Joshua Rothkopf

Refn has somehow found his way to an authentic English hard-man drama, anchored in a dynamite performance, even as it celebrates thug life.

There isn’t much of an original signature here. Returning director Dan Trachtenberg hits the beats competently but not too stridently, like a good superfan should.

It's a comedy about the unchecked id; indeed, there's sleepwalking in it. But will those grunting strolls happen through a second-story window or on the highway? You're left cringing, and that puts Birbiglia in excellent company, alone though he might be in bed.

For all its timeliness, the movie works best when it’s echoing the 15-year-old The Rules of Attraction, upping the vapidity of Ingrid’s prey.

Finding reciprocity—in the eyes of the law, your partner, your colleagues—is the essence of this documentary, one that comes at a moment that desperately lacks it.

Sly and suggestive, Lourdes is a cosmic black comedy that bumps up against the metaphysical.

For 
the most part, you’re in the hands of a capable lunatic who has a tale to tell.

This is still one of his (Berlinger) most ambitious films, vibrating with the same municipal unease as "Chinatown."

Some moments are so deliciously shivery-our heroes' breath condensing in the air like in John Carpenter's "The Thing"-that you wish the film were naughtier and less nice.

Girls Trip is so successful because it lets its cast of improvisers ease into a bond that feels bone-deep.

If I call the movie a love story, don’t laugh. Torres has made it with love in his heart.

At its best (which is often), director James Marsh’s affecting biopic of the cosmos-rattling astrophysicist Stephen Hawking plays deftly against schmaltz.

This disappointing dramatization, mounted with generic blandness by Jean-François Richet, makes no case for the man's larger significance, nor does any emotional digging at all. Such detachment was no doubt considered artistically shrewd-it's a big mistake.

So much of Get on Up is uncannily perfect, from its nightmarish Georgia childhood flashbacks to delirious concert re-creations and the casting of Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd as Brown’s longtime manager.

His own worst enemy, Finkelstein has both trouble and tragic writ large on his brow.

Feeling anything in a DC Universe installment is, in itself, evidence of filmmaking that’s superheroic (that overall bluish-gray glumness is completely gone). So imagine the shock to also encounter a nuanced, funny script, a richly developed surrogate family, a visual appreciation of Philadelphia and its heroic Rocky iconography, and not one but two expert jokes involving a strip club.

The real-life setup is a knockout, both ancient and timely, and even though Rohrwacher never quite passes — she looks too much like Barbra Streisand’s "Yentl" — the movie is on to a larger point, namely about the fluidity of sexual identity and our universal penchant for self-reinvention. The film builds slowly but deserves an audience eager to discuss it.

The film plays like something Boyle could kick out in his sleep, all his supercool devices listlessly deployed in service of a mediocre wet dream.

Philippe earns his keep, not only by mounting a crisp, elegant production well above the standard of your typical video-lensed making-of, but by skewing toward anecdotes that most corporate clients would frown upon.

Recreating the crime for The Walk, director Robert Zemeckis does a crackerjack job with the thrills and a so-so one with the laughs (at least the intentional ones) and skips the deeper magic altogether.

Superfans aren’t necessarily going to love this. It’s a movie made with affection, but also with the wisdom that visionaries can sometimes be jerks.

Inspiring heartbreaker of a documentary.

If you're even slightly interested in folk music, there will be something here to simmer that curiosity into a full-on boil: the Arabic trip-hop stylings of monomonikered rapper-singer Raiz, raspy Pietra Montecorvino's Stevie Nicks–like dance tunes, a gorgeous sax solo from local jazz legend James Senese.

Walker integrates stranger-on-the-street testimony to further her general vibe of ignorance, thus pinpointing the true target of an agitated doc--our own blithe apathy.

For a movie with a critique of mediocrity well within its grasp, this one settles for an embrace of it, barely breaking a sweat.

A beautifully organized documentary (befitting its subject, urban planning), Matt Tyrnauer’s elegant profile sets up its iconic NYC showdown along geometric lines.

This installment delivers a heavy and welcome dose of paranoia, administered between fleetly paced smackdowns.

There's a Polanskian black comedy buried in here somewhere; a sassy neighbor girl who knows too much hints at the right direction, which is never fully explored.

Though his results are sometimes raw, Dolan seems to be chronicling heartache as he discovers it. Indulge him.

You never feel the burn in The Skin I Live In, certainly not the way you do in an immortal shocker like "Eyes Without a Face." It's almost as if Almodóvar wanted to reach out into a gory genre, but couldn't do so without wearing prissy gloves.

