Macdonald has a fetching feel for the continent, and the movie has a powerful sense of what Africa looks and feels like; you can almost smell it.

The moral purity of After Innocence is so overwhelming that it simply leaves you with nothing to say or do. It's kind of beyond criticism.

If there's anyone who can make this ordeal -- and when you're plumb out of characters, it can be an ordeal -- tolerable, and even entertaining, it's Hanks.

Quintessential film noir. [20 Mar 2005, p.N03]

Lures us in with extraordinary subtlety. Keeping sound effects and incidental music to a relative minimum, it builds its suspense almost subliminally. So when something scary or shocking does occur -- deprived of those Hollywood-style cues -- we are truly startled.

A pulpy grindhouse B-picture tricked out in art house pretensions, counting on the siren call of sex and violence to fleece the rubes. Choose your own adventure. And maybe bring a barf bag.

There’s a lot going on here — a quasi-biblical space opera, part Lawrence of Arabia and part mobster movie — and spreading it out over two movies has allowed [Villaneuve] to take his time with the story and tell it richly, and without rushing

The filmmakers keep trying to make Will appear paranoid, but he’s not fooled for long — and most viewers won’t be, either.

The interviews with band members, managers, friends and peer fans confirm not only how influential, but how beloved the Ramones were.

A brainy, superbly acted buddy movie.

The film, like the cheap double-scotches quaffed down by the central character, leaves a distinctly sour aftertaste that's hard to wash away the morning after.

Soderbergh won't hit the Oscar jackpot with Ocean's Eleven, but he has come up with a stylish winner.

Under the supervision of animation director Carlos Léon Sancha, the film is a graceful, somewhat overbusy visual treat, a playful riot of colors anchored by a crisp sense of line.

The sad truth is that Wonder Boys is little more than a sentimentalized encomium to the disheveled, childish life it ascribes to writers.

A startling portrayal of how the cycle of abuse plays itself out in the lives of its victims.

Howard directs Rush with speed and jangly, jarring verve, bringing the races themselves to white-knuckled life and allowing the men’s stories to play out with only slightly predictable reversals, upsets and, inevitably, those hard lessons learned.

Despite a nice performance by Dern, Smooth Talk never gets better than its good intentions. Adapted from a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, the movie is awfully short-storyish -- it meanders through its slight narrative, and the dialogue can be stilted and literary (it's meant to be read, not heard).

That rare movie that manages to be not only an adroit, carefully observed study in character and suspense, but important.

This intimate, straightforward, often wrenching portrait of five families dealing with bullying and its aftermath doesn't hold many surprises at a time when such campaigns as "It Gets Better" and special programming on kids' cable networks are bringing the issue to the fore.

Written and directed with tart intelligence by Alice Wu, and featuring some dazzling breakout performances, this breezy, self-aware and utterly adorable coming-of-age tale keeps one eye on literary and cinematic classics, and the other firmly on a future full of exploration, self-expression and buoyant expectation.

In the end, we're about a third of the way through the great Khan's life; he hasn't even begun to take down the cities of Cathay or spread his seed. That suggests two sequels. I, for one, can't wait.

May not be the ultimate word on the Tibetan situation, or even the Dalai Lama, but its heart seems to be in the right place; and it's entertaining enough to give audiences an emotional sense of the story. [16 January 1998, p.N32]

A memorable return to the Hundred Acre Wood and a lively, interactive adventure that should delight everyone from wide-eyed preschoolers to nostalgic grandparents.

Armageddon Time is a pungent, disarmingly honest evocation of love and loyalty, striving and struggle, and how identity morphs from one generation to the next. In revisiting his own coming of age, Gray has managed to illuminate a much larger one that hasn’t stopped.

It seems almost disrespectful to weave in a provocative re-creation of the killings -- somehow a massacre of unarmed innocents that shocked the world should be more than just fodder for ginning up the tension at the end of a commercial movie.

For the most part, 2nd Chance is right on target. But in the end, its aim isn’t quite true.

Whether Thelma is the victim of malign forces beyond her control or the Scandinavian equivalent of horror heroine Carrie, is the central question in this superbly controlled, if derivative, variation on a familiar theme.

Plan B possesses the requisite number of outré sight gags and gross-out humor to qualify it as a sophomoric teen flick. But director Natalie Morales keeps the action running smoothly, allowing her two gifted stars to deliver genuine breakout performances in vivid roles.

Colette’s story is a good one — she went on to produce multiple works under her own name, the best known of which is “Gigi” — but here it’s shakily told. As a tale about a woman whose life was defined by fire, Colette lacks much of a spark.

