Kyle Smith

BlackBerry is a biography of a once-great business that is fascinating enough on its own terms without being reshaped to fit a narrative formula.

Oddity is everything a horror film should be—creepy, exciting, unpredictable—and it leads to an ending that’s both shocking and inevitable.

Rom-coms died because they weren’t very rom and didn’t have enough com. But Sleeping With Other People, which is both hilarious and emotionally alive, is as delightful as a first date that crackles with possibility.

Situations get increasingly ridiculous, and none of the characters ever seems like anything but a screenwriter's sketch.

A fantastically entertaining biography.

Fifty Shades will make you dumber.

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

Despite all of the hideous critters Hellboy encounters, there is a hint that things are considerably weirder elsewhere.

Two possible ways of regarding Please Give: It's shallow. Or maybe it's deeply shallow.

A deeply felt evocation of a place and a people by writer-director Matt Porterfield, who set this largely improvised film in his own lower-class Baltimore neighborhood.

The purity is admirable. The excitement is notable. “Chapter 4” may run nearly three hours, but when we’re having this much fun calling out “Oof!” and “Get him!” the evening passes in breezy delight.

The movie can be mildly amusing. But I couldn’t figure out which of the three principals I least wanted to know.

Based on the true story of the world's largest counterfeiting operation, The Counterfeiters is full of the weird details that, though unsurprising on one level, are so jarringly wrong that they seem fresh: As a reward for producing 134 million pounds sterling, the prisoners get a pingpong table.

How dark is this comedy? It's a big hit in Ireland.

Directed by James Griffiths, “Wallis Island” is warm, endearing and very funny, a quintessential indie smile-maker about nice, humble people adorably stumbling their way toward a little happiness.

Ex Machina offers plenty of intriguing style but a spotty story line.

Directed by his longtime friend and collaborator Richard Linklater, Mr. Hawke makes the most of what might be the year’s most brilliant screenplay, by Robert Kaplow, by delivering a Hart full of mischief and wit, desperation and self-loathing. There has never been a great book written about Hart, but at last he has this movie to renew and restore his story.

"HP6" is suspenseful and artfully realized. It's a definite improvement over J.K. Rowling's dimly written and exposition-clogged book.

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

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

Firmly rejecting the prevailing style in horror movies today, Mr. Eggers has created a somber, cold-sweat doomscape that is in no way a thrill ride.

Thanks to an inert story and disagreeable characters, its 90 minutes go by slowly.

As Mamie Till, the previously little-known actress Danielle Deadwyler gives an astonishing performance, shimmering first with tenderness and later with the kind of agony no mother should ever have to contemplate, much less bear.

At the end the film turns into an infomercial for President Obama’s Iran deal, but Gibney delivers plenty to think about — and fear.

Mr. Peele has loads of ideas and builds up considerable suspense and dread, but he fails to tie everything together with a resounding final act.

What a sweet collision is Rescue Dawn: the American psycho meets the German kook.

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

How English is this movie? As English as a cold, rainy day at the beach. As English as the politeness that masks hostility, as English as a pie that contains meat, as English as secretly wishing you lived in some other country.