The Woman in Black is a welcome addition to the old canon; renouncing innovation, embracing anachronism, it's almost "The Artist" of ghost movies. To anyone who fancies throwback stories of the supernatural, there's nothing so appealing as a well-preserved corpse.

Flouting all rules of the sea but honoring every war-epic cliche about guts under pressure.

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.

Five-Year has comic bloat. Virtually every character gets their own moment of stand up, but in most cases, the bits aren't funny enough to warrant the screen time.

Free Guy is a little like Ready Player One jumbled with The Truman Show, with some Sleeping Beauty and The Velveteen Rabbit mixed in. It is, admittedly, a lot of movie, probably too much. But Reynolds makes the most of Guy’s elation at finally busting out.

Spielberg has energized each frame with allusive legerdemain and an intelligent density of images and emotions.

For every obvious turn The Help takes, there is Davis, the ideal counterweight.

Charm City Kings lands on an elegiac, bittersweet note rather than a happy one, and doesn’t feature as many crazy, exhilarating bike stunts as you might hope. But in its view of a world where kids make their own fun and also, sometimes, their own bad choices, it rings true. Sometimes becoming a man is the hardest stunt to pull off.

The Farrellys need to remember this: Sappiness is easy, comedy is hard.

This good-natured movie is very much in the spirit of those ancient comedies from Ealing Film Studios in which nice, silly people defend some enclave of old-fashioned sanity against the forces of brute modernism. [27 January 1997, p. 68]

There’s nothing cuddly about the were-creatures of The Cursed. But there’s no question that they get the job done.

The production's genially tatty air enhances its anarchical mood and encourages one to go with its goofy yet often shrewd comic flow.

The King, written by Michôd and Edgerton, zips along—it never feels like a slog, though it still has a satisfyingly hefty dramatic weight.

Men is a little too neat structurally, its moral and human issues a little too clear-cut: at heart it is old-fashioned melodrama. But Sorkin's dialogue is spit-shined, and the energy and conviction with which it is staged and played is more than a compensation; it's transformative. And hugely entertaining. [14 Dec 1992]

When a mild-mannered peasant unsheathes the powers he has long kept hidden, the results can be spectacular. The same can be said for Peter Chan Ho-sun's Dragon, a martial-arts morality play as lithe as it is forceful.

For those of us who think this is the best comedy of 2004, the genius of the movie lies in its relocation.

The film ends with a syrupy coda that betrays its earlier subtlety. But Ronan and Howle are the keepers of its true spirit.

There's enough narrative for three fine films. But not enough for The Interpreter. The thriller pieces feel assembled rather than organic.

A vampire story needs vampires, sure, but it also needs a human victim to lead the audience into the vortex and help them escape it. Otherwise, the fear factor evaporates, and you get this mishmash: an interview in a void, a vampire movie with underbite.

Harris and Mastrantonio do have a strong death and resurrection sequence, but long before that, one is pining for a rubber shark or a plastic octopus -- anything, in fact, out of a good old low-tech thriller. [14 Aug 1989, p.79]

Mel Gibson, directing for the first time, presents this deeply wet material in a reasonably cool and dry manner. But his film is in desperate need of smarm busting -- something, anything that would relieve the familiarity of its characters, the predictability of its structure, the bland failure to challenge its perfect correctness of outlook. [30 August 1993, p.63]

The summer’s best, coolest, juiciest, smartest action movie.

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'.

The dreariest thriller of the year.

Unfortunately, failed comedy and vigorous suspense are handcuffed together for the entire trip.

This cutesy film is overwhelmed by a sense of forced farce.

The film's steamy sex scenes—especially the first, which takes place in the kitchen among foods and utensils as elemental as love and death-will raise eyebrows and temperatures...Like Last Tango in Paris, Rafelson's Postman shows what his doomed lovers do but does not tell who they are. Their willful sex scenes are explicit and incandescent; their motivations are elliptical smoke signals viewed from the other side of Death Valley.

A relentlessly grim film.