John Anderson

There are a few characters and storylines that aren’t quite resolved, but the essentials—notably, what launched Mickey into a life of crime—are wrapped up in a way that should mollify a viewership left hanging when the show was so abruptly assassinated.

It's doubtful Milarepa will be opening in Beijing any time soon; all the more reason it deserves a look.

Mr. Malek gives an eccentric performance, but he won’t make anyone forget Dustin Hoffman, whose original Dega was an endearing coward, a fatalist and a masterpiece.

Narrated quite drolly by comedian John Hodgman, Class Action Park is very funny in its dark way, the interviewees are all charmingly surprised that they lived through their teenage years and there’s a remarkable amount of action footage from the park, considering that it predates cellphones. (The animation by Richard Langberg is amusing, too.) Where the film has a problem is Mulvihill.

Sometimes you just want a crazy action movie to kill an evening, and “Lou” fits that bill. Just don’t expect to be thinking about it tomorrow.

The landscape is dire, the architecture is haunted, children disappear by the dozens and antique toys inexplicably spark to life. That Mr. Radcliffe doesn't is part of the problem.

What keeps Ain’t in It for My Health from being a really satisfying portrait isn’t a lack of access, but a lack of intimacy.

A serviceable thriller, kind of an “Argo” in Argentina, replete with ornate preparations, plans gone awry and narrow escapes.

Being a person who grew up with him as a live cultural presence, I’m a highly biased fan of the man. Still, like its subject, “Belushi” is sometimes simply too much.

A lot of culture, East and West, receives glancing blows from The Monkey King, which was directed by Anthony Stacchi, whose 2014 stop-motion animated feature “The Boxtrolls” is a classic. And an entirely different animal from The Monkey King.

It may be a historical documentary, but it has blinkers on.

Minka Kelly has a face that could launch a thousand cable movies and is the freshest thing about “Champagne Problems,” a holiday-season romance that takes the welcome tack of embracing its own clichés.

Mr. LaBute is not a moralizer as much as a lamenter — his people usually bring unhappiness upon themselves. In the gently joyous Dirty Weekend, though, they are capable of finding a flight path to contentment.

Mr. Chase still tries to be funny here, sometimes desperately, and isn’t. Which along with a career’s worth of ill will puts the sting in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not.

The film is much too long—the first couple of acts feel like an overture to the reunion of Sam, Scarlet and the lethal librarians. It is also, occasionally, hilarious.

There’s a weariness to West of the Jordan River, both in the storytelling and the face of Amos Gitai.

One of the brighter aspects of Life of Crime, which otherwise ambles along good naturedly, is the casting.

Luckily, there are jokes, like little lifeboats, floating all around, rescuing “Like Father” from anything resembling gravity.

There are reasons to watch, principally Dianne Wiest’s outrageous Ruth Gordon impersonation and the presence of the gifted Julia Garner.

Hyams the director ("Sudden Death," "Timecop," "The Star Chamber") operates at too much of a fevered pitch for things not to eventually get out of hand -- accelerating violence and horror eventually hit maximum velocity and warp into nonsense, no matter how erudite the script.

Jakubowicz has made a muscular, messy and vulgar film based on a life that has been all those things.

Where one suspects Mr. Sires wants to go in his ultimately righteous film is into the squalid margins of America whence a Babudar might spring. That he hits a stone wall, in the form of the subject’s mother, is too bad, but no surprise.

While it isn’t the intention of the film to generate sympathy for Mr. Út, one can’t quite help it.

Ms. Jacknow, finally, finds herself with little room to move except into a full-blown nightmare hellscape and turns Clock, for all its thoughtful moments, into one movie for two very distinct audiences.

Straightforward storytelling was never the strong suit of the show, which relied very much on Mr. Murphy’s charisma and that of his co-stars, notably Sophie Rundle, who plays sister Ada Shelby. The future always looked grim in Peaky Blinders, but the fate of the show, which apparently has two Murphy-less years to go in a planned sequel, is beyond uncertain.

Percy Vs Goliath has a solid sense of place—the Canadian prairie—and Mr. Walken gives us a solid sense of Percy, a man whose instincts are so contrarian he sometimes seems unsure whom to disagree with, or what to refuse to do.

The Found Footage Phenomenon, while long-winded, offers a knowledgeable take on what makes the difference.

Moonlight Sonata is not a children’s film, of course. What it deals in, regardless of how buoyant its characters, are the most serious issues imaginable. Not that there aren’t moments of pure mirth. “Did Beethoven ever play it?” Jonas asks of the sonata, “and is it on YouTube?” Even the formidable Ms. Connolly is given pause by that.