Silverado looks great and moves fast. Mr. Kasdan has packed his action well against the fearsomely long, dusty stretches of Western plain. [11 Jul 1985, p.1]

I found this film deeply affecting as well. It has a gravity that's independent of technique, and an engaging spirit that's enhanced by flashes of comedy.

The film deserves to be seen, and admired, for its own revelations, and for its unlikely, yet deeply affecting, transformation into a story of abiding love that, in its own turn, involves a deception. At the age of 86, Mr. Randi is a small, gnomish figure who walks with a cane. What seems entirely undiminished, though, is the power of his mind, driven more than ever by the dictates of his heart.

An evil spell nearly does Snow White in, but it's lifted in the nick of time. The strangest spell afflicts Kristen Stewart; she can't seem to imbue Snow White with anything more than a semblance of feeling. That spell never lifts, but it doesn't make much difference in the end because the forces of good manage to work around it.

The film celebrates artistic freedom without preaching a sermon, and often flies when Mr. Chi is on screen. When he is on stage, spinning and leaping to the strains of magnificent music, the film soars.

It’s a strange piece of work, full of paradox — sharply analytical about the ways of love, yet sometimes plodding to the point of self-parody; intentionally distanced, yet offputtingly so, despite an exquisite performance by one of the stars, Clotilde Courau.

A thoroughly serious film, full of vivid details, but also a relentlessly serious one that requires Mr. Wilson to spend a great deal of time looking disconsolate.

In Queen’s case, this means a tiger-striped stripper dress and snake-print go-go boots, which she will wear for the rest of the movie. It makes for terrific visuals, but like the sex scene to come it’s not a dignified enough use of this actress, and makes a blaxploitation film out of something that seemed to harbor loftier ambitions.

The script — by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul — is erratic, to put it generously. Yet the 3-D animation is so stylish and, from time to time, so downright beautiful, that you hardly notice when the storytelling loses track of itself.

Since Mr. Stone is a prisoner of his penchant for pop-psychologizing on a cosmic scale, his movie has the astounding effect of absolving President Nixon of personal guilt for his crimes and misdeeds without bothering to explain what he did wrong. [21 Dec 1995, p.A12]

“Yacht Rock” is the yacht rock of documentaries.

Movies often turn on slender notions worked up to look like full-fledged ideas. Once in a while, though, a notion will be fertile to begin with, a self-renewing source of delight. That's the case with Luc Besson's Angel-A.

The film is all the more powerful for its grounding in fact. How powerful? Sufficiently, during most of its length, and extremely during several eruptions of searing drama.

The brute force of Terminator 3 is relieved, I'm happy to say, by Claire Danes's winning performance as John Connor's reluctant accomplice (whom the production notes describe, not inaccurately, as an "unsuspecting veterinarian"); by many of the special effects, which don't seem obsolete at all, and, yes, by the sinister trix of the Terminatrix.

Mr. Carnahan has till now been pigeonholed, and rightly, by comedy shoot-'em-ups like "Smokin' Aces" and "The A-Team." But here he is with The Grey - certainly an adventure film but one with a spiritual ingredient that is both surprising and fiercely resonant.

“Focuses” is a relative term for a documentary that dispenses lots of information without organizing it very well, but Fantastic Fungi is never uninteresting, and often startling in the natural beauty it reveals.

One of the funny things about America: The Motion Picture—not all of which is screamingly funny—is that the more you know about America’s past, the more amusing it probably is (the past and the film).

An improbably delicious comedy.

I floated in and out of states that included suspense, surprise, delight and shock, all of them adding up to steady-state enjoyment.

The drama is by turns rushed and overplayed, but it has a haunting core and moments of slippery, surprising cinematic style that make the movie linger in the mind, if only for a little while

This ambitious and mutedly angry film also assumes an ironic tone in examining the Hitler phenomenon from angles political, sociological, psychological and, very intriguingly, cinematic.

By the Grace of God is overlong, and loses dramatic momentum as the group works out a social-media strategy and debates potential clickbait. But Mr. Ozon’s film is notable for the range of its concerns — the Church’s belief in redemption versus the legal requirement of punishment; the power of forgiveness versus the need for revenge; and before and after everything else, the special pain inflicted on innocent, uncomprehending children.

Too often the film languishes as Mr. Kasdan poses Big Questions and then has his characters answer them in conversations that are so casual they seem improvised. [26 Dec 1991]

Stephen King fans will respond immediately to the atmosphere writer-director John Lee Hancock creates at the outset of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone—a world of perpetual autumn and incipient unease, a white-clapboard Maine where the chill gets into the bones and the soul.

While Ms. Gillespie can’t solve the mystery of why exactly her subject did what he did, she has created a novel kind of crime film, one aided in no small way by what seems to be the complete flight recording from Russell’s mad act. And a group of loved ones willing to listen to it.

