Bilge Ebiri

Lynskey’s shivering rage and Wood’s Zen incompetence play off beautifully against each other, and Blair deftly juggles the suspense, humor and social overtones of his script. Until, that is, the film’s final 30 or 40 minutes, when he settles for genre schlock and the revelatory film we thought we were watching devolves into a less interesting, more familiar one.

I’ve now seen Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film twice, and I think I might be one more viewing away from finally being able to say what the hell it’s about. That sounds like a condemnation, but a film you need to see again should be a film you want to see again, and the oblique beauty of Goodbye to Language, shot in 3-D, has a tractor-beam-like pull.

In some ways, it encapsulates the director’s best and worst instincts. It might be his most personal film, a genuine effort to understand the connection between two of his key obsessions, spiritual faith and human impulse. It’s also hard to shake the feeling that the film wants to outrage us into a response, but its supposed transgressions often feel tired and pro forma.

If Profile has value, it’s not as a tale of terrorist recruitment or of amorous delusion, but of how power works in the extremely online world.

This new film doesn’t have the emotional grounding of the original, and it probably dwells too long explaining things we never cared about. But it’s still a visceral, cathartic and — most important — gorgeous two hours of kinetic, poetic bloodshed.

Branagh wisely gives the movie the quality of a childhood memory, of stolen moments and eavesdropped conversations.

What makes Alex Garland’s Civil War so diabolically clever is the way that it both revels in and abhors our fascination with the idea of America as a battlefield.

This understated, generous film quietly sneaks up on you.

The film is a masterpiece, so you should see it any way you can.

I never found myself genuinely wondering what was going to happen next; the moves are too familiar. Even the big fight, entertaining as it is, feels like it's there not because of dramatic inevitability, but because somebody behind a desk decided it had to be. It's just a bunch of stuff.

The premise of Late Fame is so captivating that one wants to forgive its shortcomings and focus on what it does so well, starting with a truly great and nuanced role for Dafoe, whose physical presence can evoke coarse sturdiness and emotional delicacy at the same time.

It’s light on its feet but gradually gathers real emotional weight. It’s also beautifully shot and steeped in atmosphere. We walk away from it feeling like we’ve actually been somewhere and felt something.

By the time the movie is over, we feel, perhaps for the first time, like we’ve gotten to know this legendary, almost mythical figure. Despite the tumult of her life and her singularity as both a person and an artist, this Frida seems downright familiar.

The LEGO Batman Movie is entertaining, but it also sometimes feels less like a spin-off of The LEGO Movie and more like one of its targets.

For an hour and a half, this charming little movie, with its chatty talking heads and its sweet-natured subjects, offers a glimpse into the lives of two fascinating people whom I had never heard of, and who shared an unlikely life filled with achievements and setbacks, wonder and pain.

Karan Kandhari’s colorful and deeply odd Sister Midnight, about the frustrations of a young woman in a working-class corner of Mumbai, is one of those movies that starts over here and ends waaay over there. But the film comes by its tonal shifts and narrative changes honestly — its twists are organic and rooted in character — which is quite an accomplishment for a feature directing debut

Origin has instances of raw domestic melodrama, but the emotions are so sincere that it’s hard not to be moved by it all. The film’s depiction of moments out of history is similarly textured.

The director’s latest, her first film in seven years, is an absurdly riveting thriller with the kind of ticking-clock, military-grade suspense the director does so well.

There’s a lot to chew on here, but in the end, I wish Okja simply worked better as a movie.

It is not easy to describe In the Last Days of the City, an immersive visual experience with a wisp of a story and a wellspring of ideas.

Frozen is one of the few recent films to capture that classic Disney spirit.

Goodman also doesn’t state overtly why the story of the Oklahoma City bombing is so relevant today. He doesn’t have to. His methodical recounting of the rise of white nationalism and fringe movements reverberates with today’s world, in which racist violence and conspiracist lunacy has been emboldened and brought troublingly into the mainstream.

It showcases two astonishing performances: one from the always reliable Taron Egerton as the hardened, haunted ex-con Nate McClusky and another from newcomer Ana Sophia Heger as his young daughter, Polly, in whose queasy glances the drama finds its sorrow and its depth.

This doc could have been a mess, frankly. But Philippe has put the film together smartly, taking us from the general to the particular.

Unlike many modern-day animated films, which find inspiration in fantasy and present us with unique, fanciful designs, the world of The Sea Beast is so realistically rendered, so detailed and physical, that much of the time it feels like a live-action adventure. It’s so thoroughly immersive it might make you believe in sea monsters.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower and its eye-popping cavalcade of creations and colors speak not to the shock and awe of technology but to the can-do magic of human achievement.

Jackass Forever is a kinder, gentler Jackass, but thankfully, it’s not a more mature one.

The pleasures of Bones and All wind up being incidental and, sadly, fleeting — an effectively grisly scene here, an arresting performance there. The film, as a whole, never quite hangs together, because even as it goes through the motions of both the road movie and the romance, it never really finds an animating energy to drive it along.