Jake Cole

It recognizes that the thinly veiled secret of Wolverine’s loner act is that he’s always been a cog of some kind.

When the film’s actors are given space to etch their characters’ feelings, they turn in strikingly naturalistic performances.

When it's good, this new Ghostbusters is funny, driven, sometimes even a bit scary.

The film is a reminder of the potential of these films before they became weighed down by blockbuster-ready excesses.

For all of its spiritedness, Freaky Tales wants for the sense of invention that defines the films that it references and whose moves it often falls back on borrowing.

Dash Shaw’s deceptively simple animation regularly descends into phantasmagoria that delivers on his story’s strange premise.

All of its revisionism centrally incorporates the history of the franchise, and the film both excels and suffers for frequently recalling its forbears.

The period romance has been increasingly experimented with in recent years, yet both straight dramas and convention-spoofing comedies almost always end up upholding the strict boundaries of the genre as if to prove the limits of reimagining the past.

The film has the courage of its convictions, suggesting that violence on behalf of an oppressed people isn’t only justifiable but even moral.

The action consistently snaps the film into focus, but it also further illustrates how badly the decision to split this narrative into two parts throws off the delicate rhythm that’s made Mission: Impossible arguably the most consistently entertaining American action franchise of all time.

As passably entertaining as the film is, it never surrenders to the abandon of its action, and as such never feels like it shifts out of first gear.

The film fully surrenders to the grandiose fun that’s marked the best of Tom Cruise’s recent star vehicles and reaffirms Joseph Kosinski as a blockbuster craftsman par excellence.

The careful balance of “stupid and clever” that solidified the legend of the first film is less steady in its much-belated sequel.

Richard E. Grant is captivating on his own, but his rapport with Melissa McCarthy is so effortless that their characters’ conversations offer deeper pleasures than the main plot of the film.

It’s in its depiction of the communist party’s response to a peaceful demonstration that Andrei Konchalovsky’s latest is at its most effective.

The undeniable fun of Civil War's action scenes only exacerbates the failure of the narrative to adequately contend with its own themes.

Befitting its image-conscious milieu, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has the aspartame fake-sweetness and zero-calorie comfort of its predecessor: It’s charming enough in the moment but you’ll be hungry again half an hour later.

The Out-Laws shines when it spotlights the committed performances of its cast.

At a time when the nation continues to weigh the fate of its auto industry, James Mangold’s depiction of the Ford Motor Company facing its first major financial threat transparently plays to nostalgic reveries of the industry’s golden age.

As a writer and director, Rebecca Miller is at her best when she finds the shared wavelengths of her lead cast's divergent styles.

Even an act of noble sacrifice late in the film has a faintly goofy tone to it, reflective of Shane Black's streak of puckish nihilism. That attitude makes him a perfect fit for this franchise, which lost its thematic viciousness after the anti-imperialist original.

Armando Iannucci satirizes the manner in which political power is accorded to those who can mask cutthroat ambition behind an outward projection of bland inoffensiveness.

Like so many latter-day Ridley Scott films, Gladiator II at once feels half-baked and overstuffed, and the lack of internal consistency robs its action of sustained tension and its comedy of bite.

Jaume Collet-Serra’s deft touches elevate what otherwise feels like another formulaic contemporary Disney blockbuster.

Where Kandahar is most intriguing is in the oddly even-handed depiction of both American and Middle-Eastern characters as largely exasperated professionals going about their grisly work because they’re too old to pivot to a different job.

It arrives prepackaged with suggested comparisons to Michael Mann's Heat that it never earns because of its dreary literal-mindedness.

Thelma's transition into a paranormal thriller doesn’t complicate its initially potent character study.

Unfortunately, the care with which the filmmakers set up Them That Follow’s context and their characters crumbles in the final act.