Bilge Ebiri

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t demonstrate any kind of interest in, or affection for, its characters. They’re cardboard cutouts, there to represent postures rather than evoke our sympathy or humanity or even curiosity.

Even though we can foretell just about everything that will happen in The Wedding Banquet — every plot twist, every screwball complication — we don’t much mind, because the comedy is so brisk and good-natured.

Hustle works, and it works beautifully, thanks to Sandler’s commitment.

The jokes might not be the funniest, the bits might not be the wittiest, but it’s all done with such verve and velocity that we might not notice.

John Wick is a violent, violent, violent film, but its artful splatter is miles away from the brutality of "Taken" or the gleeful gore of "The Equalizer." It’s a beautiful coffee-table action movie.

It feels like a rushed journey through a vital, many-pronged debate.

The story works largely on the level of metaphor, but it’s never overbearing or suffocating; there’s life here. A lot of credit should go to the actors, particularly the lead. As the film moves along, García’s face seems to change dramatically.

A comfort movie about comfort food, Chef won’t knock your socks off, but it believes in itself — and for Favreau, that’s all that matters.

Chow is at his best when juggling disparate elements – tragedy, slapstick, romance, melancholy, fantasy. Everything is big with him; he seems incapable of underplaying anything. The crazier his movies, the better. And Journey to the West might be the craziest thing he’s done yet. You may wonder, afterwards, if you dreamt it all.

Bonham-Carter is somehow both perfect for the part of Mother Holmes and, unfortunately, wasted. Perhaps we’re merely being set up for future adventures, in which these characters will presumably play greater parts.

There are only a couple of jump scares in Anthony Scott Burns’s Come True — mild ones at that — but the movie’s elusive sense of menace lingers for days, weeks, possibly forever. That’s quite an achievement for a film whose premise isn’t particularly novel.

Amid the grit and the attempted emotional catharses and the sturm-und-drang, there is an actual Bond movie in there. No Time to Die is fun, but only when it dares to be.

Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t a particularly good movie — I’m not even sure it is a movie — but it’s so determined to beat you down with its incessant irreverence that you might find yourself submitting to it.

Jordan has a great face for doubt and inner conflict. There’s a quizzical, nervous quality to him — which is also why when he does action movies, he’s so wonderfully unpredictable — and you can sense his devotion to justice clashing with his genuine fear.

We know these characters are going through a lot, even if we don’t always see it. And so, this short, ramshackle, shrinking movie manages to stick with you.

That very unknowability, which hampered so many Efron performances in the past, turns out to be his most humanizing trait, and Neighbors’ secret weapon.

In its broad strokes, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a fairly by-the-numbers action comedy, one that sometimes wears Cage’s presence like a talisman against the bad juju of slipshod storytelling. But the talisman works because the film never loses sight of its touchingly nutty premise and because Cage remains a compelling actor.

The descent into a tepid thriller of sexual jealousy slowly negates the abstract, almost metaphorical quality of this film — and it ultimately undoes the spell cast by that mesmerizing first half.

Weiner is about as entertaining as a film about someone destroying a life and career can be. You can't turn away from the car wreck, and Weiner himself can't stop commenting on it.

All in all, one walks away from Rustin enchanted with Domingo’s performance, while feeling that a character as larger than life and momentous as Bayard Rustin surely deserves a film less dutiful and more inspired.