Amy Nicholson

Spielberg can’t fix The BFG’s strange second act.

If The Danish Girl dared to critique its main characters, it'd be brave. If it had celebrated a modern marriage that worked for 26 years — much longer and stranger than the film lets on — it'd be truly pioneering. Real life is full of kinks, mistakes, and selfish behavior. Biopics, however, are made of formulaic virtue.

This deservedly anticipated Frankenstein transforms that loneliness into stunning tableaux of Victor and his immortal Creature tethered together by their mutual self-loathing. One man’s heart never turned on. One can’t get his heart to turn off. Ours breaks.

[Tim Federle's] leads deliver hearty performances that elevate the movie, particularly once we’ve had time to adjust to the gusto of Wood, whose wired performance has the flavor of Hugh Jackman’s exuberance squeezed into an espresso cup.

The screenplay gets so intricate and angry — and so shamelessly ambitious — you can’t believe someone in today’s Hollywood was willing to put up the money to get it made. Even helmed by proven hitmaker Verbinski of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, it’s a feat akin to convincing someone to fund a skyscraper-sized cuckoo clock that has a bird that pops out and heckles the crowd.

306 Hollywood is best when it gets either very scientifically dry, or reaches beyond its liminal cuteness into ambitious visual poetry.

Don’t Breathe is a small delight, like stumbling across a shiny silver dollar.

This cheerful small town portrait makes for an idealistic crowd-pleaser (after all, Eureka Springs is the rumored home of healing waters), but this beautiful, and beautifully shot, documentary is a cure for the angry headline blues.

This frenetic and funny crossbreeding of live action and cartoon is both a reboot and an anti-reboot, a corporate-funded raspberry at corporate IP, and a giddily dumb smart aleck committed to mocking its joke — and making it, too.

If Ultraman wants to conquer the world, he’ll have to try something livelier than a cartoon that looks like a kids movie but lurches about like a saccharine family drama.

It’s an extravagant stunt perked up by moments of absurdity.

It lacks the control of Guadagnino’s earlier work — or rather, I should say, it takes subtlety and restraint and thwacks them over the fence and into the bushes.

Meet the new face of superheroes: Marc Webb's totally teenage and totally fun take on the Spider-Man franchise.

Despite Brody and Polley's reasonable efforts, they can't compensate for a script that undermines its curiosity about humanity.

This is a pragmatic recounting of a nigh-impossible mission: first, to find the trapped boys, and harder still, to swim them out.

Scare Me would work even better onstage. On screen, it feels like an experiment in minimalism. The film is heavy-handed only in Fred’s fear of emasculation and Fanny’s digs at “desperate white dudes,” troweled on for socially relevant heft.

Newt lacks soul. So, too, does his movie.

It’s refreshing to see a romp this spry. Elio isn’t trying to reinvent the spaceship — it’s after the puppyish charm of sticking your head out the window as marvels whiz past.

Do Revenge, directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, is a playful, sharp-fanged satire that feels like the ’90s teen comedy hammered into modern emojis: crown, knife, fire, winky face.

Rebel Wilson is the peroxided Aussi who stole scenes as Kristen Wiig's roommate in "Bridesmaids," and this is the role that will turn her into a star.

You're Next streamlines the gory stuff for something truly shocking: good characters. Not deep, mind you. But characters who are crayoned in bright enough that they're interesting even while alive.

Edwards and the screenwriters have designed Rogue One around applause breaks for cameos and callbacks. We’ve all lost the point of the franchise. Audiences once packed theaters to gawk at the future; now, it’s to soak in the past.

The best parts of Sparling's script play like an absurdist snuff film.

The heavily improvised flick ambles as slowly as a toddler rounding first base. Hopefully, Garlin's next movie bothers to include a plot and jokes, i.e. the essential building blocks of a comedy.

This remake is loud and exaggerated; it’s more hijinks than heart. (Even the swans that bedeviled Martin have been swapped out for synchronized flamingos.) Audiences looking to shed a tear need not RSVP.

A tepid Regency-era romance.

Clemons has been a luminous presence who could bloom into a great grown-up actress. Hearts Beat Loud proves she’s the real deal. As for the film around her, Haley’s 21-drum solo salute to the passage of time is, like Frank, merely fine. But he admirably keeps his characters’ victories small and their losses familiar, making his movie a ballad everyone can hum to.

Roar is a thrilling bore, an inanity with actual peril in every scene.