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The DUFF won't stay with you far past its runtime. But as a vehicle, it's ample proof that we should be seeing more of Mae Whitman.

Most of the credit goes to Whitman, who stands in, and stands up, for the DUFF in all of us.

This winsome comedy is a little low in the stakes department, not to mention predictable, but it gets an "A" for charm.

Derivative of better teen comedies and not daring enough to deal with the consequences of an image-based culture, The DUFF wastes a talented young ensemble.

There are stretches in which The Duff soars, nailing scene after funny scene with an honest spirit rarely seen in mainstream teen films.

Formulaic, sure -- but cute, sassy and quick...just edgy enough to work

Its central pair of unlikely allies will engage young audiences' sympathy. They're smartly played by Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell, whose warmth and comic chops keep the movie buoyant.

While it's neither as biting as Mean Girls nor as sweetly referential as Easy A, the earnest and sometimes amusing The DUFF is a fine addition to the canon.

I laughed a few times and despite some guy-a-mile-away plot moments, walked away feeling just fine about it. And from a jaded film snob, that's a very good sign.

The film is not only fine theater but a thoroughly convincing piece of history.

This is one of Lamont Johnson's best movies -- a product of a good script, but one resents a certain indifference. [Full Review in Spanish]

None of the slow developing dramatics touched me as much as it was supposed to and the concluding happy ending seemed predictable from almost the onset.

It's ridiculous, but Kadi seems determined to stay in this comfort zone, trusting in the banality of melodrama to communicate simple ideas on life, love, and the pursuit of happiness.

It's pushing its agenda at every moment, first gently, then relentlessly.

The story's accumulation of contrived setbacks strains credulity.

Tired and worn out immigrant's saga with a 9/11 hook that isn't compelling

... a mesmerizing portrait of committed activist who transforms himself into a media-hungry rock star of an international terrorist.

Fun and sincere. [Full review in Spanish]

A brilliant drama with black-comic undertones. The film is directed by Joel Schumacher and stars Michael Douglas, in what may be the best performance of his career,

Falling Down," a stellar film, is Joel Schumacher's miracle.

Disturbing '90s crime thriller has violence and language.

This is probably Schumacher's most accomplished work besides Tigerland and, interestingly, shot in L.A. around the time of the riots.

Even decades later, It is still as a very actual film. [Full Review in Spanish]

It's a somewhat high-concept premise that's employed to consistently engrossing effect by filmmaker Schumacher...

We cannot make out if we are meant to like him or not, or why he is so angry, and this is intriguing.

Director Joel Schumacher, credited with toning down Ebbe Roe Smith's script, paces the film rivetingly, which goes to show that good film-making doesn't guarantee a good film. Falling Down is as sleek and efficient as a torture chamber.

None of the characters ever rises beyond the level of his or her generic functions, and by the end the overall emptiness of the conception becomes fully apparent.

Let's face it, there is an element of truth in the character of D-FENS. But it is, finally, tabloid truth.

The character of William Foster (simply called D-Fens in the closing credits) represents an element of our collective id.

Atrociously written by actor Ebbe Roe Smith and atrociously directed (it goes without saying) by Joel Schumacher...

A heavy-handed potboiler, but as it raises the temperature, it does give cause to consider the line--so easily crossed--between social function and disasterous personal undoing. [Blu-ray]

...holds up pretty well today, even if its tone meanders all over the place.

At first comes across like a mean-spirited black comedy and then snowballs into a reasonably powerful portrait of social alienation. The tone is unremittingly dour, however.

A real artist could make something incisive or darkly hilarious out of this moral tightrope act. Schumacher, veering recklessly between social satire, kick-ass fantasy and damsel-in-distress melodrama, plays the game for opportunistic cheap thrills.

Maybe Michael Douglas' best work, he as the depressed man driven to madness.

Joel Schumacher's best film.

A crude, cathartic rant that both condemns and exploits modern paranoia.

Dealing with urban paranoia from a White POV is a good, timely idea, but film can't decide whether Michael Douglas is an ordinary or psychopathic man and whether we should feel sympathy or pity for the "victimization" of this yuppie.

Douglas' tortured misfit is a chore to watch.

A powerful, gripping, darkly humorous film with a dynamite lead performance by Michael Douglas. One of 1993's ten-best films.

Douglas as you've never seen him before

It's half a really good movie, and half a mediocre one with a good actor.

One of Schumacher's lone efforts that actually has some depth

Click to read review

Falling Down offers an interesting concept that is handled with the grace of a psycho wielding a baseball bat.

Great action and commentary on the working man. Kinda wished for a more ironic ending though.

Schumacher's hostile study of urban angst and the breakdown of a fragile crewcut crusader (Douglas) is downright suspenseful if not wryly witty in its caustic conception

It turns one man's slide toward madness into a wickedly mischievous, entertaining suspense thriller.

It's hard not to root for this embodiment of white man's angst ... the ending seems stilted, as if to say "we must openly condemn him while we secretly admire him."

A sweaty and fascinating look at one modern man's descent.

It is a worrying and unnerving reflection of our society, which will certainly make you wonder about the quality of life you strive to maintain.

Douglas' portrayal of a man heading for the abyss is utterly convincing.

