Kimberley Jones

The film moves so subtly, in fact, and so seamlessly between wry humor and the emotional wreckage of life-or-death, that it was with some shock that I found myself weeping halfway through the film.

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.

Wright takes the tools of a bloodless medium, the video game, and crafts an action-comedy with a true-blue beating heart.

Kazan appears in every scene of The Exploding Girl’s perfectly paced 80 minutes, and you’d miss her if she ducked out for even a moment.

Lin’s F&F films are operatically dumb, which was what makes them so much fun; maybe if Star Trek Beyond were stupider it wouldn’t feel like such a chore.

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.

Tonally, it all makes sense, but there’s such a thing as overmuchness. Gibney laudably launches a withering attack here on the pay-to-play relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers. But this viewer felt withered, too, by the end of his battering ram of a movie.

Failed feminist statement or not, Coyote Ugly is a likable, if confused film.

Something that falls just shy of greatness.

Early Man is wanting: of a cleverer narrative, of memorable characters. It’s not bad, necessarily. It just feels like an early draft of a better movie to come.

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.

Hard truths: Popstar’s jokes land pillow-soft.

The film can feel a touch overscripted, but Polley and her actors effect true-to-life rhythms of speech.

The Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee’s’ 1993 breakout feature, is actually an inspired vehicle to revisit.

Funny and fierce and deeply moving.

The only weak link here is Aniston's character – her Olivia, stuck in a holding pattern, feels like a holdover from Holofcener's previous, single-girl pictures, and Aniston underplays the role to the point of expressionlessness.

(It should also be noted that Page One wears its pro-Times bias on its sleeve, right up to the rankling but now-common inclusion of a "get involved" Web address at film's end.)

Unvarnished and often silent, she (Hayek) holds the camera’s gaze like a dare. She cuts such a striking figure, you’ll want to follow her anywhere … and where the film ultimately follows is utterly gutting.

To a one, they're terrific. But in this overpacked ensemble cast, it's Binoche you want to see more of.

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

The film provides invaluable context in its detailing of institutional racism in the Sixties and Seventies and in its emphasis on Ellis as an advocate for equality and as a righteous shit-stirrer.

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

Amusing enough, but weirdly joyless.

This is provocative stuff, to be sure, in which the stakes are so high that a pratfall concludes with exploding limbs and the anguished effect of its final minutes is a quiet shock to the system. A comedy of errors and terrors? Who woulda thunk it?

Moon doesn't belabor anything, really, so confidently measured and philosophically nuanced it all plays out (aided by a striking, under-the-skin original score by Clint Mansell).

Other People is gentle, heartfelt, and of a delicate build. Kelly’s best observations are small but true: the touching banality of a bad pop song, and that “other people” is in fact most people, if you’re paying attention.

It’s best to situate yourself in the middle of the row; a seat at the end will most likely leave you feeling cross-eyed for an hour.

What a weird, winning little movie is Robot & Frank, which explores what happens to the essential self as the memory goes. Oh, and it's a heist picture. With robot butlers. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it.