Jason Bailey

Johnson and Kendrick are just terrific together — ample chemistry, excellent comic byplay — and the sense of play, the feeling of one-upmanship in their scenes together, immediately cranks the picture up a notch.

Once you get on this one’s wavelength, it’s wildly funny and delightfully subversive.

It’s about as well-acted and enjoyable a version of this particular thing as you’re likely to find.

Enemies of the State is powered by a sense of momentum – it’s a story filled with unexpected twists and turns, and not just in terms of “plotting.” Kennebeck finds herself wrestling with the prickly proposition of unraveling where, exactly, the truth lies; it’s the job of any good documentary filmmaker, of course, but in this particular case, it’s a journey of discoveries and often disturbing ones.

There are moments in “My Zoe” that are hard to watch, unthinkable in their emotional brutality. That Delpy finds her way to the ending she does—and earns it is—no small accomplishment.

Stargirl was published twenty years ago, and its age occasionally shows in this adaptation; some of the story beats and character qualities (particularly those of the rather precious title character) have congealed into cliché. But Hart (who wrote the screenplay with Kristin Hahn and Jordan Horowitz) is such an enchanting filmmaker, her storytelling style so warm and welcoming, that those concerns fade.

Class Action Park loses its footing somewhat in the closing passages; Scott and Porges don’t seem to know quite how to wrap things up, and the film’s big tonal shift is a turning point that is all but impossible to come back from.

When Togo gets going, it goes.

A gnarly mash-up of midnight movie and social commentary, the picture is overly overt but undeniably effective, delivering genre jolts and broad messaging in equal measure.

This is a filmmaker aware of the conventions, who wields them with wit and precision and knows his audience is on the gag as well. In many ways, The Perfection amounts to little more than a bag of tricks. But no one is pretending otherwise. And they’re good tricks.

If White’s wild formal experimentation and narrative cul-de-sacs result in a strange identity crisis for the film — a sense that he wasn’t entirely sure which movie he wanted to make — Gardner’s stellar work unifies it.

A confidently crafted, well-acted three-hander ... But some viewers will find the hamster-wheel nature of “Jungleland” monotonous, and it’s hard to blame them.

One can’t help coming away with the feeling that if the intelligence and originality of All My Puny Sorrows matched its earnestness, they could’ve really had something here.

Gellar and Goldfine manage the tone expertly, inserting little jolts of humor to keep things from getting too reverent.

Derrickson can build a mood and craft creepy imagery, and he moves his camera with precision. But this feels like a notebook of compelling visual and narrative ideas that never quite fit together, that can’t quite manage to coalesce into coherence.

For all the impressive craft, sense of harrowing anxiety and searing performances on display, Lost Girls doesn’t seem to know how to wrap things up and it hurts the picture overall.

Barthes’ screenplay is clean; for the most part, it’s brainy but not didactic, and thoughtful but not dull.

At its best, it’s a moody, scary, post-Peckinpah meditation on masculinity — and an all too rare opportunity to see Mr. Wright fronting a feature.

"Rather” is ultimately a valentine, which is fine. But as such, it’s not as tough on Dan Rather as he would’ve been to such a subject himself.

Summer of ’85 is ultimately not entirely successful, because its disparate tones don’t always mesh. But more than that, the carefree, romantic stuff is so enjoyable, and so sincere, that in retrospect, one wishes the entire film had lived there – both in that flush of first love (or at least lust), and in reckoning afterward with the complexities of that emotion.

By working in such a deliberately muted key, the emotional payoffs we’re conditioned to require from a story like this never quite arrive, and Van Groeningen never finds a workable substitute for them.

The film is undeniably entertaining, it’s fun to see these characters and creators again, and hey, who am I to begrudge them a victory lap? But ultimately, the contrast between the epilogue film and the source material is undeniable.

The pace drags in the home stretch a bit, and the laughs dry up considerably. None of this matters much. George and Julia spark and sparkle, which is what the trailers promise, and it’s what the movie delivers.

The value of Downhill comes from merging this story with these two distinct comic personas, and seeing what they do with it (and each other). That’s probably not enough of a reason for it to exist. But it’s not nothing, either.

Tom Hanks is such an avatar for optimism and goodness that the qualities of this character – his heartbreak and vulnerability and resignation to a certain kind of hopelessness – land with greater impact, and he’s so good that when the filmmakers go for the big emotional wallop at the end, they almost pull it off.

Maya is full of the kind of tiny, keenly observed moments that make Løve such a special filmmaker.

The picture clangs clumsily for stretches, particularly in its second half; Selick is trying to merge the doomy darkness of “Coraline” with the high spirit and good humor of “Nightmare Before Christmas,” and they don’t always mix.

Bana is one of the producers of The Dry, and it’s not hard to see why he wanted to act the role, which is uniquely suited to his specific talents – his potent mixture of brusque physicality and barely bottled emotion. Connolly is a patient enough director to let us take in the pain this man holds in his face and the quiet power in his eyes.