While the morality of D-Fens methods are questionable, there's a resonance about his reaction to everyday annoyances, and Michael Douglas' hypnotic performance makes it memorable.

At its heart, this is very dark satire, and there are a good many laughs. But there are times when one wishes that the comedy could remain with the problems being solved in less violent ways.

Schumacher at first seems like an odd choice to helm this taut, over-the-edge thriller but at closer inspection, it's obvious that The Powers That Be chose him for his ability to add the necessary action-genre punch...

The film ... is actually about a great sadness which turns into madness, and which can afflict anyone who is told, after many years of hard work, that he is unnecessary and irrelevant.

Although it takes a number of wrong turns, Falling Down still has the power to disturb.

Unfortunately, it continues on through an uninspired series of cartoonishly brutal social insults, each one growing more lethal than the next, thereby justifying an increasingly lethal response.

Douglas's intentionally robotic -- and intense -- performance holds its own. He's scary, normal and funny all at once...

An uneven and frequently pretentious story that is never as important or dramatic as it thinks it is.

Falling Down is a brutally manipulative revenge fantasy, a piece of comic-strip demagoguery that teeters uneasily on the brink of satire.

"[El] Camino is pure metaphor." And that is the point of this film - it allows us to partake in this journey and make our own meaning of El Camino...

The music is beautiful, and the insights are often profound. But at times, one wonders if the film might have been more successful with a bit more rigor and focus.

On-camera observations offer few surprising insights, though the exploration is certainly admirable.

Due to a combination of sophisticated direction, an engaging human element, lofty ideas on the nature of self, and exquisite cinematography, all set a beautiful cello score, it succeeds in a profound way.

A largely inspiring and transporting portrait.

The greatest compliment one can pay it is that it's bound to eclipse The Way as the film that people will say inspired them to put one foot in front of the other and make their way to pay Saint James a visit.

A cellist's 600-mile trek with his instrument along an ancient Spanish pilgrimage trail becomes a soulful riff on the all-too-fleeting rhapsodies of travel.

"Strangers on the Earth" raises questions about how it was made, and even whether making it defeats the inherent asceticism of the project.

Surely, there's meaning in them thar hills, but you'll just have to take this film's many words for it.

Ironically if you're walking 700 km or 700 miles with other people, you cannot expect them to be strangers on the earth. An engaging doc about the centuries' old pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

Strangers [on the earth] promises a connection and theme will be found between various travellers found on the Camino, but it doesn't really deliver.

We are alone on this trip - take it, and this marvellous film, at your own pace.

The result is enlightening, poignant and even occasionally funny.

Pleasant, but only intermittently engaging.

A few promising ideas are unfortunately dwarfed by the horrendous acting and ridiculous soundtrack.

A terrible Canadian movie about the making of a terrible Canadian movie.

A forgettable fluffy Canadian film about runaway production during the heady days of Tax Credit filmmaking in the late 70s.

A curious artifact: A movie about an era that produced scores of movies most people never saw, and arriving nearly a generation after most people never saw them.

Hollywood North loses bite, first by being exactly the kind of movie it satirizes and by being so dated.

There isn't a lot that is original about <i.Hollywood North, but Modine is appealing as the put-upon producer and the situation the hapless Meyers finds himself in is very funny.

...the movie seems content to simply exist as a wacky comedy (how else do you explain the presence of Alan Thicke?), which is somewhat disappointing.

What the film lacks in bite and originality, it makes up for in humor and charm.

you ultimately can't help but feel a little sorry for this movie.

Excessively sentimental, but still entertaining thanks to the unusual chemistry between the stars.

This tragic-comic-historical-pastoral romance scrapes the bottom of all its generic barrels, to say nothing of being extremely badly directed by Colin Nutley, an Englishman based in Sweden whose many previous films I've managed not to see.

The Promoter is a good example of an efficient but not very stimulating comedy that gets seen and liked because the critics admire it.

It's solid stuff, but too many involved seem to be marking time.

Neame and his players inject this with plenty of wit, distracting one from the Horatio Alger cliches.

The principal character in Arnold Bennett's novel The Card... provides a made-to-measure part for Alec Guinness in a capital performance.

Complacent class-based British comedy.

The Promoter, while vastly amusing in spots, is not a first-rate Guinness show.

Brisk, brassy and keenly observed, Neame's film is a thoroughly enjoyable social satire that will appeal to the blagger in everyone.

Trauma Therapy primarily draws its strength from its varied characters, all perfectly cast.

The director shows no flair for the genre, as he generates little tension in the therapeutic sessions, and fails to use the setting to create feelings of dread or claustrophobia

Ott and crew tell a tale of two immigrants

The perpetrator is known from the beginning, a secret from the past, an utterly unexpected plot twist, and of course, revenge are all present in here, defining the film

There are moments that work, and others that do not (no young man, not even Waymon, could be as uncoordinated on a dance floor as he seems to be). But beneath the plot, which is routine, are a lot of assumptions that are not.

The film sabotages the allure of its central mystery by substituting style and an intolerable protagonist in place of genuinely riveting content.

A beautifully crafted film about the life-giving and the life-denying properties of obsession.