Michael Phillips

Without making a big deal out of it, Big Hero 6 features a shrewdly balanced and engaging group of male and female characters of various ethnic backgrounds. It'd be nice to live in a world where this wasn't worth a mention, but it is. And yet the movie belongs to the big guy.

In terms of its title, Haywire doesn't quite go there; it's more "Haywire-ish." But it's eccentric, and the on-screen violence is sharp and exciting - brutal without being either subhumanly sadistic or superhumanly ridiculous.

The chief limitation of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is an old story: However touching, Cooke's Rachel is there mainly to prop up the sweetly messed-up young male lead, and then to quietly guide him toward adulthood.

Now 94, Squibb takes care of business every minute in the enjoyable contrivance Thelma, which succeeds, sometimes in spite of itself, for reasons revealed in the first minute of writer-director Josh Margolin’s comedy.

Starts out wobbly but ends up quite nicely, primarily because Carrey has a wonderful acting partner in Zooey Deschanel.

This is straight-up commercial comedy, low-keyed diversion, and while it can't hold a candle to recent, dark-comic Israeli achievements such as Joseph Cedar's "Footnote," the actors more than save it.

Nichols has yet to make an uninteresting film; this one’s a stimulating collision of myth and realism, and keeping Comer at the core was a very smart move.

A preposterous but beautifully polished Danish thriller.

Respect runs into trouble when its own respect toward Aretha Franklin, the woman who gave us the voice of a century, settles for garden-variety adoration. But longtime stage director Liesl Tommy’s debut feature, working from a screenplay by dramatist and screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson, offers plenty of compensations amid its biopic conventions.

The jokes, mostly bitter, deadpan asides in a depiction of U.S. anti-terrorist activity as its own form of domestic terrorism, arrive just in time. The pacing’s both swift and, in proud, sour comic tradition, Swiftian.

Some of the action (and violence) in A Cat in Paris borders on the jarring, and the slam-bang finale - set atop Notre Dame Cathedral - favors bombast over wit. But getting there is a lot of fun, in part because the animators take time to make Dino a truly charismatic animal.

Danny Trejo plays Sherry's sometime lover and friend, and he's a big asset to a small, sharp film that won't be for everyone. That's a compliment.

Rich and stimulating even when it wanders.

I took the film not as any sort of design for living, or facile explanation of anything, but as a design for communicating — honestly, humanely, painfully, sometimes — for the good of whatever relationships yours happen to be.

The film ticks a lot of boxes. Underdog triumph. Showbiz triumph. Working-class heroics. Flagrant, often effective filmmaking technique, from a first-time feature writer-director, Geremy Jasper.

Jones is first-rate (and her fellow writer McCormack is fun as the wild-eyed pot dealer, Skillz). The film has a conventional fake-documentary look, but underneath it is an honest concern about how to learn to treat people well and kindly after the end. Or to get to an ending, or a new beginning, in the first place.

Hardy is remarkable, however. This is an actor with a memorably expressive rasp of a voice, both blunt and musical.

While the film's patient, moody progression into personal nightmare territory won't be for everyone, it's a genuinely evocative creation.

The movie does its duty. It's a reliable commodity, delivered efficiently and well, like pizza.

What the writing and filmmaking sometimes overdo, the actors mitigate beautifully. Benesch is a powerhouse of subtlety and focus, and the camera stays as close as possible to her watchful, at times disbelieving eyes.

The film offers plenty of good screen company along the way.

Samsara is gorgeous. And sometimes, depending on expectations, looks are enough.

The movie's fun, a lot of it having nothing to do with its specific subject.

Almost all of it works as wish-fulfillment fantasy.

It's fun! Extremely violent, cleverly managed fun, full of eviscerating aliens.

A tender and upbeat spirit informs the writing and the execution.

Like the Danny Boyle film version of "127 Hours," Wild is extremely nervous about boring its audience with its protagonist's aloneness. Still, Witherspoon and Dern are reason enough to see it.

As Cornelia's revered documentary filmmaker father, a crusty truth-teller in the Frederick Wiseman mold, Charles Grodin provides a master class in minimalism.

When the actors get their chances, Crown Heights rises above the routine.

Spielberg’s control of pacing, rhythm, action dynamics and tonal juggling is so astute that the story of Wade never quite gets lost in all the fly-by jokes and references. Sheridan’s highly skillful, as is Cooke.

Is what we see grief porn or an epic, careerlong study in the best and worst we can find on Earth? See the film and decide for yourself.

