M. E. Russell

At its best, Prisoners dwells on the ways the characters affected by the case are held mentally captive -- by conviction, compulsion, procedure, skewed beliefs, rage, and grief -- and how each character's blind spot and/or maniacal focus furthers or frustrates the search for the girls.

As horror movies go, The Conjuring is an extremely skillful, entertaining remix album. That's not an insult.

"Fast Five" and Fast & Furious 6 -- the newest, nearly-as-much-dumb-fun sequel -- play more like "The Avengers" than they don't.

Oblivion is Moebius-comic gorgeous and it sounds great, especially the loud, nervewracking honks the drones make when they're weighing whether or not to shoot you. I suppose that's a surface appeal. But it's a nice surface.

The movie unfolds in the uplifting manner you'd expect, but its real pleasures lie in its terrific '60s pop-soul soundtrack and especially in its frequently funny performances.

It's quietly brutal stuff, beautifully acted by Fanning, Englert, Christina Hendricks and a word-twisting Alessandro Nivola.

It's got a big heart and high spirits on a low budget and actors who refuse to phone it in.

No one joyfully embraces this absurdity better than Michael Sheen. The actor finds a ridiculous-yet-perfect way to deliver every single second of his performance as head of the global vampire council -- He's all over the film's finale. It's fantastic.

It's fascinating as an offbeat storytelling exercise.

The movie's perfectly understated, warts-and-all sense of time and place will send any suburban Gen Xer in the audience flashing right back to their less-cautious days, when mix tapes did heavy lifting as calling cards.

The film's climax is a bit of a jumble, but by then Hillcoat has built his world so vibrantly that it hardly matters. And the hard-charging soundtrack -- featuring Cave, Warren Ellis, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson -- is an absolute blast.

Wiseman's PG-13 remake isn't as funny, or vivid, or splatter-tastic. It contains no mutants, inflating heads, trips to Mars, or freaky little psychic dudes named "Kuato" emerging from people's stomachs. But it does a decent job setting up an unsubtle dystopia.

The movie is well-acted and a bit frustrating, but also a pleasant little surprise.

The movie is directed with real confidence by Batmanglij. He lets his actors breathe, builds suspense in one group-purge brainwashing scene, and lets the mystery unfold in an immersive way that's probably a bit more compelling than its actual scripted payoff deserves.

It's better at being droll than laugh-out-loud funny.

Waititi is still telling stories of offbeat, semi-delusional New Zealanders, and he's still sprinkling his work with cartoonish flights of fancy -- but this time he grounds the comedy in a big-hearted, bittersweet story about a boy desperate to connect with his father.

John Carter is too wickedly strange not to recommend. Movies this expensive usually play it much safer.

The sequel has all the merits and demerits of its predecessor, only with a less-snarly antagonist, a more thoughtful final showdown and broader Holmes/Watson relationship jokes.

Arthur is sort of a dull hero, but the grandfather is classic, hilarious Aardman -- a thoroughly British eccentric prone to weird nostalgic/fatalistic utterances.

To my thinking, the grand simplicity of the metaphor is a big part of In Time's oddly retro sci-fi charm. Niccol is practicing the old-school craft of making a barn-broad alternate-reality that forces you to think about the way we all consensually agree to participate in systems -- even when those systems are hopelessly screwed up.

In their best moments, Hark's action movies have a what-did-I-just-see giddiness, as if their choreography were springing straight from a cartoon id. Though I could have done without much of the film's CGI-heavy fakery, "Detective Dee" finds that giddiness more than a few times.

A terrific midnight movie of the future -- a tough, funny, fast-moving and tightly constructed John Carpenter riff in which a bickering group fights a pack of space monsters in and around a single location.

Fright Night joins "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" as proof that you actually can do this sort of thing correctly.

It's a brisk, though laugh-imbalanced, B-comedy with a hard R.

The movie is plainly entertaining, with a terrific cast and a fast-moving story helping you overlook the dialogue's frequent failure to crackle.

The movie is strongest when it stays with Bateman and Spacey, who play greatest-hits remixes of their best-loved performances.

But if it's going to be diet Pixar, at least it's action-packed diet Pixar -- with overwhelming, detail-choked production design that occasionally had my jaw lowering like a forklift.

Submarine pulls off a nice little feat: It's a reference-heavy coming-of-age indie flick that feels fresh despite being, well, a reference-heavy coming-of-age indie flick.