If you’ve come to The Devil Wears Prada 2 looking for laughs, be prepared for a feathery fringe of existential angst on the side. Yet I'd argue that that makes The Devil Wears Prada 2 more pleasurable than less.

Armed or not, Reeves is the weapon that can go off at any time. That's why Street Kings, though it isn't a great movie, is a pretty damn cool Keanu Reeves movie, one that on the Reevesian action scale measures somewhere between "Whoa" and "Wow."

Sassy but never cynical, Mikey is first seen, through some cunningly simple special effects, as a kind of hot-rodding sperm cruising up the Fallopian tube to the tune of the Beach Boys' I Get Around. [20 Nov 1989, p.98]

Emma Bolger is -- no other word for it -- magical in the role...In her way she encapsulates In America's virtues. It's a realistic movie, but one that's always aware that transformative hope may be just around the corner.

Summer of 85 delights in romantic excess, ending up as an almost literal evocation of one of the songs on its era-specific soundtrack.

The surprises of The Life Ahead are the gentle kind: There are no wild revelations or transformations, no hyper-dramatic turnabouts. But the movie has a quietly enjoyable power.

Beautiful Creatures is good fun and I want to know what happens next for Lena the teenaged witch.

A carnival of bang-up stunt scenes. which Richard Rush presents with marvelous subtlety.

This feels the way a lot of us are living now -- on desperation's dull yet still cutting edge.

Almost every actor in it outplays the material they're working with, particularly Jason Bateman. Horrible Bosses would be worth seeing if only for the pleasure of watching him delicately bat indelicate comedy around.

Your enjoyment of Black Bear will depend on your tolerance for cerebral game-playing for art’s sake. But if the movie is sometimes a little too hung up on its somewhat tortured premise, it still offers some subtle, dusky pleasures. Chief among them is Plaza’s performance.

Coppola brings the old spook story alive -- well, undead -- as a luscious, infernal romance.

At its best it perfectly expresses the fears and loathings of kids who came of age in the late '60's; at its worst Animal House revels in abject silliness. The hilarious highs easily compensate for the puerile lows.

Muppet magic remains a bewildering succession of wonderful bits.

The results are unique in the contemporary cinema -- behavioral honesty and intensity raised to a flash point. If this be comedy, it is so only in the nominal sense that no one dies at the end of the picture.

This Mafia tale doesn’t aspire to the heights of a "Godfather" or the epic sprawl of "The Sopranos." Vromen and cowriter Morgan Land are content to bring subtle shadings to the tale of a strange man in a dirty business.

If the ending of Eleanor Bergstein's script is too neat and inspirational, the rough energy of the film's song and dance does carry one along, past the whispered doubts of better judgment. [14 Sept 1987]

It’s not just the story of a mother and daughter, but a tapestry of a whole community. Peoples, who grew up in the Fort Worth area herself, has filled her movie with characters and details that feel lived in.

Attention must be paid to movie allure, in a star like Depp and his current harem. Angelique may be the only satanist among the women here, but they're all bewitching.

Storytelling efficiency is one of Miss Sloane’s most effective calling cards — that, and Chastain.

This is a picture Beatty has wanted to make for years, and if the movie isn’t the achievement it should be, it’s at least entertaining in fits and starts.

It seemed to me as I left the theater that A Christmas Tale was a little too jumpy for its own good, with too many characters and plot points hastily interwoven. But I've come think that it is faithful to its essential purpose, which is to disprove the Tolstoyan dictum that unhappy families are each miserable in their own ways.

The film, which had a troubled history and a humongous reported price tag of $120 million, could have been a fiasco; instead, it smartly remythologizes this indispensable Hollywood icon. [01 Jul 1996 Pg.65]

Mann is a fantastic technician, but his perpetual coolness is a liability. He seems to want us to understand this complex, deeply private man, one who was both revered and reserved. But in the end, he’s more interested in Enzo Ferrari’s mystique than in his humanity.

