Kimberley Jones

Neeson, taking a welcome break from his late-career reinvention as a man of action, and Manville (Another Year, Phantom Thread) are such gifted performers, and they play this couple – their tenderness and stress – at a likably subtle frequency.

When the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River began construction in the early Nineties, an estimated 2 million people's lives were impacted. That's a staggering number to contemplate, but Up the Yangtze effectively personalizes that near-meaningless number by putting a face on at least a few of those 2 million.

A nice-looking, nice-feeling exercise in conventionalism that sure could use a couple of transvestites and maybe a house falling from the sky.

The all-around excellent cast swings with aplomb from silly to sweet.

Mostly it will just make you hungry to revisit Ashman’s work. That’s perhaps not the intended result of this fond tribute/merely serviceable survey of a too-short career – but it’s not necessarily a bad one.

It’s not an altogether convincing portrait, but it is an entertaining, even moving one, and the forcefulness of Bullock's presence goes a long way in pulling the film back from the brink of cuddliness.

When it’s Law reading aloud in his awful cornpone accent, it sounds like curdled grits. But when Firth narrates, low and measured, the prose springs to life. I wouldn’t call Genius inspired, but not for nothing it inspired me to pick up "Look Homeward, Angel" for the first time.

Gently funny and admirably, even unfashionably humane, People Places Things is at its best beat-to-beat.

Affectionate but uninsightful biopic.

Mercifully, the frosted icing-icky title bears little relation to the film's actual content.

Just because the jokes about micro-dosing, Crossfit- and social media-obsessive city folk are a little obvious doesn’t mean they won’t resonate with any townie aching for the before-days.

If tradecraft is what you like best about the espionage genre – the dead drops and dead-of-night tailings – then All the Old Knives will feel comparatively pokey, especially put up against the kind of spry spy entertainments long-form television so capably produces.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is elevated comfort food. The flavors aren’t complex, but it’s nourishing nonetheless.

It Ends With Us pours most of its nuance into the beginning, middle, and harrowing climax of its central relationship.

The twentysomething talents behind Mystery Team are still in the comedy minors, but this nerdy, nutty, perfectly pitched first swing suggests there are major things to come.

Those moments, as affecting as they are, can't surmount the overworkshopped feel of the whole film.

What the film itself is trying to communicate proves more elusive; whatever meaning Millepied meant to impart by tethering this “entirely new and unique artistic endeavor” to a century-and-a-half-old opera never quite made sense to me.

It’s an electrifying watch in its profound discomfort, and a testament to McKenzie’s ability to disarm with a smile, then land a righteous blow against the bad guys.

The film tracks the laborious training process of how anxious, heartbroken Helen forges a bond with Mabel, and it’s fascinating stuff.

Returning director Ron Howard somewhat belabors the Botticelli-inspired hallucinations Langdon suffers from following a konk on the head – though you really can’t oversell the creepiness of a beaky plague mask – but he continues to have an inspired hand in casting his supporting players.

His (Spielberg) is an old-fashioned style of moviemaking that can produce soaring entertainment or, alternately, a fussed-over theatricality. Minute to minute, Lincoln moves between these extremes.

Trainwreck can be furiously funny. It just goes down too easy. It’s scared of its own sharp edges. The sly raging against the machine of Inside Amy Schumer has gone missing. Here, the rage, curiously, is turned inward.

The easy, fast-talking rapport between the four young women is The Sisterhood’s biggest selling point. Too bad, then, that the premise demands they spend most of the film away from each other.

Echotone is scattered, for sure (the sound ordinance battle is poorly handled), but as an anecdotal account of Austin in the first decade of a new century, it's rarely anything less than compelling.

Authenticity is strangely lacking in Laurel Canyon, although Cholodenko’s exquisite eye for framing remains uncorrupted. Laurel Canyon is often visually captivating.

This kind of a dance film lives and dies by the routines, and this one wins: Mixing elements of gymnastics, karate, and break with the almighty step – an exceedingly polite term for what is really an awesome stomp.

Throughout, the documentary is fun and engaging, even whimsical when using (to good effect) illustrations and Gilliam’s own storyboards.

It is certainly competent, lovely to look at, but leaves little lasting impression.

It’s a little bit silly – as is Dafoe’s Kentucky-fried cowboy mechanic named Elvis – but silly is fun. In fact, one wishes it were sillier still.

Far more engrossing are the long, dialogue-free stretches that fix on, say, bobbing feet or curled fists on a speed bag. The soundscape, too, is endlessly fascinating, a layer cake of squeaks, grunts, gasps, and rattling chains that, combined, catches a rhythm that sounds an awful lot like song.

She Said is a respectful, serious-minded effort that works so hard not to sensationalize the material, it works against its dramatic impact.

