The director took great efforts to be true to Chinese martial arts, but he did so without sacrificing his own distinctive vision.

So many of our problems remain, but 40 Years a Prisoner presents a valuable primer on what mistakes not to repeat.

If you can survive the F-bombs and the near-constant ethnic invective, Gran Torino is not to be missed, if only as the gutsy, thoroughly unexpected valedictory of an icon fully willing to spend every bit of his considerable capital.

Well, surprise: Honey Boy, Shia LaBeouf’s startlingly forthright, cathartic and beautifully acted movie based on his confusing and chaotic life as a child actor, winds up demonstrating what can go right, when the right elements are in place.

As it is, The Killer is less a diamond than a piece of good-looking but cheap quartz: all sparkling surface and not much value.

My Name is Pauli Murray delivers a lively, revelatory litany of all the things Murray got right first, in a career that was driven by equal parts intellectual curiosity and call to service.

The grand subject of “Splitsville” is the virtues and pitfalls of unconventional relationship structures, and it’s never more inspired than when it’s finding surreal ways to convey the insecurities such arrangements may awaken.

The great satisfaction of this documentary is seeing the troubled children of the early scenes emerge with a maturity and equanimity that comes from pushing oneself past the furthest you thought you could go.

Results is a smooth transition for Bujalski from the fringes to more commercial work. It’s heartening that he didn’t give up his calling-card observational humor to do it.

The Pixar people have an extreme talent for conjuring imagery that is both soaring in its majesty but also resonant -- it's a stylization but acute enough to carry emotional meaning.

Comedy today is less about punch lines and pratfalls and more about eliciting that laugh-gasp hybrid. And those jokes come constantly in Appropriate Behavior.

It is a rabble-rousing cheerfest, based on a true story.

Zombieland is sometimes funny. But those of us who have teeny coronaries every time something goes bump in Zombieland might have a hard time relaxing for long enough to really enjoy ourselves.

Although the movie is slow-going at first, it gradually awakens, like Lilia. And then it dances.

The good news might be that Huppert wasn't available for Alias Betty, but the bad news is that it didn't stop France from exporting yet one more cold, pretentious, thoroughly dislikable study in sociopathy.

Whether by dint of his source material or his own maturity, the filmmaker has invested the surface sheen with tenderness and emotional depth. It’s no surprise that Julieta is marvelous to look at, but it possesses just as much substance as style.

Enzo Ferrari was a real person, not just a narrative device. No matter how ardently he sang of speed and danger, there must have been more to his character than Ferrari manages to find.

Sorry, Antz has no show-stopping song and dance numbers, no catchy melodies and no love songs either. The score, made up of old standards, does, however, enhance one of the movie's wittier episodes.

The dour, downbeat story eventually spirals into grisly Grand Guignol and contrivance. Still, Gordon-Levitt is superb, and Jeff Daniels delivers a wry and wily performance as Pratt's blind roommate.

"News” is like almost every other western. Still, it works.

Big has a warmhearted sweetness that's invigorating; it makes you want to break out the Legos. It's only near the end of the film, when Hanks has to play the scenes for pathos, that the movie becomes cloying.

Sitting through The Hangover is like watching "Memento" featuring the Three Stooges.

The Square may be one of the most timely films of this season, but it squanders its own relevancy by shooting fish in the world’s most shallow, painfully obvious barrel.

Toward the end, the film veers a bit out of control, as the residents engage in behavior that is incomprehensible, even given their previous transgressions.

For all its charisma, A Girl Cut in Two lacks a certain depth.

Director Marc Levin's shaky, hand-held camera lends "Slam" an unvarnished, documentary feel. The script – credited not only to Levin, Bonz Malone and Richard Stratton, but to acclaimed performance poets Sohn and Williams – is dense and difficult.

This taut, emotionally wrenching snapshot of both the mythologies and grim realities of war possesses useful reminders about self-deception and abuse of power, especially at a time when bellicose rhetoric and war cabinets seem to be the order of the day.

The whole thing looks like an ad for cologne.

Under Riklis’s direction, the film’s first act lulls the audience into a sense of familiarity, before plunging into a darker reality. The effect is shattering.