Arnold's vibrant, Malickian adaptation has another bold stroke worth mentioning: Heathcliff, a Gypsy in the original text, is now an Afro-Caribbean former slave, initially a bruised teen (Glave) and then an unusual, self-made man (Howson).

Once you get over the droll joke of seeing an equine Web surfer wearing a bathrobe and sipping his morning coffee, the movie settles into a shrill groove from which it never escapes.

The rush of A-listers combined with apocalyptic dread creates its own kind of dizzy pleasure: Who's going down next on this Poseidon Adventure?

No exchanges flare into true weirdness; rather, the mood is lingering and tentative. Undoubtedly, this is the movie's intent, but it's a fairly banal comment on foreign estrangement (or love) that could have used some roughing up.

Watch the director's 1976 "The Tenant," and you'll know he can do more with less.

Ultimately, Jenkins teases out a fascinating theme of black identity shaped and altered by sales and evolving tastes.

Calling the new A Star Is Born a “valentine” from its star, Lady Gaga, to her fans sounds a bit coy and delicate, so let’s call it what it really is: a hot French kiss (with full-on tongue), filled with passion, tears and a staggering amount of chutzpah.

Even though our clown-busting heroes predate the sweet kids on Stranger Things, they feel more generic. No performance here captures the adolescent longing that this story—essentially a coming-of-age tale—requires; only Sophia Lillis, playing the “Molly Ringwald” in an all-boys club of self-described losers, comes close to developing a distinct psychology.

Breillat, as always, goes her own way, but her impressionistic scenes barely cohere, even at this brief running time.

Life During Wartime slices deeply into its characters' weaknesses.

Morris's new subject looks relaxed and comfortable as ever lobbing out the same old evasions. He probably loves the attention from the Oscar-winning director.

A wonderfully crude film (we're talking "Superbad" levels of raunchiness), but one in which the overall vibe is sweet: kids patiently waiting for their parents to grow up already.

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are masterful in this rousing period piece, alternating belly laughs with an unflinching view of a nation at war with itself.

Gay conversion therapy gets the indictment it deserves, from an insightful script based on a you-are-there tell-all, and an outstanding cast.

The action scenes-blissfully easy to follow-are where Whedon makes the giant leap into the big leagues.

You'll forgive the movie its cluttered shagginess because its universe is so strange — even an icy puddle is rendered exquisitely.

As presented here (cut down from a longer edit), the film might have benefitted from more technical context related to the plant’s failure — this is a cautionary tale worth heeding. But the voices are valuable enough.

What you will find is a film that toggles between impressive fury and a kind of made-for-TV blandness that does Nat Turner’s 1831 uprising — still controversial — no favors.

Trumbo goes for a tone that’s more scrappy and inspirational, as this ousted ex-A-lister enlists his kids as couriers, builds a network of collaborators and wins two Academy Awards undercover.

Awkward teenage energy is the secret weapon in Marvel's post-Avengers palate cleanser, one that strains to keep things light and fun.

But mainly, it’s the film’s folk music that roots in the heart like a faraway lure.

The most heart-wrenching thing about the film is watching Fanning’s transformation from idealist to wreck, the father’s free-thinking daughter turned into the mother’s double in the space of a dinner argument. It’s not quite enough for a film, but it is for one magnificent scene.

Though supported by Woodley’s subtle narration, The Fault in Our Stars is relentlessly outward. That’s part of the book’s inspiring touch, and even if some of the supporting cast comes off as merely functional onscreen, the core of the tragedy comes to life in a heartbreaking way.

Though wildly uneven, the film sometimes comes within screaming distance of the sick ironies of "Heathers." That's how loudly Goldthwait still knows how to yell.

Until the movie's cathartic showdown (and a few backstory revelations that impress too late), The Drop putters along in a dozy register, less a simmering pot than a cooling one.

A quintet of actors carve out a beautiful, ill-fated geometry in John Wells's layoff drama, which might play like a retort to "Up in the Air" if it didn't have shortcomings of its own.

What makes Moore’s latest so ferocious—and pound for pound his most effective piece of journalism—is the way it pivots to a meaty central subject that isn’t Trump but has prescient echoes.

It’s pleasantly perverse, but somehow never quite gels. Still, it’s a fascinating keyhole into a central Hitchcockian idea, the notion that the weirdest behavior comes not from criminals, but our friends and neighbors.

When you have an actor as suggestive as Kazan, swallowing up the lens with allure and complexity, your writer-director becomes superfluous.

