Strange Weather is wise about loss, showing the ripple effects of an untimely death. It is hardly an original concept, yet it handles this subject with the care and integrity it deserves.

The director appears to be stuck with rather drab shots from inside the racers showing one car creeping ahead and then falling back. The effect is not exactly thrilling, but the audience is obviously eager to be thrilled and more than willing to do its imaginative share. Greased Lightning never generates enough momentum to meet the audience half-way. [16 July 1977, p.E5]

The movie version of The Onion Field offers a compelling buildup of suspense and apprehension, culminating in the shocking murder of a young policeman. But it gradually begins to diminish in force, transforming a gripping, realistic reenactment of a murder case into a prosaic and somewhat baffling grind. [19 Oct 1979, p.B1]

Filmed in velvety browns, with shafts of sunlight filtered through old windows, The Haunting of Julia is a definite cut above the current horror movie cliche, but yet not up to the classic psychological ghost-story level it aims at.

"Everything is achievable through technology," a character says more than once in Iron Man 2. Not so.

The list of great moments is virtually endless.

Baby Ruby makes a valuable contribution to the emerging cinematic literature on the unspoken realities of women’s lived experience — with style, disarming honesty, and a steady and intelligent hand.

Unfortunately, the sequel shortchanges the very relationships that gave the first movie its surprising heart.

Terrific family entertainment, an action comedy on a par with "Night at the Museum" and "National Treasure."

Dumont is clearly critiquing the way we mediate life via screens, large and small. There are times in this rambling story when the filmmaker’s point isn’t quite as obvious, but that’s only because he has a habit of trying to jab several moving targets with a sharp stick all at the same time.

First-time director Chris Gorak is no Rod Serling, and in his hands the enterprise tends toward the lurid, especially after his nifty third-act twist.

The ballplayers themselves are a well-drawn, enjoyably kooky bunch, but it's absolutely impossible to believe that they would accept Billy's leadership. (If you believe this premise, then you probably believe Marge Schott doesn't look like a Saint Bernard.) And of all the child actors in the movie, the scrawny 13-year-old star shows the least presence.

An action thriller in which the Irish actor plays Nels Coxman, a snowplow operator at a Colorado ski resort with the death-dealing skills of a special-ops commando. This time, the absurdity is intentional.

“House” sometimes loses track of convoluted plot points and skimps on exteriors. But it does a fine job of capturing the childlike wonderment that suffused those earlier films.

The films are highly entertaining and highly disturbing, in the latter case for both the right and the wrong reasons. While admirably delineating moral decay, which eats away at one character like a virus, the movies never really get at the seed of evil.

Of all ironies, "Strangers" occasionally takes a step in the direction of the after-school specials it's trying to twit; you'll catch it trying to make you feel warm and fuzzy about Jerri.

The Wall is a fairly hopeless film. In a sense, the fragile structure of the title acts as a double metaphor: for a barrier between enemies that keeps them from killing each other, as well as one that must come down if true understanding is ever to occur.

A laugh-in-the-dark funhouse ride that provides nearly two hours of slightly sinister sight gags and Gothic giggles, is creepy, kooky, even altogether ooky enough to satisfy any Addams addict.

The great Cornish king becomes merely a corny one as the tale devolves into a compromise between the principles of Camelot and of Hollywood.

The personable star of the TV series "Home Improvement" turns this Walt Disney film around. He may not be as effervescent as, say, Robin Williams, but he's full of understated, ticklish charm.

The film stars Bruce Campbell of the "Evil Dead" series as Elvis in a touching, funny and at times grotesque performance that is actually the best thing about the movie.

Ordinary Angels, an uplifting drama inspired by the effort to get a sick girl to a transplant hospital amid a massive 1994 Kentucky snowstorm, poses a challenge to cynics: Even if you could resist another spunky, heartstring-tugging Hilary Swank performance in this overstuffed true tale, who among us can deny the sublime beauty of Jack Reacher’s tears?

Overlong, overcrowded, overstimulating and with an over-the-top performance by Charlize Theron as the evil queen Ravenna, the movie is a virtual orchard of toxic excess, starting with the unnecessarily sprawling cast of characters.

Black Sunday takes such a plodding literal-minded approach with an extravagant thriller premise that we have more than enough time to watch the gears working and all too often jamming. [01 Apr 1977, p.B1]

Covers every cliche in the Hollywood sports movie playbook, but it also makes the routine much more enjoyable than you'd expect.

This finale turns Assisted Living from fascinating experimental film into something finer.

1,000 Times Good Night has moments of both startling violence and breathtaking beauty.

It’s all very eventful, to be sure, but there is little insight offered up into any kind of larger meaning, whether psychological, musical or sociological.

There's a lovely moment with Mirren and John Hurt that helps send Brighton Rock toward its final note of tenderness. With so much style to burn, Joffe handles the tinge of Greene-ian ambivalence just right.

Exudes genuine appeal, thanks to director Kenny Ortega's brilliant choreography and a gifted cast.

Unfortunately, screenwriter Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner make the unexpected mistake of being too subtle.

