Kyle Smith

It has a classical moral that would have made Aesop salute: Greed is not only corrupting, it can be self-defeating. Moreover, suspense lies both in wanting to know whether Miller’s quest will succeed and in what lessons might be learned. Though Miller’s actions drive the story, it is mainly an education for Will, the observer.

Ms. Gladstone draws a lot of sympathy as the modest, helpless Mollie, but like everything else here her performance suffers from inertia. She spends the bulk of the movie mired in illness and despondency, and her look mirrors how I felt as I watched: numb and trapped.

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.

What you take away from Anatomy of a Fall is largely up to you, but it’s a thoroughly engrossing case study.

Successfully stringing together shocking, disgusting and terrifying moments counts as a solid day’s work for most horror directors, and since The Exorcist: Believer achieves all that it’s competent enough. But I expected better from Mr. Green.

While the subject has been the province of clichés and exaggeration, the movie’s points are well-crafted, despite a wild Hollywood ending at odds with this indie offering’s otherwise gritty appeal. As it decries a social problem it adds layers and surprises. It can’t be dismissed as an overwrought message movie.

Cinema’s power to transport is vividly on display in Nigerian writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s eerie but beautiful visit to a rich and unfamiliar setting.

The more the film trumpets its thematic seriousness, the sillier it gets.

There’s a more interesting, less strident film under the surface, but it never manages to get out.

Heart and soul—those two concepts beaten to death by lyricists—suffuse every scene of this modest, perfect picture.

The Inventor falls awkwardly between a kids’ movie and one for grown-ups.

Though the film can’t capture Wolfe’s writing, it does a public service in passing along its subject’s wisdom.

I was at least interested in the spooky goings-on, even as I grew increasingly tired of Mr. Branagh’s labored attempts to twist an ordinary detective story into a horror flick.

For all of the moments of splendor and awe in The Mountain, I’d have preferred a less open-ended film.

For those who can tolerate—or better yet, relish—extreme violence, The Equalizer 3 is diverting enough. If the script is so-so, the beautiful Italian locations, Mr. Washington’s still-world-class charm and an eerie, frightening musical score by Marcelo Zarvos lift it (slightly) above average for the action-thriller genre.

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

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.

Though it may have some novel elements, the franchise already feels tired, and isn’t much more promising than recent DC efforts “Black Adam” and “The Flash.” This beetle doesn’t have much juice.

Strays is wildly inappropriate. It’s also wildly funny.

It’s difficult to watch but beguilingly genuine in its exploration of the tortured dynamics of three adult siblings whose mother died five years earlier and who haven’t been together in three years.

A general sense that things aren’t heading anywhere too exciting pervades this cinematic chunk of corporate synergy.

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.

Dreamin’ Wild is an elegant appreciation of the many textures of aging, balancing the feel of rhapsodic memories and shuddery regrets.

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.

At its best it’s entertaining in a quaint, late-’60s way, which makes it a pleasant summer surprise.

In balancing the two sides’ competing motives, Mr. Sorogoyen has fashioned not only a taut drama but a parable that is widely applicable across many cultures at this moment.

Mr. Nolan’s utterly enthralling film lasts three hours. But despite being as talky as a math seminar, it crackles, hurtles and whooshes, generating more suspense and excitement than anything found in the alleged climaxes of the recent superhero pictures (which owe much to the director’s Batman films).

Barbie is a template for how not to write a crowd-pleasing Hollywood feature.