David Rooney

The film appears consistently poised to go deeper but instead hangs back, making it less substantial than it might have been. Yet the sweet-natured story's gentle humor and poignancy should draw appreciative audiences.

It's a riveting narrative, and even those not among Houston's more passionate fan base will find it an emotionally wrenching experience.

While it's more dramatically diffuse than the reboot and lacks a definitive villain, the new film is shot through with a stirring reverence for the Marvel Comics characters and their universe.

A fascinating process movie about acting and storytelling, but also a curious meta-contemplation of our own voyeuristic attraction to tragedy.

Even if the film ultimately strays too far into virtuosic theatricality, betraying its origins, La Cocina is a gripping reflection on the dehumanizing grind of labor and the ways that its soul-crushing routines stifle hope. Even if he takes too long wrapping up an overwrought climactic crescendo, this is a compelling vision of the immigrant experience as a hellish limbo in which even the seeming ballast of community, brotherhood and love can be illusory.

Eight years since her last feature, Kathryn Bigelow returns with an unrelenting chokehold thriller so controlled, kinetic and unsettlingly immersive that you stagger out at the end of it wondering if the world will still be intact.

Capturing that transitional moment when seemingly permanent adolescent ties suddenly appear uncertain, this is a melancholy drama laced with notes of anger and disquiet, but also resilience.

A bland road movie running on empty. It's depressing to see a deluxe cast wasted on such by-the-numbers material -- from predictable plot to fabricated Hallmark sentiment to strenuous milking of warm-and-fuzzy laughs from the irrepressible spirit of three women whose youth is behind them.

Even if some viewers might grow impatient with Simon’s passivity in the face of endless microaggressions, there’s enough tenderness, heart and ultimate self-realization in Solo to keep you watching.

A fascinating window into the psychological and emotional minefield of early puberty and the torn feelings of a vulnerable child watching her darkest instincts play out, Hatching delivers.

The Robin Hood-like renegade hero of the Antipodean common man, Ned Kelly gets a ripping reinvention in director Justin Kurzel's feverish punk Western, a raw rebel yell of a movie that combines visceral violence with a kind of delirious, scrappy poetry.

Warm, funny, heartfelt and even uplifting, the film is led by revelatory performances from Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, both of them exploring rewarding new dramatic range without neglecting their mad comedic skills.

Gritty and compelling as Monster is, the script's not entirely satisfying elaboration of the central relationship and Ricci's somewhat ungiving performance limit the material to that of a superior telemovie rather than something emotionally richer, like "Boys Don't Cry."

While there are numerous dynamite performance clips, Berg's film is generally more revealing on a personal level than as an appreciation of her music.

The plotting here is so hopelessly tangled, clichéd, and bereft of psychological complexity that it's difficult to care what happens to any of these people.

In the central role, Castellitto's powerfully focused performance manages to keep the complex drama grounded.

The well-structured film goes beyond issues of sexuality, giving nuanced consideration to broader questions of love and loss, family and friendship, trust, lies and deception.

My Old Ass is a slender film, but it’s so nicely judged and so infused with a generosity of spirit toward all its characters, across the generations, that its sentimentality acquires substance.

This slight but appealing film's funky eccentricity feels a little contrived at times.

It could almost be described as a slyly playful, minimalist take on M. Night Shyamalan territory, though that risks making it seem more commercial than it is.

Guadagnino has made a kind of emo horror movie. He’s far less interested in the shock factor than the poignant isolation of his young principal characters and the life raft they come to represent to one another as they slowly let down their guard.

Despite its flaws, Motel Destino has mood, rawness and atmosphere to burn, fueled by Amine Bouhafa’s score, which becomes steadily more disquieting as it ratchets up the urgency.

The storytelling lacks the clean lines to make it consistently propulsive. Paradoxically, given its lofty position in the sci-fi canon, much of the narrative’s novelty has also been diluted, rendered stale by decades of imitation.

The unapologetic sentimentality doesn’t make this bittersweet comedy-drama any less touching or insightful in its observation of spiky family interactions when end-of-life issues and questions of inheritance cause sparks.

By turns spiky and lyrical, this unsettling drama will be anathema to many audiences, but is bound to be a provocative, talked-about release.

An unvarnished family snapshot that traces the seeds from which the artist evolved and the tough lessons about life’s unfairness that helped shape his character, this is a refreshingly understated drama whose gentleness makes it all the more bittersweet.

While the more enigmatic supernatural elements at times veer close to formulaic Hollywood horror tropes, the movie maintains a compelling seriousness, particularly in its consideration of the conflict between sexuality and repression.

Beautifully acted by Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola as the three points of a melancholy romantic triangle, this is a deeply felt drama that exerts a powerful grip.