Amy Nicholson

Instead of slapstick laughs, The Long Dumb Road pays attention to how these two opposites connect.

Like its star, Anna and the Apocalypse merrily charges through danger. It’s a genre mash-up populated with cliches...but McPhail finds small moments to make his characters unique.

The crux of Gun’s struggle is that she risked everything to tell the truth, and the war happened anyway. Ultimately, her personal story was neither uplifting, nor tragic, which means the film surrounding her doesn’t hurtle toward a satisfying arc.

This documentary on one of the most universal, photographed, analyzed, opined upon and slavered over human experiences manages to astound.

Diana wants our respect — and by the end of the movie, she’s earned it. While she’s one of the prickliest protagonists you’ll see this year, she’s so raw and earnest and apologetically herself that you adore her anyway — from the safe distance of the screen.

For all its clichés, this furious and discomfiting film tugs on your conscience for days, making a powerful case to turn the American public’s attention back to a conflict it would rather forget.

Fellowes manages to navigate Downton Abbey to charm both reactionaries and revolutionaries.

The film is expertly crafted with jewel-toned cinematography, terrifically sleazy saxophone music, and performances by Abbott and Wasikowska that take turns seizing command. Still, like Reed’s solo rehearsals, Piercing has the feel of a blueprint, a talented man exercising his technical skills while waiting for a whack at the real deal.

The Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs franchise takes its comic cues from The Muppets and Pee Wee's Playhouse, kids' shows that ripen as their audience matures.

By poking fun at the cliches, director Gluck thinks he can turn an inevitability into an in-joke. Eh, it'll do.

Justin McMillan and Christopher Nelius' rah-rah documentary is most alive when it unearths old '80s footage of the friends partying it up with blond groupies — talk about thrilling curves.

[Davis's] insistence on shaking hands and showing respect — the opposite of the behavior you see on Twitter — patiently chips away at their preconceptions about race. It's like he's trying to carve the Lincoln Memorial with a scalpel.

Earlier incarnations of this story had activism as the end goal, Valentin for his principles and Molina for his new friend. Condon is more focused on their humanity. Caring for each other makes this bleak world worth fighting for. Without joy, we’re already in chains.

Like its actress, it's an ambitious knockout that doesn't quite live up to its potential. But its argument is worth hearing: Instead of crying for the collapse of one actress, Folman is crying for the collapse of civilization, the triumph of the synthetic over the real.

Batkid Begins wants audiences to celebrate the everyday heroes who donated their time and energy to Miles's dream. Absolutely, we should. Still, take a minute to ask what the disproportionate investment and interest in Batkid's adventure says about our own maturity — and how the internet allows us to feel like champions for rallying for one afternoon, while overlooking the years of unglamorous doctor appointments before it.

I wish Larraín had cut Callas down to size more. He’s too protective of his fellow artist to slosh around in the fury that fueled her art. Callas could sing three octaves, but the film is mostly one note.

Split has to satisfy both audiences that believe in trigger warnings and the camp crowd that just wants to see McAvoy pull the trigger. And so, Shyamalan trickily asks us to redefine victimhood.

As a satire, it’s almost too implied — the filmmakers barely bother to develop their ideas, figuring correctly that people already agree the internet is, at best, a neutral-evil. I liked it and was impatient with it in equal measure, the way a teacher feels about a lazy, gifted child.

The storytelling is wonky, given the film’s competing needs to be Miranda-blunt about the modern magazine business while pairing marvelously with a glass of rosé.

This TMNT is bigger and emptier, a wasteland of pixels.

Despite its climactic eye-rolls, Friday’s Child is a great showcase for Sheridan

The French provocateur Catherine Breillat gets her kicks with unnerving tales of sexual coercion, but a clothed, close-up first kiss in “Last Summer” may be her most excruciating to date.

Payne's book is more epic and shameless than Gustin Nash's tidy adaptation.

Brooks can merely offer this flawed pair more kindness than they grant each other (or themselves). Which makes “Oh, Hi!” a pleasant if perilous date night film. Having spent an enjoyable evening with it myself, I have to admit: I like the movie fine, but I’m not in love.

These ladies - even at their weakest - carry themselves with the confidence of winners, and we cling to their strength like a life raft.

It’s clear these overgrown kids are careening toward adult-size pain. But Marks’s infatuation with her flawed lovebirds also seduces the audience.

Fortunately for Burton, Big Eyes is actually good. Not great, but good enough -- the perfect middlebrow portrait of the ultimate middlebrow artist.

Keaton’s an old pro at getting audiences to love a well-intentioned jerk, and the script gets good chuckles out of his inconsiderate attempts at generosity.