A warm, earnestly entertaining film.

At its worst, River's Edge is crackpot sociology. Jimenez and Hunter use the characters' lack of affect as an indictment. The film has a hectoring, hysterical tone. It wants to find out why these kids, who have grown up in splintered, lower-middle-class homes, are like they are. They want to blame somebody.

There's a place in the movies for wish fulfillment, no doubt, including the wish for it all to be over.

The first half of Cold is tense and suspenseful, albeit in a conventional way; the second half is sickeningly compelling. It’s hard to watch and hard to look away from.

The director Vaughn has a flair not merely for action and ambiance but also for character.

It is sheer brilliance and testament to the vitality of an old master.

A compelling French Canadian drama.

It is to the film's credit -- and Foxx's -- that we are able to see, behind the flash and fury, a man who didn't know how to love, and was so much the lonelier for it.

Mask is a tear-jerker in the sense that your dentist is a tooth jerker -- it yanks on your heart with pliers. That said, the story it has to tell is so unutterably sad and inspiring that the movie works in spite of itself. [22 Mar 1985, p.C1]

All the kids are believable and Suburbia's shortcomings are mostly in its script, not in its characterizations. [11 Feb 1984, p.G1]

Two things distinguish writer-director Elegance Bratton’s lyrical debut feature from its predecessors: a clanking, droning, energizing score by experimental rock band Animal Collective and a central character — based on Bratton himself — who’s Black and gay.

It seems to celebrate him more for his attitude, his fashionably leftist politics, his fame and his friendships than for any meaningful accomplishment.

Macabre, yes, but the movie's also inventive and funny. You get a lot of smart bang-bang for your buck.

Bridge never quite gels into anything.

What it establishes is hard to put your finger on. It's not a sensibility, exactly; it's more of a sense that the filmmaker's heart is in the right place -- that she is a sophisticated, caring, feeling person.

It's a film filled with excellent acting, beautifully composed shots, and one or two legitimate storytelling surprises.

One of those rare movie history lessons that don't make you feel as if you're facing the chalkboard. It's an impassioned movie, with vehement, soulful performances from Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek, but it's also a work of great restraint and proportion. 

Lacks emotional depth and intellectual sincerity.

The New World is stately almost to the point of being static and thus has trouble finding a central story around which to arrange itself; it's not quite the thin dead line, but it's close.

In a textbook example of the have-it-both-ways ethos of self-loathing narcissism, Carell has succeeded in creating a character of old-fashioned decency in a movie that otherwise flouts it at every turn.

“Corner” is a deeply sympathetic tale, using the possibilities of animation not just to pique curiosity, but to devastate.

But even appreciated simply as a little-known chapter of European history, it proves consistently engrossing, edifying and affecting.

You may catch yourself trying to remember where you parked a little before the end.

Dark Waters is an effective outrage machine: If you like “Erin Brockovich,” you’ll probably like this too.

A charming, if limited, romantic comedy that examines post-collegiate angst with easy, unself-conscious humor.

There's nothing stodgy about these court jesters or their humor, even though their act is a decidedly grown-up affair.

A sweet but labored love story.

In a sense, Shattered Glass is a parenthetical horror movie in which someone discovers (or worse, denies) the monster within themselves.

It's a masterful little film, and, thanks to Zhang's seasoned hands, it's subtly heartfelt but never manipulative.

As is his wont, Spielberg can't resist stuffing the ending of the movie with a bit too much cheese and baloney. Despite those quibbles, War of the Worlds is taut, gripping and surprisingly dark filmmaking.

ShowBusiness is not so clever nor so entertaining as the popular musical "A Chorus Line," which plied this territory more than 30 years ago, but it does go deeper into the mechanics of the business.

This one has crossover hit written all over it.

To present a simple progression from crime to trial to death, when a moral dilemma was promised, is a dramatic crime. [01 May 1981, p.19]

Thirst is good, insolent fun for about two-thirds of the way, before it stumbles and drowns in a pool of its own excess. Still, you can't help but admire a horror movie that prompts us to wonder how vampires with a surplus of blood got by before the advent of Tupperware.

