Chris Nashawaty

The Rolling Thunder Revue was Dylan’s personal magical mystery tour — and in Scorsese’s hands, there’s no shortage of magic or mystery.

Director Jesse V. Johnson sprinkles in enough cruel twists of fate and melancholy-laced flashbacks to prevent Avengement from becoming just another disposable exercise in action sadism on a budget. The real credit, though, goes to Adkins, who one of these days will hopefully get called up to the Hollywood big leagues and wind up surprising a lot of people — and grin while he’s doing it.

It delivers. The Perfection is a pure hit of twisted, absurd camp catnip.

Even if this handsome film runs a bit snoozy and dull at times, it’s wondefully acted and clearly made with no shortage of compassion and love.

I don’t mean to give the impression that John Wick 3 is anything grander than a gorgeously choreographed, gratuitously violent action movie. But as gorgeously choreographed, gratuitously violent action movies go, it’s high art.

Hoult brings a quiet, romantic intensity to the young Tolkien (pronounced ‘Tolkeen’, who knew?), Lily Collins does a lot with a little as his first love Edith, and the Hobbit horde will gobble up all of the easter-egg references peppered throughout the movie.

In the end, Non-Fiction is a warm, humane story that ends on a hopeful note reminiscent of "Hannah and Her Sisters." Life can be a messy business, but every so often it reveals moments of unexpected joy with perfect clarity.

Not that there’s a ton of competition, but Long Shot may be the most deliriously raunchy comedy with a pivotal semen gag since "There’s Something About Mary."

There’s something about the movie that makes it all feel as though it’s being presented under glass. Nureyev is more of an idea than an actual flesh and blood character. The only time The White Crow truly shoots off sparks is during its dance sequences. For those brief, beautiful moments, you can almost feel what it must have been like to witness a one-of-a-kind artist at the spellbinding height of his powers taking flight. But then the spell is broken, and the crow falls back to earth.

No matter how shaggy and self-indulgent it is, or how anticlimactic its big so-what of an ending ends up being, I was never bored. More than that, I kind of dug its sheer swing-for-the-fences insanity.

Marcello may remain a mystery, but the thing that makes Dogman worth checking out is the actor who portrays him. It’s a performance that never barks too loudly, but leaves you with an unmistakable bite.

The moments that work the best are the ones where Tammi lets the pace and pulse slow down, lets the ominous wind whistle and groan, and it isn’t trying to turn The Wind into Meek’s Cutoff as interpreted by the director of Insidious.

High Life is, at turns, gorgeous, ridiculous, and confounding. Yet, the more you wrestle with it, the more it haunts you. As for Pattinson, who commits as fully as ever, he can rest easy knowing that he’s left his audience another riddle to chew on.

Fortunately, directing duo Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer get everything absolutely right in their bone-chillingly effective new remake.

As a faithful update of a cherished classic, the new Dumbo will get the job done for restless kids on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Still, we’ve come to expect more magic, more bizarro pixie dust from Burton. Maybe that’s why the second marriage between the director and Disney feels more like an uneasy corporate alliance than a union of artistic passion.

It’s a cliché to say that they don’t make movies like this anymore — nasty, nihilistic, nicotine-stained ‘70s death trips. But thank goodness that Zahler’s doing everything in his power to prove that cliché wrong.

Shazam! is basically two movies in one. One with Levi and his wiseass foster brother (a fresh Jack Dylan Grazer), the other with Strong and all his snarling, computer-generated gobbledygook. And they both have the other in a headlock, wrestling for the soul of the story. I loved one, yawned through the other.

It’s cartoonish, fast-paced, a bit cheesy, and ridiculously dumb fun.

The Highwaymen is a leisurely ride with a pair of actors who know how to do a lot by not doing too much. It won’t reinvent cinema the way that "Bonnie and Clyde" once did. But it’s a ride worth taking nonetheless.

Yardie is a sprawling drug-world saga, but whatever narrative flaws it has are helped out by an infectious selection of dub-heavy reggae tracks and an authentically gritty sense of period and place.

It’s just another three-hankie teen weepie, albeit one with the saving grace of another excellent Haley Lu Richardson performance that gooses the film just past serviceable into the realm of slightly better than average.

The NASA mission at the heart of the must-see documentary Apollo 11 reminds you what it feels to be truly awestruck.

There may be no honor among thieves, but Triple Frontier certainly makes watching them pretty entertaining.