Craven also wrote the script here, based on a news story about California parents who kept their children locked in the basement for many years. That's scary -- and so is how far Craven has fallen.

The movie faithfully records the rivalries among the various members of a fractious Baltimore family, but it never really attempts to resolve any of the internecine conflicts. In that sense, it's less ambitious than many a TV series.

Say this for Confetti: It's a crowd-pleaser. If, that is, the crowd is composed of people who have never seen a movie by Christopher Guest or a TV show starring Ricky Gervais.

The look, style and smarts of A Walk Among the Tombstones seem like such a refreshingly toned-down departure from the outlandishness of Neeson’s “Taken” franchise that it’s all the more dismaying when the film shifts radically into a sadistic tableau of blood and gore.

Even Mary Tyler Moore's sunny but vulnerable Mary Richards or Tina Fey's Liz Lemon seem more fleshily real than Becky.

Ralph Bakshi's half-baked epic American Pop exposes the banality of his pop mentality. The creator of "Lord of the Rings' and "Fritz the Cat" surpasses himself: American Pop is undeniably his sorriest spectacle yet. [6 March 1981, p.C11]

Green proves adept at capturing the quiet intensity and peculiar rhythms of Traveller culture.

Good intentions only go so far, especially when they mask tawdry melodrama. Even the best movies push emotional buttons, but they work because viewers become wrapped up in the story. This one is so manipulative you can hear the gears grinding — until they lock up.

Danner's performance, as she rages against the dying of the romantic light, all but steals the movie from Braff.

From the get-go, the story remains bogged down in its rather limited morass.

Moderately pleasing adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novella.

Three Peaks is not a devastating film like “Force Majeure” — another mountain-set foreign film about the exposure of fissures in a family dynamic — but it is a satisfying one. There’s just enough closure to its inconclusive climax to allow you to relax, even if it doesn’t give you much to terribly ponder during the drive home.

Wind, an adventure loosely drawn on yachtsman Dennis Conner's run for the America's Cup, won't sail for luff or money. A wonky idea from the weighing of the anchor, it's essentially an attempt to remake Rocky with a spinnaker.

But this is Statham’s show, and his stoic brutality makes this a captivating slow burn.

In the end, Jules performs a magical if tiny bait-and-switch: It’s less a sci-fi parable — “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” for the AARP demographic — than a fairy tale reminding us that the tribulations of getting old are more natural than sad, and best done in the company of loved ones.

Winds up being a touching portrait of that rarity in the movies: a recognizably human couple with recognizably human problems and quirks.

Scorchingly raunchy - and yes, pretty funny.

There's something dead and rotting at the center of Mama, and it isn't the ghost of the woman who lends the horror film its title.

At its core, The Company You Keep is a good, solid thriller about a fugitive trying to clear his name. But it’s a much more interesting movie at the edges.

This real-life case of Misery sets your teeth on edge, your blood boiling, your adrenaline surging with the subtlety of a World War II propaganda film.

Forks is a plate of vegetables. It's high on nutritional value but absent any pleasure.

Although the material is conventionally manipulated to provoke terror by exploiting Cujo as a mad dog--a four-footed Jaws as a shameless matter of fact--moviegoers are likely to feel too appalled at the way a sick animal is systematically neglected.

Olivia Colman, Kaitlyn Dever and Jim Gaffigan round out a talented yet crowded ensemble cast, which has so many principal characters — all flawed in a different way — that the filmmakers are unable at times to devote the attention that each one deserves.

There are some scenes that rival any in recent memory -- Winger and Hannah escaping a flaming finale in a burning gallery and Winger and Redford escaping an exploding warehouse -- but the whole is less than its parts, a little too careful. Kind of like dinner theater.

There is one reason, and one reason alone, to watch Cet Amour-La. It is Jeanne Moreau.

The movie ends not with a bang but a wimp.

There's every reason to watch Bread and Roses for what Loach really does best: He involves us directly in the desperate lives of his characters, who are forced to live without security and who have to compromise to make ends meet. And, above all, who feel as real as moviemaking allows.

Overlong and overstuffed with Southern rock and blues numbers, Burden is not exemplary filmmaking. But for viewers who can endure another spin through white-supremacist malice and ignorance, Hedlund and Riseborough make it a compelling ride.

That movie is not half bad, either. The trial, by comparison, will feel familiar to anyone who has ever watched any David take on any corporate Goliath before a court of law ("Erin Brockovich," "A Civil Action," etc., etc.).

Works far better as an idea than its execution; this has to do with the difficulties of making profound statements with limited budgets and technology, and also grappling with the still-growing sensibilities of an emerging writer.

It’s pretty obvious, with the controversy surrounding Trump’s political ascendancy, that there is a built-in market for a film that makes him and his business surrogates out to be both callous bullies and buffoons.

The romantic comedy about a divorced couple having an affair manages to be both light on its feet and heavy enough to deliver something of a message.

Future II bombards you with more brand-name advertising than three hours of prime-time TV could muster, although repeat filmmakers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis put a humorous twist on everything.

