T-Rex is ultimately about a remarkable (and likable) young person finding her personal power despite pressure from all sides.

A unique and satisfying new documentary.

At more than two hours, it’s simply too long. However, thanks to Collette’s work, “Hereditary” is a horror movie that really sinks its claws into you.

The laughs are sometimes bigger than expected, and so are the emotions stirred by the bittersweet finale.

Unlike the cheapie late-1970s Mexican exploitation movie Survive!, this sobering account of a 1972 Andes plane crash has a spiritual quality that makes the tougher aspects of the story easier to handle. [15 Jan 1993, p.16]

Get Out will scare you, make you laugh and perhaps make you uncomfortable. It’s supposed to.

A traditional documentary with solemn voice-over, career timeline and critical assessments this is not. But while a few more facts along those lines would have been welcome...this visual love letter nevertheless conveys Kirk’s spirit and music well.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ particular brand of dark comedy can be an acquired taste, and his latest, the gritty conspiracy thriller Bugonia, pushes that taste to the limit.

In channeling his creative resources toward the sound of “Undertone,” Tuason conjures a lot out of a simple concept — a girl in a house. The marriage of this sound design to thoughtful, carefully placed camera movements makes for a horror film that’s a suspenseful slow burn.

In more careless hands, Middle Man’s deranged farce could have resulted in an unchecked, undisciplined movie with nothing to say. But beneath the roller-coaster madness here is an earthbound terror that art is meant to reveal.

Ultimately, Moving On is about friendship, and who better than Grace and Frankie to show us that?

The Man in the Moon isn't likely to replace Mockingbird in the eyes of any of its fans, but it's far superior to such recent Mulligan mistakes as Clara's Heart and Kiss Me Goodbye. It's the most careful, sensitive work he's done since the 1970s. [04 Oct 1991, p.23]

Cruise valiantly throws everything he’s got into the movie — including a lot of his trademark Very Intense Running — and the result mostly works, but it feels like a franchise that’s winding down. Here’s hoping a few thrills have been saved for “Part Two.”

Raoul Walsh's lengthy, relatively gritty 1945 war movie stars Errol Flynn as the leader of a paratrooper group that goes after a key Japanese target. [02 Sep 1999]

Harrison is more interested in teasing than frightening an audience to death, but he still manages to deliver several strong jolts. So does the cast of first-rate actors, who obviously had a marvelous time turning themselves into goons, cannibals, gargoyles and ghouls. [04 May 1990, p.28]

The role is built for a tour-de-force performance, and Curtis delivers. [17 Sep 2000]

The performances are first rate, particularly Rains’ work in the lead role.

Director Hill usually makes rough 'n' ready films about men in action ("48 HRS," "Extreme Prejudice"). His change-of-pace 1993 Western, "Geronimo: An American Legend," caught many off guard. "Wild Bill" continues to exhibit this maturing filmmaker while retaining the boisterous tone of Hill's earlier films.

Based on the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, two late-1940s serial killers who conned and murdered several widows who took out lonely-hearts ads, writer-director Leonard Kastle's only feature film to date is one of the least glamorous couple-on-the-run movies ever made. [05 Dec 1992, p.C5]

A tidy if bloodstained little thriller with a clever idea at its core.

It not only feels like a transposed stage piece, it plays like a workshop performance that may not have found its final form. But the actors keep it lively and darkly funny, and the picture rarely feels stagey. [07 Oct 1994, p.D31]

It’s chilly in Oslo, and in this movie; the better to sneak up on you quietly, like an unexpected shiver.

The pieces still come together to reveal a thorny portrait of how little a push it takes to create a villain.

It's light and fizzy and fun without once calling attention to the fact that a lot of hard work went into it (Gerald Scarfe's sharp production design keeps it from looking quite like any other Disney cartoon). [27 June 1997, p.F1]

Alda brings admirable dimension to his small role, and once again Huston proves that she could read one word of dialogue and assume full command of the screen. [20 Aug 1993, p.D14]

Reynolds is playing what amounts to the straight man to Jackson’s bad boy, and the back-and-forth between the two, with his character stewing and steaming in exasperation at the killer’s taunts, gives The Hitman’s Bodyguard its special fizz.

