The Avengers has been executed with all the reverence the super-fans demand, as well as the winking, self-referential humor that has made it palatable for filmgoers disinclined to take a bunch of grown men dressed in spangles and spandex so very seriously.

5B is ultimately about survival, and the struggle at its center is undeniably a heartbreaking one. Too often, however, the filmmakers get in the way of their own story.

This may not be Roman Polanski’s finest movie; it may not even be his best adaptation of a play. But it’s masterfully done in a way that does justice to its source material.

Like the mysterious, bound package Goodman gives Turturro (the contents are never revealed), the Coens isolate a small area of interest, bind it with psycho-atmospheric finesse, then wait for something significant to emerge. Even after a second viewing of this movie, it doesn't.

Beirut is an engaging, well-crafted thriller, offering a showcase not just for Hamm but for Rosamund Pike (playing his levelheaded handler) and an ensemble of terrific character actors, including Dean Norris, Shea Whigham and Larry Pine.

Nurse Betty is this year's "Being John Malkovich"-an utter original with a little something to say and a way of saying it that manages to be at once delightful and bilious.

But even though Marcos, in this film, provides enough material for a few hundred giggles and head-shakings, she also shows a pathetically human side.

Yes, it features some of the most rapturous footage of calving glaciers and ice floes — alternately freezing and thawing — that you’re likely to have seen (much of it captured on equipment designed and built by the filmmaker). But it is the simple glimpses of ordinary life in an extraordinary place that are the most stirring moments in the film.

Stands as a valuable chronicle of a brief and snarling musical movement.

“Eat Pray Love” this isn’t. Although Lucy is on a journey of self-discovery, she often hurts others in her quest for herself. That makes Hirayanagi’s take on the later-in-life coming-of-age story more honest than most.

Fitfully amusing and ultimately kind of heartwarming in a twisted sort of way

Does the world need another Bill Cunningham documentary? Yes, it turns out. More than ever.

Moka is a stark, moody mystery that doesn’t actually contain much mystery. Instead, it excels as a character study and a dynamic face-off between two formidable actresses: Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.

It’s intentionally chaotic and, now and again, surprisingly funny.

Harrowing, controlled and diabolically self-assured, Joshua leaves filmgoers teetering on their own emotional precipice, wondering just where pathos ends and pathology begins.

The Piano Lesson offers a spirited if uneven testimony to the playwright’s great gifts.

The uneven tone especially undermines the ending — one that’s as tragic as it is predictable. Viewers may expect — even crave — to feel an emotional impact, but the movie hasn’t laid the groundwork.

Rumours is too slap-happy to function as the fine-tuned political satire one might want it to be, and too often the gags hit a nonsensical dead end.

More interesting for the world it evokes rather than the drama that unfolds.

A thoughtful and surprisingly affecting portrait of a screwed-up man who dared to mess with some powerful people, seen through the eyes of the idealistic kid who chooses to champion his ultimately losing cause.

Sharp, lively, funny and ultimately sobering film.

Coogan and Brydon might scoff at such sentimentality, but over the course of the Trip films, they’ve shown us that world, at its most aspirationally easeful and epicurean. Even more brilliantly — and affectingly — they’ve constructed a world between them, an airy, reality-adjacent universe conjured in billowing clouds of witticisms, idle observations, passive-aggressive feints and silent, solitary reflections. Did they ever really live there? Maybe not. But it’s been a delightful place to visit.

A few more bucks (or a little more thought) for the script would have been a better investment than faking Seattle. The characters are introduced so quickly, and their personalities are so thin, that what happens to them has little weight.

A worthy addition to the Christmas movie canon. It's funny and good-looking, with an impeccable voice cast of U.K. actors. It's also unexpectedly fresh, despite the familiar-sounding premise.

Terry Gilliam is the wit behind this lavish display of sieges, sea-creature tussles and trips to the moon. Adapting the handed-down stories of Baron Von Munchausen, an 18th-century spinner of tall tales, this modern maker of similar flights of fancy has created another brilliantly inventive epic of fantasy and satire.

The documentary offers a fascinating and heartfelt examination of history through the microcosm of one sport.

The casting for the movie is outstanding. Streep is marvelous, as always, but in this case she outdoes even herself (and the script) by bringing a degree of poignancy to her conniving character.

The film’s themes mature from adolescent pettiness to adult regret, with several epilogues set well after the main events of the story.

What works best here comes between the movie’s heavy opening and its lightweight conclusion.

In an increasingly mean-spirited world, the spirit of fun and kindness in Captain Underpants is simply a tonic.

The movie may not have quite the mind-bending wallop of “Inception,” but Predestination is about something deeper than fantasy.

Nothing in the first Gremlins came close to being as bad as these early segments in the second one, and because the concept is no longer fresh, and the suspense over what's going to happen is lost, we're ready for the filmmakers to get on with it long before they've finished setting the table.