I can't remember a film that sees the here and now more precisely, one that offers total believability in the tone and motive of its characters and then goes further, showing us a whole and completely recognizable world.

Gradually, and with the methodical patience of someone unearthing buried treasure with a tiny brush, The Dig reveals itself to be a story of love and estrangement, of things lost and longed for, of life and death — of what lasts and what doesn’t.

Ultimately, [Heckerling's] portrait is affectionate and, in places, even sweet, enabling us to laugh at them and embrace them at the same time.

As a storyteller, Amalric is a master of manipulation, first leading the audience in one direction and then another. The Blue Room is a hall of mirrors, reflecting every detail but making it hard to know where you stand.

Abetted by an observant cast, she (Dabis) navigates across politically and emotionally fraught terrain with a warming inflection of humor and a mother-hen's attention to the needs of all of her characters.

You’ll laugh, all right. You’ll cry. You’ll do both at the same time. CODA is just that kind of movie. And thank goodness for it.

The new film, a fitfully amusing and perfectly harmless spoof of the morbid and masochistic cliches that sustain the typical soap opera, represents a mellow, spruced-up turn toward the mainstream. [06 Jul 1981, p.C3]

Actor and screenwriter Joel Kim Booster gives Jane Austen a brisk, lighthearted refresh in Fire Island, a hedonistic — but disarmingly sincere — ode to the eponymous gay vacation spot.

Like any successful comedy — or movie, for that matter — “Bros” succeeds in its specificity: in this case, gay life and culture that are brimming with foibles, contradictions, triumphs and failures just waiting to be mined for comic gold.

Matilda...explodes with an exhilarating pleasure in filmic transformation, in harnessing the strength of one medium and regenerating it freshly in another.

By the film's self-congratulatory final shot, Stevie has become less a portrait of a sorry young man's difficult life than the story of auteurist arrogance and self-deception run amok.

August, who also made "Pelle the Conqueror" and "House of the Spirits," steers this story to its stirring conclusion with firm lack of sentimentality.

There's something impressive and yet lacking about everything.

If you love the theater, you've got to see the film.

Rather than a movie that breaks the mold, it looks like Anning has inspired one we've seen before.

We realize that this romance, like the beautiful land, is doomed almost inevitably to earthquake fissures, to irreversible change. But rather than making us despondent, Climates leaves us peacefully philosophical.

The result is a movie that feels both hard-edged and dreamy; punk-rock and lyrical; wised-up and unbearably tender.

The movie is taut, fast, achingly authentic and terribly melancholy.

The performances remain subtly powerful, especially Karam’s. Tony is a man whose unpredictable rage can be sparked by one wrong move, but Karam infuses the character with pathos through the subtlest gestures and facial expressions. El Basha, who is also moving in his role, was the first Palestinian to win best actor at the Venice Film Festival.

Fremont has the demeanor of a kitchen-sink drama but is laced with deadpan absurdism.

At just over 1 ½ hours, the film feels painfully long, paralyzed by a numbing bleakness. That’s not only the result of the protagonist’s downward trajectory, but also of cinematographer Bradford Young’s long, plodding shots, which only call attention to the visually hollow landscape.

It's a nicely balanced blend of comedy, drama and athletic dancing that plies its trade with winking, unforced self-assurance.

They don't come any cuter than The Adventures of Milo and Otis, a heartwarming, tail-thumping story about a curious kitten and his pug-nosed puppy pal. It's totally awwwwww-some.

Straight Outta Compton reminds viewers not only who N.W.A. were and what they meant, but also why they mattered — and still do.

Garrone has created a world of both rich and ugly textures — visual, narrative and imaginative — that transports, delights and imparts disturbing lessons.

Eastwood was never much of a cinematic stylist to begin with, and this film in particular has the dull, proficient sheen of a TV movie.

Captain Fantastic leaves viewers with the cheering, deeply affecting image of a dad whose superpowers lie in simply doing the best that he can.

An amusing, buoyant documentary about competitive body building, dominated by the humorous though awesomely proportioned star presence of champion of champions Arnold Schwarzenegger as he trains and disarms the competition prior to defending the title of Mr. Olympia for the fifth time.