It is not exactly a thriller, yet its plausibility will inspire very real anxiety.

This is a story of family and of friendship, with enough humor to keep it from getting too sappy and enough restraint to keep it from getting too sophomoric.

The movie, though quite funny in parts, turns organically dark, and it refuses to paint a picture of a cotton-candy world. It prefers the real one.

Taking its cues from the religious severity of the community in which it’s set — and the London weather — Lelio’s latest film is austere, deliberate and rather chilly.

Something to get excited about.

An edgy, irreverent, thoroughly winning comedy.

You have to see this to believe it.

Malkovich's lead performance digs in its heels, deadening the movie's speedy exhilaration. The result is a highly diverting but ultimately unsatisfying production that doesn't perform -- so much as paraphrase -- the script.

Cousteau is a thorough if somewhat by-the-book profile of a pioneer in the field of marine ecology and an activist for better environmental stewardship.

Amusing and even edifying, although it is also unlikely to make converts out of those who just don’t get Zappa’s pastiche of juvenile parody and sophisticated songwriting, derived from rock, jazz and 20th-century experimental music.

How do you make a movie about this story? Do you spin it as a thriller, a true-crime drama, a horror film, a sick pop-culture joke? Actress Anna Kendrick, making her debut as a director, does something fascinating. She juggles all four and then adds a fifth layer undergirding the others: the unceasing dread that comes from being a woman who knows men like Rodney Alcala are out there.

Working from the script by Jeff Maguire, director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot") plods through the narrative as if he were completely unconcerned with giving it even a semblance of credibility.

This bracing movie...gets off to a spirited start and rarely lets up, sharing with viewers a little-known chapter of history as inspiring as it is intriguing.

Intriguing, marvelously inventive documentary.

One of the best little slice-of-contemporary-Americana pictures to emerge from Hollywood in recent years. [01 July 1984, p.F1]

Joins such wonderful recent films as "The Lives of Others" and "The Baader Meinhof Complex" as a clear-eyed portrait of a highly charged chapter in Germany's history, a history that once again proves rewarding fodder for an alert artistic imagination.

Eminently watchable thanks to strong performances from its three leads (McKellen, Redgrave, Fraser).

Writ small, Golden Door is an absorbing and moving love story; writ large, it's the story we've never stopped telling ourselves.

Fiddler’s Journey aims to tell a story that delves into more than creative and technical details. Although it is also about those details.

For a movie about a groundbreaking gay rebellion, Stonewall Uprising plays it much too straight.

It's a smart, bold genre exercise that's enormous fun to watch, harking back to gritty urban thrillers of the 1970s with an assured sense of tone and style.

He was many things, the documentary reveals, but self-serious was not among the late writer’s lengthy list of descriptors.

For those seeking further insight into this sliver of Ali’s remarkable career, “Trials” is as comprehensive as it gets.

Miss Hokusai is more adept at delivering beautiful visuals than anything deeper. That’s perhaps not all that ironic, given that the movie’s portrayal of Hokusai is as a man who valued art above all else.

Even at its most troubling, Cyrus is powered by a deep vein of humanism, one that offers hope to even the weirdest among us.

It is through the genius of Frears, screenwriter Jimmy McGovern and this talented cast that Liam lets no one off the hook, least of all the audience.

The path taken by the film is somewhat labyrinthine and obscure, but it offers enough rewards to counterbalance its frustrations.

Feelings of displacement — of loss of home, country and language — are balanced by the vivid imagination of a better existence. In other words, Radio Dreams is a quintessentially American stor

Beecroft’s screenplay — which the actor turned filmmaker wrote after moving in with Tabatha and Porshia, off and on, for three years — is not as strong as her visual storytelling. Some of her dialogue trips over its own bootlaces.

Hollywoodgate is a fascinatingly — and sometimes frustratingly — oblique portrait of a country and its people in the tragic grip of extremism.

For fans of dance, Ballet 422 will produce plenty of pleasures. But as with great ballet, great movies always benefit from a little drama.

In My Father’s House offers lots of interesting raw material, but it could use a disinterested observer’s remix.

After Tiller does viewers the great service of providing light where there’s usually only heat, giving a human face and heart to what previously might have been an abstract issue or quickly scanned news item.

Quirky to a fault, the film’s most absurd moments are nevertheless grounded by the human need for connection.

Like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Flame and Citron is the story of handsome rogues with guns. It's fast-paced, stylish and thrilling.

After Auschwitz also addresses more mundane subjects as well: making a wedding dress from leftover parachute silk, emigrating to America, finding jobs, buying cars, registering to vote. The smallest things become imbued with an importance out of proportion to their significance to the rest of us.

