Alex Harrison

Beetlejuice and Delia are deployed just the right amount, each injecting the movie with their own flavor of chaos whenever things risk feeling stale.

Layne's performance is a real strength, and she does a great job of not only anchoring us in her character's emotions, but embodying how she feels about singing in any given scene.

While it has its weak spots, A Family Affair holds together well enough to entertain.

Gradually, everything becomes burdened with story. The more the triangle of Kathy, Benny, and Johnny is played up for drama, the less interesting it becomes.

The characters are animated with such clarity of expression, and the film is edited so expertly, that lines just aren't necessary.

Atlas is like an artificial sci-fi movie that walks and talks like the real thing, but just isn't.

If Infested suffers from anything, it's that Vaniček makes its characters and themes too real, and the monsters can't keep up.

The movie is so interested in archeology (the credits dedicate it "to all archeologists, custodians of every end") that it becomes an analogue for the viewing experience. Rohrwacher asks us to interpret La Chimera the way archaeologists interpret fragments of the past.

Late Night with the Devil is tremendously fun.

Damsel is a lifeless experience. The filmmakers have assembled all the constituent parts of an interesting fantasy adventure film — genre-bending premise, a starry cast, locations with character, and some creative creature design — but the connective tissue is paper-thin.

Problemista invokes the simplicity of myth without ever letting its characters become simplistic.

The bottom line: even with some inconsistencies, Drugstore June is funny. It creatively approaches a deceptively ambitious setup and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Bleeding Love remains under-written and over-directed, unable to fully justify the time it asks for. If you're wanting to see Ewan McGregor do some quality acting, there are plenty of more rewarding options.

It's almost like Cumming has made two films, one through aesthetics and atmosphere and one through story and theme, that ultimately can't coexist. Neither is a bad film, but the former makes a much greater impression, and I wish it had been seen through to the end.

Thankfully for us, though, a film is not a meal. We can watch The Taste of Things as many times as we'd like.

Tótem's camera is always studying the actors, exploratory and intrusive in the manner of a child's perceptive gaze.

Perhaps, Kaurismäki's movie suggests, disaffection is a valid response to this reality we live in. So, when these two people meet and sparks fly, it becomes all the more meaningful.

If entertainment is all you're looking for, you'll find it, and you'll even have the fun of debating the accents and VFX as you leave the theater. But there's also a lot more to find beneath its surface pleasures, making it a worthy Christmas capstone for what has been a very good year for adults at the movies.

Lord of Misrule feels like it was made with a lack of understanding of what actually works about its premise, and the result is a constant ebb-and-flow of being drawn in by the imagery and pushed back out by the storytelling.

Silent Night winks at us as often as it tries for genuine drama, and whichever tone you choose to accept will likely determine whether you have as much fun with it as I did.

Manodrome lacks depth as either social commentary or character study, in large part because of how it positions us in relation to its protagonist's perspective.

Keeping us close to the film's talented cast is a decided strength of this, and the performances add nuance to a largely straightforward viewing experience. But it's hard not to wish Fingernails had grander designs. It shows just enough of its full potential to leave us wanting to see those ideas expressed more fully.

This is not a biopic of an artist so much as a human artwork, capturing the many questions he provokes and the contradictory answers that define him.

I do not regret having seen it, and with all there is to recommend it, I feel comfortable suggesting you seek it out upon release. But do so with tempered expectations.

It's a journey as much defined by tedium as tension, but to paraphrase the assassin, if you can't handle a little boredom, this might not be the film for you.

Savor Hit Man, however you come across it - it's not every day the movies entertain us in this way at this level of execution anymore.

A lot happens, story-wise, but if the film had just followed Sylvia and Saul learning how to be around each other, it would've been enough.

While not flawless in execution, it's daringly creative — the kind of movie that will inevitably cause those who see it to start talking about other movies as a way of understanding