John Anderson

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.

Ms. Clarkson is always fascinating; only on second viewing did I notice how much Ms. Mortimer was doing while Mr. Nighy was stealing a scene. In the end, though, it’s his movie. And likely wasn’t supposed to be.

Mr. Reynolds can do goofily perplexed as well as anyone and is quite charming as Guy, who doesn’t know what’s going on, except that as “Blue Shirt Guy” he’s rocked the worldview of online gamers everywhere.

In addition to the disco rhythms, glitzy fashions and alarming hairstyles, Love to Love You, Donna Summer might strike a nostalgic nerve with how natural, funny and forthcoming its subject is.

Despite its dubious inhabitants, the film consistently entertains by throwing the kinds of curves one should see coming but doesn’t.

Writer-director Alejandra Márquez Abella never makes the slightest suggestion that José isn’t going to get where he’s going, but neither does she make A Million Miles Away into any kind of ethnic agitprop.

It's a trip into a primordial world and primeval sensibilities, and if you're looking to shake off the mall-movie blahs, there are few better places to look.

[The Kings of Summer] is much more interested in the laughs that can be mined from character rather than plot. Galletta’s script, Vogt-Roberts’ direction and the distinctive play of the actors, notably Offerman and Mullally, lets the viewer know who everyone is right away, and the gag lines flow.

Ms. Newton is the kind of performer who seizes one’s attention immediately; Mr. Allen is, by nature of the story, relegated to more of a supporting role as the narrative progresses, but he’s an amiable presence.

It wants to fly away, though in one sense it does show restraint: There’s enough going on in Rogue Agent to have fueled an eight-week PBS mystery series. Economy, in the world of fictionalized espionage, is quite decidedly a virtue.

In its way, it pokes at the very delicate membrane between horror and comedy.

The most profound thing the remarkably dread-filled drama Day Night Day Night tells us is what it doesn't tell us.

"Witty and brisk" is not the name of a French breakfast cereal, but it does describe a certain brand of French film, the type that coquettishly flirts with comedy while sprinting in the direction of dry, sophisticated charm. Such is Haute Cuisine.

Beast of War is a rare animal—a hybrid shark movie and a war film—and it takes care to deliver some tweaks.

It’s the definition of guilty pleasure.

Mr. Damon brings both a weary optimism and convincing physicality to Max, who is no revolutionary. He just wants to live, and is willing to don an exoskeletal combat suit and fight robots to do it.

It’s easy to smile at The Thursday Murder Club, with its veteran performers chewing the scenery and still having the teeth to do it. Does that sound ageist? It might, if the charms of this lighthearted, star-studded confection weren’t all about its main characters being advanced in years and still as sharp as an insulin injection.

Everything in The Light Between Oceans is deeply felt and dramatically precise, in a way that seems destined to become profoundly personal for each and every viewer.

A two-hour documentary that feels like three, it certainly has a worthy subject, and a charismatic one; it commits a trove of valuable cultural lore to posterity. But it also commits a sin in never finding its rhythm, or a through-line on which to hang one of the great stories of American popular music.

Goofily funny, and silly, and in many ways follows the currents of contemporary comedy into the gulf stream of inanity. And yet Ned turns out to be a strangely moving figure, a comic foil worthy of affection, perhaps even respect.

If the screenplay to Kill the Messenger were a news story, any capable copydesk would have kicked it back to the reporter — not for a shortage of facts, but a lack of dramatic soul.

Following Woody Allen, Ang Lee and any number of sitcoms, Georgia Lee constructs her well-shot, well-written film around three daughters.

The difficulty is that Brassed Off operates at an emotional pitch that starts at a crescendo and never relents--rendering almost everything equally inconsequential.

Steven Soderbergh takes Gray (who appeared in his little-appreciated gem "King of the Hill") places he's never been on-screen. Motion, color and brazen stylizing enhance what is at times a genuinely hysterical work on rationalized terror.[9 May 1997, p.F12]

There are a few speedbumps of illogic along the gnarled route of Night Always Comes, but they can’t negate the pace of the storytelling, Mr. García’s gymnastic shooting, or the sense of there being no bottom to the well of darkness explored by Mr. Caron.

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

It is Mr. Kinnear's slippery charm that keeps Thin Ice from sinking into the frosty Wisconsin slush toward which it seems to be heading from the start.

For a movie with such a nose for nuttiness, its human element is genuine and warm.