Katie Walsh

The film’s representation of how emotions and memories create a belief system and sense of self are indeed useful for talking to kids about how their inner lives and brains work, and the imagery is smart, but it has the feeling of an educational children’s book.

Coogler and Baylin’s screenplay isn’t all that innovative with the sports movie formula, and it unfortunately tends to rely on characters plainly spelling out their inner monologues, rather than leaving it to subtext. But Jordan’s steady direction elevates the material, keeping a strong hand on the tone and emotional tenor.

The film may struggle to take flight, but when it does, it is undeniably moving, with a message of freedom and defiance that resonates now more than ever.

Nathaniel, a native of Pakistan, has delivered a stunning, emotive work that takes to task oppressive patriarchy. It's a gorgeous, suspenseful cinematic achievement.

There’s a salve-like quality to Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a balm for any battered romantic’s soul. It may be utter fantasy, but it’s the kind of escape you’ll want to revisit again and again, like a favorite Austen novel.

The style is busy, Affleck laying a heavy hand on the ’80s references and music cues, Robert Richardson’s cinematography mimicking the amateurish style of someone with a brand-new camcorder. But the pace flies, and the actors make the film wildly engaging.

Fuller demonstrates a strong command over his visual domain, but the pat allegory he presents about the monsters with whom we have to learn to live feels a bit muddled.

What Happens Later is so deeply heartfelt, and so beautifully performed, that it stirs something within — a hope, not necessarily for an airport rendezvous, but for a moment of healing, the kind that everyone desires and everyone deserves.

What keeps Hoppers from drifting into Pollyanna-ish sensibility is its charming spikiness, and embrace of the weird, wacky and witty as it unfurls a high-tech action thriller about a strange, if brief, merging of the human and animal worlds.

It’s an incredibly moving film that encompasses a wide scope of global issues through the intimate remembrance of one life.

Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut Funny Pages is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey.

Bourgeois-Tacquet’s script is loaded with witty bon mots and carefully-constructed insights.

It's the non-superhero elements of Spider-Man: Homecoming that make it a great movie, and a non-stop fun summer flick. There isn't an ounce of fat on this film, packing in so many story elements and characters, while finding room for small, funny asides and moments that make it an addictively rich, idiosyncratic and re-watchable movie.

With an excellent cast and style, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is one gorgeous and dynamic fractured fairy tale.

There are a few inventive battles on a frozen pond and atop the tiled roof of a temple, but they are so CGI-enhanced as to seem cartoonish, not marvelous.

Writer-director Chen, along with the two leads, delicately navigates this story, and the result is something deeply humanist and nuanced rather than sensational, though the rainy milieu adds drama to the proceedings.

Covino’s filmmaking is tremendously appealing, buoyant and playful, and in Splitsville, he dials everything up from The Climb, especially the comedy.

Funny, unique, and entirely inappropriate, Appropriate Behavior is a supremely satisfying and irreverent take on the New York rom-com.

There are times when this visual twist confuses rather than elucidates. However, there’s no denying the bracing, honest nature of Mouthpiece, a truly revolutionary piece of filmmaking.