Chris Nashawaty

Both Cage and Sheridan (who shined opposite Matthew McConaughey in Mud) give true and at times tender performances. It's a shame the film lacks the same subtlety and force.

It's always a thrill to see what an artist as singular as Jarmusch will do next. I just wish that his foray into the world of the undead had a little more to sink its beautiful fangs into.

Frost is a likable bloke with a deft physical grace to match his rat-a-tat one-liners. But all the sequins and silk shirts in the world can’t disguise the film’s too-familiar formula.

Make no mistake, there will be a sequel. Clary may not wind up having the same pop-culture impact as Bella and Katniss, but like it or not, this won't be the last time you hear from her.

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.

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.

Farrell delivers his lines with the same replicant monotone he used in The Lobster. And Kidman, the only cast member who expresses recognizably human emotions, extends her recent hot streak. But even she’s not enough to give this head-scratcher any real life.

It's moving, admirable, and occasionally exhilarating. What it's missing is the one thing that could always be counted on with Jolie as a star: the spark of danger.

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.”

The first two-thirds of the film, which are like the Brothers Grimm's Greatest Hits on laughing gas, have a fizzy, fairy-dust energy. But as soon as the baker couple's scavenger hunt is over and a rampaging giant appears, Woods loses its magic and momentum and sags like an airless balloon.

To cover up the script's lack of originality, screenwriters Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman pummel us with a string of self-aware meta-commentary jokes that poke fun at bloated sequels.

Transpecos is a lean-and-mean atmospheric thriller that starts off tautly but ultimately slackens as it goes along.

It’s a shame the rest of the soap-opera story doesn’t measure up to its stunts.

Stalingrad is a 3-D epic that's one-dimensional.

After a while, the director of the more perceptive "Frances Ha" and "The Squid and the Whale" tips his hand, painting the aging Xers as guardians of integrity and the millennials as opportunists. It’s a cheap shot, and it feels like he’s telling the kids to get off his lawn. It’s not Stiller’s character who’s the curmudgeon, it’s Baumbach.

Tonally, the movie can’t decide whether it’s a comedy, a romance, or a wistful wartime madeleine. What it’s missing is the sense of joy and wonder of its predecessor.

As far as cheap warm-weather junk food goes, it will suffice. It will have to.

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.

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

There aren’t enough laughs here to goose it past formulaic. It’s harmless and mild and likable, but it’s also a toothless comedy that should have had some bite.

A lot of us have really missed Pee-wee, and seeing him go through his fun-house morning regimen at the outset of the film is a giddy treat. It’s like catching up with an old friend. But nostalgia gets you only so far.

The biggest problem with the new Hunger Games movie is right there in the title: Part 1. Mockingjay, the final installment in Suzanne Collins' best-selling YA trilogy, wasn't conceived in two parts.

The loner has to learn to put someone else first. It’s both as manipulative and hokey as that sounds, but occasionally it works well enough that you might find yourself getting choked up against your better judgment.

The biggest problem is that the film, written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, never makes a convincing case for why Valli the man or the singer matters beyond the music in the way that "Ray" and "Walk the Line" did for Ray Charles and Johnny Cash.

Berg has made a powerful film and an important reminder of what really happens when we send men and women off to war. It's just too bad that subtlety isn't a stronger weapon in his arsenal.

Howard’s film, for all of its storytelling skill, technical polish, and rousing high-seas sequences, never quite casts the spell it should. It’s too polite to give us a real feeling of life or death. Its sense of danger is watered down.

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

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.