Kyle Smith

A Most Violent Year is a small picture, but each brushstroke is laden with detail and craftsmanship.

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.

It isn’t until the last half hour that the film finally switches tones from aggressively and charmlessly filthy to thoughtful.

Po speaks loudly and carries big shtick. Let the rest of the world cringe at our hyperconfidence, our charisma, our pure awesomeness.

Touch is a worthy consideration of the things that matter most when the clock is running out, but it could have been more focused.

Dream Scenario is such an imaginatively offbeat movie that it’s a shame it isn’t better.

Big Hero 6 even has a title that sounds like a product ordered off the takeout menu of the type of restaurant that recombines a few elements in many ways. That could work fine, if any of the ingredients were particularly flavorful.

Jacques Rivette's film is full of painstaking historical detail, but the behavior of the two nonlovers is mired in inaction and emotionally incomprehensible.

Struggles to maintain a sober, evenhanded tone about an utterly ridiculous story.

The only possible interest the movie will inspire in anyone comes when Paltrow flashes a breast toward the end, far too late to pump any excitement into an aggressively boring film that gurgles with self-indulgence.

The nicest thing I can think of to say about the doc Neil Young Journeys is that at least it isn't in 3-D.

David Gordon Green’s Joe largely succeeds in immersing us in a rural world of cruelty, ugliness, decay, neglect and aggression, but if there is a point to it all, I couldn’t find it.

German guilt gets a vigorous workout in the penetrating and symbolically important documentary Two or Three Things I Know About Him.

Although the payoff is creepy, it takes a little too long to arrive -- and when it does, it's about as worn-out as the movie's title.

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 visual effects are amazing, but they don't make up for acting that is restrained to an uninsightful fault.

Loaded with dazzling ideas that don’t ultimately pull together.

The overall effect is appropriately trippy, and revealing.

It’s stylish and chilling, with a lively feminist undercurrent.

Sincerely directed by one woman (Phyllida Lloyd, who did "Mamma Mia!") and smartly written by another (Abi Morgan), the film stars an unsurpassable Meryl Streep, whose ability to empathize with her characters has never been more gloriously impassioned than it is in this titanic performance.

Rejecting all Hollywood trends pointing the other way, Inside Out 2 goes for the penetrating over the shallow every time, never allowing the premise to devolve into a mere gimmick.

This film is narratively inert (we spend a lot of time listening to the same questions being asked over and over) and, like virtually all docs in its genre, less than vigorous in its pursuit of truth.

Mr. Pearce (“Iron Man 3,” “Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation”) and his director have no idea what kind of picture they want to make. Instead they have four or five different concepts which they set loose like cars ramming into each other as they jostle for position.

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.

The plot is so rich and eventful, and the script so witty, that the movie doesn’t drag once the extended flashback starts. Moreover, every moment is eye candy. The screen bursts with whimsical costumes (by Paul Tazewell) and sets (Nathan Crowley is the production designer), and all of the important roles are impeccably cast.

It’s mainly instructive in that it shows how liberals believe the end always justifies the means.

Here’s a brilliant idea for a rock documentary: Catch up with a band in the creaky fog of middle age, long after the hits. A certain toll has been exacted, a certain humility achieved, and yet the story is not yet over.

This atmospheric, cool-looking but gimpy thriller based on a John le Carré novel makes “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” look like “22 Jump Street.”