Mark Feeney

"Cruelty and tedium, even with imaginative flair thrown in, doesn’t make for all that good a combination. (...) Rating: *1/2 (out of 4)"  

"Gyllenhaal uses that handsome-hangdog face of his to good effect. Salim is very good. If he weren't, the movie simply wouldn't work (...) Rating: **1/2 (out of 4)"  

"[This] documentary is lean and lucid and even at 84 minutes never feels hurried (...) Rating: *** (out of 4)"  

"'Secret Headquarters' is uneven but consistently lively. There are moments of real wit, though not enough to compensate for the fairly tired, somewhat confused action sequences (…) Rating: ** (out of 4)"  

"Visually, the movie is surprisingly inventive (...) Sure, a lot of the jokes are dumb — you got a problem with that? — but “Paws” is quite smart. (...) Rating: **1/2 (out of 4)"  

"The fact that Stu was a real person gives the movie considerable leeway, plausibility-wise. But an awful lot of squaring of the circle needs doing here (…) Rating: ** (out of 4)"  

"It has a tendency to slickness. Part of the power of the ending is that the slickness seems all gone (...) Rating: **½ (out of 4)"  

"What makes a rock band worth attending to a half century after its breakup isn't its personalities or backstory or context (...) It's the music (...) Rating: *** (out of 4)"  

"When the film keeps things simple, it’s at its best (...) Then the film becomes less simple. It gets a bit overwrought as certain personal histories are explained (…) Rating: ** (out of 4)"  

"For those too young to have experienced the tsunami of celebrity and contradiction that was Ali (...) the documentary will come as a revelation. For those who were around back then, it’s a time machine with boxing gloves."  

"Acute and skillfully made, 'Candyman' is also pointedly political (…) Rating: **½ (out of 4)"  

"Even on automatic pilot, as he is here, Jackson is always good company (...) [But it] isn’t enough to compensate for watching a succession of scenes that are like recruitment ads for abattoir work (...) Rating: *½ (out of 4)"  

"'Woman' is a lot trickier than 'Rear Window,' if also fairly lackluster, as the Hitchcock classic definitely is not. What the Netflix original has going for it is a stellar cast."  

"Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s ‘Hemingway’ shows that the writer’s greatest creation was also his darkest: himself"  

"[It] has a nice feel of its own. The first two-thirds is lively in pace, all of it is amiable in tone and sun-splashed in appearance (…) Rating: **½ (out of 4)"  

"The story Hobkinson presents is richer, and far more disturbing, than any that Hollywood storytelling has had to offer."  

"Part of the great fascination of 'Zidane' is its demonstrating that action is not necessarily the same as motion (…) Rating: *** (out of 4)"  

"It's always raining or snowing or misting. This makes for a nice visual, but it also makes the scenes look interchangeable"

"The best thing about the picture is its proudly hammy supporting cast."  

"Everything that Doctor Strangelove is -- daring and inspired, vibrant and brilliantly staged -- Becket is not."