Anthony Lane

Given the upheavals of the past two years, along the fault line between electoral and sexual politics, Reitman could have told the sorry saga from Rice’s point of view — her brush with fame, and her demonization as a temptress, or worse, at the hands of the media. Why must the fall of man, rather than the survival of woman, still be the main event? Can’t we have the business without the monkeys?

Personally, for that reason, I would have lopped off the final scene, which I simply didn’t believe in, and which, if anything, resolves too much. A movie as cryptic as “Burning” deserves to hang fire.

The later sections of the story, dealing with Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis, are carefully handled, but most of the film is stuffed with lumps of cheesy rock-speak (“We’re just not thinking big enough”; “I won’t compromise my vision”), and gives off the delicious aroma of parody.

The Guilty is smartly constructed and tautened with regular twists, but, if it were merely clever, it wouldn’t test your nerves as it does. Its view of human error is rarely less than abrasive, and most of the adult characters, visible and invisible, are enmeshed in a hell of good intentions.

The first time I saw Guadagnino’s Suspiria, I came out pretty much covered in gore, and confounded by the surfeit of stories. Can a splash be so big that it drowns the senses? How does such a film cohere? The second time around, I followed the flow, and found that what it led to was not terror, or disgust, but an unexpected sadness.

I prefer Wildlife when it gets messier, as Mulligan casts aside her natural sweetness to bring us a soured soul, driven only by the courage of her confusion. So rank is the unhappiness that you can almost smell the bitter smoke of the fires, drifting from far away.

The Halloween of today is slick and sick, but little is left of that sleep-destroying dread. Still, not all is lost, because the Bogeyman, bless him, has not forgotten his manners. For old times’ sake, he gets to sit up straight.

Skillful and compelling this film may be, but, if Neil Armstrong had been the sort of fellow who was likely to cry on the moon, he wouldn’t have been the first man chosen to go there. He would have been the last.

The Old Man & the Gun is as much of a fantasy as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Yet you buy into the geniality of Lowery’s movie, nourished as it is by the entire cast.

The result is pure Saturday-night moviegoing: it gives you one hell of a wallop, then you wake up on Sunday morning without a scratch. (By contrast, the emotional nakedness of the Judy Garland version, poised within formal compositions, can still reduce me to rubble.)

Knightley and West leap without a qualm into these excesses, not least the Feydeau-like saga of a flame-haired Louisiana heiress (Eleanor Tomlinson), who sleeps with both Willy and his wife, unbeknownst to her, though he beknew everything.

The film will neither change minds nor soothe embittered hearts, I fear, and an opportunity has been missed.

The narrative staggers on, enlivened only by the hovering threat of kitsch and the musical dubbing. Moore, like an upmarket version of Lina Lamont, in “Singin’ in the Rain,” lip-synchs convincingly to the sound of Renée Fleming. But not quite convincingly enough.

There's another reason for the lure of The Sisters Brothers. If the lives that it portrays are in transit, the world that encircles them is in even faster flux.

Their amateur restaging of the deportation is at the core of Greene’s movie, which grows into an adventurous exercise in drama-documentary; what could have seemed arch or awkward is handled with grace and tact, and there is even a song. Not that all hurts are healed. The rifts and scars, like those in the landscape, are here to stay.

It’s worth seeing precisely for the heat of the arguments that you can enjoy after the screening and, above all, for Emma Thompson.

For regular moviegoers, The Apparition will seem most remarkable for what it is not. So accustomed are we to yarns of demonic possession that the beatific equivalent comes as quite a shock.

What Hawke has provided here, with plenty of grace and a minimum of fuss, is an elegy for a life that went missing, more smolder than blaze, and a chance to hear the songs of the unsung.

What lingers, when this movie is done, are not the regular rallies, during which we survey the whole court, but those moments when we focus on McEnroe alone — on the dancing shuffle of his feet as he bobs and races for a return. Swap the sneakers for tap shoes and the dusty clay for a mirrored floor, and we could be watching Fred without Ginger, lost in the delirium of his art.

Lee would contend, I guess, that the sober approach will no longer suffice — that the age we inhabit is too drunk on its own craziness. He has a point.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film. Yet the play of emotions on Macdonald’s face tells of worries and wounds much deeper than anything that can be accounted for in the script, and it will take more than a jigsaw, I reckon, even a thousand-piece whopper, to free this woman’s soul.

To be fair, you can scoff at the antics and still be swept away. The final quarter of Mission: Impossible—Fallout takes place in Kashmir, with a helicopter chase through deep gullies and past snowy peaks. McQuarrie keeps the action crisp and clear, to match the icy air.

For all its faults, has a musty charm.

Another case of a talent torched by its own incandescence — the first half of McQueen is an indubitable thrill, and the second half almost too sad for words.

The most curious passages of Generation Wealth are those in which the director questions her own parents and kids.

Why, then, does the pulse of the narrative falter in the second half? Mainly because Van Sant has covered so much ground in the first, and there isn’t a great deal left to recount.

If you are pressed for time this week, and can spare only fifteen minutes at the cinema, spend them at the opening of Custody. There’s a scene near the start that is like a mini-movie in itself, tense with foreboding — a tension that the rest of Xavier Legrand’s film does nothing to dispel.

Although Sollima’s film is unbothered, for the most part, by the plight of refugees, it gets one thing dismayingly right: our most significant witness, on the fault line where Mexico and America grate against each other, is a child.