed IV” might be headed; you can also see that Jordan as a director shows promise well beyond this film. “Creed III” works as well as it needs to, and for the umpteenth film in a franchise, that’s more than enough.

Shyamalan’s latest cinematic confrontation with mortality and meaning, Knock at the Cabin, is among his best work.

Spirals into a twisted, unsettling finale that'll have you either rewinding several times or relinquishing your deposit to stomp on the tape. [31 Oct 1999]

In this, his feature directorial debut, Möller makes a whole lot out of very little: a whole lot of dramatic forcefulness out of the most simple and basic of elements, a solitary man struggling to do the right thing.

Not a perfect movie, but a truly moving one.

For the most part, the movie finds a family-friendly balance between stunning scenery, hold-your-breath action and animals having goofy conversations with each other.

Sollima’s style is cool and observational. There also are several stunts combined with camera movements that are genuinely jaw-dropping.

It's sweet and funny one moment, melodramatic and contrived the next. Blending the moods, and often holding the film together through sheer force of personality, Ryder gives her most affecting performance to date. [14 Dec 1990, p.26]

You watch “Glass Onion” relaxed, feeling like you’re in good hands; everyone on-screen is clearly having a wonderful time, so you can’t help but join right in. The plot’s a clever, multilayered caper, echoing the elaborate structure the movie is named for, and Johnson fills the script with funny name-dropping . . . and lets the cast happily ham it up.

If “Fast Six” is as much guilty-pleasure fun as this edition, directed within an inch of its life by Justin Lin (even the occasional subtitles are excitable), it’ll do just fine.

The most enjoyable mainstream comedy since "Sister Act." It's slim, it's superficial and it hedges every commercial bet in the book. But for some reason, none of this prevents it from being a whole lotta fun. [1 Oct 1993, p.D16]

Filmed in sepia tones to give it period flavor, infused with a sense of unrelieved tension and paranoia, and climaxing with a furious gunbattle, Anthropoid is a gripping picture.

Achingly sad and dismayingly familiar.

Ingeniously using his low budget to address his ambitions, Johnson has directed, co-written (and starred in) a unique science-fiction film.

Raimi can’t resist letting things get wildly over the top at times (there’s a lot of blood and vomit in this movie), but ultimately Send Help is a fascinating study of what happens when a power dynamic suddenly shifts — and when a skilled and charismatic actor is given space to try something entirely new.

Director Ma has made a quietly merciless picture, a horror movie, really, about a decent man, an ordinary man, left alone, bereft, embittered, ruined by his act of decency.

The likable tale of a real-life friendship, Green Book lets us spend two hours in the company of two electric actors.

Is it as good as the book? No. Did it make me happy? Oh yes, and how nice to be reminded what a gift a joyful rom-com can be.

Under the steady direction of John Frankenheimer, the movie's most memorable scenes involve the beasts' half-human limitations, their blind allegiance to "father" Moreau, and their discovery of the painful implants he uses to control them. They often make up for what was the chief shortcoming in Wells' original: its thin plot. [23 Aug 1996]

Angelopoulos remains faithful to his oeurve with Eternity and a Day. A slow journey through remembrance and repentance, the film's haunting message is told with a transcendent trickery that blends past and present into single scenes. [18 Jun 1999]

Despite the miscasting of the central role and quite a lot of lackluster dialogue, the story proves again to be almost foolproof. The fight sequences are explosive, the physical production is impressive, and the supporting performances are full of juice.

What seems like a meandering comedy of police ineptitude eventually tightens into a gripping character study that defies genre conventions.

The film goes on longer than it needs to, and as with so many in its genre, its director loses control by the third act. But “Blink Twice” is a promising debut that’s haunting for its performances (Ackie gives a vivid, vulnerable star turn; Tatum finds, behind his good-guy smile, an eeriness he’s never shown on-screen; Geena Davis pops up to steal a few scenes, as is her right) and for its feminist sensibility.

It’s an agreeably generic mishmash of every old-guys-pull-one-last-heist movie you’ve ever seen.

Who emerges as the winner of this “Civil War”? The audience. The picture delivers in a big, big way.

Numerous fine performances carry the film, with Oldman's Jackie as the standout. [21 Sep 1990, p.24]

It's trashy to the bone, but director Ernest Dickerson targets just the right tone for tension and comic relief, and keeps the whole thing rolling in Grand Guignol style. It may be disposable, but "Demon Knight" is never boring. It's consistently hilarious and just outrageous enough to make Gaines spin happily in his grave. [13 Jan 1995, p.H26]

Its message is of a young woman’s empowerment, and of how love can save a family — and if the special effects sometimes overwhelm that message (such as a glorious field of flowers that takes flight in a colorful frenzy), it rings through loud and clear by the end.

A surprisingly sweet-spirited picture about a man’s redemption and a boy’s initiation into the ways of the world.

It’s a raunchy comedy, with a plot that ends up hinging on a very R-rated video. And, most surprising of all, it’s also a conventional and rather sweet rom-com.

None of these stories feel monumental, and all of them resolve themselves neatly in a quarter-hour or so. But they have a kindness to them; a way of seeing people as they are, with their flaws and their goodness.

Serkis again proves that in the highly specialized realm of performance-capture acting, he has no peer.

It’s the trio that gives this story liftoff, thanks to spectacular performances from Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez as friends who have seen each other through their best and worst moments.

Nocturnal Animals is, I think, a beautiful mess, but I might have to watch it again to be sure.