Petzold walks the tricky tightrope of being both timeless and timely, the performances (especially those of Rogowski and Beer) are chillingly good, and the ambiguous final shot is damn near perfect. In Transit, the past is prologue… and it’s devastating.

Thanks to two pitch-perfect performances, Paddleton is bittersweet and poignant beyond words.

It’s a triumph of style over substance. But what style!

If there’s one nit to pick with Everybody Knows, it’s that Farhadi’s films, as excellent as they are, are starting to feel a bit same-y. He’s plying the same family-in-crisis formula he’s worked before. That formula still works like gangbusters, but it’s becoming a formula nonetheless: Happiness and community curdle into paranoia and suspicion.

Clocking in at a lean and very mean 81 minutes, writer-director Nicolas Pesce’s follow-up to his grim 2016 black-and-white arthouse chiller "The Eyes of My Mother" is a sick-joke psychological cat-and-mouse game with just enough twists to keep you on your toes.

It knows exactly what kind of movie it is, but that doesn’t stand in the way of it goosing its bloodbath set pieces with irreverent, off-kilter gallows humor.

As entertaining as The Lego Movie 2 ends up being — and let’s be clear, it’s still better than 99 percent of its competition — there’s something missing: that white-hot spark of insane creativity and out-of-the-box novelty that made the first Lego Movie such an unexpected, revolutionary surprise. Everything is still awesome. Just a little bit less so.

Heartwarming, mildly funny, and occasionally thrilling without ever being anything more than just fine.

The reason that this old-fashioned movie works as well as it does is the transformative commitment of its two leads. They’re both clowns crying on the inside, who, despite years of resentment, know they’re more than partners; they’re uneasy soul mates stuck in one last “fine mess” together.

Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War resembles a waking dream. And a ravishingly romantic one at that.

For all of its brutal, raw force, Labaki’s excellent film is tough sledding — a sucker punch that lands with the emotional force of Dickens relocated to the slums of the modern-day Middle East. It leaves a bruise.

The Mule fits the 88-year-old Eastwood perfectly. Not just because there probably aren’t many roles for actors of his age out there, but also because its lack of judgment makes sense for a star who’s always been as willing to play anti-heroes as heroes.

Creed II slavishly follows the sentimental-palooka Rocky template as if it were a sacred text. Still, it doesn’t make those old rope-a-dope tropes any less effective.

Two of the chapters stand with some of the best work the merry-prankster filmmakers have ever done, while the rest are varying degrees of… fine.

At its heart (and it’s a big corny heart, for sure), the film’s message is one of unconditional love and embracing family wherever you find it. It’s hard to argue with. Especially when it’s served up with such spiky laughter-through-tears sweetness.

A surprisingly well-made mash-up of old-fashion war movie tropes and proudly disgusting horror-flick shocks. It’s a ton of fun.

More narratively straightforward (but also masterfully edited in F for Fake style), the documentary takes its title from a Welles quote about the fickle hypocrisy of the movie business and about his other favorite subject: himself. And that quote couldn’t have been more spot-on for a man who was most appreciated most only when it was too late.

The Other Side of the Wind (both the movie and the movie-within-a-movie) is a hypnotic, magical mess of a film. It’s a lot of story and not enough of one. Still, there are shots that are so haunting and beautifully composed that you want to get out of your seat and take up residence in them.

Boy Erased is the kind of topical, well-intentioned movie that makes you wish it was slightly better than it is.

Viper Club is an earnest and often engaging film that’s undeniably heartfelt. It’s capital-I important and timely. But without its star’s passionate, nuanced performance, it would run the risk of being a bit generic and forgettable.

The Guilty is an absolute workout that pulls the rug out from under you just when you think you have it figured out. The last ten minutes will keep you rattled long after you’ve left the theater.

It’s likely to be enjoyed more by audiences unfamiliar with the original.

Few filmmakers can turn a mundane town council meeting about a library bench into a meditation on patriotism and civic responsibility the way Wiseman can. Let’s hope his camera continues to roll for years to come.

Wildlife is confident and patient and mature. It may be a small film, but its power is massive. Especially its very last shot, which is so devastating it has the force of a sucker punch.

While it’s loaded with excellent ensemble performances and flashes of real poignancy, it can’t seem to help itself from occasionally jack-knifing into heavy-handed wrong turns that can play as clichéd or phony. It’s half of a great movie.

