More important, however, than the letter of the film is the spirit. It seizes a burning issue, and lets the sparks fall where they may.

Doesn't aim too high or strain too hard; it is at ease inhabiting its pretty, miniature realm.

No wonder adolescents have taken Repo Man for their own. Lifting its hood is like peering into a teen-ager's mind: miswired and noisy, Repo Man is capable of fast starts and amazing cornering. [4 Feb 1985]

Brideshead Revisited is untaxing, pleasant enough to watch. But I'm still waiting to be seriously discomfited by it.

So here's my second and final verdict on the movie: it's as captivating as its heroine.

A filmmaker can do a lot with this Sliding Doors-style idea; there’s also plenty that could send it careering off the rails. But Look Both Ways has a mild sweetness that makes it go down easy.

Even the weak moments are saved by Poitier, who invests his role with a subtle warmth.

Hustle works its smooth moves scene after scene and ends with a satisfying whoosh, something like the sound of a ball sweeping through the net after circling the hoop for a suspenseful second or two.

It's worth considering precisely whom the movie is meant for. It's not labeled as such, but It's Kind of a Funny Story is squarely aimed at young adults.

As transparent as this device is, Angels has elemental satisfactions in its blend of movie genre that could appeal to wide segments of the audience.

These two are both a little mad, and they’re made for each other; it takes this absurd mystery to make them see it. The screwball comedy is the truest and purest language of love. Like the song of lovebirds, it sounds like dizzy chatter—until you stop to really listen.

What takes Conviction out of the "Erin Brockovich" inspirational orbit - and gives it fresh interest - is the fact that Betty Anne is never portrayed as a fish suddenly taking brilliantly to judicial waters. Instead of being a legal savant, she's a persistent lunatic tilting at windmills for the sake of a familial love no one else can quite understand.

Perched at the restless midpoint of psychological and super-natural horror, She Dies Tomorrow is dotted with experimental flourishes: the screen is occasionally smeared with what looks like blood, though it might be an ecto-plasmic communiqué from another world. And there’s no tidy resolution — She Dies Tomorrow leaves a trail of jagged question marks in its wake.

The cluttered climax, in a Mother Bates cellar, explains little of the killers’ psychology; for that you have to read the book. But it does let Neeson assert his primacy as the cinema’s most graven, grieving, grievous senior citizen — a figure who doesn’t so much star in his films as haunt them. This ghost of a movie star is never more at home than when walking among the tombstones.

Somehow Neeson makes the ridiculous plausible. A mature, real man in an era of superhero fantasy, he radiates something rare in movie musclemen: a haunted gravity to match his outsize physique.

The Revenant is supposed to be relentless, though you may find it tiresome, the movie equivalent of tigers circling a tree so single-mindedly that they churn themselves into butter.

In a brief review in Time magazine this week, I gave Dan a gentleman's B-. Let me try to remember why. Because the pressure of keeping his ardor secret turns Dan pleasingly cranky.

Without Duvall's rich, supremely skilled performance, this slim period piece wouldn't amount to much.

It's pointed, a piece of domestic comedy that starts with the unappealing sight of an overgrown slacker hunched on a faux leather couch in a dingy basement and subtly winds its way into a tender, wise and completely delightful film about family.

The movie’s lo-fi vibe is part of its charm.

The perfect summation of Hollywood at this moment - an apotheosis of American male infantilism - and, on its own, a most likable mess.

It is impressive enough that Paltrow holds your eye as a parade of lovelies and virtuoso actresses (Greta Scacchi, Polly Walker, Juliet Stevenson) march past. But her finest trick is to provide a comic subtext to Emma.

Jogs from one incident to the next, amassing information and dispensing attitude but rarely creating real characters. That's supposed to be director Milos Forman's forte; here, though, nearly everyone is an enemy or a stooge.

Lonergan didn't bite off more than he could chew with Margaret - this is his personal moral gymnasium - but he did bite off more than others might want to chew.

Luhrmann and his co-writers Sam Bromell and Craig Pearce use the story of Elvis’ supremely crooked manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, lurking beneath prosthetic jowls), to frame the larger, more glorious and more tragic story of Elvis.

Wright's performance is the key to a movie that pulses with the sick thrill of historical discovery. The Conspirator reminds us that. when we surrendered so many of our Constitutional rights and judgments after 9/11, it wasn't the first time.

The movie around him is sometimes glancingly light. Other times it works way too aggressively at being entertainment, rather than just breathing. But Holland, as both Parker and Spidey, is always fun to watch: His bumbling uncertainty and his boyish eagerness make him believable not just as a crime fighter but as a kid.

What makes White House Down not just tolerable but frivolously entertaining is its slapstick soul; a scene where the presidential limousine does doughnuts on the South Lawn plays like an homage to the Keystone Kops.

If sometimes this loose and anecdotal film loses dramatic pace, it always rights itself. And it remains steadily in touch with its best qualities - generosity, common sense and a mature decency that is neither smug nor sentimental.

Unpregnant is ultimately about the people who have our backs when the rest of the world seems to be pushing against us — in other words, the families we choose for ourselves.