Sully is a classy, enormously satisfying ode to simple competence. To paraphrase the title character, it’s just a movie doing its job. And amen to that.

The latest furiously paced, perversely entertaining "Pulp Fiction" for puppies.

Dressed to Kill is a witty blend of suspense and humor, a skillful manipulation of basic nightmare ingredients that leaves one limp, amused and always impressed. It's an achievement particularly noteworthy in contrast to the Grade-Z "horror" movies that have been cluttering up the screens lately. [25 July 1980, p.17]

A shapeless collection of encounters with Texas prison inmates and their victims, what could have been a well-aimed examination of the most troubling contradictions of capital punishment instead becomes a maudlin, unrestrained wallow.

Interstellar tries so hard to be so many things that it winds up shrinking into itself, much like one of the collapsed stars Coop hurtles past on his way to new worlds. For a movie about transcending all manner of dimensions, “Interstellar” ultimately falls surprisingly flat.

Overall, “Shoot First” is a breezy look at a professional whose work remains endearing, despite some highfalutin claims.

The news is good for Bridge to Terabithia fans. The beloved children's book has not just survived but thrived in its adaptation to the screen.

On one level, The Attack is a mystery, but not the kind you think. It’s obvious from the start who detonated the bomb; the only question is why. It’s a question that probably cannot be answered to the satisfaction of anyone living outside Israel or the occupied territories.

Combines nonstop action with an absorbing story to become a classic on par with "Hoosiers" and "Hoop Dreams."

Regan directs Scrapper with exceptional verve, interrupting the narrative with witty documentarylike asides whose framing evokes the poppy aesthetic of Wes Anderson.

The film has some clumsy scenes, and sometimes the director overcrowds his comedy. The remarkable thing, however, is that for a mere $100,000, Townsend and company have made a funny, poignant and technically proficient film -- one that should thoroughly embarrass those studios that routinely offer up badly made, multimillion-dollar disasters.

In Ozon’s confident hands, The New Girlfriend has moments that juxtapose gentle humor and surprising depth of feeling.

Simple fare, a feel-good movie that re-creates a time and place with gentle humor and a reminder that the Aussies have the right stuff, too.

Brilliantly played by Denzel Washington

It orders you to love it. It demands love, which is the best way not to get it.

The film is complex and bold, sometimes even exhilarating. It can also be frustratingly esoteric.

By observing the struggle of the miner with a mix of resignation and resolve, the movie hints that this struggle is the struggle of every worker.

One of the most rousing and appealing animated features ever made by the Disney studio. [24 June 1977, p.B1]

Joy Ride is a heartwarming film about identity and friendship wrapped in a package of penis jokes. The directorial debut of Adele Lim, a co-writer of “Crazy Rich Asians,” applies “Bridesmaids” humor to a story that is surprisingly genuine and full of richly developed relationships.

Infectious and inspiring, despite one's best efforts to resist its charms.

This is a movie to see and a director to watch.

Like the finest forebears of the rom-com genre — including its urtext, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — Crazy Rich Asians indulges in the escapist pleasures of aspirational wealth, obscene consumerism and invidious judge-iness.

At times, In Order of Disappearance is a bit too self-consciously clever. But what saves it, paradoxically — even, at times, delightfully — from skidding off course into cliche is the profound appeal of its middle-of-the-road, but never dull, protagonist.

The Duke, based on the 1961 theft of Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London, features delightful performances by Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, both of whom help ground this strenuously heartwarming film in something a little more solid than the ether in which it otherwise seems to be set.

The young actors are quite proficient and un-sappy too -- it's not their fault if they too often seem like chessmen being moved around on the director's board, composed into picturesque tableaux.

Wildean panache of this caliber is not the norm in movie dialogue, so on this score alone, The History Boys is a blessing. The top-drawer work of a fine ensemble is another.

The story behind Hercules, Walt Disney’s insipid, lifeless, animated feature, is hardly the stuff of children’s entertainment.

A taut, meticulously crafted police procedural.

The movie's surrender to banality is all the more dispiriting because it gets off to such a good start.

It is when Ivins herself opens her mouth that the film is at its best.

Like "Winter Soldier," Sir! No Sir! will surely reopen old wounds, as the Vietnam War -- like the Civil War 100 years before -- refuses to die. But hawks and doves alike should be grateful to Zeiger for preserving a fascinating piece of American cultural history.

Nicolas Cage goes delightfully, derangedly meta in Dream Scenario, a smart, dizzyingly entertaining horror-comedy that morphs into scathing social satire.

“Wild Nights” largely sidesteps the worst tropes of biographical drama, but when it falls, it falls hard.