I couldn't help but feel this adaptation needed more of the thing for which Jane herself yearns: a sense of freedom. At their best, though, Wasikowska and Fassbender hint at their well-worn characters' inner lives, which are complex, unruly and impervious to time.

Even when it falters, Master Gardener speaks from a place the filmmaker has always worked, with one foot in the character-building of “slow cinema,” and the other in spasms of violence. It may be hard to buy where this movie lands. But even an unstuck landing isn’t enough to un-recommend it.

Weisz and the sharpest supporting players lift My Cousin Rachel to a higher plane. Holliday Granger as Philip's smitten family friend; Simon Russell Beale, a truly great actor, as the skeptical family solicitor; Tim Barlow, tottering around as the sublimely crusty servant: These are choice turns.

The movie itself is more of a square than a circle — straightforward and honorific, peppered with old and newer archival footage.

The movie, directed by Paul McGuigan, may be a bit tame and well-behaved for its subjects. But it’s a valentine, not a psychodrama.

Extremely raunchy, Get Him to the Greek is also very funny

Grant and Barrymore are very enjoyable together onscreen. Who would've guessed that Barrymore would turn into such a deft comedian?

With most stories, even most documentaries, survival is the happy ending — the reward for one's luck, or skill, or exceptional circumstances. Sole Survivor, Ky Dickens' nonfiction account of four sole survivors of commercial plane crashes, turns that notion on its head, exploring the depths of survivor guilt and the post-accident lives of these living exceptions to a terrible, fatal rule.

The fun of Spy comes in watching the right actors mess with their own images, blithely.

The movie at hand is small, I suppose, and it may not be enough for some audiences. It’s enough for me.

It works, even when the material’s routine, because Pugh’s forceful yet subtle characterization of a heavy-hearted killing machine with an awful childhood feels like something’s at stake. She and the reliably witty Harbour work well together.

The result is a clever, violent daydream. But McDonagh's skill behind the camera has grown considerably since "In Bruges." And the way he writes, he's able to attract the ideal actors into his garden of psychopathology.

As for Janney: Hers is a performance of such astute, subtle and compulsively watchable hamming, it’s guaranteed to win a supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Swift, sharp adaptation of Stephen King's short story (from the "Everything's Eventual" collection).

The look and sound of Duplicity is half the payoff.

Barrymore’s direction is generous to a fault, and there are times when you wish Whip It simply moved faster, on and off the track. It succeeds because of the emotional rather than comic payoffs.

"Relief" is the word for it. It's a relief to see Robert De Niro giving an honest, effective starring performance in a project that does not stink and that, in fact, rises to a respectable level of filmmaking proficiency. How long has it been?

Some films are destined for nervous laughter, with enough of a pungent aftertaste to linger. This is one of them.

Even if this sex-forward comedy-drama is slightly miscast, directorially, and always slightly favoring the male gaze, the actors are excellent.

There is, however, just enough atmospheric detail and, in the final lap, enough genuine feeling in the thorny friendships to make it worth seeing.

Gottsagen is not disabled. He has Down syndrome. He is also as able-bodied and innately appealing a screen performer as we’ve seen in 2019. Nilson and Schwartz made good on their promise to Gottsagen, and now he has returned the favor.

It’s one of his good ones. Small, modest, a little stodgy. But good, and even a little brave in its courtroom-drama willingness to dunk the audience in the main character’s soup of anxiety almost immediately.

Keeps you interested in its characters and isn’t afraid of complicating your sympathies a little. In these dog-day months for romantic comedy, that means a lot.

Deadpool 2 is just like “Deadpool” only more so. It’s actually a fair bit better — funnier, more inventive than the 2016 smash...and more consistent in its chosen tone and style: ultraviolent screwball comedy.

He's the anti-Michael Bay, the un-Roland Emmerich. No fake-documentary "realism" here; Soderbergh values the silence before the storm, or a hushed two-person encounter in which one or both parties are concealing something.

As interesting, certainly, as “American Gangster,” and operating with a truer street sense of the characters involved.

Souza comes off as a genuine and genuinely humble talent. There is, however, an element of intentional or inadvertent image-packaging that goes with any White House photographer’s beat. One wishes Souza were heard on the subject of the fine, tricky line between reportorial authenticity and visual flattery.

I found most of what's actually put forth in the film interpretively ridiculous. But I'm just one theorist among millions, and the film worked for me anyway.

Whole sections of “Godzilla X Kong” shove the humans off-screen for many minutes at a time. Few will complain.

The events are complicated, though not complicated by cheap thrills or easy politics. It's a film of interest rather than throttling suspense. By the end, however, when Bachmann's future depends on a very simple nonviolent series of events, Corbijn's methodical approach pays off. And we care. We care about the protagonist's outcome.