Maybe this documentary is a bit too enthralled by her, but she emerges from it a game girl, a gay activist and a curiously sympathetic figure.

The best comic turns are by the Afro-Asian twins Keith and Kenny Lucas, whose timing is eerie and superb.

There’s a great deal of slow story buildup until the last 10 minutes or so, at which point about three movies’ worth of plot hit at once. This gives the picture’s ending a rushed feel that’s vaguely unsatisfying. It’s not that you want things to be harder for Sandra; but her challenges—particularly her emotional conflicts—might have been explored in a little more depth.

"What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?" You can say that her movie, though soapy, is better than her silly book.

There is no denying that Schwimmer knows something about getting a performance out of an actor. Liberato, who is 15 now, is flat-out terrific. Shifting fluidly from demure to sullen and damaged, she is tremendously compelling.

This fine, persuasive movie will have to serve as his testament, and it's a fitting one. How many men can say they wrote their own epitaphs in their own blood?

Examples of absurdly misguided thinking--on the part of the U.S. military and the government--stack up quickly, and Michôd tracks it all with a sly wink.

Gere and Molina are themselves terrific as the con men.

As always, the acting is superlative. Gazzara's Cosmo catches all the paradoxes and puzzles of the character, the wired ambition and the rapture over doom.

Blockers has a loopy sweetness, but it’s smart, too.

Even when the story falters, or becomes astonishingly silly, there’s still plenty to keep you gazing at the surface.

While the movie is glorious to watch, it brings no coherence or insight to its two main characters.

Tatum’s is the central performance: most daring because it’s least giving. He has often played young men of thick athleticism and slow wit. It’s proof of Tatum’s intelligence that he can make the audience feel smarter than the characters he plays – until they reveal a sly brilliance halfway through the movie.

At its metallic heart, T3 is another chase movie -- one figure relentlessly tracking three others, mostly in cars, at high speed through implausibly underpopulated Los Angeles streets.

Cameron Diaz is sublimely screwy as the single-minded bride determined not to let anything--including the deadly mishaps that keep shrinking the wedding party--spoil her nuptials. [30 November 1998, p. 111]

Save Yourselves! was completed well before the pandemic hit—it played at Sundance in January — but it’s one of those works that has magically landed at the right time. It takes itself just seriously enough, but not too seriously.

The performances of these actors are reason enough to go. The reason to stay is Lawrence.

Not in any sense a great movie, a masterpiece that future generations will want to rediscover. But it is a solid, well-made, generally gripping and intelligent movie -- and how many of those have lately been made in America?

Davidson’s Zeke is one of those inexplicably winning losers with coolness in his bones. He just doesn’t know how to make it work in the real world.

Makes for a long, lumpy trip with a charismatic guide and some brilliant detours.

Together, the three wheel through absurd gags that shouldn’t work and somehow make them sing, giving the movie a loose, joyous energy.

Anthology inspired by Dr. David Reuben’s book of the same title. Allen’s version is far less educational than Reuben’s; it takes the form of several unrelated sketches, each of which purports to answer a question posed in Reuben’s book. The funniest bits are the first and last.

Tom Hanks doesn't turn Polar Express into much of a thrill ride. For that you need 3-D goggles.

Like a fire made with mildly damp kindling, The Pale Blue Eye—adapted from Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel of the same name—takes a while to get going. Maybe, in truth, it never really does get going. But the story’s stately pace is part of the attraction, and perhaps key to its pleasurably somber tone.

The film is full of sharp acting and home truths, but its ambition to be different finally surrenders to its need to be loved.

in a larger sense Be Kind Rewind declares that the riches of cinema history touch each of us personally. Films become so deep a part of us that we own them that our memories of them, whether faithful or fanciful, become their meanings. As a movie critic and, even before and above that, a movie lover, how can I disagree with that?

Could women stop war through the sedation of sex and drugs and a plot to bury every weapon in their community? Labaki has said she knows Where Do We Go Now? is a fantasy. But it's a good one, and this lovely film seems pertinent far beyond the landscape of the Middle East.

Director Kelly Makin has a gift for casually tossed-off farce.

Redacted pretty successfully sustains a dual level of hysteria (in its content) and disinterest (in its film-long framing devices). It's an amazingly vigorous work for a filmmaker who turns 67 on Sept. 11... The movie is a cry of national shame; for De Palma, it's a new badge of honor for a wily old vet.

The film's success is due in large part to actors who are both faithful to all the social minutiae and seductive enough to keep you watching.

The action sequences succeed in transporting one out of the theater and into a landscape of savagery and survival.

Fond, zippy new documentary about the Bruce who, on the Hollywood circuit, is the real Boss.

Inside is essentially a one-man extravaganza for Dafoe, and he shoulders its complexities ably, with zero vanity.

For a good hour, a very good first hour, the film efficiently accumulates small, terrifying incidents and images.

With their technical astonishments, Director Henson and Executive Producer Lucas have been faithful to the pioneering Disney spirit. In suggesting the thrilling dilemmas that await a wise child, they have flown worlds beyond Walt. [7 July 1986, p.65]

Ceases to be a cogent study of the disease of genius and devolves into two lesser creatures: an ordinary weepie and an Oscar contender.