Netflix feels like a proper home for a film this idiosyncratic. After all, you’ll know within 30 minutes stumbling onto it whether you want to keep following its unsettling descent into blood-soaked madness or pick up your remote and head over to the relatively sunnier and safer comforts of "Broadchurch."

Taken together, the film is kaleidoscopic, sober, and also a bit glib. 22 July is exceptionally choreographed and tough to sit through, but it also leaves an uneasy, bitter aftertaste knowing that the movie is probably exactly the kind of continued attention a deranged narcissist like Breivik would have wanted.

Everett’s utterly fantastic performance as Wilde slightly exceeds his grasp as a first-time filmmaker.

One of the great surprises of Matt Tyrnauer’s giddy glitterbomb of a documentary about New York’s infamously Caligulan Me Decade hot spot is discovering how much of our culture (the drugs, the music, the sexual liberation) is wrapped up in one nightclub that existed for a mere 33 months.

In The Great Buster, Bogdanovich has provided a brilliantly enthralling primer.

It’s about perseverance, compassion, and empathy.

Despite its Irish setting, Black ’47 feels more than anything like an American Western, what with its shades-of-grey morality and almost Biblical quest for payback. Like Clint Eastwood’s Bill Munny in "Unforgiven" or John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers," Martin is a silent avenger pushed to do things he doesn’t want to do but also can’t ignore.

In the end, the answer may be only slightly deeper than “because it’s there”, but for 100 nerve-racking minutes, Free Solo brings us one man’s suicidal quest with sympathy, grace, and a ton of adrenalin.

Love, Gilda is penetrating, painful, and personal.

Black, no surprise, steals the show, manically hamming it up like Harry Houdini on laughing gas, while Roth tries to keep the breakneck pace of his phantasmagoria going. As someone who was growing bored with Roth’s gory shockfests, I say: “Welcome to the kiddie table, Eli.”

What sets it a notch or two above rote familiarity is its cast, featuring a charismatic, white trash-with-a-heart-of-gold turn from a mulletted Matthew McConaughey and a naturalistically low-key performance from newcomer Richie Merritt.

It’s a fully immersive experience that begs to be anchored by someone who’s lit from within by blinding neon, but who also, amidst all of the nutty squalls of genre scuzz can still wear his broken heart on his sleeve. And, these days, that list is a short one. In fact, there’s really only one name on it. Thankfully, Cosmatos found him.

Experiencing the lovely and lyrical Roma, you get the impression that at age 56, Cuarón not only wanted to get these still-vivid memories down on film, but that he also needed to. You’ll be glad he did. Because movies with this much empathy and humanity don’t come along very often.

Hal gives us a lot to take in, whether you’re an aficionado or new to Ashby’s work. Scott has done movie fans a real service. She’s finally given an under-sung filmmaking giant his well-deserved close-up at long last.

There’s no denying that Bisbee ’17 has some moments of deep elegiac power or, for that matter, that Greene’s ambition is boundless. But by the end, I often felt like his blurring of the past and the present was an experiment that was easier to admire than be swept up by.

The film is fizzy, lightweight fun with some real moments of genuine heart.

This couldn’t be further from the corsets and curtsies of your typical Hollywood prestige period piece. It’s more like "All About Eve" directed by a Satyricon-era Fellini all hopped up with enough sex, deviance, hypocrisy, decadence, and spicy profanity to make your average Masterpiece Theatre patron reach into their PBS tote bag for some smelling salts.

It’s very much its own thing – part harrowing and exhilarating space epic on a grand canvas and part intimate character study in miniature. And while both of those elements are stunning, especially when you consider just how early Chazelle is in his career as a director, the character sections are slightly less successful.

It’s the psychological duel between the terrific Isaac and Kingsley as captor and prisoner that delivers the film’s most charged jolts of electricity.

It’s heartbreaking, raw, and true. But it never veers into exploitation or becomes oppressively maudlin.

Blaze isn’t a flashy movie, which seems about right since Hawke’s closest mentors and collaborators (Richard Linklater, for example) aren’t known for their look-at-me personalities. Like the real-life Foley, they’re storytellers and yarn spinners first and foremost, fame and fortune be damned.

A lightweight teen rom-com that isn’t likely to clear up anyone’s grasp of what the studio stands for, but it is breezy and charming enough to merit a watch contingent on reasonable expectations.