Sturgess, saddled with a caddish character, is less compelling, but he does provide the film's only spot of unloosed, raw emotion. Everything else feels too precisely and too compactly assembled for much impact.

The latest installment in the Austin Powers series has stopped making much sense at all, but it sure gets its giggle on, and good.

Interstellar is riddled with ridiculisms; the but how comes … never stop. And yet: Nolan, a notoriously chilly filmmaker who’s never shown much faculty with matters of the heart, is pinning that heart squarely on his sleeve.

All told, Pitch Perfect isn't all that good – but it's an awfully good sport.

The Hunger Games franchise, both in print and onscreen, has been exceptionally clever about cozying away imaginative space for fans to fill in the blanks and cast themselves in the rich drama. That this latest film leaves us hungering for more only means that it’s working.

The filmmakers don’t endorse Michael’s solipsism, but we’re stuck with it anyway – the film is entirely from his point of view, save a lovely, pacifying final shot.

The darker stuff begs to be handled less delicately than this dance, and in that respect the director stumbles.

Big Miracle is all formula, but with just enough savvy to temper the gentle-spiritedness and qualify it as that rare family film with an emotional manipulativeness that doesn't leave a sick slick in the mouth.

The Dreamers is infused with the same kind of wistful melancholy that made the French New Wave films so winning, and it’s all gorgeous to look at.

What is notable is how the film gives children a framework, and the language, to process this act of violence, same as it does the pain of grief, the bitter rub of mortality. I don’t know if that sensitivity will translate to a gajillion more princess dresses sold, but as a teaching aid for kids – a tool for taking on more adult concerns – I found it surprisingly impactful.

An absorbing human drama.

This first release from Disney’s self-explanatory new arm, Disneynature, is at the very least peripherally concerned with the planet and its dwindling prospects, but the real renewable resource here is the groundbreaking "Planet Earth" miniseries.

Makes for a playfully enthralling hour and a half.

Does Apatow understand his heroes are assholes?

At just under two hours, Die My Love is a lot of movie with not a lot of story. Good thing, then, that it centers Lawrence in very nearly every frame.

There's no question that the actors and filmmakers have fashioned a compelling (if unformed) love story of a certain age – which is not to be confused for a love story for the ages.

There is Clooney’s deceptively layered performance, some startling bits of laugh-out-loud absurdity, and the not-at-all-negligible pleasure to be had in a cockeyed point of view.

Medem's film is a bleached-out beauty, hitting our most commanding human emotions -- lust to love to grief to rage and back again -- while only occasionally striking a wrong chord.

By the end, I was moved. Not floored, but moved.

What keeps Outside In interesting throughout is the nuanced work of its so very watchable leads – especially Duplass, who spent the first half of his career behind the camera writing, directing, and producing film and TV with his brother Mark.

By necessity, Black Mass begins in a hole it can never dig out of. It’s the portrait of a monster told in a flat line.

Where "Finding Nemo" capitalized on the awesome splendor and danger of the ocean, this follow-up shifts much of its action to an aquatic park and becomes broader and sillier, or at least reality-busting, for it.

The cult of Iris caught like grassfire, and the film catches this nonagenarian nonpareil, ever in her defining owl glasses and heavy jewelry, at peak heat.

As obvious as they get, and it wears its message on its bloodied jersey.

The film also inspires, if unconsciously, the viewer to rethink what exactly constitutes art.

It all boils down to trying too hard, when everybody knows a good grift is one that appears effortless.

These women are marvelous, with ancient, creased faces and the kind of admirable f...-all attitude that comes with age. I couldn't take my eyes off them.

Ultimately, it’s the kind-of mystery that undermines Past Life’s emotional kapow. You can hardly fault writer/director Avi Nesher for trying to tease suspense out of the story, but he establishes early an ominous tone and stubbornly holds steadfast to it.

An admirable effort, but too many words, words, and more words, and not enough of the ache of that half-smile.

The lion’s share of the work then is on Bening and Bell’s shoulders to flesh out dramatically thin characters. That they do.

With so many soldiers interviewed, some only fleetingly, it's impossible to keep track of them all.

If the cast blurs together, the expert costume and production design, filmed in lusciously retro 16mm, give the eye plenty to enjoy.

The Tavern footage is terrific stuff – unstaged and unmediated and the closest the camera gets to penetrating the enigmatic yet magnetic chef.

Any SNL fan, and I am one, is still going to get a kick out of the close access and cavalcade of stars like Tina Fey, Chris Rock, John Mulaney, Paula Pell, and Paul Simon giving testimony. By dint of that access, Lorne is by definition revealing. Revelatory? Not as much.

Capitalizes on the audience’s familiarity with the many players and their complex backstories, but never advances the ball down the field, tenders no new thought or wrinkle to the franchise. It’s the difference between a diverting entertainment, and a riveting one.