The film ends with an ambiguous, yet powerful conclusion. It doesn’t answer the question it raises, yet the way it’s asked keeps it echoing in your head. Except that Cahill can’t seem to leave well enough alone.

It’s worth a watch, if just for Stamp’s complex performance.

The movie Casanova, starring Heath Ledger, not only fetters the randy Venetian in political correctness, it condemns him to dwell inside the modern equivalent of a bad Shakespeare play.

War Dogs stays at arm’s length from the subjects, afraid to implicate us in the pleasures and prosperity of their rise, thus making their fall seem distant, puny and unaffecting.

This is basically a story about the pastime of shopping as an antidote to boredom, only the shopper has wandered into a cocktail lounge, instead of a store, and is looking for something live, or nearly so, to try on. That any human activity worth considering should ensue from this situation would be ridiculous to expect. [8 Feb 1980, p.20]

For all of The Equalizer’s overkill, Washington retains an admirable air of seriousness, embodying McCall as a believable figure of purity and protection, even when he’s going after his opponents with methodical, thoughtfully choreographed sadism.

Branagh, who proved his action bona fides with “Thor,” does an inarguably competent job of choreographing a modestly intelligent espionage thriller, even if it’s impossible to identify anything new he’s bringing to an already groaning table.

This "Holmes" is just about as silly as it awesome. At times, Ritchie and company try so hard to make sure this isn't your father's "Sherlock Holmes" that it comes across as, well, cartoonish.

A modern Gothic slow burn that simmers in pedestrian frights until it finally boils over into bursts of delicious, gory violence. When it does, anchored by an impressive performance by Sydney Sweeney, the bloodshed isn’t just welcome but cathartic, a gonzo takedown of religious patriarchy with one hell of a memorable finale that reconfirms the good news: Nunsploitation is back, baby.

In Born in East L.A., Marin plays it mostly for cheap laughs and only an occasional touch of pathos. In other words, he's taken the easy way out. And the script is so sketchy, the scenes so disconnected and the ideas so vacuous (even for Marin) that Born in East L.A. is in desperate need of a center it never finds in its 75 unfocused minutes. The film is a series of skits, blackouts and punchlines, but finished it's not.

Its strength is the documentary-textured depiction of Native Americans in their social environment. Its weakness is a story that's a patchy combination of soap opera, low-tech magic realism and, at times, ploddingly sociological commentary.

This one's a turkey as big as the Eiffel Tower but it's bad in a particularly American way: It's wildly overdone, it throws in everything in an attempt to appeal to everyone, it's gargantuan and anti-logical, pointlessly ornate and pointlessly violent.

An insufferable, self-important, sloppily made bore.

Actually, Spottiswoode's film has its moments.

As an amalgam of drama and history, Reiner and scriptwriter Lewis Colick strike a surprisingly satisfying compromise.

It's heartwarming. But the film never really takes fire.

Charming enough.

One electrifying performance becomes the only saving grace of The Kingdom, a goofy action movie that tries to marry the blitzkrieg entertainment of "Rambo" to the cultural consciousness of "Syriana."

It’s diverting to watch and has moments of brilliance, but even with all its refreshing female characters, May in the Summer doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

The title of the film “Mending the Line” refers to an adjustment to a fly-fishing line to counter the effects of water currents. But there’s a lot more than the placement of a filament that needs to be remedied in this well-meaning but inert PTSD melodrama.

The gently perfumed air of impending doom suffuses 3 Hearts, a tasteful, mildly intriguing romantic drama from writer-director Benoît Jacquot.

Save Me is a particularly flattering showcase for Gant, best known for his work on the TV show "Queer as Folk" and ready for a big-screen breakout.

The sequel's plot is laughably thin.

Mufasa at least has the grace to offer audiences a fresh story, but children and parents may find it surprisingly difficult to tell one exquisitely rendered lion from the next.

Although the humor doesn’t wear out its welcome, the whiz-bang action sequences do, especially when the unnecessarily bombastic, San Francisco-set finale arrives. Visually, the kinetic movie is occasionally inventive but disappointingly content to paint by numbers.

Suffers from melodramatic overkill.

The film’s inertness is unexpected, and a tad disappointing, considering that first-time screenwriter Joshua Rollins has unearthed some genuinely fascinating details about Bales’s backstory that were not in either published account of the rescue.

It's simultaneously arty, arcane and nasty.

A thoroughly gratifying prestige thriller, thanks to riveting suspense and two brilliant stars.

The story (by Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle) does not exist to serve the needs of logic, but those of Neeson, who, as has become his habit in this sort of thing, delivers, at minimum, a modicum of guilty pleasure as the middle-aged, tender-but-tough Everyman in a tight spot.

If your kids are too young to sit unsupervised, get together with other parents and pay an older sibling or sitter to go.

Even if at times its structure feels overly complicated and the B-roll seems silly, the movie makes compelling points. More important, the film suggests both long-term and short-term solutions.

I Am Michael, is an intermittently affecting — but not entirely convincing — conversion story.

After a sensational beginning, the movie loses its way in the late going and somehow doesn't deliver. [12 Mar 1999]