Matt Zoller Seitz

A very funny and observant movie, albeit squirm-inducing, with endlessly quotable dialogue.

Private Property is a terrific example of the spell that a confident film can weave by placing a handful of troubled characters in a confined location, and in the end it does feel like as much of a tragedy as a potboiler.

A solid hangout movie as well as a band-of-buddies film — genres that tend to revolve around young men. It's also a movie that deliberately blurs the line between documentary and fiction: the main characters are all real New York skaters who are playing characters who are very close to themselves in real life.

India's Daughter is a sorrowful and angry movie, yet measured. It seems determined to see a bigger picture without letting one victim's story get lost in the canvas.

There are multiple knockout supporting performances, and the film has a gift for giving you just enough of the supporting characters to fill them out in your imagination whenever Lourenço leaves their presence.

Paddington in Peru is pleasurable mainly for its just-hanging-out-with-friends vibe, which it wears with quiet grace.

If you treat Tomorrowland mainly as an immense cinematic theme park that unveils a new "ride" every few minutes—just as Bird's last feature, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" was mainly a series of action scenes—its weaker aspects won't be deal-breakers.

There's something refreshing, at times remarkable, about the sureness of the acting, and the filmmaker's touch.

This movie will be of particular interest to students who want a lively, thoughtful presentation of basic historical subjects but aren't going to get it in classrooms where the curriculum is approved by people who are mainly concerned with avoiding discomfort and preserving the status quo.

Our Nixon seems to be more interested in evoking emotional than intellectual responses.

In the Earth is a film made for midnight showings. It's ominous, brutal, pretentious, and often stirring. Even though some sections feel rushed and it falls apart at the end, every part of it is memorable.

What it definitely isn't is a biography of David Foster Wallace, much less a celebration of his work and worldview.

Hunter Gatherer doesn't look or feel like many movies being made right now.

It's all over the place, and if there was a way to unify all of its disparate elements, the filmmaker never quite figured it out. You just have to agree that it's all of a piece and accept it isn't going to settle into any one mode for very long.

Ford's voice — always deep, lowered an octave by age and one more by William's longing — is even more powerful. This is Ford's best performance since "The Fugitive," maybe since "Witness."

This is a likable, funny diversion, and sometimes more than that.

It can't quite seem to get out of its own way. It is intelligent and sensitive and assembled with a great care, and worth watching just for its images of the jungle.

The Luckiest Man in America is good follow-up viewing for “Quiz Show,” a drama about the 1950s quiz show scandals that prompted congressional investigations and led to reforms in the television industry. It’s also an example of how to make a low-budget movie that immerses you in a long-gone world and the minds of people who lived in it, while maintaining a tight geographical focus on a small number of characters.

Despite its missteps, this is Baker's best-directed film, judged purely in terms of how economically he sets up and pays off each mile marker in the story, often getting in and out of a scene with two or three elegantly choreographed but unpretentious shots.

Gabriel isn't a perfect movie, but it's a great reminder of what movies can do, and used to do often, until American movies decided to concentrate mainly on spectacle and franchise building and leave characterization to TV.

It's often said that when you're presented with conflicting accounts of an event, the one that seems most plausible is probably correct. The movie seems to align itself with that sentiment.

The film is high-strung, nervous and slightly chilly in the New York scenes, but once the action shifts to the beaches of Venice, it slows down considerably, and fittingly.

It takes prodigious comic gifts to make a loathsome, pathetic character so mesmerizing that you enjoy watching him dig himself into a hole for 90-plus minutes. Jim Cummings, the star, editor, co-writer, and co-director of The Beta Test, has those gifts.

It seems more likely that this is a film about discoveries rather than statements, with the camera following people and then abandoning them to seek insight elsewhere, by looking into things rather than merely looking at them.

Much of the film's appeal lies in watching the two lead actors enact subtle, honest moments of observed behavior.

This documentary does a fine job of capturing what made her special.

There is, nevertheless, something to be said for a documentary that tries to do something different and perhaps impossible, even if it doesn't quite get there. And in the end, any flaws or missed opportunities are subsumed by the movie's sincerity and wealth of insight.

Momoa is the best reason to see the movie. He's as alpha-cool, even jerk-ish, as a "maverick" action star can be while also making you believe his character is fundamentally decent and knows when he's gone too far and sincerely feels bad about it. And he's got range.