Amy Nicholson

Saving Mr. Banks, a fictionalized account of two weeks Travers spent on the lot in Burbank, is proof that Walt has thawed and secretly reclaimed Disney's reins.

Scott still has a talent for lovely details... He's always used awe as a tool. Scott's art direction is so precise we assume he also obsessed over the script. Surely a spectacle like this has gotta mean something. Like the intelligent-design argument, his eye is too advanced to be an accident.

Entertainment is a painful, poetic watch.

I’ll give Schrader the benefit of the doubt that his dialogue is stilted by design, even though the female characters are particularly prone to clunkers. . . But it’s still irritating to sit through, and once we start questioning everything we see — would young Leonard really order a bran muffin at an ice cream parlor? — it gets harder to hand over our trust when the movie wants to get emotional.

So far I’ve yet to see any movie figure out how to integrate the dull activity of staring at a small black rectangle into something worthy of the screen. Landon’s approach looks a bit too much like a billboard or a meme, but I think he’s on the right track to be trying something expressionistic that circles back around to silent-movie aesthetics.

In the judgment of the film, Cullen is just a side effect of an institutional cancer.

This downbeat drama is as overwrought as Killian’s muscles — it’s a steroidal portrait of a man in distress.

It’s not hard to imagine “Transformers One” connecting with preteens whose pubescent bodies can be as unwieldy as Orion’s first, clumsy transformation, with wheels where he expects legs and arms where he expects wheels.

Ari Aster’s Eddington is such a superb social satire about contemporary America that I want to bury it in the desert for 20 years. More distance will make it easier to laugh.

Oppenheimer is after something that drives right at the heart of what a musical is. To harmonize means to agree. It’s a public display of solidarity — a pact to parrot the same delusions.

Having stripped away most of the documentary’s narration and sit-down interviews with Kerr’s family and friends, the film barely explores anyone’s psychology — and Blunt’s railroaded Dawn loses her chance to speak for herself.

This reboot’s boldest stride toward progress is that it values emotionally credible performances.

As Paltrow (Gwyneth’s brother), who directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Tom Shoval, makes his own case that history is built of small, individual actions that tend to be overlooked, he allows himself a bit of gallows humor.

The Rover might not be about anything at all, but the dust it stirs up sticks to you after you leave the theater.

As a distraction, Bressack and the screenwriter Alan Horsnail surround their indifferent lead with tinsel.

Alas, the flick can't resist overheating. Paradoxically, when people finally do jump in their cars, curl their fists and grab their guns, we wish they'd retreat to the safety of their monitors.

Headland's film might have been more engaging if it were about its supporting characters.

Where Jane feels thinly sketched in pastels, Corrine’s portrait has been detailed in bright permanent markers. A’zion roils with emotions and her character is funny, mercurial, reactive and real.

The film is so committed to its rigors — the two-person cast, the glacial camera pivots, the moody lighting — that it teeters on the line of becoming monotonous.

Ultimately, Fast Color’s thesis is more inspirational than the film, which often seems like it, too, is struggling to swirl itself into something more solid. Instead, its magical sparks don’t quite congeal as the audience can’t help hoping a movie this empathetic and unusual reaches transcendence

Nasty Baby isn't satisfying. But on Silva's terms, it makes sense.

Federer describes himself as an emotional guy, but with the international press and his management team nearly always on the sidelines, there’s little privacy to get personal.

This is an ugly part of an ugly war, and Ayer wallows in it. Instead of flags and patriotism, Fury is about filth.

The movie is lovely, but airless and bolted with scraps that barely hold together.

If you break the script down into plot points, it sounds a little silly: The narrative thrust is simply Katniss shooting several pro-revolution commercials. But it works because we're fascinated by media fights — thousands occur online every day.

By exposing his soft belly, the aging documentarian is reconquering his own legacy. He's spent 25 years bellowing about our problems. Now it's time to solve them. If we don't think we can, just remember Berlin.

Mostly I Am Mother is exactly what it seems: a good-looking allegory that postures like it’s wrestling with more ideas than it actually is.

Kinds of Kindness runs nearly three hours in length and reveals nothing more than our eagerness to give him the benefit of the doubt. We’re here for the sick thrills. Instead, what we’re served feels more like dirty limericks delivered at an excruciating pace by a bore with bad breath.