If you're looking for an action thriller, this isn't it. The pace is deliberate, the tone is pensive, albeit punctuated by occasional violence, and the style is exceedingly lean; characters reveal themselves mainly through moral choices.

It settles for being amusing when it could have been interesting as well.

The vision of office work that's offered up by Haiku Tunnel is as chilling as it is funny.

The script, adapted by Matt Greenhalgh from a memoir by Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird, is flagrantly Oedipal; almost every scene between John and his mother is sexually charged. The curse is taken off most of these encounters by Anne-Marie Duff's eloquent work in the mother's role.

Presley Chweneyagae's Tsotsi makes his presence deeply felt. In a world of heedless children wielding guns, his tale is a heartening one.

The writing sometimes collapses into overkill, but sometimes it is precisely on point.

By its end, “Misericordia” emerges as a drama by turns chilling and absurd, with some of its twists daring us toward incredulity. Yet Mr. Guiraudie’s mix of mischief-making and straight-faced conviction keeps us continuously unsettled, and continuously curious.

Kristin Scott Thomas is the best though not the only reason to see Leaving.

Munich is a Spielberg film for better and worse, a vivid, sometimes simplistic thriller in which action speaks louder than ideas.

[Cher's] never been better. [5 Jan 1988, p.22(E)]

The film succeeds on the strength of the boy, and the remarkable young actor who plays him, Kodi Smit-McPhee.

The pace is deliberate, verging on slow — Australian filmmakers aren't keen on short takes or quick cuts — but the content is constantly surprising.

The Counterfeiters is inevitably serious, even austere, and full of chilling, ironic details.

For all its pictorial splendor and carefully calculated drama, this film misses greatness by a country mile.

[Luhrmann's] movie is all over the map. But what a gorgeous map it is. The too-muchness, like the too-longness, befits the Northern Territory's vastness. In its heart of hearts Australia is an old-fashioned Western -- a Northern, if you will -- and all the more enjoyable for it.

Like the movie as a whole, she (Judy) is funny, sweet, sophisticated and adventurous.

The film, though lush, thoughtful and at times affecting, never fully escapes a certain therapeutic mode. It doesn’t depict life lived, exactly; it depicts life theorized.

The best part of Red is the spectacle of terrific actors being terrific in novel ways.

A rehashing of decades-old race relations in New York, or anywhere in America, might seem superfluous given more recent events, but Mr. Muhammad’s point isn’t to stir up anger. It’s to decry damage—the waste of a promising young life and the collateral wreckage visited upon a family and friends.

We can all see where this is going. In fact, if it didn’t go there we’d feel cheated, even though the route—as navigated by writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote “The Devil Wears Prada” and co-created “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”—is as roundabout as the performances and casting are straightforward.

An unusual amalgam of formulaic feel-goodism and shocking tough-mindedness, a movie that allows us to decode the inner life of its hero while he's decoding the world around him.

A valuable film, provided one doesn't ask too much of it.

There are clashes of philosophy and practical action that need sorting out, and After the Bite treats both sides with respect.

What the film does best is document the lengths to which people are going to protect themselves -- subcutaneous microchips for identification, ever-heavier armor for fancy cars.

The clash Mr. Roberts devises between the lunchbucket blues of operating a crane at a shipyard and the dazzle of big-time sports raises pertinent questions about the relationship between vocation and avocation, about where we truly locate meaning in our lives, especially as time grows less disposable.

What's remarkable, though, is how Ms. Bier's film, in Danish and English, finds beauty in its quiet moments, which are many and close between.

Disney’s new live-action version is for the most part beguilingly good, even though it’s no replacement for the studio’s 1950 animated classic.

What makes the film valuable is its focus on Justice Ginsburg as a champion of women’s rights.

May be something of a stunt, but it's a fascinating stunt that holds your attention from the start to shortly before the finish.

Cheerfully horrifying.

The story's literary underpinnings are hilariously represented by the denizens of a seedy writers' retreat situated near Tamara's old house, which she has come back to reclaim after her mother's death.

The film gives no reason for optimism in the urban warfare it portrays, but its heart, head and sharp eye are in exactly the right place.

Blunt, brassy and chatty, she makes for a refreshingly open host of her own life story.

Star Trek Beyond is better than not-bad. By any earthly standard it’s good.

It's all rather amusing, but after awhile you tire of all the perfect little nuances about characters who seem like prototypes for a certain type of Victorian novel. [6 Mar 1986, p.23(E)]

There are degrees of villainy in “Operation Varsity Blues,” but it’s hard to peg the privileged, bribe-paying parents as the worst of a bad lot. Besides, they have to live not just with their criminal convictions but with those wiretapped conversations, in which they reveal what they really think of their own children.

Feast for Rolling Stones fans.

A seasoned director might have known when to ask Ms. Theron to do less, or nothing at all; as things stand, she acts at every single moment. But what brave and ferocious acting she does.

