Cadillac Records may be a mess dramatically, but it's a wonderful mess, and not just because of the great music. The people who made it must have harbored the notion, almost subversive in a season of so many depressing films, that going out to the movies should be fun.

Seldom has a film presented such a richly ambiguous juxtaposition of modernity (among the toys showered on the boy is a really cool radio-controlled helicopter), ancient mindset and, to be sure, possible miraculousness.

If you are going to watch a biographical documentary, it’s not necessarily a disadvantage to go in knowing nothing at all about the story. And if you are up to speed on The Fastest Woman on Earth, it’s still an engaging, moving and even shocking documentary.

The whole thing comes together surprisingly well, as a celebration of its own milieu, and of a tender teen's transformation into a strong young woman.

The worthwhile Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me explains much, about the star, the culture and maybe the moment.

This isn't a great film, but it's a surprisingly good and confident one, with a minimum of the showboating that often substitutes, in the feelgood genre, for simple feelings.

Ms. Armstrong's Little Women, which has enough sugar to make your teeth sing, if not your heart. [29 Dec 1994]

A quietly transfixing drama.

A consistently entertaining, frequently violent and generally slapdash action comedy.

None of this is uninteresting, and much of it is fascinating as the film gets up close and personal with the earth’s seething innards.

The most remarkable thing about The Mermaid, though, is its clarity as a cautionary fable.

Abe is played by Noah Schnapp, from “Stranger Things,” and he’s irresistibly charming. Abe the movie is charming too.

This lovely debut feature by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz trafficks in the pleasure of watching intriguing people working through outlandish problems in unlikely ways. Go in expecting the best and you’ll come out smiling.

I regretted it most when the temporal hopscotching took me away from Ms. Winslet's portrait of the writer as a young sensualist, madly smitten by words and life.

Considering the star power -- and talent -- of the cast around her, it would have been impressive if Alison Lohman had simply held her own as Astrid, the young heroine of White Oleander. Instead, she owns the movie.

This new “Alien” prequel is mostly a gore fest, which may be great news for gluttons of the genre.

Reconstruction means to be confusing, and is. It also means to intrigue us, and does.

There is no reason to adapt an existing work without doing something new, and Ms. DaCosta does plenty, though much of the updating shows how truly groundbreaking Ibsen was. And how little ground is left to break.

What's troubling about the film's technique is its lack of context; we must take Yuris, who speaks serviceable English, pretty much at his word. What's troubling about his story is its ring of truth.

For all its imperfections, this docudrama with an agitprop heart finds a surprising way into the subject of undocumented immigrants languishing in detention centers.

This Danish-language film about a Copenhagen commune in the mid-1970s pulses with screwy energy and antic confusion.

Despite the righteous indignation that is so clearly fueling the film--much of its $8 million budget was raised from off-island Taiwanese--the movie is a sturdy entry in the paranoid-thriller genre, and raises some interesting issues about our relationship with the country we used to call China.

Mr. Howard wants us to know that greater challenges lie ahead — not a welcome reminder while we’re in the grips of the coronavirus. Yet his documentary also dramatizes the resilience and resourcefulness we can bring to bear in meeting them. Calamity, the film says, isn’t destiny.

Real-life events have overtaken District B13, and they give this feverish, yet oddly flat French action adventure a whiff of substance to go along with its spectacular stunts.

In its agreeably eccentric spirit, Tommy’s Honour evokes the Scottish comedies of Bill Forsyth; here it’s oddballs among the handmade, undimpled golf balls.

Mr. Davenport, who makes films “about disability” according to his website, also makes them from the perspective of the disabled—he has cerebral palsy and often uses a wheelchair. Like many people who find themselves on the anti- side of the assisted-suicide issue, he takes the concept to what seem very logical conclusions—with an assist from Canada.

The movie blurs into a continuum of cars pounding one another and closeups of faces showing disgust, happiness, fear and outrage. It's the kind of shorthand imagery that works best in brief spurts, say, the amount of time it takes for a television commercial to implant a spark-plug brand into your brain. [5 Jul 1990, p.A9]

Who Killed the Electric Car?, a fascinating feature-length documentary by Chris Paine, opens with a mock funeral, then follows the structure of a mock trial in which multiple suspects are found guilty.