Chris Nashawaty

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.

In Wiener-Dog, Solondz just keeps telling the same dark joke over and over again—and it just keeps getting less and less funny. It’s a dog.

As an introduction to a first-class director who shouldn’t require any introduction at all, By Sidney Lumet is a thoughtful and thought-provoking treat.

There are some stretches of the film that are frankly a bit boring and wouldn’t be missed if they were cut.

Megan Leavey is one of those strong-arm soaps, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that it has a certain secret weapon in the forced-waterworks department—an adorable bomb-sniffing German shepherd. All together now: Awwwwww.

Crimson Peak is a cobwebs-and-candelabras chamber piece that’s so preoccupied with being visually stunning it forgets to be scary.

Parents looking for a 21st-century E.T. to share with their kids are bound to be a bit disappointed even as their eyes are dazzled.

It feels like a movie that’s been lovingly crafted and put under glass in a museum. And I kept waiting for it to move me more than it did.

For a movie about the importance of objectivity, Truth feels like a biased and sanctimonious op-ed column.

While the story attempts the moves that a Pixar film typically makes—nonverbal storytelling, death, a bittersweet ending—most of The Good Dinosaur’s punches land soft, made worse by the disconnect that exists between the overly cartoonish style of the characters and the photorealistic landscapes.

Now, in Johanna Hamilton’s fiery truth-to-power documentary, those gray-haired agitators finally step out of the shadows to explain what they did and why they did it (with the help of some slightly hokey dramatic reenactments). Their message—namely, Who will watch the watchmen? — remains as important today as it was 44 years ago.

Charlie McDowell's romantic brainteaser is disarmingly clever — too clever to spoil. But it's also repetitive and a bit too Spike Jonze lite.

A violent, grungy, Peckinpah-lite action thriller that’s worth checking out just to be reminded how powerful an actor Mel Gibson continues to be even—if the parts aren’t coming like they once were.

Fantastic Beasts is two-plus hours of meandering eye candy that feels numbingly inconsequential.

It doesn’t have the most adrenalized action sequences or the deepest origin story. What it has is the balls to mess with the formula and have some naughty, hard-R fun. It’s a superhero film for the wiseasses shooting spitballs in the back of the school bus.

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.

Richard Fleischer’s dystopian thriller set in an overpopulated, famine-stricken 2022 New York is a wonderfully silly slice of future schlock, featuring some of Heston’s zestiest overacting.

The premise would make for a great Funny or Die video, but stretched out to feature length, it runs out of ideas pretty quickly. Still, Plaza is terrific. She commits so fully to her rabid, Romero-esque alter ego, she chews the movie up.

Rogue One would have been a very good stand-alone sci-fi movie if it came out under a different name. But what makes it especially exciting is how it perfectly snaps right into the Star Wars timeline and connects events we already know by heart with ones that we never even considered.

Gazzara struts like a polyester peacock, playing a doomed nightclub owner in debt to the wrong people.

It's a deeply touching story about survival, perseverance, and hope.

The movie spins like a top for two hours. With his pearly shark’s grin, always-underestimated comic timing, and macho daredevil streak, Cruise rips into the role and summons a side of himself that he rarely lets his guard down enough to reveal.

There are some solid scares (Wan is too gifted in the dark art of gotcha manipulation to not make you leap a few times), but there’s nothing on par with the first film’s brilliant hide-and-clap scene with Lili Taylor. If there’s going to be a Conjuring 3—and this movie is just decent enough to suggest there will be—our heroes should be a little choosier about which case they dust off next.

The achievement of Edward Zwick’s new Fischer biopic, Pawn Sacrifice, is that it does just that. It manages to turn thinking into action.

Saving Mr. Banks is a wholesomely square film about a wholesomely square film. But damned if its sugar doesn't go down like honey.

It’s fine and funny and sweet and lush and some of the songs are infectious, but I still don’t completely understand why it exists — and why they couldn’t do more with it.

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.

There are certain movies that you really want to like based on their ambition, or their weirdness, or their ambitious weirdness, and ultimately you just can’t. Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise is one of those movies.