If there is any problem with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, it's the fact that analyzing the film is potentially more fun than the film itself. But that's OK, because it means Craven has put enough thought into his work to make it worth thinking about. [14 Oct 1994, p.H40]

Most of all, you see Roberts, who takes hold of this movie like a lamppost in the winter darkness. That huge Julia Roberts smile turns up here, but it’s haunting.

Deschamps’ camera captures the emotional roller coaster Redzepi rode during that tumultuous time and shows his conflicted relationship with fame. He dismisses its importance but also clearly craves it. The end result is a revealing portrait of an artist wholly dedicated to his art.

It's absolutely fascinating while it's happening, but it ends so abruptly that a reel seems to be missing. [03 Mar 1995, p.H31]

Mustang could easily have been a pure heartbreaker, but it isn’t. It is surprisingly nuanced and even something of an adventure tale about a fight for freedom and identity.

The character is manipulative, unsympathetic and quite depraved, but Caine plays him with such wicked glee that it's impossible to resist watching and vicariously enjoying his descent into corruption. [23 Mar 1990, p.26]

Do I think we need more reheated IP that uses our collective nostalgia as catnip to cover up the fact that we didn’t actually care that much about the original film? Nah, of course not. But if you’re gonna make it, make it well, make it fun and make it stand on its own two narrative feet. This update pulls that off, and with a bloody high body count to boot.

In the vast canon of King-derived movies, “Tower” belongs in the upper ranks.

An ordinary house cat and a basement spider become ferocious adversaries of tiny Grant Williams in director Jack Arnold's vision of an upside-down world. [31 Oct 2010, p.H6]

“Turn off your brain, and let your heart do da talking,” advised Rocky, and he was right. This franchise just might go on forever, and my heart kind of hopes that it does.

The flowers in Flowers are touchstones, reminders of a person, but more significantly of the conflicted feelings shared by the three main women in the picture.

The Fall Guy isn’t a perfect movie; it’s longer and a bit more self-aware than it needs to be, and not every joke lands. But it has that rare quality in a big-studio film: a sense of fun.

Everybody involved seems to be having a blast making this latest “SpongeBob” a funny, fast-paced pleasure.

Its evocation of a specific place, California’s Coachella Valley, is indelible.

Feig, who’s made a specialty of stories featuring unlikely female duos, knows exactly what he’s doing here in the classy-B-movie genre, and “The Housemaid” ticks along like oatmeal-toned clockwork — a little scary, a little silly and very popcorn-appropriate.

The logistics of this outdoor adventure may not be entirely convincing, but the characters usually are. That's a rarity in this kind of picture, and Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin rise to the challenge with some of the best work they've done in a long time. [26 Sep 1997]

This is the movie that Steven Spielberg's Money Pit should have been. The mind-blowing ending makes it a must-see. [31 Oct 1999]

Filmed in Oregon and Montana by a first-rate crew, The River Wild puts you in the hot seat of its white-water climax, and through a combination of deft camera work, snappy editing and genuine derring-do, the stellar cast is right there with you. Even when you know it's filmmaking trickery, you'll wish you'd brought a wet suit. [30 Sep 1994, p.H3]

Schepisi may not have found the perfect screen equivalent for John le Carre's world of romance and deception. But his mixed success is certainly a treat for the eye. [21 Dec 1990, p.24]

The fun here is in the little moments the actors find, and in the way that Waititi, within the massive machine that is a studio superhero movie, brings out a looseness and playfulness in the performances.

Akira offers moments as eerily powerful as anything I've seen in animation. (Highlights include the kiddies bringing toy animals to sinister marauding life, and Tetsuo's nightmares of disintegration.) Unfortunately, those moments are badly undermined by a weak script, a facile scenario and some wretchedly screechy voice-acting. [11 Jan 1990, p.G4]

Gordon-Levitt carries the movie, and without flash or overt dramatics, overshadows everyone else in it.

The style is busy, Affleck laying a heavy hand on the ’80s references and music cues, Robert Richardson’s cinematography mimicking the amateurish style of someone with a brand-new camcorder. But the pace flies, and the actors make the film wildly engaging.

Oleanna the movie remains faithful to the charged 1992 play in Mamet's original Off Broadway production. It features outstanding performances by a pair of expert actors. And Andrzej Sekula's beautiful cinematography firmly inserts their encounters into the musty, hallowed interiors of an Ivy League college. [04 Nov 1994, p.i34]

Call me a sucker for white-trash humor, but it's mercilessly funny. [19 Sep 2003]

Sometimes too many ideas collide into each other — a zippy back-and-forth structure in the screenplay gets abandoned, and the pacing in the final act feels off — but Birds of Prey is never boring and often great fun.

