Christy Lemire

The Glorias is consistently a visual treat, as you’d expect from Taymor.

This may be the start of a most welcome girl-powered franchise.

While Antebellum is dazzling to the eyes, it also leaves an icky taste in your mouth in its leering, exploitative depiction of violent, slavery movie tropes.

It’s steeped in traditional cultural locales and details, yet feels bracingly modern with the help of dazzling special effects and innovative action sequences.

Love, Guaranteed is the kind of movie you leave on the TV because you’re lying on the couch with a cold, and the remote control has fallen off the blanket onto the rug, and you don’t feel like going to the trouble to reach down, grab it and change the channel.

Lingua Franca isn’t a screed. Far from it. Sandoval pulls us in gently with long, single takes which are often static, immersing us in the quiet rhythms of the lived-in environment she’s created within the Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Like a novice juggler struggling to master some complicated tricks, The One and Only Ivan tries to encompass several different stories, themes, and ideas while appealing to adults and very young kids at the same time. It’s a tough feat to pull off — an uneasy mix of lofty notions about freedom and dog fart jokes — which the film only sporadically succeeds in achieving.

Pistorius does solid work throughout in expressing various states of panic, but she’s mainly reacting to Crowe’s improbable omnipresence.

The sad subtext of Made in Italy is more intriguing and poignant than what we see on screen.

There is nothing new, exciting or particularly challenging about what The Secret: Dare to Dream is selling.

Entertaining and richly sourced documentary.

With Radioactive, Satrapi eschews traditional biopic notions in favor of a more daring approach. But the execution is frustratingly inconsistent, with a time-hopping structure that’s more jarring than thrilling.

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

The Hoebers have woven a delightfully weird streak throughout the humor that’ll keep you on your toes. It’s consistently a pleasant surprise in what is otherwise a predictable story.

Cinematographer Daniel Patterson makes us feel the steam of humid Texas nights, but he also has an eye for the unexpected, romantic moments in Turq’s life: the moody pink-and-blue lighting during an after-hours slow dance, the glow of birthday candles in a darkened kitchen or the unvarnished warmth of mother and daughter sitting side-by-side outside the decaying restaurant.

It took 20 years for an Artemis Fowl movie to come out, and now that it’s here, the film itself feels like it’s in a hurry to be over already.

The debut feature from Australian writer/director Mirrah Foulkes eventually provides enough of a revenge fantasy to satisfy, even if the road there is a bit windy and bumpy.

I'm No Longer Here (“Ya no estoy aqui”) is one of those Netflix movies you’ll wish you’d watched on the big screen. The film from Mexico City-born writer/director Fernando Frias de le Parra is so gorgeously shot and offers such a rich sense of place that it’s always visually compelling, even when the narrative tends to sag a bit.

Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan do their best to elevate Military Wives from a simple tune to a symphony, but the notes just aren’t there on the page.

A frantic jumble of retro kitsch and random pop-culture references.

Typically reliable actors like David Strathairn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan can only do so much when they’re given so little to work with on the page.

The pieces may seem familiar in The Half of It, but the way Alice Wu assembles them results in a fresh and inspired whole.

Bad Education also calls to mind the great Alexander Payne film “Election,” with its students who are smarter and savvier than you’d expect and teachers who aren’t as mature and responsible as you’d hope. Finley actually could have used a bit more of Payne’s sharp bite in tackling this material.

It never quite works on its own. What’s crucial at the core is creating a character who feels like a real human being; Susan is more of a collection of quirks and bad choices. There just isn’t much to her. And the novelty alone of seeing Hayes play a woman is not enough to recommend this, although he does offer sporadic glimmers of vulnerability and humanity.

A drama that’s tastefully restrained to a fault in a particularly British manner.

The pacing is so jarring that the emotional payoff doesn’t develop as intended. And the overall irony, of course, is that this is a movie about the need for magic that could have used a little more of the stuff itself. But if it makes you think of your mom and dad fondly, even for a moment, well at least that’s something.

The film’s frank talk about mental illness, suicidal thoughts, physical abuse and family loss is so potent and necessary that it makes you wish Fanning hadn’t been saddled with a treacly narration at the end, summarizing the themes.

Director Jan Komasa’s film — nominated this year for the international-feature Oscar — may feel a tad slow at times, but Bielenia is never less than totally compelling.