As for the yellow handkerchief of the title, I'd have dismissed it as a cheesy device if it weren't for the fact that I'm still cherishing the eloquence of Hurt's silent marvel when he finally sees it, fluttering across the gray Southern sky.

Roughest spots in the original versions have been sandpapered or excised, the pressroom’s whiskey cynicism toned down to half of one per cent, but the comedy still has enough Hecht-MacArthur kick to make later interpolations smell synthetic.

Nair sleekly manages the story’s thriller aspects, especially the kidnapping. But this is a character study, and she has found some superb actors to fill it.

Those opening trailers are hilarious and devastatingly acute, but the rest of Stiller's film could be more a deconstruction of comedy than a display of it. The brain gets the joke; the ribs are untickled.

Enough of Curtis' lovably crazed characters do succeed in finding love in all the unlikely places that you leave the theater with your heart humming happily. He has his dark -- well, darkish -- side under control. Which is to say that he is an Englishman, well practiced in masking pain and absurdity and descents into sheer goofiness with mannerly behavior, sly irony and stiff upper lips.

This is an ambitious picture, filled with grand ideas. Parts of it are wondrously beautiful; some sections are so mawkishly morbid they might make you groan. But at least you won’t be bored.

Certainly it's the lightest and brightest -- everyone is still chaste, but the movie is actually sexy in parts. It appears to have embraced its own sense of camp and is consistently funny in an intentional way. For the first time, I found myself curious to see what comes next.

Derek Cianfrance’s based-on-true-life caper Roofman feels like a mainstream studio movie from 10 or 15 years ago, and that’s a good thing.

As played by Rodriguez, Wise and Snow, these women embrace one another’s differences and help ease the way through tough times. The city is theirs for the taking, a backdrop for their raunchy jokes, furtive sexual encounters and procurement of various feel-good substances.

Luhrmann, an Australian who pretty much let his camera go nuts in the egregiously overrated "Strictly Ballroom", here makes reasonable, imaginative decisions that are, arguably, true to Shakespeare.

Major League doesn't try too hard or aim too high, but it is pretty funny. With its stock characters, breezy dialogue, dense ambience and instinct for easy emotions, it could serve as the pilot for a pay-cable sitcom. The film's tone is acerb, but its climax is as predictably uplifting as Rocky's and as surefire effective as Damn Yankees'.

An American Pickle is a real movie, and it’s delightful.

This is less a straight-up biopic than a meditation on the texture of one vibrant but troubled life; Zellweger goes just far enough into Garland’s pathology of suffering without fetishizing it.

Beautiful young people, stunning scenery, and—did I mention?—unreally gorgeous tomatoes: none of these are negligible movie pleasures, and You, Me & Tuscany—directed by Kat Coiro and written by husband-and-wife team Ryan Engle and Kristin Engle—serves them up unapologetically.

As The Commuter rattles on, the plot becomes more and more implausible — though again, believability isn’t what we’ve signed on for here.

Everything Everywhere is fringey and wayward, too often frenetic only for craziness’ sake. But Yeoh anchors it. When the story around her flails, she gives you plenty to hang onto.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday may be at times unfocused, but it’s never boring. And as always, Daniels rounds up the finest performers and gives them great characters to dig into.

Even if [Garland] offers no clear solutions to this crisis, he throws his full weight into exploring it. Just be warned that the path he cuts is a thorny one.

A bittersweet feel-good movie is perhaps the best kind.

Savvy family entertainment.

Statham is the real thing, and he’s key to the effectiveness of this good-natured and often highly ridiculous adaptation of Steve Alten’s 1997 sci-fi potboiler.

Mother! is ambitious and dorky, like a Hieronymus Bosch painting redone as swirl-art. It’s entertaining to watch, because it’s not easy to see where it’s going — though you might feel a little underwhelmed when you discover where it ends up. The main reason to keep watching is Lawrence, receptive and radiant.

Another Saturday Night Live skit is turned into a winning movie. And this one has a little heart. [2 Aug 1993]

Out of a borrowed and preposterous premise, Audiard has fashioned a film that is more haunting--and more compellingly watchable--than it has any right to be.

