Jeannette Catsoulis

This fabulously inventive debut feature, written and directed by the British comedian Joe Cornish, never flags.

Refusing to pander to restless derrières, they’ve given this big, bounding, beautifully cinematic swashbuckler almost three hours to breathe. Yet their pacing is so frisky — and Celia Lafitedupont’s editing so elegant — your derrière is unlikely to complain.

Dark Horse is a canny package that uses the classic structure of the sports-underdog story to deliver a glowing ode to community pride and the merits of collective action over individual gain.

The film’s guileless, heartfelt style veers perilously close to corniness at times, but the superb cast dares you to mock.

Willets Point may not be the slickest of movies, but what it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in heart.

Matching her subject’s lackadaisical rhythms, Ms. Huber has shaped an unusually poetic biopic.

The battle scenes are as lacking in heat and coherence as the central love story.

As popular as this window-fogging franchise has become, its flaccid finale is likely critic proof. But if I can persuade just one of you to bypass its milquetoast masochism and watch the stratospherically superior “9 1/2 Weeks” instead, then I will have done my job.

While the movie is rightfully more interested in lauding her bravery than highlighting her sometimes abrasive personality, these small moments help to humanize a portrait that can at times seem more awestruck than enlightening.

The wonder of Black's performance here is its empathy and balance: inasmuch as he can disappear into any role, he dissolves into this one with no hint of mocking remove. It's a beautiful thing to see.

Verhoeven brings more vitality to his work than many filmmakers half his age, and his screenplay (with David Birke) is a tasteless hoot, gleefully cramming the frame with blood, fornication and flagellations galore.

A novel teenage comedy with an astute understanding of adolescent sexual confusion and the nebulous nature of desire, Zerophilia suggests an elastic view of gender that's alternately gleeful and terrifying.

Ms. Dyrholm, photographed frequently in brutally unforgiving close-up, fully captures the faded charisma of the woman whose life reads like a Who’s Who of the New York midcentury art scene.

The plot matters only inasmuch as it allows the returning director, Chad Stahelski, to stage his spectacular fight sequences in various stunning Roman locations, where they unfold with an almost erotic brutality.

Subtle and slow and wrenchingly empathetic, The Escape is about gradually realizing that the life you have may not be the one you want.

Send Help may not be peak Raimi (that, to my mind, would be A Simple Plan), but it’s Raimi at peak pulp. I’ll happily take it.

Branagh’s remembrances may be idealized, but with Belfast he has written a charming, rose-tinted thank-you note to the city that sparked his dreams and the parents whose sacrifices helped them come true.

The filmmakers work tirelessly to parallel their undersea world with the larger universe, offering genteel reminders of our mutual dependence.

Anchored by Rosamund Pike’s powerhouse lead performance, this restive, raw movie slowly accumulates the heft to render its flaws irrelevant.

Ultimately his story draws more energy from class than from criminality: awash in sludgy browns and rotting greens - the colors of poverty and decomposition - this unpredictable oddity is a little bonkers but a lot original.

A movie of stark contrasts and zigzagging motives, Beauty in Trouble moves from the golden serenity of a Tuscan villa to the powdery chaos of a Czech garage without sacrificing thematic confidence or nuanced performances.

Sally, a welcome but unadventurous documentary about the astronaut Sally Ride (who died in 2012), wraps a risk-taking personality inside a risk-averse package.

More curious and combative than the movie around her, Kennedy is as much anthropologist as chef, her deep love for her adopted country palpable.

Even while embracing the breathless beats of the crime thriller, Graceland holds tight to its concern for exploited children.

I’m beginning to think that the Philippous don’t just want to shatter our nerves: They want to break our hearts.

Though at times squirmingly unpleasant, Hoard is never a drag. The insolence of the filmmaking and the artlessness of the leads energize a plot of stunning recklessness and unexpected humor.

Presenting neither an argument for medication nor its rejection, Billy the Kid is a deceptively simple portrait of a shockingly self-aware and articulate young man.

Good Ol’ Freda celebrates an intensely private witness to four of the most public lives in pop-culture history.