Wheatley, underplaying his stylishness, goes for a subtle national satire about geeks gone wild, and that’s the fun here: On as mild-mannered a vacation as two Brits might devise, a killer comes along—and, after a while, is politely welcomed in, the kettle simmering.

The transformation that you anticipate never comes; the movie feels strangled.

You can't believe what you're watching: Compliance, true to its title, digs into the rarely explored subject of psychological acquiescence (behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram should get a cowriting credit), with common-sense dignity being the first casualty.

Fogel is a little out of his depth, but he has a killer tale to tell.

If the movie had a lead actress more delicate or malleable than the strong-cheeked Lawrence-a Natalie Portman, say-it would tip over into sexy-girl-killer celebration; the same goes for Harrelson's salty mentor, who is never too supportive or paternal. Both performers lean into the economies of survival, certain of the savagery that lies ahead, and come up with sharp work.

The big absence here is the man himself; Gibney couldn’t get the jailed Abramoff on camera, either due to unwillingness or a Justice Department intervention. Whatever the reason, it’s crippling.

Merchant never loses our interest: He’s made a sparkly, strutting film that doesn’t apologize for or look down upon its heroes. A “soap opera in spandex” is what Hutch calls pro wrestling to his trainees, and the movie follows suit. Who doesn’t love a melodrama in tights once in a while?

Like the wood-grained farmhouse itself — a beautiful piece of production design by Julie Berghoff — The Conjuring has an analog solidity that makes the terror to come almost unbearable.

Too many digital effects ruin the spell of a tactile world of evil objects scheming your demise. But even a mediocre FD is better than more Jigsaw.

The movie toggles between two periods-before and after a catastrophe-and, were it not for Swinton's magnetism, it would be unbearable. Instead, you'll want to stay for the wallop.

Eventually it’s go time, and if The East loses a little steam on the grounds of action mechanics (a skill these plots always require), it’s never dumb on the subject of covert allegiances.

The drama it might remind you most of, oddly enough, is "Six Degrees of Separation," also about the snowballing connections between unlikely people. And as in that urban clash, the bedrock of it all is social responsibility, ever crumbling and rebuilding. A total triumph.

Nothing here is new, but you can’t call expert craft like this warmed-over. Solidly satisfying with ruthless forward momentum, the film plays like a minor triumph.

The material isn’t excited or shaped toward any insight — the Mike Leigh of "Naked" did this sort of thing brilliantly — and the arrival of a sluggish investigating journalist (Richard Jenkins), himself a bar fixture and underachiever, doesn’t offer a valid counterpoint.

It’s as pure an expression of Tarantino’s voice as he’s ever mustered—easy to savor, even if the aftertaste leaves a trace of nasty bitterness.

From its title on, Come Undone is as dully generic as is imaginable.

It all really happened but surely with a lot more passion than writer-director Angela Robinson’s script would have it.

Land Ho! avoids schmaltz to get at that rarest of male timber: rekindled hearts.

Thank You for Your Service is as necessary as top-flight journalism.

Writer-director Von Trotta, an icon of the New German Cinema, doesn't have the technical chops for the fireworks you desire, so she settles for wan earnestness.

It’s hard to give sibling co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo (makers of the thornier Captain America films) any credit—or blame, really—for steering a product that’s been so corporately fine-tuned. They toggle dutifully between million-dollar quips and Wrestlemania smackdowns, and when they find room for a vista of galactic stillness, it’s not out of any inspired vision so much as the need for air.

By the time Sorcerer gets around to its rain-soaked, rickety-bridge set piece, you’ll either be obsessed or fully checked out. Give yourself a chance to pick sides.

Stopping just short of the devastating exposé it might have been (but plenty creepy).

John Wick feels like action manna for its cleanly designed gun-fu sequences—ones you can actually follow—and brutal takedowns. But the revenge plotting is deeply dopey and we shouldn't have to choose one or the other.

Alas, this is a film that builds to a backroom compromise on carbon emissions, not the most thrilling of dramatic structures. The serious issue of global warming won’t be minimized by a mediocre documentary, but it has yet to find a filmmaker inflamed with rage and visual passion.

The more substantial material, including Spitzer's feuds with vindictive New York politician Joe Bruno and financier Ken Langone, gets short shrift.

An eerie resurrection regains some good will, but we'll have to wait for Neshat to catch up with the art of storytelling.

The middle section of the story is where Rise truly takes off, perhaps in ways that will have viewers forgiving the rest.