Gary Thompson

The movie mainly rides on the chemistry and charm of its two leads, and writer Kaling has given Thompson a substantial character to play.

There is honest sentiment in the arc of this story, aided by the chemistry between Gottsagen and LaBeouf, and by the warm mood of the film.

Some are born great, others achieve greatness, and in the documentary Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, we meet a musician who falls squarely in the latter camp.

You almost wish the movie had jettisoned the horror elements entirely, and converted It into what it feels like it wants to be — something more like King’s Stand By Me, with a teen girl in the mix.

Mostly what lurks around the edge of the action isn’t danger, but affection.

Ali and Mortensen make the friendship feel real, using some unexpected tools from Farrelly's kit. His comedic instincts help the movie tiptoe through some dangerous cultural minefields.

Hedges is an efficient, expressive actor, and has the knack for conveying complex information with a look or a gesture, as he does here, suggesting the turmoil within his character on the night when his parents assign him to undergo therapy.

Hamm is in his sweet spot here as a former hotshot now emptied of ideals and passion. Pike plays a woman who trades on being underestimated by men, and supporting pros like Whigham and Norris obviously enjoy working with better-than-average dialogue.

I wonder if Noe is familiar with the work of Three Dog Night, and their 1970 rumination on a party gone bad, “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Its lyrics apply here: “I’ve seen so many things I ain’t never seen before. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to see no more.”

The value and uses of spectacle become part of the story in Far From Home, which can be read as a bit of playful in-house MCU criticism of CGI fatigue.

The most engaging passages in the scattershot Fahrenheit 11/9 address the water scandal in Flint.

It’s easy enough to guess where this is going, but the movie gets the details right, and the relationships play out in a satisfying way, aided by Merchant’s consistently funny writing and light touch.

This is the culmination of DeMonaco’s seething Purge scenarios, which have become increasingly focused on polarization and rage.

As usual, Hall is awesome. She has an effortless way of projecting ferocious female intellect, and we see why her character captivates Byrne. When Hall is on screen, the movie works.

I’ve never seen anything like it, and I would have found it persuasive had I not read the 2007 Vanity Fair article based on interviews with the young men in prison.

It’s a good, quiet performance by Teller, and also by Bennett — her Saskia is welcoming but wary.

Characters overflow on the screen, crowding out emotional investment, and there is a severely misplaced emphasis on the power of special effects — many characters appear to be entirely digitized, and none has much screen impact.

Gore is his own form of renewable energy. He is tireless, never wavers in his devotion to his crusade — an apt term in “Truth to Power,” which invokes Pope Francis and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The movie’s money line has Gore (he repeats it in virtually every interview) invoking the Book of Revelation.

Result[s] in pleasant but forgettable results.

The movie is mostly gore free and tame by the standards of modern horror movies, and some of the familiar visual touches borrow greedily from the James Wan school. But it’s smartly written and well-acted.

Suffice it to say that as James is pushed into the real world, the real world is more than willing to meet him halfway, in a way that is touching and charming, and at the same time plausible.

In Framing John DeLorean, Philadelphia-based documentarians Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce (The Art of the Steal) mix fact, drama, and speculation to draw an ambitious portrait of the fabled automaker, but within the frame, key questions remain unanswered.

Waters' novel was content to let the evil within Hundreds Hall remain shapeless and nameless. Director Lenny Abrahamson's (Room) movie wants to give it definite shape, and even a name, though the movie is not better for it.

You could call Juliet, Naked a romantic comedy, and you could probably predict with some accuracy how the relationships play out. But it's the details here that count, and they paint a substantive and truthful picture of middle age, and the way it is acquainted with regret and failure.

The ability of political power to impose narratives, says Chappaquiddick, has always been conditional on our willingness to believe them.

This is an intriguingly weird, gender inversion of the Cinderella fantasy at the root of Pretty Woman.

It’s a funny concept, helped by Marshall-Green’s blended look of pleasure and consternation at being the vessel for an invincibility that he enjoys but cannot control.

Patti Cake$, in the end, is a little pat, but it doesn’t take its underdog, band-of-misfits formula too far, and Macdonald’s infectious grit carries the day.