Matilda, the funny new children's film directed by and starring Danny DeVito, takes that alter-family and creates a real-life fairy tale. Frequent use of vibrant colors like magenta and chartreuse, combined with unflattering camera angles and bizarre characters, give the action an unreal quality, like the land of Oz. [02 Aug 1996, p.B01]

All the Money in the World may not have that many surprises up its sleeve, especially if you already know how this story ends. You will, however, get your money’s worth, one way or another: whether it’s from the crime thriller or the thought-provoking sermon on filthy lucre that it throws in, at no extra charge.

It’s nice to be reminded of what old people look like, since they are, at least in movies these days, ever more invisible.

The film, despite being mostly set in a huge, expensive apartment that inexplicably seems to be illuminated only by low-wattage lightbulbs, by and large resists the easy tropes of conventional horror. Instead, Jusu focuses, with an assured storytelling that slowly builds a mood of real-world dread, on more corporeal concerns.

A pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps.

Certainly the going is grim, and there's nothing socially redeeming about "Blues" whatsoever, but writer/director George Armitage's movie is also funny, stirring and full of great moments done in the pop-arty, lightly macabre spirit of producer Jonathan Demme.

Friendship is primarily a movie for Robinson’s hardcore fans, but, for the Tim-curious, it serves as an amusing — if haphazard and uneven — introduction to his distinctive sensibility.

The satirical edge has been dulled in a film that is dominated, and ultimately swamped, by its star's mannered, pixilated performance.

Headhunters has less in common with the somber, brooding tone of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" than the cheeky black comedy "In Bruges."

It's not fierce, it's not angry, it's not radical, it's polite and what might be called "life-affirming." But it does have a couple of attributes most movies don't.

It's the sort of movie that can make normally well-read and intelligent viewers feel stupid.

Damning legal brief against the former secretary of state.

Like the novel, the film is occasionally overwrought and overwritten.

Will probably appeal only to the most committed of Leigh fans.

The only thing wrong with Bowling for Columbine is Moore himself.

An engaging, modestly amusing, sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious comedy of manners in which the usual millennial excesses are skewered, from the invidious hellhole of social media to the mendacities of online dating.

Unfolds as a series of meticulous tableaux vivants, but like those parlor pastimes, it lacks physical verve and a compelling emotional charge.

Stone creates a riveting marriage of fact and fiction, hypothesis and empirical proof in the edge-of-the-seat spirit of a conspiracy thriller.

Say this much for Fennell: She is incapable of pulling punches. Even when they’re swaddled in the puffiest, fuzziest of gloves, her blows land with gut-wrenching force.

The film’s structural shortcomings will matter less to most viewers than the personality of the central character, Michal.

Well-made and likable, without any major missteps. It’s also just a little bland.

The movie is an intellectual puzzle, the outcome of which is never in doubt. Its minor thrills come not from not knowing what will happen, but from watching the cagey choreography of two acrobatic minds.

Some movies prove so eye-opening that a viewer may feel the urge to recount the story, start to finish, to friends and acquaintances. Crime After Crime is that kind of film.

The movie is a joyless, inconclusive affair. By not making Orton either a homosexual hero or a working-class hero, avenues that were both open to them and that lesser minds might have traveled down, the filmmakers have shown great intellectual taste. But it's not the kind of taste that's illuminating. Ultimately, they seem not to have known exactly what to make of their subject.

Director Walter Lang does almost nothing to cinematize the show, but that's all right; King and I works fine as an act of theatrical preservation, and at some strange level the story, even with its abrupt ending, still has power. [27 Feb 1992, p.D7]

At its worst, which ends up being most of the time, the movie traps us in art-house pretentiousness, as we're obliged to follow the yearnings and abstract corruptions of the urban zestless.

A full-throttle fantasy, about as heady a movie experience as it gets.

The film is most interesting when it uses Gold to tell the story of Los Angeles’s diversity, rather than the story of the most important stomach in Los Angeles.

There is an obliqueness to In Bloom. Writer Nana Ekvtimishvili, who directed the movie with Simon Gross, doesn’t spell things out, and the complete story never comes into focus... But when the truth is so troubling, sometimes part of the story is more than enough.

