Elvis Mitchell

“Natalie Portman's approach to acting demands that she wears her heart on her sleeve so explicitly, the heart becomes the whole garment - a crimson chemise with streaks of blue veins running...”

“Berry was a transitional and, to my mind, revolutionary black figure who had to find a place for the rage that the crucible of racism created.”

“If you start off as a fearsome figure in pop culture, it's almost axiomatic that at some point, years under the lights softens you into a cuddly family figure.”

“The idea of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet so inflaming the fanboy community is amusing, since that group's 20/50 vision also had it tsking its disapproval about Michael Keaton as Batman and...”

“The picture is being promoted as Disney's 'Spirited Away,' although seeing just 10 minutes of this English version of a hugely popular Japanese film will quickly disabuse any discerning view...”

“Duncan Jones has skills; he's an architect of emotional dislocation.”

“We do want to be diverted and be interested and be provoked by popular culture - by art, if we're lucky. And it's amazing how often people have lost sight of this.”

“'Man is an endangered species,' announces one of the titles at the beginning of the sci-fi lump 'Battlefield Earth.' And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't...”

“Before he became 'a working actor,' as he now proudly calls himself, Jamie Dornan initially caught the public's attention as a model - you may remember him from those greasy underwear ads wi...”

“Like his countryman, Kiefer Sutherland, Seth Rogen has a voice that's 10 years older than he is - a combination of world-weariness and exuberance, an instrument that he's mastered for specif...”

“'Ali' is a breakthrough for its director, Michael Mann. The film, based on the life of Muhammad Ali, is Mr. Mann's first movie with feeling; his overwhelming love of its subject will turn au...”

“Theron says that she was intrigued by the psychological demands of the material in playing the complicated 'Queen Ravenna', and Stewart's performance as 'Snow White', the fairest of them all...”

“Muhammad Ali inside the ring and Muhammad Ali outside the ring were totally different men; his abrasive, magnetic daring and infectious self-love outside the ring galvanized the world and di...”

“The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, 'Wait - I'm going to go into hip-hop.'”

“'Black Hawk Down' wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily.”

“The Wachowskis' use of space rivals that of musical directors like Gene Kelly and Mark Sandrich.”

“When an actor commits himself to a role as fully as Russell Crowe does in the grandiose and silly 'Gladiator,' you may ask yourself why and at the same time thank him for his absorption in t...”

“The story of a proud Roman soldier who is sold into slavery and must fight his way back to freedom, 'Gladiator' suggests what would happen if someone made a movie of the imminent extreme-foo...”

“'The Third Man,' directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, is, quite simply, one of the finest movies ever made.”

“Establishing mood through pictorial means is the director Ridley Scott's most notable talent. There may be no working director more accomplished at wringing texture out of the color blue tha...”