It’s easily the director’s best movie since 2002’s "25th Hour."

It is ridiculous, cheesy popcorn fun. And Statham, God bless him, knows exactly what kind of guilty pleasure he’s signed on for — Sharknado with a bigger budget and a much bigger monster.

He’s not just a name-dropper, but a master storyteller. Whether you believe every spicy morsel that drops from his lips is entirely up to you.

All of the families in Far From the Tree are compelling — their trials unimaginable and their spirits indomitable.

Over 95 minutes, Blindspotting builds tension like a simmering cauldron on the verge of boiling over. Its themes of racial prejudice, class conflict, friendship and loyalty find a voice that’s both disarmingly funny and heartbreakingly tragic.

It’s the kind of pure, straight-no-chaser pop fun that not only keeps taking your breath away over and over again, it restores your occasionally shaky faith in summer blockbusters.

Eighth Grade is an absolute delight that stings with truth. It’s heartbreaking, heartwarming, and a total charmer.

The harmless high jinks all go down easily enough without being particularly memorable or pushing the art form past the expected.

Exploding with infectious originality, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You may be the most wonderfully bizarre film of 2018.

The best documentaries reveal the ways in which truth can be stranger (and wilder and weirder) than fiction. And director Tim Wardle’s stunning and tragic Sundance sensation, Three Identical Strangers, is stranger (and wilder and weirder) than most.

You more or less know what this soft-drink-sponsored movie is going to be as soon as the lights start to dim. What makes it worth recommending is that it ends up being just slightly more than that by the time the lights come back on.

It’s a slower (at times probably too slow) and more contemplative movie than its predecessor, but it’s no less haunting, thanks to unshakable performances from Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie.

It’s a ridiculously raunchy and very, very sweet comedy about staying connected to the most important people in your life.

Hereditary doesn’t reinvent horror cinema so much as polish the cobwebs off of its classics, strip them for parts, and refashion them into something that feels terrifyingly fresh and new.

It’s like a security blanket for our troubled times.

Howard, thankfully, gets more to do than the last go round (and in combat boots, no less!), Pratt busts out his Indiana Jones cocktail of can-do heroism and deadpan jokiness, and Bayona and his screenwriters (Trevorrow and Derek Connolly) test the laws of incredulity with varying degrees of success. At least, until the final half hour when forehead-slapping absurdity finally win out. Up until then, Fallen Kingdom is exactly the kind of escapist summer behemoth you want it to be.

It’s all done expertly and with an unexpectedly deft sleight-of-hand twist in the homestretch that proves once again that Kormakur is the kind of overachieving director that one pigeonholes at their own risk. He has a knack for making the familiar feel more surprising than it is.

More than anything, the film feels a bit like a trial balloon for the relative star power of Jacobs, who’s been promoted from best friend to headliner here.

First Reformed is a bleak, punishing movie and the furthest thing imaginable from an easy crowdpleaser. But Hawke juices it with an austere sense of grace.

Whether he’s washing the feet of prisoners in America, visiting sick children in Africa, or praying with hurricane victims in Asia, Pope Francis doesn’t merely preach empathy, responsibility, and accountability, he lives it.

Speaking of Glover, it’s no spoiler to say that the Atlanta star is easily the best thing in this good-not-great movie.

Pearce takes his time laying out his sleeping-with-the-enemy tale, but his stinginess with plot lends the film an vice-tightening air of mystery that suits it.

Still, there are enough glimpses of the old master peeking through that it’s hard not to have a bit of a good time. It turns out that even second-rate (okay, third-rate) Woo has its moments.

What saves Infinity War from being just another bloated supergroup tour – and what will end up being the thing that blows fans’ minds to dust – is the film’s final stretch.

Michel Hazanavicius’ new film, Godard Mon Amour, tackles that period in Godard’s life on and off the screen — and does it in a dismissively light-hearted way that I’m sure the auteur himself loathes.

Tully feels like the work of a writer who’s matured and lived and become less superficial without giving up any of her natural gift for finding humor in the absurd.

The dialogue mixes Sunday school and the streets, and it’s funny, profane, and occasionally poignant when it’s not a bit too on the nose.

Of the film’s two stars, it’s LaBeouf who seems especially well cast here. Until now, the actor has never seemed to measure up to the potential that he promised early on in his career. But there’s something about playing McEnroe that brings out the sort of unpredictable subtlety he’s always been capable of.