By the time the film is over, the movie has degenerated with a jaundiced vengeance. Fosse's sour, grandstanding cynicism imposed an intolerable burden of self-pity on his talent, our compassion and the tradition of the backstage muscial.

A surprisingly lush, well-produced film.

The performers bring freshness to what could have been cliched roles.

Although nowhere near the class of its equine hero, is quite a satisfying ride.

Pontecorvo's pointed 1969 drama of the politics of war feels surprisingly timely.

It’s [Bong Joon Ho's] first film since “Parasite” became the first foreign language movie to win a best picture Oscar in 2020, and while it’s not his best work, “Mickey 17” is still a great deal of acrid fun. In the bargain, you get three great performances from two very good actors.

It's actually quite satisfying, in a weird, magical-realism sort of way that manages to disturb and confound as much as it appeases the romantic.

A clever slice of regional noir that carries a gale-force punch beneath its modest, soft-spoken trappings.

Happy End, for its part, signals a return to form for the director, who here makes a stark departure from the sweet tone of “Amour” — perhaps his most mainstream work — in favor of the vinegary outlook on life manifested in such films as “Funny Games,” his 2007 horror movie about violently psychopathic home invaders, and “The White Ribbon,” his 2009 pre-World War I period piece about, among other things, child abuse.

A gorgeously photographed storybook.

The picture that emerges is fractured, making for a portrait that’s as fascinating as it is baffling.

It is an engrossing tale, full of betrayal and chicanery, and it casts the Egyptian political-military complex and the religious hierarchy as riddled with corruption.

Risk raises deep misgivings about its subject and its maker. But it’s still queasily, compulsively watchable — and probably necessary, if only as a cautionary example of how ethics, objectivity and agendas come into play in nonfiction filmmaking.

It takes us someplace, yes, but the trip is just this side of transporting.

By the end of Invisible Beauty, it’s obvious from all the accolades that [Hardison] made a difference in the lives of a new generation of Black models.

Phantasm will not be remembered as a masterpiece of the horror genre, but it sustains a gauche, hokey, desperately improvisational charm.... It entertains through a half-facetious juvenile gusto.

An engaging and touching valedictory to one of the most pivotal figures of the 20th century.

Nine Days is, in the end, meant as a wake-up call: a bracing splash of fake seawater in the face that somehow, against all logic, feels like the real thing.

It’s also a telling personal moment, because it opens the door to a discussion of Wallace’s struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts.

The much ballyhooed movie, far from great and far from short (2 1/2 hours!), is still great fun.

At 46, Shinkai still has plenty of time to convince us of his gifts. Weathering With You may not reach the heights of “Your Name,” but it still achieves something impressive: It tells a story that, without sugarcoating the environmental challenges that lie ahead, manages to end on a hopeful note.

The movie, which is based on the Lowell Cunningham comic book series, throws out some wonderful implications, but they’re frustratingly few and far between.

The director, who is the son of filmmaker David Cronenberg, seems to have inherited some of his father’s worst excesses, which are here unleashed in a manner that is sophomoric, fetishistically violent and hyper-sexualized.

Spiritually aware documentary.

Thanks to Rock's running monologue, combining scathing humor with trenchant observations, the film manages to be side-splitting even while making its most poignant points.

In the end, it's primarily a brain teaser, obtuse and ultimately limited in its emotional impact.

Costner (with Michael Blake's screenplay) creates a vision so childlike, so willfully romantic, it's hard to put up a fight.

Close kin to Fatal Attraction, but more earnestly told, it is a cautionary treatise on the wages of fooling around in the office (death for her, despair for him). But mostly it is a solid whodunit, driven by subtext and the intensity of Ford, Greta Scacchi as the predatory other woman and Bonnie Bedelia as the wronged wife.

The Outrun is a recovery drama lifted above the genre’s necessary clichés by the star’s prickly, incandescent presence. It’s also boosted by the film’s setting in the stark Orkney Isles in the north of Scotland and by Fingscheidt’s poetic approach to time, place and chronology.

Emphasizes action and eye-popping visuals over emotion.

A colorfully macabre stop-motion animation comedy that embraces the sociopolitical allegories of George A. Romero's zombie pictures and reworks them into a feature-length episode of "Scooby-Doo."