Touch is a worthy consideration of the things that matter most when the clock is running out, but it could have been more focused.

Given the nature of the production — it was made for grownups, not children, in an era when life moves much faster than it did in Mr. Rogers’s day — sticky sweetness threatens at every turn, along with naked contrivance. Yet the movie bets on goodness, and wins.

You'll miss out on some really great stuff if you don't see this surprising movie.

This ambitious, entertaining movie, which showed at film festivals earlier this year, has been hailed in some quarters as a masterpiece worthy of Arthur Miller's Willy Loman or Sinclair Lewis's George Babbitt. Yet its social comments are stained by condescension, and its uplift is sustained by sentimentality that Mr. Nicholson's prickly Everyman can't conceal.

Finally seems like a bit of a con in its own right, but a marvelously smooth one.

Jon Shenk's fascinating documentary feature The Island President personalizes the threat of global warming, and nationalizes it too, by focusing on Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives.

In an odd way, Predator: Badlands is a date-night movie posing as merely a sci-fi killing jamboree. All of those lovable lummoxes out there with their hyper-verbal lady friends will learn a little about cooperation.

By turns repellent, powerful and ludicrous, Antichrist piles horror on horror with pitiless passion.

Like Kong himself, it's imposing, sometimes endearing, and very rough around the edges.

And The Donut King is about the doughnuts themselves — how they’ve evolved over the decades from a sturdy staple into a fantasy, if not quite a delicacy, of prismatic colors and preposterous toppings.

As constructed, Citizen K serves as a briskly paced primer into all things Putin, Russian and, incidentally, Khodorkovskian.

Mad Dog and Glory also seems like two movies at once, only in this case the split comes off like a case of Siamese twins. Actually, it's girls on one side and boys on the other, and the boys get all the breaks. [4 Mar 1993, p.A12]

George Clooney's film noir sensibility in the title role feels authentic, and admirably solid.

The film itself is fairly slight: I'm not sure what it adds up to. Still, I enjoyed every moment of its beguiling saga of a depressed teen named Craig.

Cinema Sabaya, a quietly affecting little film about unexpected connections and unseen sorrows, shimmers with a bright optimism about how people might overlook one another’s differences if only they took a little time to learn about each other.

Mr. Henry’s performance, by turns firm and funny, is the highlight of the movie.

Bright, buoyant and hilarious, though far from flawless, this romantic comedy, directed by Jon M. Chu and based on the popular novel by Kevin Kwan, is also a cultural milestone.

It’s also a film made by her grieving husband. On paper, it shouldn’t work at all. It works measurably better on screen.

Is this movie better seen in a theater than at home on Netflix? Yes, no and what can one say? Watch it anyway.

Musically, the film is best viewed and heard as an artifact.

The pacing is good, the atmosphere authentic, and even the paperwork — which is where the real revolutions in law occur — has a certain kinetic quality to it. And while viewers might think they know where the film is going, and what the payoff is going to be, they’ll still be caught off guard emotionally.

A movie you can't readily get out of your head.

Mr. Murphy rises to every occasion, not only with the crisp wit that has long been his hallmark, but with restraint and tenderness that serve him well.

I felt much the same way as I sat goggle-eyed through this endless extravaganza of visual abracadabra. It seemed entirely possible that I might die of the fidgets or old age while waiting for Baron Munchausen to kill the Turks. And yet I found myself wanting to see the end of the movie before I expired. [9 Mar 1989, p.1]

Youth in Revolt is basically an absurdist ramble, but a terrifically likable ramble.

The narrative, framed as a psychological mystery, labors under more layers of significance than it can handle without falling into contrivance and argumentation. Still, the dramatic core is strong, an exceptional young man struggling to find, and become, whoever he really is.

A likable lightweight, though it's heavy enough on cosmic combat and dazzling effects.

Mr. Washington is splendid, as always. So is Forest Whitaker as James Farmer, Sr.

The movie is maddening too, just as it intends to be, but you do watch, and care, and learn. What seems at first to be a gallery of narcissistic rogues turns into something else, a study in equal-opportunity romantic folly.

For almost two hours of car chases and car wrecks and extraordinary animated transformation sequences that meld fluidly with live action, the welcome mat is out for Michael Bay's cheerfully dopey saga.

Border may not be everyone’s idea of a fun night out, but it takes you to places you won’t forget, and that’s nothing to sniff at.

What the movie lacks in coherence it makes up for in zest, well-founded self-delight and a sharpshooter's eye for the absurdities of reality TV.

The film fulfills its feel-good promise, as long as it's seen as the fairy tale it was meant to be.

“Disaster Is My Muse” differs from other “American Masters” programs by having a subject who is alive, well, loves his wife, Françoise (who appears frequently and to great effect), and about whom there is a more than generous amount of documentation (as in drawings) and footage.

Full of life -- which is a very good thing to say about a story that turns on death -- wonderfully odd, and a gallery of perfect performances.