Swims upstream against high-definition with a defiantly lo-fi approach that's also ingeniously evocative of the historical period.

The film isn't a worldbeater as either old-school journalism of rigorous reportage or dazzling showmanship...will be of most use as a time capsule of sorts...

The mealy half-truth director Peter Webber...and screenwriters Vera Blasi and David Klass settle for just winds up a waste of everyone's time.

Provides plenty of moving case studies...[but] it's most useful for its prismatic look at the problem of American hunger, examining the problem's recent history, its root causes...and its inextricability from other national crises...

In its modern way, Snitch is almost Dickensian in its intent, missing no opportunity for melodramatic confrontation as it puts a (baby) face on a social ill.

The material calls out for a more expressive cinematographic treatment. Had the film been less antiseptic and more bold in its visuals and the emotional depths of its performances, it could have been a classic; instead, it's a rather ordinary indie.

The 'other' Oscar-nominated feature about a war on terror, Dror Moreh’s documentary The Gatekeepers proves more intellectually engaging than Hollywood’s Zero Dark Thirty, and at least as unsettling.

Does Sparks have to treat people like total idiots...?...[A] soulless-cash-grab.

McCarthy is a worthy successor to John Candy, who also had a gift for warming up caricatures with loveable humanity.

Doesn't avoid all of the traps of the genre, but Hoffman does show good taste, particularly in casting.

Has significant blemishes that don't quite come out in the wash...but the picture persists on the strength of its committed performances.

The sheer bulk of talent involved (top-tier technicians and designers included) turns out to be a case of water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Takes dicey material—the story of one privileged family's suffering during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—and transcends its political incorrectness by focusing on the human condition.

The Baby Boomer teaming no one was asking for—Billy Crystal and Bette Midler—melded to that most moribund of genres, rugrats 'comedy'...

A mixed bag of suitable and not-so-suitable choices. On balance, though, it's about as compelling a screen version of Les Mis as we have any right to expect...Pop a dramamine and you'll be fine.

There's a case to be made that blood-spattering revenge pictures, no matter how evil the villain, are cultural poison, but if this is what it takes to [get] Don Johnson as a dyed-in-the-wool racist done up as Colonel Sanders, well, so be it.

[McQuarrie] spreads a unearned veneer of intelligence over...a plot one character aptly describes as 'grassy-knoll ludicrous.'

Silly and nice, basically unfunny but basically innocuous—so as satisfying as your average leftovers.

Mostly succeeds on its own merits...[but] many comedic and musical distractions pad the 134-minute running time and stray from the implicit promise of that title: the film has little to say about middle age...

As playful as it is...Holy Motors has the power to haunt as much as to amuse.

Another day at the Romantic Comedy Factory:
'...Pull me down a Gerard Butler and a Jessica Biel, will ya?'

Reenactment cinema...On balance, Hitchcock is about as entertaining and as trustworthy as a tabloid.

Even if the cause and effect of the plot proves fairly impenetrable...one can't deny the film is frequently visually resplendent and imaginative...

Who's for 130 minutes of alienation?...We're able to intellectualize why we should care (those social strictures are crushing hearts!), but we're too distracted to be moved.

John Milius' 1984 original may not have been a paragon of clear-headed foreign policy, but...Dan Bradley's remake predictably sidesteps—and, in one case, mocks—its source material's most interesting moments...

Heavenly shades of night are falling: it's Twilight time...[for a series which] has always been borderline comical in its moments of greatest sincerity...

Playful...the most conspicuously repeated word is 'game,' the most dangerous of which Bond typically is, pursues, or plays.

Despite...misguided commercial instincts, Flight offers much that's productively unsettling, anchored by Washington's old-school movie-star performance...

The Wachowskis and Tykwer are determined to make you understand eternity, and in that and only that, they succeed: by the time you get to the film’s endless series of endings, you’ll feel as if you’ve lived lifetimes.

There’s a nobility in a well-made teen movie, not least because of the rarity of the breed...[this] sports movie concerned with the physical, emotional, and moral development of a young man fruitfully aspires to the likes of Breaking Away.

Foreign-film comfort food...at its best in exploring the psychology of the adopted.

Smart enough to work on multiple levels: as a witty salute to masculine '70s cinema...as a deconstruction of same...and as an existential consideration of the role of self-expression in ascribing meaning to life...

The ludicrous plot devices that allow Mills to go from point A to point Z insult the intelligence of the character and the audience.

The milieu End of Watch introduces as 'Once upon a time in South Central' may feel a bit old hat...

Playing a character that's almost entirely unsympathetic, Gere demonstrates the outward charm that's allowed Miller to accumulate his wealth and status, as well as the abyss-staring soul his showmanship conceals.

This psychodrama of ill-advised behavior may well leave you feeling dirty...for what you've watched helplessly and perhaps for what you've countenanced as an American citizen.

A fairly straightforward yarn with bluntly articulated themes of Regret, Guilt, Misplaced Trust, and the Vagaries of Fate.

Film demonstrably isn't the best medium for this story...but [it] remains resonant, with its hidden-in-plain-sight metaphor of drifting unconsciously through life.

Tough-minded...In recounting 'the Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy,' Lawless does not lack for local color and local legend.

Cold-staring with a black, reflective visor, a robot helps a fading old man to see life, and himself, more clearly.

Yee-haw, and so forth.

A kinder, gentler divorce comedy...Jones' commitment to portraying Celeste at least as much for her flaws as her strengths winds up making the character more likeable.

Friedkin’s pretty shrewd himself, in how he teases out the humor without indulging Letts’ immature glibness, and how he sidesteps Bible Belt baptism to waterboard us in the sewer of selfish human nature.

There’s a weirdly riveting intensity—and a palpable sense of privilege—to the way the movie takes us into squirmy private moments...

In a time of mind-numbing rom coms, Ruby Sparks uses fantasy to get real about modern romance.

Stranger than fiction...simply by presenting us with the facts as they unfolded, Layton winningly encourages more questions than answers.

The Nolans consider the issues of the day...explore the role of legendary heroes (from Robin Hood to Batman and Robin) in galvanizing the public, and labor mightily to ensure that how their Batman ends dovetails with 2005’s Batman Begins.

With its brash humor and emotional generosity, The Intouchables has crowd-pleaser written all over it, but there’s no mistaking the queasy racial implications.

Oliver Stone, bless ’im, still believes in red-meat cinema.

Polley’s fearlessness is one of many reasons I take no pleasure in saying that Take This Waltz stumbles.