A funny thing happened while watching Luce. With only a half-hour or so of the movie left to go, it suddenly occurred to me: I wasn’t sure what the movie was actually about. Or, more accurately, it was about so much that, at the point where most films are starting to wrap things up, this one felt like it was still just setting the stage.

The film as a whole is a little like one of those inflatable love dolls -- a reasonable facsimile, but nothing like the real thing.

But if the modestly budgeted film (loosely based on journalist Michael Nicholson's factual narrative, "Natasha's Story") lopes along a formulaic, often heavy-handed track, its pictures and subtext make a powerful statement. [9Jan1998 Pg. N.41]

Knappenberger’s documentary is smart and focused, homing in on a recurring theme of independence.

The acting ensemble has a believable, brotherly chemistry, especially Teller and Taylor Kitsch, playing a troublemaker who initially teases Brendan brutally before the two warm up to each other, forming an adorable bond.

Good old-fashioned movie storytelling that steadily builds, over the course of nearly three hours, to a white-knuckle conclusion that satisfies on nearly every level.

It does exactly what its subject didn’t do: toe the line.

A fascinating, funny and informative documentary.

As Ravel puts it, the disproportionate influence of money on elections isn’t a Democratic or Republican problem, but a “gateway issue to every other issue you might care about.” Dark Money makes the case, as well as any film can, that she’s pretty much right on the money.

Possibly without meaning to, the younger Wexler has made a superb examination not of professional cinematography -- really, who cares? -- but of the eternal bad business between fathers and sons.

Surprisingly smart, graphically faithful live-action adaptation of the Mike Mignola series

There are no surprises in Sleepless, and the audience is ahead of the characters every step of the way. But people seem to like it that way. And, hey, it works like a charm.

Violette mostly avoids the pitfalls associated with movies about writers by limiting the scenes of Violette scribbling furiously in a notebook.

Betting on Zero makes such a strong and effective case that the company does, in fact, engage in shady business practices that it’s likely to leave viewers in a state of Documentary High Dudgeon (that brand of cinematic outrage that is not entirely unmixed with a pleasurable feeling of moral superiority).

Propelled by a lyrical, pulsing soundtrack of Colombian rock, hip-hop and bolero, Days of the Whale is less a character study, or even a love story than a vibrant study in swirling perpetual motion.

Slick, silly and often extravagantly pretty, it’s a pastiche that threads a tricky needle, conveying the dual nature of cinema as an enchanting art form and a ruthless, rationalized industrial practice.

Though much of "Candy" is a clumsy sprawl, there's more than enough human spirit in the tank to keep it going.

At nearly three hours long, and told with the book’s peripatetic structure, moving from nightmare to nightmare, The Painted Bird is not for the faint of heart.

In the end, The Color Purple manages to find a sweet spot between tragedy and entertainment. But is that really the best way to honor Walker’s vision?

What might have been just another anodyne promo piece or solipsistic valentine instead becomes a funny, eccentric and finally deeply poignant depiction of art, family, ­self-sabotage and the prickly intricacies of brotherly love.

There are many periods when the two men are traveling and you feel the need to fast-forward the movie to another scene. This is not a great comedy but it's a string of funny highlights.

A dead-on sense of how rich kids live and talk today, a sense of the melancholy of a dysfunctional family, and some great dark laughs.

Glazer and Rabinowitz’s script can be patchy and manic, but it does its best work showing the contortions women undergo to prove their support, especially in today’s “yaaaas queen” era where everyone is a goddess.

As happens with many time-travel films, this one ultimately paints itself into a bit of a narrative corner.

A great performance does not necessarily make for great tragedy, and Christine remains mired in the minutiae of its portrait of a doomed, bitter young woman.

There's nothing "wrong" with this movie but it feels like warmed-over business as usual.

A logistical wonder, a marvel of engineering, and relentlessly, mercilessly thrilling.

The casting coup here is Benedict Cumberbatch, who exudes steely resolve and silken savagery as a villain on the cusp of becoming a legendary nemesis.

Famuyiwa reminds viewers not to believe — or worse, internalize — the hype, and he provides a great deal of cheeky, infectious fun in the process. Put another way, Dope is the bomb.

