Kyle Smith

The latest and best “TMNT” movie contains a little more substance than may at first be apparent, and this sci-fi reptile comedy admirably advances a message that we can and should all get along, majority and minorities alike.

If you emerge from this movie with a strong urge to rewatch the entire saga, you won’t be alone. Neither will those who emerge with tears of gratitude in their eyes.

Though Anora frequently sparkles, it’s also inconsistent, so it falls short of becoming a classic of its genre. Still, thanks to its appealingly youthful energy and its earthy performances, it’s one of the spiciest comedies of the year.

Ms. Mirren and the film do us all a service in declining to paint Meir as a legendary figure but instead observing that although she was a strong leader who can rightly be credited with saving her country from annihilation, crisis forced her to make grueling decisions whose psychic burdens she bore heavily.

As directed with a wonderful combination of whimsy, deadpan humor and childlike exhilaration by Ms. Regan, the film is impish and full of bounce.

The bad news about the Ennio Morricone documentary Ennio is its length: 2 1/2 hours. Far too short!

The film is quiet, deliberate and low-key, and some may find it underwhelming, but writer-director Gabriel Martins has a novelist’s feel for his characters, taking us under everybody’s skin with deep sympathy for their differing outlooks.

It’s easily the most effective work of horror I’ve seen this year.

The direct, intimate way in which the movie is filmed and acted, however, makes it an affecting study of two people’s attempts to forge some kind of relationship despite huge psychic damage on both sides.

Understanding that a knockout finish is the most important element, Mr. Spielberg delivers spectacularly in a scene drawn from a real-life meeting. He puts a mischievous twist on his well-earned reputation for sentimental endings by dramatizing an encounter with one of the gods of celluloid.

There is a lot of untapped potential here, and a reality-TV series covering the same subject would be welcome. Nevertheless, inspiring true stories about youth are a little too scarce these days, and “Folktales” is not only magical and warm, it’s also a bracing interlude of good cheer.

A film such as this one ought to present a portrait that feels in some sense true and also make viewers so engaged that they’re hungry to learn more about the subject. Suffused with youthful passion and a deepening sensation of onrushing doom, Ms. O’Connor’s film heartily succeeds on both counts.

American Fiction is being heralded as a brilliant satire, which is almost correct. I’d say it’s sharp and funny, but its targets are low-hanging, and the film’s writer-director, Cord Jefferson, is hardly the first to take a poke at them.

The Iron Claw is either a cheesy professional-wrestling hold or the unbreakable grip of a hostile fate. Or perhaps it’s how a father clutches his children. Whatever it is, it’s a resonant image for a potent tearjerker.

The contrast between the two Killians—mighty on the outside, meek within—makes Magazine Dreams a wrenching character study, by turns lovely and chaotic.

Of all the versions I’ve seen, the latest one is the best, a holiday spectacle bursting with spirited sisterhood. Its characters may be broadly drawn, but their sorrows and triumphs come across with more feeling than ever.

It’s a film about tableaus and texture that strives, largely successfully, to re-create the experience of being an extremely small part of a vast, historic conflagration. In effect, it’s an anti-spaghetti western, eschewing all things grandiose and bold-faced in favor of the small and prosaic.

What might have come across as a soap opera in lesser hands instead feels appropriately weighty. As he steers events toward a devastating climax, Mr. August proves he’s still an able steward of refined human drama.

Not many performers can please an audience as much as Mark Wahlberg, but the pooch comes close.

Birdy is refreshingly complicated: She’s obnoxious but lovable, entitled but sweet

Mr. Wang’s honest self-appraisal yields a richly detailed film.

In the title role, Sydney Sweeney must be relieved to be giving people a reason to discuss her acting. She’s excellent in the role, small and vulnerable yet tough and fierce, a pink-clad dynamo who is nevertheless beholden to others.

Though the affair dragged on so long before Dreyfus was finally cleared that Mr. Polanski confines the resolution to an epilogue, he has nevertheless made an oft-told tale lively and urgent. “An Officer and a Spy” is Mr. Polanski’s finest work in many years.

The film is a sort of jigsaw puzzle that demands either paying minute attention or viewing it twice. Seemingly unimportant and easily forgotten details from the opening minutes turn out to cohere and create a conclusive emotional impact of the kind that everyone in the movie is missing.

The lean, athletic Mr. Herzog, 83 years old, seems as spry and eager as ever, and his global enthusiasm remains a force of nature in itself. Ghost Elephants takes its place as yet another of the director’s essential forays into the wild and unknown.

Mr. Birney’s exotically low-fi imagination makes for a freaky and feverish trip.

Filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a native of the state, has done a breathtakingly expressive job of capturing the strangeness, the beauty and the devastation of her homeland in the poetic, entrancing documentary King Coal.

