Lou Lumenick

A gut-wrenching experience.

This movie belongs to its young stars, who have grown immensely as actors since they were first ideally cast by Chris Columbus, the hack who directed the first two movies.

There are more than ample rewards for discerning adults: Some of the best dialogue in a recent movie and a gallery of unforgettable performances.

It's the well-wrought details that explain, perhaps better than any earlier film, how an entire country bought into Hitler's genocidal madness.

The Agronomist uses archival footage and music to tell a moving story that's all too common in the Third World.

Side by Side is an eye-opening, comprehensive look at the biggest technological revolution in Hollywood history. One huge irony is that digital formats are evolving so rapidly that the only foolproof way to archive and preserve a movie shot on video for future generations is . . . to transfer it to film.

The movie fails to add up to the sum of its laborious parts. There's no emotional investment in any of the characters, and you can see the writer-director's windup con coming a mile away.

Shepard, who directed "The Matador" and the pilot for "Ugly Betty," can't quite get the disparate elements of The Hunting Party to mesh into a satisfying whole.

There is no shortage of indie movies about economically challenged women. This one is different, in that the women actually do something besides just talk about it.

Love is Strange is very well worth seeing for its two stars, who acutely convey the pain their characters feel over their separation as well as displaying their considerable comic chops to keep things from getting too grim.

A gripping reminder of a brutal chapter of 20th-century history.

It falls to Hanks and his movie-star presence to anchor this ambitious enterprise, and he does some of his most impressive acting without saying a word.

A glorified TV movie.

For those willing to work a bit at it, this is the sort of artistry many American independent movies aspire to - but rarely achieve.

A moribund attempt to exhume the Jack Ryan techno-thriller franchise with a severely miscast Ben Affleck, is truly the 20-megaton bomb among this summer's blockbusters.

Hollywood's Woman of the Year is a pregnant 16-year-old, the incredibly hip, smart-mouthed and totally endearing heroine of the wise and witty Juno.

A thoughtful, rousing and beautifully crafted epic.

Only Bryan Cranston, as Teller’s downsized dad, emerges with his dignity fully intact from Get a Job, whose scattershot direction is credited to Dylan Kidd (“Roger Dodger”).

Quite unlike anything I've ever seen before.

She’s (Fey) so good that — up to a point — you can ignore Paul Weitz’ erratic direction and a patchy script, both of which clumsily handle shifts between comedy and drama.

Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg’s best film since “Saving Private Ryan,” stars a flawless Tom Hanks in the smart, old-school thriller as James Donovan.

Short, sweet, charming and often very funny, Shaun the Sheep Movie has essentially no intelligible dialogue and doesn’t need any.

Paved with such good intentions and talent that it's sad to report this lavishly mounted gangster epic - the most serious-minded Hollywood film of the season - doesn't come close to living up to expectations.

This superbly acted and ultimately disarming dual coming-out comedy-drama -- which turns out to be semi-autobiographical -- certainly grows on you, despite all of the twee touches.

Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton have unexpectedly great chemistry in this warm and funny comedy.

Catnip for the art-house crowd.

The last half hour devoted to the Big Game, staged by a crew from NFL films, is genuinely rousing and inspiring. That's where Friday Night Lights finally shines.

Even a great British cast and obscenity-laden gangland dialogue aren't enough to make what amounts to an extended acting exercise into much of a movie.