Well acted and acutely observed, the film doesn't try to be a conventionally satisfying coke-land action film.

McConaughey's fans might be shocked to see him in this role - more likely, they'd skip the opportunity - but they ought to give his performance a shot. The dimpled demon lover proves he can be just as seductive playing Texas's creepiest, craziest cop.

If this riveting, repelling film is to be seen, it must be not at home but in a theater, where you are confined in a room, like Sandra and Becky, deciding whether to watch, and how you would react.

Knightley embodies Anna as a girlish woman who has never felt erotic love; once smitten, she is raised to heavenly ecstasy before tumbling into the abyss of shame. It's a nervy performance, acutely attuned to the volcanic changes a naive creature must enjoy and endure on her first leap into mad passion. She helps make Anna Karenina an operatic romance worth singing about.

Sometimes engrossing, sometimes exasperating romance. In these scenes, Cotillard shows she doesn't need the validation of Cannes or the Academy. Her strong, subtle performance is gloriously winning on its own.

A fanciful film with the patina of hyper-realism, Looper is well served by actors who behave not as if they were dropped carelessly into the future but spent their whole desperate lives there.

Bad 25 is an intimate view of a performer at his peak in the intense splendor of creativity.

This high-IQ sermon is long but never lazy. Renouncing his tendency to make every movie take emotional flight, Spielberg sticks to the story as Kushner has artfully compressed it. Lincoln is brain food and, at another pivotal moment in American political history, an instructive feast.

A pastiche that's nearly as funny as it is long (2hr. 45min.), and quite as politically troubling as it may be liberating, Django Unchained is pure, if not great, Tarantino.

Besides rehabbing a hero who overcomes anxiety to save the world and defeat the terror-industrial complex by the simple matter of cloning his body armor, the movie proves that there’s still intelligent life on Planet Marvel. As you’re propelled out of the theater on IM3′s hydraulic lift of pleasures, you’re likely to say, “That is how it’s done.”

This isn't "2001," by a long shot, but for 2000, it'll do nicely.

Manages to make its point--that we are all impaired, short on that rarest quality, common sense--without being imprisoned by its complex format.

Fond, zippy new documentary about the Bruce who, on the Hollywood circuit, is the real Boss.

Take this Shower and feel refreshed; it's a cool dip on a hot day.

Blane's snooty friend Steff (Spader) could be a tired stereotype, but with his all-year tan, his hip-blase voice and hs view of high school as a "career," Steff becomes a recognizable character of any age: upscale slime in embryo. [3 Mar 1996, p.83]

The 80 minutes it spends on the atoll alone with Hanks make for engrossing storytelling. The film is less sure-footed back in civilization.

But the actor (Nolte) finds truth in Wade's emotional clumsiness, in the despair of a man who hasn't the tools or the cool to survive. There are too many of these men in life, and not enough films that tell their sad tales.

The film bubbles with acid wit, in the tradition of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges, while simmering with the ache of lust pursued and love lost.

If Michael Lehmann's direction were a bit more astute, the movie could be the classic genre mutation it aims to be: Andy Hardy meets "Badlands." [17 April 1989]

An adoring tone and the familiar slo-mo, wide-angle baskebatics.

For those who park their sense and sensibility at the 'plex door, there's plenty to enjoy in the performances, the rowdy innocence of the whole thing, the closing sing-along of Build Me Up Buttercup--and the vision of Cameron Diaz in giggly, gangly bloom.

Jogs from one incident to the next, amassing information and dispensing attitude but rarely creating real characters. That's supposed to be director Milos Forman's forte; here, though, nearly everyone is an enemy or a stooge.

Vivid, relevant and of elevating scariness.

Best to savor The Grifters for its handsome design -- the picture looks as clean as a Hockney landscape -- and its juicy performances. [11 Feb 1991]

Doesn't aim too high or strain too hard; it is at ease inhabiting its pretty, miniature realm.

But it also has enough buoyant '70s music to shake anybody's tail feather, and a kind of easy jubilance of narrative and character. Bet it makes you wanna dance. [11 Oct 1993]

Ceases to be a cogent study of the disease of genius and devolves into two lesser creatures: an ordinary weepie and an Oscar contender.

Wants to contain multitudes -- high ideals and high tech, the poignant and the silly. Doing so, it becomes a lexicon of modern filmmaking. It could be its own creature: Super-Generico. That's not the worst thing for a movie to be, but it's not quite Marvel-ous either.