It’s all quite wistfully romantic, and mostly winningly so, despite the sometimes wise-way-beyond-their-years dialogue and not always plausible plot.

A charming, moving and over-too-soon portrait of a country, and of what it means to have a longer than expected life.

Sometimes, miscasting can be very interesting, in the hands of an actor who knows what she’s doing — and Kidman is definitely that. Here, she creates a nuanced and believable version of Ball (and of “Lucy,” the character Ball played on her sitcom “I Love Lucy,” though we don’t see much of her), meticulously introducing us to a serious, thoughtful woman obsessed with the details of comedy, who understood what it meant to have power at a time when few women did.

Adams, six Academy Award nominations later, still sings and dances like a Technicolor dream, and this time around she gets to have some fun as not only the ultra-sweet Giselle, whose voice sounds like butterflies and sunrises, but an evil alter ego.

Ridley is the picture’s real find. Her Rey is fearless, forceful, resourceful, and with a hidden side to her personality that slowly manifests itself and will surely be more deeply explored in the sequels.

An outrageously dark comedy that defies death, laughs at funerals, and lends a whole new meaning to the phrase maintaining one's appearance. [31 July 1992, p.3]

The Moment works best when examining the creative tensions between people with different agendas, the small passive-aggressive tensions and second-guessing generating the ripples of conflict. But perhaps Zamiri felt those stakes were too small.

In other words: yes, it’s fun.

The horror is all the more effective for having sneaked up on us quietly.

One of the least classifiable, most fascinating horror films of the past decade. [07 Dec 1990, p.28]

Even viewers put off by the old Hanna-Barbera animation style may want to give this one a chance. The figures are as bland as ever, but the computer-enhanced universe they inhabit couldn't be more lively. Light, goofy, fun to watch, it's a perfect summer movie for the little kids and the adults who accompany them. [6 July 1990, p.20]

The pace is swift, archival clips are well-chosen and conspiracy theories pile up in a way that seems intentionally funny.

Kaufman can't raise the script far above the pulp material on which it's based, but it's a more intelligent adaptation than this summer's blockbuster movie of Crichton's "Jurassic Park." It's also a more interesting consideration of racial-cultural conflicts than such major-studio gaffes as "Mr. Baseball" and "Falling Down." [30 July 1993, p.D3]

Dear ol' auntie is not what she seems, and "House" turns into a horror-fantasy comedy that grows increasingly absurd as the body-count rises, provoking more laughs than fear with over-the-top scenes involving severed limbs, a ravenous piano, attacking mattresses and a cat with telekinetic powers. [27 Nov 2009, p.E16]

Definitely not a documentary. Still, just try not to get a little choked up when Custer, leaving to his death, tells his wife, "Walking through life with you ma'am has been a very gracious thing." [19 Apr 2005, p.E1]

On a visual level, Lumet states this case so well that he doesn't need to hammer it home verbally. [27 Apr 1990, p.3]

The first-time director and co-writer, John Dahl, has a veteran's assurance. He knows exactly what he wants from the actors, how to stage the tricky action, how to keep the plot comprehensible, how to use the Nevada/Arizona locations to suggest the aridness of the characters' lives. He doesn't break any new ground with Kill Me Again, but he does establish himself as a filmmaker to watch. [04 May 1990, p.3]

Nobody in this movie would be out of place in a glamorous old-Hollywood drama, which is kind of what On Swift Horses is trying to be — and, most of the time, coming pretty close.

The teenage, first-time actor certainly holds his own with the experienced likes of Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Jason Leigh. But at the same time, he gives the impression of being just slightly disengaged from the part, almost as though he’s spectator at the kid’s life.

Rylance (“Bridge of Spies”) anchors it all, creating a character with unexpected layers, like a suit with an elegant silk lining you didn’t realize was there.

The lessons of compassion and empathy are profound, and remind us that tales of good triumphing over evil are evergreen, even when it doesn’t seem to be reflected in the world around us.

When Queer wanders in its own direction in the shaky latter half and captivating conclusion, it may lose some watchers in this descent into dreamlike despair. Still, it crafts a critical last paint stroke in its delicate portrait of desire.