A book that got under the young Guadagnino’s skin, about the ache to merge with a forbidden lover’s body and soul, has become a film that uses the play of light on a screen to hint at the light we carry inside ourselves and that only the queer know we share.

Brown seamlessly blends the emotional, intimate stories of people with bigger pictures, using the explosion as the starting point for a ripple effect that just keeps growing.

It’s a viciously smart and disturbingly funny abduction tale, primarily confined to a grubby basement but with a purview that extends from the inner sanctums of the memory to the outer reaches of the galaxy.

We get Albert’s side of the story, and that’s clearly problematic. How much faith should we put in the account of someone who tells such massive whoppers? That question constantly hovers over Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary, which is by turns fascinating and unseemly.

Worse yet is the insincerity of the film's central performances. Too cool by half, Glodell, Wiseman and Dawson speak every line as if it had air quotes around it. In fact, the entire movie feels as though it has air quotes around it.

What’s true in Pakistan turns out to be universal: Misconceptions can prove as dangerous as any disease and are even harder to eradicate.

[A] well-told tale.

Blade goes for the carotid while offering a classic look and a comic-book story. It’s part Kurosawa, part “X-Men,” part “Ichi the Killer.”

The acting is straight out of '50s B movies. The exposition is clumsy, the sound track corny, the denouement silly. Then again, who said bad taste was easy? [13 Apr 1987, Style, p.b4]

Considering that any one of those elements could have scuttled its fragile mix of drama, comedy and life-and-death stakes, 50/50 beats the odds with modest, utterly winning ease.

All too often the plot feels calculated rather than organic, the result of a time-tested formula rather than genuine innovation.

Spielberg has created an appropriate showcase for the magnificent creature that emerges, one that recalls the great movie horses of yore in a story guaranteed to pluck, grab and wring viewers' hearts, but thankfully not break them.

This is a very sweet movie to watch, the pleasant cinematic equivalent of light summer reading.

As long as it stayed mainstream dirty it was okay, but when it got into perversions the American Psychiatric Society hasn't even named yet, it left me behind.

Enhanced by a wicked sense of humor, Will Gluck's movie does what Hughes did best, showcasing characters with personality who make you wish you had them on speed dial.

For every misgiving The Eagle Huntress invites, it offers inspiration in equal measure, taking the audience on a beautiful, thrilling journey to a part of the world that is still largely inaccessible. And it introduces them to a young woman who gives bravery a bracing, unforgettable face.

Nothing about El Camino makes a case that we are necessarily better off with it than without it, or that some great hole has now been filled. It turns out we were fine with the idea of not knowing exactly what happened to Jesse; that way, we could always hope the best. Now that we know, dare we ask for a little more? Or leave it be?

You may not enjoy The Mother (I certainly didn't), but it's a movie so heavy on truth, its spell cannot be denied.

Censored Voices is an essential documentary. Its subject is nothing less than loss of innocence, the seeds of hatred and the illusory nature of victory.

It’s an affectionate finale for the character, crafted with such care — from Molly Emma Rowe’s costumes to Kave Quinn’s thoughtful production design to those signature needle drops, monologues and Bridget-isms — it’s a shame “Mad About the Boy” isn’t opening in U.S. theaters.

Tautou is a delight, as always, using her bubbly personality to comic advantage. And Elmaleh makes for a sort of poor man's Buster Keaton, perpetually stressed but refusing to surrender, no matter how much damage he sustains to himself or his wallet.

All in all, the film is an excellent, if modest, alternative for moviegoers who have been blockbustered into submission this summer.

Wonderful images, hues, sensations and faces.

Down and Out suggests the kind of conflict of values that the fish-out-of-water story depends on: wealthy Dave is a workaholic, but Jerry doesn't want to work; Dave is a striver, but Jerry's given up. But the idea is never really pursued.

More than just one of the best movies so far this year, it is a revolution in young-adult entertainment.

Beauty Is Embarrassing stays true to White's own exacting standards: It's thoughtful, skillfully executed and pure pop pleasure, from start to finish.

Candyman can’t seem to decide whether it wants to scare you or make you think.