One can still appreciate the professionalism with which Levin crafted them and the larky spirits with which the performers force the suspension of incredulity.

Farrell's work as Syracuse is understated to the point that some may find it unremarkable -- but it's a beautifully confident performance, an irony given that he constructs his portrayal of Syracuse around the concept of humility.

This is a sort-of comedy about personal trauma, a delicate line to walk—and Victor mostly pulls it off.

It’s simply a movie that makes you feel welcome.

It’s a fun, open-hearted picture, and even if it lacks the wistful subtlety of the original, it ends up on the same landing note: the people we love best are always worth fighting for.

[Hargitay]'s unruly secrets reflect the uncomfortable truths that are so often hidden in our own histories.

Rather than juicing each element to blockbuster volume, Clooney has delivered it in the tone of a memorial lecture, warm and ambling, given by one of the distinguished academics he put in his movie.

The movie is finally predictable, but it has connected with a generation that believes it has been saddled with the thankless job of raising its own parents.

Lemmons – who has directed some splendid pictures over the years, among them "Eve’s Bayou" and "The Caveman’s Valentine" – is fully alive to both the danger and beauty of the landscape of the American South – even the shape of a tree, craggy and twisted or lush with leaves, could be either a warning or a welcome. Erivo shines through it all, giving us a glimpse into the mind of a steadfast woman of purpose.

It has the slapdash air of a movie that was a little more fun to shoot than to watch. To say that Blades is a little sharper than "Kicking and Screaming," but not nearly so smart as the best parts of "Talladega," is like taste-testing a Big Mac against a Whopper and a Wendy's Classic Double.

The story is almost embarrassingly simple. But the picture slides by pleasantly enough like a stream in a Budd Boetticher movie, a calm place to take off your boots and set a spell as you reflect on the true meaning of manhood, the necessity of overcoming hidden heartache and the pleasures of finally, in your sunset years, succumbing to the love of a good woman.

This is an effective and unsettling piece of filmmaking, partly because Gyllenhaal has one of the most sympathetic faces in movies today--it's haunted and haunting.

Ambitious, sweet-spirited.

It often feels less than dynamic, perhaps a little inert. But then, sometimes it’s what a movie doesn’t show that matters. We all think we know the truth of Bruce Springsteen. Doesn’t he belong to us, after all? Deliver Me from Nowhere shows us another truth, the sound of a ghost captured on a length of tape.

Salaam Bombay! deserves a broad audience, not just to open American eyes to plights of hunger and homelessness abroad, but to open American minds to the vitality of a cinema without rim shots and happy endings.

The story never runs completely off the rails and is, in any event, just a pretext for a lot of very sharp badinage by Jason Smilovic--a screenwriter who would have been at home writing for Cary Grant--for yards of terrific movie acting and for some well-timed direction by Paul McGuigan.

Harrelson rewards watching; he's no less potent at rest than when he explodes in calculated rage.

Adam Yauch, known as MCA, was both the founder of the group and guy whose vision helped hold it together for more than 20 years; he died in 2012, from parotid cancer, and though he’s present in spirit in Beastie Boys Story, you can’t help feeling that the whole thing would be a lot more fun, and smarter, if he were around.

An adoring tone and the familiar slo-mo, wide-angle baskebatics.

The good news is that Spinal Tap II mostly builds on the legacy of the earlier film, instead of just recycling its best jokes for nostalgia’s sake.

Blane's snooty friend Steff (Spader) could be a tired stereotype, but with his all-year tan, his hip-blase voice and hs view of high school as a "career," Steff becomes a recognizable character of any age: upscale slime in embryo. [3 Mar 1996, p.83]

A tangy frappe of a movie--preposterously comic, deliriously romantic, outrageously stylish in black-and-white.

Mockingjay Part 2 is a worthy conclusion to a series that’s meant so much to so many, made stars of its younger players and allowed more-established performers to shamelessly ham it up.

