Leah Greenblatt

The real draw is Dinklage: with his mournful eyes and crooked smile, he's the tender, towering soul of Cyrano.

A sly fairytale about a medieval tween that manages to be both cheeky and modern without losing its heart.

The movie loses some momentum in the final third, and tends to over-egg its caricatures of all these platinum-card fools and clueless masters of the universe. But its appetite for destruction is also too much fun in the end to refuse: a giddy little amuse bouche for the apocalypse to come.

In some ways Beale feels less like a movie than a well-staged, meticulously shot play; a period piece that floats beyond its specific time and place and into the realm of allegory.

An unabashedly heady romance, rich in pretty costumes — when they're wearing them — and lush, lusty atmosphere.

At just over 120 minutes, though — a blink in Marvel time — this Ant-Man is clever enough to be fun, and wise enough not overstay its welcome. Who better understands the benefits, after all, of keeping it small?

Somewhere along the way Earl eases up on the suburban–Wes Anderson whimsy and starts to find its heart, infusing the story’s self-conscious cleverness and trick-shot set pieces with something sweeter, sadder, and even a little bit profound. In other words, it grows up.

It all becomes a sort of muddle for a while midway, one that’s not nearly as compelling as the acting itself, which is largely phenomenal, frequently surprising, and often more than a little bit heartbreaking.

The freshness is found, primarily, in the energy of her storytelling and her vital young cast.

If the film itself feels like a little less than the sum of its provocative premise, it’s still moving in its own unshowy way: a quietly profound exploration of identity, sacrifice, and the connection all human beings long for, whether or not their God or their family or their community approves.

If the storyline doesn’t so much unfold as burst out in glittery puffs — and if music cues seem to make up about 40 percent of the plot—it’s still an endearing kind of chaos.

So come for the crossbows, etc., and to watch Weaving’s star be born in real time; stay for the socio-economic lessons and sweet, sweet revenge.

The skillfulness of the telling, paradoxically, can make The Father feel at times almost too painful to sit through; as the story shifts elliptically in and out of time, Anthony's losses become our own.

Director Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips, United 93) has always had a taste for the topical and political, and his third Bourne outing augments the usual truth-and-justice talking points with a strenuously current nod to digital privacy issues via a Zuckerberg-like social-media mogul (Riz Ahmed). If anything, he underplays those assets, shorting deeper story development for exotic zip codes, bang-up fisticuffs, and adrenalized chase scenes.

What the movie doesn’t do, until it’s nearly over, is make any real case for why so much of America continued to put their faith in Kennedy long after the facts of the case were revealed.

There's a sneaky cumulative power to the filmmaking, though; if Happening often feels like a punch to the solar plexus, that's exactly what it should be.

It’s also a haunting, thought-provoking piece of work, made infinitely more powerful by all the things it chooses not to show.

It would be easy to mine Jenkins’ story for silly farce and 1940s set pieces and let it coast from there, but director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen) is too kind, and too nuanced, to do that. Even when she’s murdering a high C, his Florence finds the melody.

Beneath all the chinchilla and body glitter, there’s a smart, beating heart.

The shrewd, relentless winkiness of McKay’s filmmaking style may have worked better, though, for breaking down subprime mortgages in The Big Short than it does chronicling a deadly misbegotten war. What remains then is the cipher at the center of Vice: the Man Who Wasn’t There, and probably never will be.

Another rich creation in Mills' bittersweet, gently profound collisions of art and life.

It feels only appropriate that James Franco, an actor and director for whom weirdness is next to godliness, would be the one to tell his story.

Fans of Get Out, Peele’s brilliant, mind-bending 2017 debut, may feel vaguely let down that his follow-up is, for all of its sly humor and high style, a fairly straightforward genre piece, and that its bigger ideas and metaphors don’t feel quite fully baked.

While a Black Panther without Boseman is undoubtedly nothing like the film's creators or any of its cast wanted it to be, the movie they've made feels like something unusually elegant and profound for the multiplex: a little bit of forever for the star who left too soon.

What works almost disturbingly well is the way Berg calibrates his delivery of the disaster while still holding on to the human scale of it.

With [Crawford's] proud, wounded performance at the center, the film's raw vérité style and unforced naturalism do more than set a mood; in its best moments, it breaks your heart.

It’s their quiet devotion and enduring dignity that give A United Kingdom not just a romantic center, but its soul.

Glass Onion doesn't feel like a movie that's meant, really, to be peeled. It's here strictly to dazzle you with money and murder and famous-people pandemonium, then sharpen its knives for the next installment.