Christy Lemire

The razzle-dazzle that's Jon M. Chu's bread and butter is on glorious display in "Wicked," the big-screen version of the beloved Broadway musical.

Lowriders may spell too much out with obvious dialogue, and it may veer a bit too easily toward melodrama. But there’s an earnestness and a fundamental truth to this familial saga—as well as an appealing, low-budget scrappiness—that consistently make it hum.

Imagine a cross between “Taken” and “Fargo” and you’ll get an idea of the chilly thrills “Dead of Winter” has to offer.

Indeed, the director of “99 Homes” and “The White Tiger” has proven a driving interest in telling stories that shine a light on injustice and cruelty. But here, the result suggests he’s dipping his toe into these enormous subjects rather than getting his arms around them in a smart and satisfying way.

It’s charmingly funny and shamelessly punny.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is zippy and breezy.

Veteran French director Anne Fontaine approaches a spiritually and emotionally complex real-life slice of history with deftness and understated drama in The Innocents.

Before You Know It shifts seamlessly from quirky to sad to mysterious to wacky to surreal within just the space of a few days, so much so that you’d never know it’s director Hannah Pearl Utt’s feature filmmaking debut.

Greene’s film is deceptively profound in that it’s about a specific woman with a specific kind of life, yet it has universal resonance as a reflection of the struggle so many women endure—the desire to be all things to all people and inevitably failing someone, the yearning to balance career and parenthood and never finding enough time to do either completely right.

See it with someone you love, and then just try to feel smug about the security of your own relationship afterward.

An intimate, thorough look at a candidate on the rise and on the go.

It’s impossible to watch Introducing, Selma Blair and not feel deeply moved.

While Puzzle adheres to a bit of a formula in depicting her character’s path of self-discovery, it’s filled with vivid details and lovely grace notes along the way.

Hedges’ film is stronger in its first half, when it’s an understated character drama, than in its second half, when it morphs into a contrived crime thriller. But the performances remain uniformly strong and hold the story together, even as it threatens to spin out of control.

It aims for and earns genuine emotion rather than cheap thrills.

The detached, bemused tone that sustains the film for so long eventually gives way to actual feelings—to its detriment—as this dark comedy steadily turns just plain dark.

Sheridan drops us in and we know this place immediately; his storytelling is meaty but efficient, and his pacing moves along at a steadily engrossing clip before ultimately exploding in a startling blast of violence.

The first feature from the longtime music video director has a ton of style, and signals from the beginning her confident use of framing, texture and color.

Johnson keeps it all moving at a decent clip, though, with the help of Michael Penn’s score. And she photographs Powley and her mesmerizing blue eyes so lovingly that it’s hard not to find her adorable—even when she’s being awful.

Lady Macbeth has the refined, pleasing trappings of a tasteful period piece with the vicious, beating heart of a brutal psychological thriller. You can’t stop watching its beauty, even as you long to look away from its cruelty.

Split is more lean and taut in its narrative and pace than we’ve seen from Shyamalan lately.

As in other recent female-driven raunchy comedies like “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and “Spy,” the force is strong in this one.

Director Dawn Porter’s film is an intimate homage to both the legend and the man, as spry and lively as Lewis himself.

A mother-daughter bond shines through stark black-and-white cinematography and surreal humor in El Planeta.

Suspiria is as striking and severe as the director’s “Call Me by Your Name,” the best film of 2017, was warm and welcoming.

In terms of underwater worlds, once you’ve been to Pandora, you can never go anywhere else. But the fictional Caribbean island where The Little Mermaid takes place is certainly a pleasant escape.

What’s fascinating about Jimi: All Is By My Side is not only its decision to show us this particular chapter in Hendrix’s life, but also the way it teases out the shadings in a famous figure we only think we know so well.

Shortland has essentially crafted a claustrophobic two-hander with only occasional forays into the outside world.