Joe Williams

A minor revelation.

This stylish film reminds us that great images endure after bodies and buildings crumble.

If you don’t crave the taste of motor oil on your popcorn, Furious 7 can’t end fast enough.

Richly photographed and featuring an attractive cast, Farewell, My Queen is a layer cake of royal pleasures, rote protocols and revolutionary politics. For skeptics who thought this story had grown stale, let them eat their words.

Damsels in Distress is shockingly tone-deaf. Stillman is still capable of a few amusing quips, but his storytelling is sophomoric.

Nowhere Boy is too astutely written and directed to go to predictably melodramatic extremes.

Eccentric enough to get mistaken for an uplifting fantasy, but it's Plaza who belongs in the penthouse.

Barney's Version has episodes instead of plot, outbursts instead of wit and alibis instead of growth.

With this unfunny fourth installment, the "Ice Age" franchise has skidded so far into kiddie land that adults who tread there risk extinction.

A distinctly European exercise in observational nuance and tonal restraint in which Coppola stretches static images to the breaking point.

July is a provocative and honorably independent filmmaker, but given the meager rewards of investing our time, The Future wasn't worth the wait.

Director Philipp Stolzl worked in the same dangerous conditions as the original climbers, and we can feel the chill and peril in our bones. It's a shame, then, that the screenwriter, unlike the camera crew and the characters, was afflicted with such timidity.

Cinderella is so scrubbed of personality, it’s not even worth calling a mess.

The funniest movie of the year.

A passable popcorn movie, but fans of the first film who expect lightning to strike twice are liable to get burned.

Streep is astonishing, conveying Child's gusto, her quavering voice, even her height.

Age of Ultron has self-aware laughs, grandiose themes and the best effects that money can buy. But at this point, it will take true vision to plot the umpteen sequels without getting trapped in a time loop.

The best kind of comic-book movie. It's stylish and spectacular, yet it's rooted in history and human emotions. It's smart yet it's funny. It's wise yet it kicks ass when it has to. Just like the U.S. of A.

A good nature film - and a great technical achievement.

A charming throwback filled with authentic characters.

Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller told me that Gould's music is as divisive today as it was 50 years ago, when the pianist publicly clashed with conductor Leonard Bernstein over the tempo of a performance.

As long as Hollywood keeps hitting us over the head with empty spectacles like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, regular Joes will be too numb to fight back.

The several allusions to Thomas Mann’s forbidden-love novel “Death in Venice” are apt, but Yossi is also a standalone film and an extraordinary sequel.

As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams.

A colorful indictment of corporate infestation, but it's missing a prescription.

At its heart, this is a compassionate character study. Robbie’s tenderness toward his son and his remorse for a street fight are the raw ingredients of a ripening consciousness.

Fast Five represents Yankee ingenuity of the brutally stupid kind.

By the time the meta-movie and cute-dog subplots collide in the desert, this high-concept vehicle has run out of gas. Movies about the filmmaking process may never get old, but self-referential hit men smell like yesterday's fish story.