The 42-year-old Assayas demonstrates an assured light touch here, drawing expert comic performances from Cheung, Richard and Ogier while using a 16mm hand-held camera to lend the film a live, experimental quality. It dovetails neatly with a surreal and quite hilarious ending that carries the technique - and Vidal's cinematic pretensions - to their logical conclusion. [26 Sept 1997]

Hunter Killer grabs the audience by the throat and speeds ahead while disbelief wallows helplessly in its bubbly wake.

If The Eagle Huntress sounds familiar, that’s because the outline of a modern feminist epic is always there in the background. What’s surprising is how fresh and charming the movie manages to be.

From the start, Bottle Rocket isn't about creating a full-throttle commercial story. It weaves a beguiling web of comedy, pathos and crime. Other debut features have gone down this road, but director Anderson is amazingly at ease with the set-up.

It’s a remarkable story, told in a movie that doesn’t always quite live up to it; except for a few crucial scenes, The Zookeeper’s Wife feels a bit too soft-focus for the devastating story it tells.

Whichever side you come down on, Johns’ and Squires’ low-key performances are impressive (Johns won Best Actor at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival), and the technological/red-tape hurdles their characters face feel stingingly accurate.

Florid but warmhearted — much like the man at its center — The Happy Prince is a haunting portrait of the aftermath of betrayal; of how the master of comedy became a tragedy.

In F9, bonkers on top of bonkers results in a truly delightful and vividly sensorial time at the movies.

Though The Infiltrator breaks no new ground in its storytelling, it is nonetheless a riveting piece of work.

Even with deep-seated problems that they may or may not be able to overcome, this is a couple worth rooting for. And — heartfelt, sarcastic and funny; tinged with love, loss and healing — Band Aid is, too.

Candles illuminate faces in the dark; a curving staircase looms like a shadow. And the actors pitch their roles perfectly: Kidman’s breathy calm; Farrell’s charm, just hinting at something dark within it; Fanning’s way of prettily arranging herself, showing off Alice’s newfound power; Dunst’s quiet melancholy.

This is easily the best “Trek” movie since “Khan,” giving the rebooted franchise ample reason to proceed at warp speed.

Already nicknamed "This Is Spinal Rap," this clever fake-documentary should delight both those who love rap music and those who feel it's been given a free ride by music critics for far too long. [17 Jun 1994, p.E3]

There’s nothing remotely fresh about Juror #2, but that’s what makes it fresh — it’s simply a story about neither heroes nor saints, but a group of people trying hard to do the right thing.

The frenetic style suggests the influence of Richard Lester's British comedies, but the storyline and the use of rock music suggests that Coppola may have influenced Mike Nichols' "The Graduate," which was released one year later. [14 Jan 1999]

With its ever-so-earnest desire to shed light on the complex social issues of gang influence in Los Angeles, South Central is a film that's good - or at least, easily recommendable - in spite of itself. [06 Nov 1992, p.27]

Through a deft combination of physical comedy, teenage angst and small-scale exploration of a fascinating premise, “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” remains smartly committed to the emotional lives of its characters and their intermingled fates.

Life, as a character in Babes points out, isn’t always like a Nora Ephron movie, but it’s a pleasure to watch these two stumble toward their own happy ending.

It may not add up in the end, but it's fun while it lasts. [01 Oct 1993, p.D14]

While the film’s formula gets repetitive, little revelations peppered throughout keep it engaging.

Barker has a knack for jump scares — and for making a wildly fanciful story feel real.

It’s a nice message, told with charm aplenty. And as always, the Pixar magicians create a wonderfully populated world.

Shot in stark black and white, the picture’s sense of place and time is strong — pungently so.

It’s hard to get too excited about Sing, which takes a bit too long to travel its familiar path, but it’s also quite impossible to dislike it.

Stronger, ultimately, leaves its audience feeling a little stronger; we fall with Jeff, and we stand with him.

With the kind of dignity rarely found in movies today, Bertolucci has tried - if only with mixed success - to address the things that really matter. [27 May 1994, p.D3]

The bottom line, for any movie that purports to be a thrill ride, is whether the end result is thrilling — and I’d give a definite yes to that.

It's doubtful that any variation on Finney's story could be called definitive. There's an inexhaustible supply of targets; we could have a new one every year or so. But this one certainly has its creepy moments. [18 Feb 1994, p.D3]

The Accountant delivered a dependable ‘90s-style throwback action thriller and “The Accountant 2” is much the same, though it embraces a looser, more amusing tone, while playing in a story sandbox that looks like our world, with our issues: immigration, human trafficking, organized crime.

Gore and guffaws attend this very dark horror comedy in roughly equal measure.

Roman J. Israel, Esq., isn’t as good as the performance at its center, but perhaps that’s inevitable.

DaCosta whisks us through the story with plenty of wit, particularly from Kamala’s family.

The Little Stranger is a haunted-house movie, but not one with cheap scares. In fact there are few scares at all — it’s mostly just an atmosphere of lingering, musty dread — and horror-movie fans should be warned that it’s all quite subtle. But it’s haunting, in its quiet way.

It’s a pleasant Christmas-season offering; both mild (read: family-friendly) and sweet.

The movie is less interesting than the career of Nicolas Cage, but it’s very funny at moments, and Cage and Pascal have great chemistry.

White Fang is one of the best family films around right now. The violence is not too intense, the harshness of the frontier is downplayed without being ignored, and the wildlife footage is reminiscent of the best Disney documentaries. [18 Jan 1991, p.22]

Studio 666 is good B-movie fun! Time will tell if it deserves the same cult status as heavy-metal horror classics like “Trick or Treat” (1986) or “Black Roses” (1988), but there are still plenty of midnight thrills to be had.

Director/co-screenwriter Scott Derrickson generally keeps the massive enterprise moving smoothly along. The trip’s the trip here, and it’s well worth taking.