Joe McGovern

Criminal’s story moves like a fat cow. Costner and Oldman’s characters are sluggishly chasing after — irony alert! — a big black duffel back full of $100 bills, hidden behind a stack of George Orwell books.

A twisted helix of "Memento" and "Munich" without either of those film’s craft, depth, or thematic murkiness.

The visual effects are excellent, but director Roar Uthaug, who’s been tapped to reboot the "Tomb Raider" franchise, splashes in the clichés of big, dumb American action movies.

The movie version of his life, fittingly, is a massive vat of hot cocoa with a mountain of whipped cream on top — sweet and warm and made with a ­mission to satisfy everyone who takes a sip.

Once again, the shaky handheld camerawork in the battle scenes don’t portray chaos so much as a sense that the cinematographer was being attacked by desert bees

The film’s glacial pacing and drily absurd tone mimic their relationship with a bit too much discipline.

The movie’s silly-arty aesthetic is regurgitated Polanski, and there’s a shameless script steal from "Presumed Innocent."

Erupting like a scalding geyser from the ground right beneath our feet, Spike Lee’s daring, dizzying, sympathetic, symphonic, vital, vehement Chi-Raq is the most urgently 2015 movie of 2015.

How could a movie about a great screenwriter have such a terrible screenplay?

The film disappointingly ditches the cartoonist’s modest visual formula for a photorealistic 3-D playground courtesy of the animation studio behind "Ice Age."

The big draw should be 3-D, which enhances the visual intimacy, though only in shooting a male orgasm does Noé go gonzo with the format.

Hugh Jackman gives the movie a bit of twinkle as a pirate who breathes pixie dust to stay fresh and relevant. Maybe the people behind Pan should have snorted some.

The 17-minute wire-walking sequence is the most majestic simulation of a real event since the ship sinking in Titanic—a dazzling triumph of photorealistic digital effects, which exhibits Zemeckis’ mastery of both CGI and pace.

The thin story has been stretched like Silly Putty to feature-film length and the result is utterly see-through in its sledgehammer moralizing.

War Room is a gold-plated piece of Bible thumping that’s resonating with the same audience that watches Jimmy Stewart get touched by an angel every December in "It’s a Wonderful Life" — and cry next to Christmas trees, despite that film’s many hackneyed religious devices.

Goodnight Mommy, a brilliantly sinister horror film in the recent art-house mold of "The Babadook" and "It Follows," has a premise that cracks like the whip of a devil’s tail.

Gibran’s little life lessons have been turned into three-minute haiku by different animators and spread across the film. Each one soars (especially clay painter Joan Gratz’s color-bursting snippet, “On Work”), even if the plot holding them together is frustratingly Disneyish.

A wondrously sly, moving, odd portrait—perfectly befitting its subject.

In a bold move that pays off, the movie jettisons dialogue altogether and tells its whole story through barn-animal noises, goofy sound effects, and sight gags so silly they’d make Benny Hill spin in sped-up ecstasy. The effect is contagiously cute.

The plot is just implausible enough to keep the film from greatness, but director Christian Petzold (Barbara) stirs up a powder-keg metaphor about rebuilding after war.

Tangerine is touching for its non-condescending stance toward working girls and the spirit of the sidewalk.

It’s a decent critique of romance in the digital age—until you realize how boring it is to watch people break up on Facebook.

If Minions were a toy, you’d hide its batteries.

The animation is dazzling.

The sight of Schwarzenegger in this small, subdued role makes us root for his survival. That’s the power of star wattage at work. Not even the undead can kill it.

Actor Ulliel, who’s been the face of both Chanel and Hannibal Lecter (in 2007’s Hannibal Rising), knows how to slither. His version of Yves is spoiled, insecure, cruel—and, in the movie’s ironic final shot, tickled to death that we still seem to care about him.

Quebecois director Maxime Giroux mistakes long, wordless scenes of characters gazing at each other for tenderness, but he imaginatively uses gospel music as the forbidden food of love.

While the original movie benefited from narrative simplicity and an admirable lack of villains, this one paints the screen with too many characters and frequent diversions from the main story, but nevertheless serves up a bountiful and sugary feast for the 3-D-bespectacled eyes.