Creed III brings up unusually troubling questions for a formula picture, and the care the script takes to add depth to Donnie strengthens the final third of the film, which in accordance with the sports-drama rulebook leads us through a rousing training montage and a climactic competition, this time in Dodger Stadium.

Borrowing the look of The Lego Movie, Piece by Piece is as bouncy and playful as a room full of rambunctious toddlers.

We tend to think of gangland tales as exhibiting clear demarcations between those who are and are not “in the game.” La Civil catapults us into a considerably more disturbing environment, a sort of toxic sinkhole that pulls everyone into its horrors.

The movie about his life and legend, written and directed by Sean Mullin, has two purposes and succeeds delightfully at both.

It’s a pleasure to report that the 100-minute conversation is as wonderful as the actors who deliver it—by turns witty, wistful and revealing, steeped in an appreciation for the hard learning that comes with age.

The film, instead of repeating clichés about the supposed heartlessness of the ruling class, could be viewed as either a barbed accusation of managerial hypocrisy from a working-class point of view or as an exasperated testimonial from a manager of how workers make it impossible to run a company like a family.

Who doesn’t love Bill Shatner? The theatrical documentary “William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill” reminds us why, stylistically channeling what became the actor’s signature: a dedication to sustained gravitas so portentous that it becomes absurd, then keeps going until it emerges, triumphantly, into the realm of the genuinely spellbinding.

Movies about the mini-problems of normal people are vanishingly rare these days, mainly because it’s hard to make normal people seem interesting enough to be worth the price of a ticket. Ms. Holofcener has more than managed that, in a thoroughly engaging conversation-starter of a film.

Throughout The Hong Konger, Mr. Lai exhibits amazing composure as he tells a story that is both inspiring and enraging, in interviews filmed both before and between his arrests.

It’s a finely wrought story of palace intrigue enriched by lush sets and decors, having been shot at Versailles.

All of [Bogart's] facets are on view in a must-see documentary for fans of Golden Age Hollywood.

This kinetic, documentary-style, fly-on-the-wall and in-the-halls tale proves that in the hands of capable dramatists the rack of suspense can be tightened to an almost unbearable degree even when the outcome is known.

As lean and effective as its thriller elements are, especially in a breakneck third act, the movie is most intriguing in its subtext—an implied clash between conceptions of masculinity and the eras with which they’re associated.

It’s a hefty, substantial, at times dizzying experience despite lacking some elements that might have elevated it to the highest levels of its form.

Amrum is a stirring example of how childhood reminiscence can stand for so much more.

As this frequently lyrical and touching portrait of youth reminds us, for many thousands of people over the years, Cabrini-Green was simply home.

The plot is so cleverly constructed that its undertones sneak up on you. Their subtlety makes them that much more effective.

Among the film’s strongest qualities is its suspense: Mr. Zürcher builds a wicked sense of anticipation about just how far its desperately unhappy characters may go. As bleak as it is, The Sparrow in the Chimney is a skillfully painted portrait of an unstable menagerie.

In these days when flat-out comedy features are scarce, it’s one of the most welcome tenants at the summer multiplex. A mid-movie snowman gag puts the new one over the top, bestowing on it the honor of being mentionable alongside its predecessors. It sets the lunacy level to “inspired.”

Mr. Assayas has crafted a beautiful and moving tableau of how one small group dealt with a bewildering change. The time when Covid-19 ruled our lives is one many of us might prefer to forget. May our most gifted artists resist that impulse.

The warm performance by the ageless Ms. Gainsbourg and the soulfulness of the two younger leads (Judith is a subordinate figure of little importance) make for an absorbing two hours.

Carney’s film (unlike his disappointing previous effort “Begin Again”) is mad, irrepressible youth incarnate, by turns as exuberant as “The Commitments” and (nearly) as heartfelt as “Once.”

Inspector Bellamy leaves a sense not unlike a summary of Chabrol's entire career -- of guilty stains seeping away in every direction, of motives hidden and of endless stories that frustrate full understanding. To Chabrol, no life is ever a closed case.

The movie is more a situation than a narrative, and it's repetitive and depressing. One interrupter -- a murderer who did 14 years in prison -- says of the program, "In essence, it's just a Band-Aid." At best: One of his colleagues gets shot in the back for his peacekeeping effort.

The film, made by two Cuban-American exiles (and produced by their friend, Charlize Theron), makes an ironic point about Cuba: This is a land where the grandparents are revolutionaries (or at least say they are) but the kids are yearning for capitalist globalization.

For all its glutinous cuteness, damn if About Time doesn’t sneak up and sock you in the tear ducts. I tried not to fall for it. I failed.

A taut suspense flick for grown-ups.

The main flaw is that, as an actor, Duplass isn't able to make the audience love him. Picture "Bottle Rocket"-era Owen Wilson in the role, and you've got something special.

Kids will be as enthralled by this film as you were by the live-action Disney movies of the '70s. It doesn't get any sweeter than a roomful of mattresses with kids and dogs jumping on them.