Blending archival footage, actor re-creation and special effects (sometimes all in the same shot), [Sokurov] creates a sense of specific place and time — and, in doing so, crafts a sort of cinematic ode to art.

This small-focus film proves that Alec Baldwin can be convincing as a sensitive New Age kinda guy instead of the gloating scumbags he often portrays. And it suggests Hollywood can occasionally adapt a hit play to celluloid without contorting it beyond recognition. [10 Jul 1992, p.20]

The message of Bad Moms is that being a mother today is impossible... But it’s a hammer brought down with a light, goofy touch (maybe too light; the male characters could use some punching-up), with a gleefully charming central trio that I enjoyed hanging out with.

It's so downbeat that it's not likely to make a dime. Nevertheless, Rush is the most harrowing love story about a couple of drug addicts since the near-classic Panic in Needle Park. [10 Jan 1992, p.21]

The action sequences, both on the ground and in space, are rousingly staged. But the losses incurred in those sequences are sobering. The stakes in the “Star Wars” rebellion are high indeed.

What we have here is mostly a straight-up, mildly raunchy rom-com, where everyone learns lessons and gets a happy ending. But Shankman gives it all an agreeable bounce, and Henson (better known for dramatic roles, in “Hidden Figures,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and TV’s “Empire”) zestfully dives into the comedy.

None of this makes Into the West genuinely unique, or even lastingly memorable, but by refusing to sugar-coat its story or characters the way so many family films do, this is a welcomed adventure that offers enchantment without blinding children to life's difficult passages. [17 Sep 1993, p.D3]

This is Anderson soaring a bit, playing with the very nature of storytelling and performing, unafraid to let us get a little lost in the process. What’s real, and what’s the play? I wasn’t always sure, but I look forward to watching it again, to get lost one more time.

Wonka is the kind of movie that’s full of moments of enchantment.

Frot’s performance, as a woman so caught up in the joy of music that she doesn’t quite understand how bad she is, is particularly delightful, and often quite moving.

It’s not overtly radical, but the way it showcases how weird each member of the family can be — from Tina’s pseudosexual love of zombies to Gene’s obsession with performing bad music in terrible costumes — and how the rest love them anyway is quietly revolutionary.

A classy thriller with a notable period atmosphere and intelligent use of the macabre. [07 May 1992, p.3]

With only a few lapses during its opening scenes, it's a modest, intelligent exploration of the differences that can threaten a genuine attraction between two people. It doesn't soft-pedal the problems, particularly for a young man who already is set in his ways, or an older woman who never will fit in with the social and cultural pretensions of his extended family. [19 Oct 1990, p.31]

One of the movie's chief charms is Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour's lyrical score, which almost suggests an anti-"Lion King" approach. The music isn't in a hurry to dramatize its story or make epic statements. The same might be said of writer-director Michel Ocelot's delicate animation style and his handling of small moments. [30 Jun 2000]

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a gentle treat, sure to leave any book-loving viewer happy.

Thunderbolts*, one of the best MCU movies in years, delivers a much-needed jolt to the struggling franchise.

An emotional authenticity courses through the veins of Suncoast, the filmmaking debut of Laura Chinn.

It’s a bunch of plastic blocks that have an adventure, and it’s basically insane; not quite as pleasantly so as the first movie (the element of astonished surprise isn’t there), but hey, that’s a high bar. Everything is … oh, damn it, there I go again.

The young hero of the marvelous "Kirikou and the Sorceress" is back and displaying his lifesaving wits against both supernatural and environmental foes. Four stories derived from traditional African folk tales have been strikingly animated, with just enough scares to keep small eyes glued to the screen. [11 May 2006, p.H16]

The movie's larger-than-life tone is mostly justified by the quality of the performances and the theatricality of the settings. [29 Oct 1993, p.D24]

The CGI is off the leash. The manufactured chaos is unrelenting. Monsters punching monsters. The pyramids are peril. Awesome deconstruction there.

There’s plenty here to enjoy.

Directed by Carlos Saldanha, who co-directed "Ice Age," the film feels visually richer than its predecessor (thanks to all that plain white ice melting) but has the same brand of uncomplicated all-ages charm.

It is the scenes in a Buenos Aires safe house between Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) and Mossad agent Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), the leader of the abduction team, where “Operation Finale” departs from usual espionage-movie scenarios.