Ann Hornaday

It’s possible to see why McDonagh’s fans love his quirks and clever structural feints (the war of wills in “Banshees” often plays out like variations on a theme), as well as his characters’ willingness not to be liked. But what they find at the end of the filmmaker’s rainbow is less likely to be a pot of philosophical gold than prosaic self-satisfaction.

Scrappy and unsubtle where "We Were Here" is elegant and nuanced, How to Survive a Plague isn't nearly as formally beautiful as its predecessor.

Maybe the best way to describe Beasts of the Southern Wild is faux-k art. Even Hushpuppy's name suggests an author more interested in the folk- and foodways of a culture-with-a-capital-C than the people who comprise it. Too often, she and her peers are presented as curios to be exhibited rather than as fully realized -- if resolutely un-mythic -- human beings.

The mopey, midwinter atmosphere of Nancy becomes increasingly and oppressively bleak, leavened only by Smith-Cameron’s spot-on portrayal of her character’s trembling, painfully fragile optimism.

As beautiful and compelling as Ramsay’s filmmaking and Phoenix’s central performance are, the degree to which viewers will buy You Were Never Really Here depends on the degree to which they accept yet another display of febrile vigilante brutality motivated by sexual violence perpetrated against young girls. One person’s trope, after all, is another’s shopworn cliche.

The gently perfumed air of impending doom suffuses 3 Hearts, a tasteful, mildly intriguing romantic drama from writer-director Benoît Jacquot.

Never quite breaks out of its talky inertia.

For all his creepy tendencies, Hitchcock is portrayed mostly sympathetically in Hitchcock, in which Sir Anthony Hopkins plays the corpulent British auteur with a combination of hauteur and playfulness.

It's a depressing little kingdom, even when Gordon tries desperately to goose the drama with the requisite "Eye of the Tiger" riffs and some junior high-level palace intrigue.

Put delicately, this is one long sit, made all the more so by a turgid story, a dour visual palette and uninspiring action.

Consistently absorbing -- thanks in large part to strong performances from the actors -- but not particularly rewarding.

From its very first scene, Untraceable isn't the sophisticated, brainy thriller it so nearly could have been, but just another movie about a serial murderer.

Upon leaving The Big Short, audiences are likely to feel less enlightened than bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, albeit one wrapped in layers of eye-catching silks and spangles: You may be too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.

In this case, director David Michôd — working from a script he co-wrote with actor Joel Edgerton — doesn’t make the material distinctive or provocative enough to merit a second, far more dramatically inert go-round.

A vivid but vaporous portrait of collective unease that feels uncannily of this moment.

What starts out as an invigorating odyssey winds up becoming an enervating series of postures.

Gone Girl may get the job done as a dutiful, deliberately paced procedural, but it never quite makes the splash it could have as a thoughtful, timely and thoroughly bracing plunge.

It succeeds only fitfully. Toggling between Stark's impish goatee and Iron Man's full-metal body condom, and amid so many generic fireballs, kill shots and earsplitting thumps, bumps and crunches, the film finally collapses under its own weight.

Never lets viewers fully inside Erik and Paul's world, a reticence that isn't helped by the actors' fey, restrained-to-a-fault performances. That and a frustratingly episodic structure make what might have been a raw and inspiring portrait of commitment and boundaries a surprisingly uninvolving, arms-length enterprise. Keep the Lights On lets go just when it should be holding you tighter.

At the movie's thoroughly expected conclusion, a visual joke has a bedraggled cat licking at the icing on a wedding cake, but it's really Melanie who gets to have it and eat it, too.

For all its feminist pretense as a parable of empowerment, Priscilla’s still caught in a trap, even when the heroine can — and does — walk out.

After Yang again demonstrates Kogonada’s mastery of form, framing and composition. But audiences will be forgiven for wanting to reach through the screen to mess it up a little, if only to inject some recognizable warmth and spontaneity.

Does it make it as a movie? Only in fits and starts.

As lighthearted, late-summer escapism goes, Logan Lucky is an amusing if convoluted and undisciplined bagatelle. As a hotly anticipated comeback, it feels like a slightly dippy, ultimately disposable warm-up of a director whose brains, chops and judicious taste we need more than ever.

The film is ultimately too self-regarding, too smug to be transcendent itself.

Graciously accompanied by Washington (who can even make eating mac-and-cheese compelling), Zendaya emerges as the star of this show, delivering a performance that calls on sudden, turn-on-a-dime reversals — emotional figure-eights that she executes with impressive, unstudied finesse.

Equity isn’t perfect — far from it — but it’s an intriguing attempt at rebalancing a system that’s been dreadfully out of whack for far too long.

Make no mistake: The War Tapes is not an overtly political film. It appears to grind no partisan ax nor score either red or blue points. Whether viewers support the war or not -- or find themselves somewhere in the mushy middle -- this documentary won't fit comfortably into the pigeonholes of their preconceptions.