Kimberley Jones

Screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and fanboys’ favorite whipping boy, Damon Lindelof, keep the film moving at a quippy clip; there’s really no fat here until the film feints a climax only to lurch the coaster-car back up the hill again.

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.

Stoller and Segel don't shy away from rational, relatable adults, which may be an unsexy selling point for a romantic comedy, but that attention to authenticity elevates the likable, low-stakes The Five-Year Engagement.

Serenity evinces the kind of swashbuckling bonhomie that made so many of us fall in love with the original "Star Wars" films, a love that was mightily tested by George Lucas' humorless prequels.

There’s an undeniable thrill to watching something so experimental and yet totally accessible to those of us who speak only layman’s Dylanese, and it’s Haynes’ warmest film yet.

Nolan’s end-act pacing has always felt ponderous – but it’s not enough to ruin what is surely the most intellectually and viscerally engaging action film in years. The soul doesn’t stir, no, but everything else is wildly somersaulting.

Inspired by writer-director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ own experiences in the Army, including combat in Iraq, My Dead Friend Zoe tackles PTSD head-on with humor and empathy.

For all the pratfalls, this is a grim, dispiriting work. It dares not to be liked, and there’s a lot to like in that daringness.

After 2023’s exalted Asteroid City, as raw and ragged with grief a film Anderson has ever made, anything was going to feel like a comedown. More charitably, The Phoenician Scheme is a palate cleanser – a lovely lark, a spirits lifter.

It’s only in the last quarter of the film, when Wang strays from her own family’s touchstones to explore a case of separated twins, that One Child Nation loses just a touch of its urgency.

It’s a fun watch, and familiarity with Los Angeles isn’t required to get a kick out of these toe-dips into Koreatown and Tehrangeles and all the other micro-communities that make the city a macro-paradise for eaters.

If there’s a complaint to be made about Look Back, it’s that there’s not enough of it: Adapted from Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot manga of the same name, the story it tells is purposefully contained.

It’s nowhere near as soulful or questing as "2001" or "Moon" – but as popcorn entertainment, it’s surprisingly provocative.

In a startling, last-reel freeze frame, the male ego pops like a balloon, and I wanted to pre-book for the next Trip right away.

It’s one of Roberts’ best ever performances, not in least part because of how confidently she wears her age and Alma’s secrets, now that her ingénue years are firmly behind her. The woman with the mile-wide smile is no longer interested in courting our favor.

The film’s third-act reach for a redemptive arc plays hollowly, and Harrelson teeters over the line into hillbilly affectation. Still, it’s not enough to erase the memory of Harrelson’s subtler moments, or to ruin what is an altogether worthy adaptation.

Civil War’s main battle sequence is so effective because it’s six-on-six, and we’ve spent the past decade getting to know the combatants.

And yet, it works, so much so that after two and a quarter hours, I was startled – and not a little disappointed – when the closing credits kicked in.

Wild lands some hard punches, but it can’t sustain the impact. Some of that lies in its inherited arc: Strayed found some peace – the whole point of the trek – but arriving-at-peace is less provocative than the struggle, at least in a movie.

A spirited and eye-popping stealth charmer.

Origin doesn’t always get there, but the effort is exhilarating. It’s the contact high of an artist really going for it.

What wicked good fun it is watching this bad girl do her worst.

Mostly this is a tense, portentous, and provocative piece.

Surely the most unconventional romantic comedy of the summer, Results isn't anti-plot; it just moves in weird ways.

Generous and warm and howling funny, there is such a light touch to Babes, you might not even clock the depth of its observations – its inspections – of body and heart both.

Cotillard doesn't look part Native American or sound like a Thirties Chicago moll, but damned if she isn't a sight and sound to behold. Whatever her technical limitations, she rises above them to breathe a flesh, blood, and battered verisimilitude into the part. You can't tear your eyes off her, any more than you can Mann's flawed but still engrossing picture.

In its third act, Life, Above All takes a bit of a dip into la-la land, in terms of believability – how precisely is an impoverished family supposed to have afforded an ambulance and hospice care? – but that doesn't diminish the emotional impact of Manyaka's performance and the idea that courage can be infectious, too.

Boden and Fleck's unabashedly warmhearted film is a sensitively wrought but also very funny portrait of the way we respond to pressure.