Kimberley Jones

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.