Joe McGovern

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 movie’s premise has trouble sustaining a feature-length running time, getting mired in repetitive jokes and a third-act swing into harder-core suspense that never really connects.

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

Patriots Day benefits from a robust, concentrated timeline and sheer bat-out-of-hell pacing.

Schreiber buoys the film with his characteristic blend of nuance and smirking humor, exuding likability though never lionizing the self-described “selfish prick” that he’s portraying.

Years from now, when the orbital politics of the film have dissolved, what will resonate about Beatriz at Dinner will be the sight of Hayek — leaps and bounds more enchanting a screen presence than the performers surrounding her — as a poignant object of neglect.

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

Schnetzer, whose stock is sure to soon rise, is a shape-shifter — you’d never look at this gay Irish 1980s activist in Pride and conclude that it was the same person — but in only a few roles so far, he’s shown an extraordinary ability to portray both vulnerability and the mask screwed on to hide it.

Two key aspects elevate the whole experience above its modest trappings. First, the dark, beautiful musical score by composer Jeff Grace works excellently as a lush, hummable homage to Ennio Morricone, while still feeling very true to West’s horror movie roots. And second, in the film’s best performance, John Travolta appears as the frustrated father of Ransome’s bad boy.

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.

British director Sean Ellis has a knack for staging the film’s early plotting-the-scheme scenes in dimly lit, monochrome interiors, but the storytelling is disappointingly square.

Too much of the plot is spun with vanilla, especially tacked-on scenes of Walls’ starched careerist life in New York City with her Banker Boyfriend (Max Greenfield), presumably to engineer more screen time for the lead actress.

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

Portman’s evocation of this world has a strange, captivating pull. Assisted by the great Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Gattaca, Black Hawk Down, The Double Life of Veronique), she has created a visual landscape filled with nightmares.

In terms of content and meaningfulness, Terrence Malick’s Song to Song is the cinematic equivalent of a Trump press conference. Incoherent, disconnected, self-interrupting, obsessed with pointless minutiae and crammed full of odd, limp stabs at profundity from a closed-off man in his 70s who apparently has no ability to edit or accept constructive criticism.

Ross wants to shake up the format­—notably with a few scenes set 85 years after the war—but like so many directors who have tackled ­historical social issues before him, he confuses noble, cornball sermonizing for art.

The weirdest and rarest misfire in Lee’s illustrious career.

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

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.

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.

The directorial debut of actress Katie Holmes, starring herself as Rita, a drunk single mother living out of her car, is the latest well-intentioned yet lousy-with-clichés treatment in the hard-luck-woman subgenre.

Director Gaby Dellal (On a Clear Day) admirably avoids the trap in which transgender characters are portrayed as victims, but she way overcranks the “movie” neuroses of her three characters, muffling any human spark.

You won’t find much new light shed on the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye in writer-director Danny Strong’s polished but cliché-festooned biopic Rebel in the Rye.

This arena, unfortunately, is no Thunderdome. The chariot race is sloppily framed, choppily edited, and droopily choreographed, with special effects that look like they needed another few passes through the CGI machine.

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.

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.

Despite the silly and sentimental nature of his dialogue, Bridges, in this wondrous emeritus phase of his career, sells every single line. Well, almost every.

Lieberher delivered such a nuanced performance in Midnight Special (ditto Tremblay, in Room) that The Book of Henry can (we hope) just be chalked up to a case of early-career hiccups.