Allen Salkin

An international action thriller that starts slow but picks up speed and just outruns its own clichés to make for a gripping two-hour ride.

The stylish and engrossing reinterpretation of the mythological king's early years lacks character development, but makes up for it with swashbuckling, sword-fighting, beast-slaying fun.

In the movie version of Wilson, starring Woody Harrelson, no one flies or turns into a centaur. But quiet magic happens nonetheless.

Like Cohen's output, Rules Don't Apply as a whole is strangely hypnotizing. It has not been edited as so many other recent movies have, down to the nub, removing everything but the highlights you can produce movie trailers from. This thing breathes and creaks. It works. Maybe the cracks are what let the light in.

Arrival is a science fiction confection that wants to be smart. But the truly fascinating material that would have made this a very good movie rather than a pretty decent one likely ended up on what they used to call the cutting-room floor.

You might not agree with Stone that the man is a hero, but you probably do want to see the film so you can compute what the whole uproar was about.

Credit to Sachs and his co-screenwriter, Mauricio Zacharias, for creating a complex gentrification fight, along with cinematography by Óscar Durán and music by Dickon Hinchliffe that is both gritty and dreamy.

Nerve, a thriller set in a world of smartphone-obsessed teens, is clever, exciting, sweet and full of quick twists that never devolve from serving a well-built story.

Walken is great in the tragicomic role of a long-tooth singer. Better still, he deserves a Billboard hit for his on-key — and on-fleeck — version of Joe McGinty’s “When I Live My Life Over Again.”

The film’s thoughtful script and astounding craft portray a tragic inner psychological battle.

Yes, this important film will deepen a debate about the game's safety. And, yes, it makes the National Football League look like a tobacco company run by the Nixon administration. But immigration is the ultimate political football right now — and when I left the theater, it was with a renewed sense of what one dignified man can achieve when given a chance in a great nation.