Director John Carroll Lynch’s quietly assured directorial feature debut works from a simple, homey script by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja, and Lucky feels like the work of Stanton’s friends, which it is.

Guaranteed to make you think twice about what you're paying for what you're drinking.

He could dance brilliantly right up to the end, it’s clear.This Is It may be a court documentary, but as a heavily lawyered portrait of an artist, it’s still pretty compelling.

It is good. Not great. But far better than "not bad." Solidly, confidently good.

What the film has is visual authority and an eye for composition.

Parsons has some sharp, truthful moments, but his demeanor lacks the world-weary authority as written. (His zingers have lost a lot of their zing, it must be said.) Everyone else is wonderful, and the limitations of Parsons and Quinto, in the end, are just that — limitations of often effective work.

While I wish van Heijningen's Thing weren't quite so in lust with the '82 model, it works because it respects that basic premise. And it exhibits a little patience, doling out its ickiest, nastiest moments in ways that make them stick.

There is a good deal of honest charm in this story, and in the three principal performances.

Director Reginald Hudlin’s Sidney was made with the full and keenly interested cooperation of the Poitier family, following a template of access many documentaries favor or, in some cases, settle for. This is one of the good ones.

A satisfying and movingly acted story.

The result is both a success and a disappointment. It's Kind of a Funny Story, divided into neat little daylong chapters in Craig's stay, lacks the staying power and bittersweet layering of "Half Nelson" and "Sugar."

Some of the dialogue is on the clunky side; much of it comes straight (or nearly) from Lord’s memoir; and Hammer has yet to find a fully easy-breathing way of behaving naturally on screen. Rush, by contrast, has so much fun with Giacometti’s tetchy, restless qualities, you don’t always buy the “tortured” part.Yet Rush is such a formidable technician, he creates a Giacometti of substance both real and theatrical.

Slick, ice-cold and enjoyable, The Bank Job is a bit of all right.

Enough talk; enough flashbacks. Sometimes the best thing a mystery can do is give its protagonist a reason to run like hell.

Scott Thomas can play these sorts of ice queens in her sleep, but I've long thought she's a more effective and nuanced performer in French-language projects than in English-language ones. The performance is laced with just enough wit to make it sting.

It's an odd film in some ways. The porn milieu is detailed in ways at once sparing, in terms of actual screen time, and bluntly explicit. The odd-couple relationship guiding the story has its familiarities. But where it counts, 'Starlet' ... allows its characters room to maneuver within the potential cliches.

Genuinely odd in its mixture of bluntness and indirection, screenwriter Angus MacLachlan's study in biblical temptation is saved from its own heavy-handedness by a fine quartet of actors.

One can’t help but wonder if Ephron would’ve been better off focusing exclusively on Child: She’s simply more interesting screen company.

This is not a raucous family takedown; nor is Karam’s tale a matter of artificial family conflicts, tidily resolved. The Humans gets a lot done in a short amount of time, in a single, two-level setting, plus a few fraught intimations of what’s down the hall or around the corner.

So who’s up for a strange, disarming musical? As much as I hated the first one, this one works for me.

For material that started out for the stage, Finley’s directorial debut really does feel like a movie. It’s elegant and well-plotted but not at the expense of the performances.

I enjoyed it as much as any Allen film of the last 20 years.

The way Diary of the Dead chooses to deliver its gore, you know you’re in the hands of a grown-up uninterested in the excesses of the “Saw” or “Hostel” pictures. I mean, there’s gore, sure, and flesh gets eaten. But the way Romero shoots and cuts the shot of a girl’s reunion with her parents, one dead, one undead, it’s played for keeps--the right kind of gross, with a touch of mournful gravity.

This movie comes at you with an idea or two, as well as every available gun blazing.

Saoirse Ronan does subtly spectacular work in every phase of this character’s odyssey.

I do wish Felicity Jones’ character popped the way Daisy Ridley’s did in last year’s franchise offering. “The Force Awakens,” directed by J.J. Abrams, was smooth, consistent, even-toned, nostalgic. Rogue One zigzags, and it’s more willfully jarring. Yet it takes time for callbacks and shout-outs to characters we’ve seen before, and we’ll see again. And again. And again.

The story is a lot harder on its female protagonist than the 2000 film was on its male equivalent. This makes a depressing amount of sense, given what women are up against in most workplaces. Henson’s Ali plays both the dramatic encounters and the slapstick opportunities for higher stakes than Gibson ever did.

