Caryn James

Here are the bones of an ordinary ghost story. But the writer and director Frank LaLoggia brings them to life with exceptional vitality.

A glib misreading of Men might reduce it to: "Ha! Men! They're all alike." But the film's ending emphasises how much Harper's trials and Garland's film have been about her profound tangle of love, grief and understanding.

Moving on from its cynical beginning, Materialists takes the long way around to an ending that is decidedly hopeful. It offers an unblinkered, earned romanticism that suits this moment, and bolsters Song's reputation as one of our most astute observers of relationships.

[A] solid, straightforward history of abortion rights in America.

That interplay between work and life gives the project its distinctive perspective and offers the most acute revelations. The lack of talking heads commenting on her enhances the intimate feel.

I Am Greta is a smoothly constructed view of a heroine in the making, and of how the world largely embraced and sometimes dismissed her.

The script, which he wrote with Alain Le Henry, is as confusing and tiresome as the direction. What is meant to be a touching, comic relationship between Marx and Johnny is simply flat.

A flawed little time capsule, the doc veers uneasily between kindly character portrait and shallow attempt at media studies.

The film approaches its action tropes with an effective sense of absurdity, but it’s the stars’ kinetic commitment to the bit that makes this relentlessly silly film work.

Esmail's adaptation of Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel adds a playful Hitchcockian spin and the starry cast of Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali to create a psychological thriller about family, technology and life in the 21st Century.

As an emotional journey Day One has its moments. For a supposedly scary movie, it's a little bit sloppy.

A River Runs Through It, Mr. Redford's beautiful and deeply felt new movie, puts him in an entirely new category as a film maker.

The fights are about as sophisticated as watching kids in a playground, and they rely heavily on slow motion, as if that will instantly create tension.

Black Widow does become typically Avengers at the end, with an overwrought, too-long action scene that plays like a festival of stunt doubles tossing each other around a Russian lab. The real ending is better: a post-credit sequence brings back Pugh as Yelena in a tease that is not terribly surprising but is extremely welcome.

Bill Murray has a single scene as Lord Krylar, an amalgam of all droll Bill Murray characters. William Jackson Harper is wry as a sympathetic telepath, who unfortunately disappears for much of the film.

It takes a spectacular cast to pull off this kind of meandering romantic comedy, and Reality Bites couldn't have done better.

If you can't improve on Spielberg – and really, when it comes to this kind of film, who can? – better to try something bold to prevent any waning dino-interest.

The film’s slow-burn pace is an asset, not a flaw. Speak No Evil works best when it focuses on the Americans’ escalating fears, and collapses near the end when the psychological horror story turns into a predictable potboiler. But for a good three-quarters of the way, this Blumhouse production is an entertainingly elevated genre piece.

Coppola depicts their lives with sympathy but also with clear-eyed honesty about the dreams they never achieved and the youth that's impossible to reclaim.

The satire of the 50's is more bland than biting, dependent on authentically garish costumes and sets. And when the horror-film scenes begin to intrude on normal life (what is hanging from the cellar ceiling, anyway?) Mr. Balaban can't make the dark elements seem comic enough to mesh with the rest of this nightmarish joke.

The documentary does not display artistic flair or innovation, but that is not its purpose. It is solid and straightforward in style, but extraordinary in its access and in how clearly her personality and philosophy emerge.

Behind the impressive CGI, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the definition of generic, all two hours and 25 minutes of it. The ending teases a sequel that offers a more intriguing conflict ahead, but that doesn't help us now.

With a scatter-shot style that includes lengthy, often lame song-and-dance parodies, as well as special effects, slapstick and satire, the film can't begin to sustain its lunatic premise. But during the lulls between witty scenes, there is always something amusing to look at. Mr. Temple and his collaborators create a near-California so cartoonish and crayon-colored that the film comes to seem like Aliens in Toyland.

Mountainhead may seem to be an argument for fast-turnaround films, but few writers and directors could do it with Armstrong's sharp eye and intelligence, as he entertains us with these heartless, all-too-convincing megalomaniacs.

With its homogenized flavor, this Body Snatchers seems like a movie made BY pod people, FOR pod people.

Caught Stealing is an anomaly, a dark soap bubble of an entertainment. And that weirdness makes this unlikely film sparkle.

Selena y Los Dinos remains a slick doc most likely to appeal to her fans.

The film’s first-person approach and dynamic visual style make it more engaging and livelier than you might expect such a well-researched documentary about this serious subject to be.