It’s nice that established and emerging stars agree to appear in ambitious low-budget films. Such pro-bono work gives the movie a higher profile and the actors a potentially more distinguished resume. – Richard Corliss
In ‘Serena,’ stuff happens, then nastier stuff, without ever engaging the viewer’s rooting interest or sick fear. Sometimes it’s a question of sloppiness on the set or in the editing room. – Richard Corliss
Jolie’s exotic mixture of brains and glamour makes her the one reliable international star, and one of the few of either gender to make people in every country pay to see her. – Richard Corliss
‘Interstellar’ may never equal the blast of scientific speculation and cinematic revelation that was Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ but its un-Earthly vistas are spectral and spectacular. – Richard Corliss
You may debate whether the Disney heroines fit the feminist standard, but they don’t live in a democracy. Remember, they’re princesses. – Richard Corliss
‘Tammy,’ the new movie starring, produced, and co-written by Melissa McCarthy, could be an artifact from some alternate universe: the creatures there resemble Earthlings but have an entirely different and debased idea of what’s funny. – Richard Corliss
I had grown up thinking of movies as something to eat popcorn with. Bergman and the other European directors were the first ones to open my eyes to film as art. – Richard Corliss
I first visited the Toronto fest in 1979, its fourth edition, when it was known as the Festival of Festivals and had an audience of about 40,000. I happily returned to the 10-day skein nearly every year thereafter, as attendance swelled to 400,000 and it grew into the most influential film festival in North America, perhaps the world. – Richard Corliss
In film schools of the future, professors will teach ‘Tammy’ as an object lesson in Making Everything Go Wrong. – Richard Corliss
Every artist undresses his subject, whether human or still life. It is his business to find essences in surfaces, and what more attractive and challenging surface than the skin around a soul? – Richard Corliss
Though not really a comedy, ‘Rosewater’ is a demonstration of the creed behind ‘The Daily Show’: belief in the crucial need for impious wit against entrenched power. The freedom of the press is also the freedom to depress – and to inspire. That’s a message that can outlive any Oscar season. – Richard Corliss
‘TIME’s spell-check always admonishes me whenever I compose a sentence in the passive voice, a warning that is often ignored by me. – Richard Corliss
To transport picturegoers to a unique place in the glare of the earth, in the darkness of the heart – this, you realize with a gasp of joy, is what movies can do. – Richard Corliss
You know the fairy-tale drill, especially from the Disney versions: the heroines endure awful stuff in rites of passage that lead to a joyous resolution of, usually, marriage to a prince. ‘Into the Woods’ follows that template, then asks, ‘What happens after Happy Ever After?’ – Richard Corliss
It’s a fallacy, long rebuffed by science, that humans use only about 10% of their brainpower. But it is true about most summer movies. Pouring their wizardry into special effects and well-choreographed fights, warm-weather action films rarely challenge the viewer with grand notions or beautifully baffling imagery. – Richard Corliss
Soviet moviegoers gazed enviously on the jalopy that took the Joads from Oklahoma to California. The message Russians took from ‘The Grapes of Wrath’: even the poorest capitalists have cars! – Richard Corliss
‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,’ while not nearly the masterpiece proclaimed by many critics, is certainly a fascinating cross-species: a big-budget summer action fantasy with a sylvan, indie-film vibe, and a war movie that dares ask its audience to root for the peacemakers. – Richard Corliss