This is a comedy with the old-time blend of wit and sentiment. Years from now, when you stumble across it on TV, you could persuade yourself that, back in the two-thousand-oughts, they made pretty good movies.

The mix is not nearly classic but is congenial enough to warm up a January weekend and perhaps to stoke a sequel. Call it "The Green Hornet Strikes Again?" No: "Kato II!"

You’ve seen most of this before, but that’s pretty much the point: The familiarity of the setup means the actors can just knuckle down and do their thing, and their energy keeps the movie rolling at a clip.

Engrossing and inspiring, despite being the kind of movie in which one of the first words you hear is cheeky.

Plays like a vacation at a seedy seaside resort. The issue at hand - whether McKinney engaged in criminal behavior with Anderson - is of little moment; what's important is the personality of the lady in question.

It's a pretty, high-strung story, handsomely done in traditional animation (mostly by hand) that you can take the kids to without wincing.

It is like a lunatic opera, an attempt to make a furious poem out of frenzy. Russell's flamboyant theatricality and his interest in the perverse have been too much imposed on his other films; but here, style and subject are perfectly matched. The film does not work as drama. But as a glimpse of hell it is superbly, frighteningly effective.

Doctor Strange has one significant quality that most Marvel adaptations lack: A sense of humor about itself, which it wears as lightly as the most gossamer Cloak of Levitation.

It would be nice, for instance, to meet some white man, other than Dunbar [Costner], who is not a brutish lout. And it would not harm the film if there were one or two bad-natured Sioux visible in it. [12 Nov 1990, p.102]

Van Damme has been known as a martial-arts legend, movie star and pain in the ass. But never an actor -- until now.

So where’s the line between rigid parental standards and possible abuse? Captain Fantastic crab-walks tentatively toward that question, and even though its conclusion feels rushed, the movie still works as a portrait of an unorthodox family that’s well adjusted in its own odd way.

The film’s rhythms occasionally falter—this is Malcolm Washington’s feature debut, and it's an ambitious project for a beginner. But the inherent strength of the material always shines through, largely thanks to Deadwyler.

In a way, she gives voice to everything an audience might fantasize about saying to a belittling authority figure, whether it’s a boss, policeman or teacher.

What's unusual about the sometimes screwy but mostly smart and always heartfelt Perfect Sense - is its search for a middle ground.

Carr’s account is strongest in shining light on the early years of the conservatorship while elegantly steering away from the exploitative images of Britney—shaving her head, or getting strapped to a gurney—that sold magazines in the late ’00s.

Touching, generous, sweet, this little slip of a movie puts you under some kind of spell.

Lipsticked, mascaraed and tilting at a precarious angle ("How do they walk in these things?"), Actor Lemmon digs out most of the laughs in the script. As for Marilyn, she's been trimmer, slimmer and sexier in earlier pictures.

Eisenberg is a thoughtful filmmaker, devoted to showing his characters as multi-dimensional, flawed human beings.

The Debt is a little too gray and stolid - by which we may simply mean too true to its complex milieu - to qualify as scintillating entertainment. But at the end of a summer in which anything like reality was banned from movie houses, this gnarly political thriller has a tonic effect

If the modest and moving Trouble With the Curve won't overwhelm anybody, it's still an engaging winner, like a junk-ball pitcher who stays in the bigs on grit and heart.

Furious 6 is even cooler and more aerodynamically delirious than its predecessor, if such a thing is even theoretically possible.

The mind may clamor for more, but the eye, traveling over this visual history of Diana Vreeland, is pleased.

Williams locates a central truth, the contradictory allure of this utterly impossible woman - mercurial, vain, foolish, but also intelligent in some very primal way and achingly vulnerable.

A feel-good ending is mandatory, even in a comedy like this, which promises to be transgressive because it's the first major-studio job for a director with an underground reputation for being crazy-bold.

Cheerful and efficient, this is the stripey tights of melodramas.

The audience gets as pulverizing a workout as the stars do. Or rather, the stars' stunt doubles, who deserve Oscars for best supporting masochism.

In his third consecutive Cronenberg film (after playing the righteous killers of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises), Mortensen is a happy surprise. Never has this tightly-wound actor seemed so relaxed in a difficult role; he is the charming papa Jung hates to overthrow but knows he must.

In the way of most Apatow films, Trainwreck is a little too long, a little too shaggy and a little too conservative in insisting that all’s square in love and war.

During the movie's best moments, I recalled exactly what my long-gone father's roars of laughter sounded like. Was it the joyous lunacy of "Mahnamahna" that used to set him off?

Documentaries don't fly on figures, or even controversial arguments; they come to life with real, engaging people. And when this freakumentary hooks up with Urail King, it gets an A.

Politics aside, this is a handsome film with orange skies to die for, or under, and a lovely score by Carter Burwell. The picture has some ponderous and snooze-worthy stretches, but it attains a certain melancholic grandeur, with the actors and crew fighting as desperately as Crockett and Bowie to make the best of a fated adventure.

Loose-jointed and openhearted, a wink of reassurance in our age of anxiety, it’s that rare comedy that may actually play better in the living room than it does in the theater.