That the actor performs so effortlessly, so casually, is the real magic here. You forget about technique, and, best of all, you forget you're watching a black-and-white subtitled French movie from the dusty past.

It's empty of ideas, which is fine, but it's also empty of heat.

Soderbergh soaks the screen in moody, swimming pool hues to suggest the characters' murky motivations, and uses different textures of film stock to distinguish between the multiple layers of flashback. [28 April 1995, p.N44]

Although the film shows many photographs and videos of his performances, it never allows a particularly coherent assessment of any of them.

A whimsical, sad, diverting and altogether delightful exploration of how cinema can benefit, not only from glancing back at its own past, but by staying open to parallel forms of presentation and play.

You Resemble Me would be a vivid, beautifully acted reflection of dispossession and cultural dislocation if it stayed one thing. But, like its mercurial protagonist, it changes shape to become a deeply meaningful meditation on narrative itself, blending fact and fiction into a seamlessly poetic whole.

Great sword fights, great acting, fabulous sword fights and, of course, really cool sword fights.

Part of the joy of watching a John Sayles film is to see how he knits together so many people and stories into a densely layered, always absorbing whole.

As a Coen brothers fan I hate to say this, but the movie's a collection of great bits and pieces rather than a complete work.

There is no attempt to explain why an actress would go to pieces when she discovers a point of identity with her role; nor why an actress who is constantly loony, drunk, abusive or all three would not be understudied, let alone replaced. It should be noted that the play-within-the-movie is even worse than the movie-about-the-play. [14 Apr 1978, p.18]

Noé has made what might be his most accessible and, yes, tender film to date, teasing the idea of heavenly bliss — before heading straight to hell.

This is exactly the kind of weird, sardonic texture the movie is aiming for - and unfortunately, most of it occurs in the first half of the story.

What makes director Roger Donaldson's movie greater than zany heist fare is that this particular robbery really happened and that this episode illuminated an almost moral clash between the haves and the have-nots of Great Britain.

Little Voice may be more of a confection than a square meal, but it's proof of how good a dish can be when the ingredients are of the highest order.

Talk to Me, with two great actors, tells that story, and it makes you feel not only the joy people experienced in the wash of Greene's raucous, truth-saying humor, but also his wisdom and calm. And many mourned his death at 55 in 1984.

At its heart, though, this is a film about human nature: about desire, recklessness and emotions. The fraught relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is this tale’s powerful overlay. But it’s the questions it raises about personal accountability that speak to wider truths.

The Birth of a Nation is a flawed but fairly compelling chapter of the American story that powerfully resonates with how that story is playing out today.

Arthur is one of those rare contemporary entertainments that can be used to contradict people who habitually complain, "They don't make 'em like they used to!" This time they have. [17 July 1981, p.B1]

Telling an old story in a new way and infusing what might have been a dry political polemic with poetry, passion and unlikely warmth.

Newcomb is especially good and poignant, but Abbott also brings a pitiful emotional honesty to a repugnant character.

Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon (as Peter’s best friend, Ned) convincingly convey adolescent awkwardness, despite the fact that they’re all in their 20s.

The movie can't help but resonate with a ripped-from-the-headlines topicality.

Suffused with enormous compassion for the young woman at its center, this parable of awakenings shares some DNA with the art house hit “An Education” but has little of that movie’s nods to cozy humor and happy endings.

Raising Arizona is a prize package and a bundle of joy, one that puts a fresh, funny face on the American comedy movie. It's as encouraging as it is entertaining. [20 March 1987, p.C1]

The Galapagos Affair spins a strange and compelling tale, with perfectly sinister music by Laura Karpman setting the mood. But the movie is better at building suspense than following through.

After dispensing with the sluggish setup of the film’s first act, Berg shifts into high gear, powerfully evoking the feelings of dread and white-knuckle excitement that much of America no doubt felt as the manhunt progressed.

Linklater's control seems all but invisible here. But this kind of stylistic lucidity can only be the result of determined calculation and planning. The kind of happy accidents he captures don't come about by accident.

“Echo” recalls a fertile era in the history of American pop music. But all too often, it wanders out of the very canyon that defines it.

The Armor of Light is a fascinating little piece of storytelling.

It's the usual undisciplined, overextended Spike symphony: more fun than it is any good.

This is a rare kind of pulp; it's boisterously destructive, funny and, at the same time, almost serene.

A wise, warm, funny and touching romantic drama.

As she demonstrated in “The Skeleton Twins,” the former “Saturday Night Live” comedian has grown so adept at rendering troubled characters without offering sideline commentary that you can’t help but fall in love with her, even as laughter gives way to uncomfortable silence.

It's an obscure experience, partly alienating, partly enthralling; it weaves a spell that is frightening, irritating and invigorating all at once.