True to its grim prospectus, The Grey dwells in haunted machismo to the very end.

Existing in a self-contained universe, Scream 4 is its own remake (Screamake), sequel (shriekquel), parody and critique. Thus it taunts and pleases audiences, mocks and justifies itself and makes any review redundant.

As a one-off, it’s a featherweight delight, like the prettiest pink-and-white cake on the tea tray.

Writer-director Chloe Domont’s skillfully constructed debut feature Fair Play is neither a horror movie nor a corporate thriller, though it bears earmarks of both, with some dashes of erotic-thriller intrigue tossed in.

When Seeking took hold of me, completely and without warning, I was digging for tissues. It's a lovely surprise for the official start of summer.

You are never exactly bored by The Matrix Reloaded. But there is something alienating about it, maybe because it fails to fulfill its possibly loony intellectual aspirations.

This new Road House appears at a time when so much of our entertainment has been shrunk down to a manageable size. Even on the small screen, may its unruly spirit prevail.

Good--sometimes witty—suspense. [28 Jul 1997, p. 69]

Even though Boy Erased is well acted and thoughtful, there’s something vaguely disappointing about it.

It provides intimate glimpses of people usually seen, and then only briefly, as faces on a post-office wall or numbers in a cemetery.

I wish I found The Illusionist as pleasing to sit through (twice) as to write about. I'm glad there's a "new" "Tati" film to add to his small, important body of work, yet I wish that the creator of "The Triplets of Belleville" had made a true Chomet film instead. I'll be waiting for that, with a hope to be found nowhere in this handsome, airless movie.

In its best moments, Sierra Burgess, directed by Ian Samuels and written by Lindsey Beer, has the charm of a Shakespearean mistaken-identity gambol.

An action figure with a sweet core, Johnson can pump up the humanity of any franchise, whether he’s playing a stepdad who becomes a hero in Journey 2 or, as here, a stud soldier who treats Flint and Jaye like his grown children and shepherds them through peril. Following those younger Joes, the Retaliation audience is encouraged to clamber up on Johnson’s huge soldiers and go along for a pretty cool ride.

Perhaps they don't create quite enough deeply funny earthlings to go around, but a thoroughly meanspirited big-budget movie is always a treasurable rarity. And those little guys from far away are a hoot. [30 Dec 1996]

The Place Beyond the Pines can’t be said to be anyone’s movie but Cianfrance’s. Structured as a triptych, the movie is novelistic, earnest and somewhat exhausting — an ambitious effort that tries to be many things. And it is definitely something: a sprawling, engaging study in fathers, sons and sins.

On the basically farcical level where it chooses to stay, it is a funny and likable movie

The picture has a charming, low-key vibe that is, here and there, brushed with just a trace of adult melancholy. It’s good for kids, but maybe even better for adults who could use a little calming something.

All the actors rise or bend to the challenge, giving juicy performances and seemingly having a fine old time.

There is good, broad humor amid the very gross gore effects. And when the Living Impaired stalk our hero's home, it's a family reunion out of your bloodiest nightmares. [8 Feb 1993, p.83]

Given a budget that encourages their kinesthetic skills, the filmmakers tend to go on a bit, but it's mostly a kind of quick, glancing hipness that's being indulged here.

When else has the obscenity of child murder been the cause of such gravity and grace?

Because the emotional drama is so one-sided, I just can't love you.

With more sentiment and splash than the original’s sharp wit, Mr. Peabody & Sherman ends up teaching the same lesson as “Peabody’s Improbable History”: every dog should have a boy.

The hardest movies to review are the ones you respect and admire but don't love and also - and this is the crucial part - aren't angered by. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful is just that sort of film.

Quibbles aside, John Wick is the smartest display of the implacable but somehow ethical Reeves character since the "2008 Street Kings."

Inside Llewyn Davis is more deserving of a Grammy than an Oscar. Problematic movie, great album.

Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield may not be perfect, but it is alive, at least partly because of its perceptive, jaunty casting and fine performances.