James Sweeney seems intent on leading us all merrily to hell.

It’s the kind of movie that some will deem important enough to merit end-of-year awards and others will find portentous enough to give them the giggles — again, not unpleasurably.

There are extremely touching moments between Jesse and mystical Randolph, who seems to understand just about everything; and, more tellingly, between Jesse and mechanic Jim.

Never lets viewers fully inside Erik and Paul's world, a reticence that isn't helped by the actors' fey, restrained-to-a-fault performances. That and a frustratingly episodic structure make what might have been a raw and inspiring portrait of commitment and boundaries a surprisingly uninvolving, arms-length enterprise. Keep the Lights On lets go just when it should be holding you tighter.

The movie confounds at times with its aversion to clearly explaining each relationship and ritual, but ultimately that makes each realization seem more like a new discovery.

A ridiculously self-indulgent spree of satanic bogeymannerisms entitled Suspiria, virtually self-destructs in the opening sequence. Eager to menace the audience from every sensory direction, Argento doesn't so much create and sustain an illusion of terror as invite you to marvel at his garish ingenuity, at the spectacle of a filmmaker who can't resist overstylizing and upstaging his material.

One artist's moving tribute to another.

The movie is neatly structured, and Rodriguez turns out to be an interesting guy. He's worth getting to know, even if his music isn't.

Warm, ingratiating, with a beat you can dance to, Sing Street is a feel-good movie that never demands to be liked. Instead it asks, politely and irresistibly.

May be too much suspense for some, but it's vividly powerful.

In place of catharsis, the climax provides gross-out slapstick, but writer-director S. Craig Zahler takes his handiwork so seriously that viewers may do the same.

Although the Beatles weren't actually involved in the making of this animated classic, their zany spirit and inventiveness are evident throughout, thanks to a wonderfully implausible story line, some beautiful and often extraordinary animation and, of course, 14 great Beatles songs, three written expressly for the film.

It yields surprisingly unspectacular results.

The pretentiousness of acting is a fun thing to lampoon, and “Official Competition” does it with surgical precision.

Manufactured Landscapes makes an inelegant point elegantly. The point: Humanity is altering the landscape drastically and by implication irrevocably.

That's exactly the problem with this movie: It's not about a killer, or his victims, or the manhunt or the cops. They're all in it, of course, more or less. But it's about a writer.

Other documentarians before Morris have smudged the distinction between fact and fiction. But here the smudging seems almost irresponsible, and you may feel yourself wanting to fight against the conclusions that Morris comes to, not because they're incorrect, but because there's the chance they were come to unfairly. [2 Sept 1988]

The star is so engaging and her story so compelling that this well-edited profile easily hangs together.

For all its feminist pretense as a parable of empowerment, Priscilla’s still caught in a trap, even when the heroine can — and does — walk out.

Kind of like watching a John Waters film on fast forward with all the good parts cut out. It's empty of charm and meaning, but it certainly kills time, for those who wish it dead.

The film’s title is apt: Gregory was one of a kind. But despite the film’s argument that its subject’s activism was part and parcel of his comedy, and not an afterthought, it’s the jokes that are given short shrift here. One wishes there might have been room for a few more of them.

It takes nerve to make a documentary about the most unpopular period of a massively popular public figure’s life. “One to One: John & Yoko” demonstrates that it’s worth the effort.

A near-masterpiece of a film set in the hothouse world of New York ballet.

The movie is exquisitely directed by Anand Tucker in an anti-documentary style that sometimes fractures the time sequence, sometimes re-creates moments impressionistically instead of objectively and is vivid in style.

Writer-director Russell, a producer and co-writer of TV’s “The Bear” and “Beef,” knows his Hollywood existentialism — the dread that you’re not anybody unless you know a Somebody, the easy California vibe that hides gnawing insecurity, the understanding that a friend today can and certainly would cut your throat tomorrow.

The beauty of Indignation can be found in how it builds, growing from a garden-variety coming-of-age story into a poetic, even prayerful, meditation on the pitiless vagaries of character and regret. Thoughtful and reserved, perhaps even to a fault, Indignation winds up packing a wallop far greater than its modest parts might suggest.

This film is much more atmospheric; it builds, not so much logically as viscerally, until you feel you can't escape. Lurid and overdone as it is, it's still a real disturber of the peace.

You'll leave Bird's smooth flow of nightclub images, dark motel rooms and recharged Parker tracks with new respect for Eastwood the Director. But you'll also leave none the wiser about Parker the Man.