Too often, in a film about an ostensibly peaceful form of dissent, it feels like adversaries are being targeted, albeit subtly, when the real enemy is war itself.

Forget that "reality" show about young dancers on the Lifetime channel. First Position, a debut documentary from Bess Kargman, is the real thing.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves bottles the spirit of the game in the flask of a fantasy adventure even if it fails to reinvent the wheel.

In the Chinese martial-arts film The Final Master, the fighting is more lucid than the plot. That may be characteristic of the genre, yet this smart, stylish movie diverges from the expected in many ways, most of them enjoyable.

A bittersweet, elegiac tone can’t help but suffuse a film animated by so many anarchic spirits who have since left the planet, but it leaves viewers with the exhilarating, inspiring reassurance that we still have Iggy. To adopt his own highest praise: That’s cool.

The sheer earnestness of director Ugo Bienvenu’s elegiac, even mournful tale feels as appealingly anachronistic as its lush 2D animation.

The Life of Reilly pays fitting homage to a man who deserves to be remembered for much more than just trading double-entendres with Brett Somers on "The Match Game."

Pirouettes along a beguiling but treacherous line between horror and whimsy.

Under its scope and reach and passion, Gangs of New York is pretty ordinary stuff.

The film-which at 112 minutes, ends up ramblin' like its subject-does provide compelling rehab for an underrated artist.

So elegantly layered and emotionally restrained, it makes the horror at its center all the more disturbing.

So unassuming and pure of heart, you can't help but warmly extend your arms and yell "Safe!"

What rescues the film is Gernot Roll's spare, almost aesthetic cinematography, and the quality of the acting.

There are scenes that simply ask the audience to drink in the details, to enjoy the repast, just as much as follow the plot.

Instead of an originally conceived movie that reflects Nash's troubled but brilliant mind, we have one of those formulaically rendered Important Subject movies -- the kind that seem exclusively designed for Best Picture nominations.

[A] meandering, deliberate and tearless — yet oddly moving — western vehicle.

A Compassionate Spy is less a full companion piece to “Oppenheimer” than an intriguing sidebar.

There are no huge revelations here — certainly nothing that would shock superfans. The movie offers a taste of the go-go-go pace of touring the world, which led to exhaustion and frustration, but mostly focuses on the happier times.

Very little is simple in Your Sister's Sister -- not the emotions, the naturalistic tone or the unstudied, easygoing performances. But the film's pleasures are.

Only the most committed Aster-pologists are likely to enjoy Midsommar at its fullest; others, meanwhile, may admire its handsome visual design and bravura performances without completely buying in to the alternately diseased and fuzzy fable at its core.

If he had to die so soon, this movie is the best and most appropriate sendoff Lee could have hoped for.

It's a terrific, disquietingly entertaining little film -- a piece of genuine Gothic Americana.

With its zany daily episodes, "Groundhog" gets stuck in a non-progressive repetition.

An agoraphobic's nightmare, it's a condescending view, and maybe one that's totally off base. [23 Sep 1983, p.21]

Not to be missed, if only for an unforgettable leading performance by Kevin Bacon.

An astonishing lead performance by Jennifer Lawrence keeps Lynne Ramsay’s “Die My Love” from falling apart — which is ironic, given that the new film depicts her ripping at the seams.

In some ways, this dramedy, directed by Bradley Cooper, is a familiar story about midlife crises and marital dissatisfaction, but it quickly swerves in a fresh direction, resulting in a movie that’s both resonant and hilarious.

Fans of Fassbender's yummy performances in this year's "Jane Eyre" and "X-Men: First Class" should be forewarned that, although we see the handsome Irish actor in the altogether, Shame is strangely un-sexy.

By turns funny, affecting tale.

Like a good campfire storyteller, writer-director Rian Johnson knows how to fuse the amusing and the edgy. And, in Brendan, he has created an endearing character.

All in all, Doctor Strange is a fun and trippy excursion to a place where Marvel rarely seems to go: that is, to the retinal roots of the comics.

Polanski touch -- apart from a little suspense here and there -- is limited. And the story, which Ariel Dorfman adapted from his radical-chic play, is too contrived and smug to really hold.