Columbus never quite captures the depth, the rich complexities of Rowling's novels. She's written four Harry Potter books for kids that adults swoon for, too. Columbus has made two Harry Potter movies for kids … and we'll leave it at that. That isn't bad. But I suspect there's something better just around the bend.

The material is interesting, and the production values are top-notch. Anushia Nieradzik deserves special notice for her costume design; her luxurious dresses in deep shades of purple and magenta race the pulse more than anything particular in the plot or characterization. It’s all quite well done, if only a touch too decorous.

It's a goofy, tongue-in-cheek, my-gawd-how-could-we-be-so-dumb shrine, but a shrine nonetheless.

The space prison set-pieces get the job done; only in the film's terrestrial bookends does this nuts-and-bolts action film show its rust.

It’s all fairly unsubtle, and not infrequently flat-out silly, but I enjoyed its modest charms, especially in contrast to the bombast of Branagh’s previous Poirot pictures.

Director Roger Michell and his frequent writer Hanif Kureishi (their last film together was Venus) regularly dance to the very cliff’s edge of despair, and only for the grace of good casting do you not wish they’d just jump and get it over with.

Playing a 70-year-old seeking renewed purpose as an intern at an Internet start-up, Robert De Niro is gentle as a kitten. Is it disrespectful to want to greet this icon of American cinema with a snuggle and a tumbler of warm milk?

Smirking at the audacity of it all is part of the fun, and if nothing else, A Knight's Tale is a hell of a lot of fun.

If the film’s conclusion reads a touch too much like a sales pitch, I didn’t mind; the Chesters’ thoughtful approach to living in harmony with nature is one we should all buy into.

For a film that gets right up close to a musical genius, it’s when he’s walking away, hands jammed in his leather jacket, that you can see the resemblance most clearly.

It's the tortoise and the hare, Nepalese-style, and it's surprisingly dramatic.

Penn's Bicke is often so pitiable it's hard not to want to look away – but what else to expect from perhaps our most compulsively watchable contemporary actor?

After a sparky first half greatly aided by Kristin Scott Thomas' devilish turn as an unsentimental press secretary, Salmon Fishing grows soggier. It's such a pretty, witty gloss of a picture, it hardly knows what to do with real-world terror, hence the Snidely Whiplash-like limning of Muslim extremists.

Marshmallow nation, you may now exhale: Rob Thomas did ya right.

Everybody likes to watch the messy guts-stuff of other peoples' lives, if only because we know then we're not alone in our weird ways.

There are worse accusations to hurl at a filmmaker than that she has too much empathy for her characters, but in the case of Oh, Hi!, it stymies the potential in its provocative premise and holds a pretty good movie back from greatness.

She knew what "it" was going to be before anyone else. Or maybe she invented "it," and the magazine-buying public simply did as they were told.

Sleepwalk With Me is never anything less than awfully likable. But I so wanted it to be more.

The opening act, I’m sorry to report, is a mess.

Falling in love with the wrong person makes for a far more toothsome melodrama, a fact this small, satisfying picture rightly recognizes.

It’s an enjoyable enough exercise in teen angst triumphing.

While Saved! initially gets in some good gags at the expense of religious hypocrisy, it eases off, opting not to skewer religion but rather to poke it gently with a stick to see what happens.

A Girl Cut in Two is Hitchcock sans the whodunit, essentially a long preamble of seduction and spiritual ruin, capped by a crime everyone saw coming (and an eye-dazzling coda that twists the title from metaphor to … something else).

Is Gary Winick atoning for his sins? If “Bride Wars” was an acid spill -- and that’s putting it generously -- then Letters to Juliet is like the safety shower in your high school chemistry class, delivering an unsubtle blast of sanitized sentimentality.

A merry entertainment that never pretends to greatness, Penguins of Madagascar is all about antics, verbal and visual.

There’s something a little pious about how resistant the film is to portraying Nicky not just as an admirable character but as an interesting one, too.

It’s muddy, bloody, and studded with amputated limbs, yet still rather generic-feeling; it lacks the visceral impact of Joe Wright’s version of Western Front atrocities in "Atonement."

It’s always a pleasure to be in the company of Potter, and when looking back at the just-competent first outings – well, baby, you’ve come a long way – but still: Where’s the magic, huh?

All told, either you get it or you don't. Film critics and senators with election prospects don't. Kids in the mood to laugh at stupid shit for 87 minutes do. I'll toss my hat in the latter ring with glee.

Taking a cue from the horse in question, Ross’ film takes its time getting into the race, but once it gets going, the going gets good.

If you ever thought "Footloose" might’ve been improved with an Irish brogue and a short pour of agitprop, then by all means look to this latest from Ken Loach, Britain’s elder statesman of cinema and its evergreen champion of the working class.

All herky-jerky camera movements and no pussyfooting around with the interior lives of these characters.