Like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Holliday before him, Tatum is sublime at playing dumb (as a dim pretty boy, he seems to be channeling Brad Pitt in "Burn After Reading"), just as Hill shrewdly deploys his body mass for maximum physical comedy (even slimmed down, with an Oscar nomination under that tightened belt, he carries himself with a fat man's comically elephantine grace).

What is memorable is the film's portrait of a man of honor in a sleazy world, possibly a metaphor for the struggle of the artist to stay honorable in a world of backbiting, betrayal and hunger for easy money.

A thematically bleak yet subtly comic film.

With its clean staging and coolly mannered style, Selah and the Spades reaches back to Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman and even Stanley Kubrick; this is a film in which nearly every image looks worked over and carefully polished, with no detail left unconsidered.

The kind of taut, serious adult drama Hollywood rarely produces anymore. Quality-starved audiences should flock to it, if only to ensure that more of them get made.

May not be for everyone, but filmgoers tuned in to its particular, perverse frequency will find much to value in its bent sense of humor and compassion.

You’re astonished to see how fully actualized Candy was as a performer in his short time, but you’re also left with the heartbreak of all that was left unrealized by his untimely passing.

If “Oak” brushes up against the fuzzy calculus of melodrama, Mari and Turner always wrestle it back to earth.

Davis's sensibility is much more fully developed, more authentic and much less self-consciously referential than the Coens' was at the same stage. She's not just playing around with film noir, or paying homage to it -- she's using it for a new kind of edgy, grunge realism; using it to look at sex and love and murder; using it for real.

As Benny (short for Bernadette), a big-boned, headstrong lass who strains winningly against the restrictions of family, religion and just plain growing up, [Driver's] a comedic breath of fresh air, easily the best thing about the movie.

It’s a credit to Lehane’s screenplay, director Michael R. Roskam’s restraint and a superb cast led by the masterful Tom Hardy that “The Drop” earns every sad-eyed glance and heart-tugging whimper.

Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America; his final stroke of genius is his choice of music, which includes a breathtaking use of Eminem's "Mosh."

Pleasant enough and its ecological, pro-wildlife sentiments are certainly welcome.

Based on a true story, the movie takes us through some harrowing times.

Reconfirms Tarantino's status as the master of pop cinema and puts a sense of excitement into the year. He has matched, if not eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's "Pulp Fiction," though not its human charm.

Provides some wry chuckles, but much of it is as dark as a Glasgow winter.

MOST Americans are probably having a hard enough time trying to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys in Central America, and Oliver Stone's "Salvador" is careful not to help us take sides. Much to its credit, that's mainly what makes this political thriller so terrifying...It's not that there aren't any villains in this film -- based on the real-life account of photo-journalist Richard Boyle who co-wrote the screenplay with Stone -- but that there are so few good guys to turn to. [4 Apr 1986, p.29]

A dog-frequency movie: enjoyable only to those tuned in to its particular register.

Filled as it is with unforced errors, A League of Their Own isn't a perfect picture, but it is irresistibly ebullient with not one, but nine Babes on base.

Hope may be a commodity that’s in short supply by the time that Fahrenheit 11/9 has finished painting its unsettling portrait of an America in crisis.

Set in 1956, it’s a cleverly twisty crime story constructed of many invisible folds and threads, yet it fits Rylance like custom-made clothing.

Writer, director and actor Cooper Raiff delivers an ingratiating turn as a cheerful lost soul in Cha Cha Real Smooth, a post-college coming-of-age story of intergenerational lust and the rocky road to adulthood.

Now, they're together. You can't look at them, but you can't look away either. So it goes.

It takes its sweet and sour time getting there, but eventually “Sacramento” finds a satisfying seriocomic groove in the plight of men facing the prospect of fatherhood and realizing adulthood has to come along for the ride.

Dutifully covering the rise, fall and final triumph of Cohen’s career, Broomfield relegates Ihlen to the background of her own story, before bringing her back for the film’s touching final act and devastating epilogue. Achieving the kind of balance to which Cohen always aspired, Marianne & Leonard is heartbreaking and heartening in Zen-like equal measure.

McAvoy, so memorable as Idi Amin's doctor turned adviser in last year's "The Last King of Scotland," may be the most likable British newcomer since Ewan McGregor; his glistening eyes can seduce audiences with their ability to show conflicting emotions.

Greengrass employs a handheld camera effectively, as usual, to simulate confusion, panic and terror. He cuts away from the most horrific moments of slaughter.

While this adaptation of Waller's treacly bodice-ripper leaves out a lot of the lurid excess, it is not altogether free of pomposity.

The result is a film exponentially more vivid and absorbing than the garden-variety rock-doc or biopic. "About a Son" is a must for anyone who still loves Cobain, or still has hope for cinematic portraiture.

Gator never emerges as anything but a blatant and outspoken -- and virulently brutal -- jerk.

It's a whimsical tale of war and redemption, of faith, hope and even some charity...It's quite a treat, as a matter of fact.

A pleasure because of zany developments like this, and a healthy dose of amusing characters.