At times, Limbo can feel confining in ways that exceed the confining circumstances of its characters. But the story of Omar deepens and amplifies the film’s second half, maintaining its droll amusements but playing the circumstances for just enough bittersweet honesty to make it stick.

Here’s the surprise: Bandslam may come from synthetic materials, but the characters are a little more complicated than usual.

The visual personality of the movie is fantastically vivid and bright, the story itself, less so.

At its best Jason Bourne crackles with professionalism; at its worst, it's rehashing greatest hits (as in, "assassinations") from earlier films, with a lavish budget.

As Kay and Arnold struggle to reconnect, Hope Springs stays close to the task at hand. The characters aren't fabulously dimensional, but the actors are.

Most of the stuff that's new in the new Sparkle, written by Mara Brock Akil (who is married to the director), is shrewd and cleverly considered. The stuff that's old is what people responded to back in '76.

Recently making its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Wild Robot already has been pumped up into the contradictory “instant classic” stratosphere. I understand the enthusiasm, or most of it, I guess, especially given the mellow, less photorealistic, more painterly visual landscapes, and Sanders’ assured tear-duct massage technique.

Director Jon Favreau's voice cast for the animals is tiptop.

The climax of “Final Reckoning” is likewise impressive and scenic, but paced and edited less for the good of the overall movie and more for risk-verification purposes. That said, this franchise has class.

What works about ParaNorman is its subtle interweave of the stoical and the heroic. The voice work is inspired, without a lot of theatrical flourish. The low-key musical score by Jon Brion, one of the year's best, teases out the macabre humor in each new challenge faced by Norman.

Ideally, with Roe about to be erased from the books, The Janes would land on a more complex note of imminent, controversial change afoot. Small matters. It’s a very fine film

The acting is uniformly strong, the visual approach self-effacingly honest.

In the end, all these young women want is a foothold on life, a little less humiliation and some physical intimacy. If that makes Bottoms snarky on the outside but conventionally heartfelt on the inside, well, that’s fine, actually.

The runaway train thriller Unstoppable is one of Tony Scott's better films.

The movie has a sense of humor, but its sense of dread, micro and macro, overrules it.

The film’s half-real, half-fantasy treatment of a fact-based story is almost really good. But “good enough” is good enough, thanks mostly to Jennifer Lopez dining out on her best role in years. She’s terrific.

In the best possible way, Reeder has returned throughout her career to stories and characters rooted in trauma, while expanding the fantasy/reality boundaries of her narratives. This is her best realized work so far.

While I hope Perkins doesn’t lean into jokey sadism as a dominant creative impulse — we have too many jokey sadists with movie deals as is — The Monkey asserts his stealth versatility as well as his confident technique.

If a Warner Bros. social-protest film from the early 1930s somehow got into bed with an American indie from the 1970s, how would the love-child turn out? Like this.

The Dawn Treader doesn't so much reinvent the "Narnia" franchise as do what's needed, and expected, with a little more zip than the previous voyages.

It’s essentially the Hotel Earle from “Barton Fink,” augmented by the latest in robotic surgical techniques for bullet extraction.

Things We Lost in the Fire finds Bier at an interesting juncture, half-Dogmatic, half traditionalist.

Yet it's worth seeing because the sights are truly something. Claudio Miranda's pearly cinematography, Donald Graham Burt's luscious production design, the visual effects supervised by Eric Barba--everything blends, and none of the seams show.

I liked a lot of writer-director Jeff Baena's picture; it may be a one-joke movie, but I've seen comedies recently that would've killed for that many.

Amid so many earnest, forgettable COVID-era and COVID-acknowledging movies around the world, here’s one that truly goes for it.

Many will find DaCosta’s take on the story didactic, I suppose, or low on genre payoffs. I’m eager to see it a second time, flaws and all. It’s alive and awake to where we are now.

Malick is a true searcher, true to his preoccupations and definitions of soulful rhapsody. To the Wonder repeats its central motifs aplenty, yet you may find yourself thinking about life, and living, and love, while sorting through the movie. Even if it drives you nertz.

If there’s anything rarer than a film about money that truly makes us think, it’s a film about politics that makes us feel like there’s something to it beyond money, and luck.

It's an entertaining picture — pulp, coming from a place of righteous indignation.

Even when Shanks hits the primary theme of his movie a little too insistently, the actors are vivid throughout. Brie, especially, is spectacularly effective in every emotional register, in the keys of D (Distress), E (Eh what’s going on with our suction-lips?) and C (Commitment is all).

The film favors more subtly melancholy strains and, at its best, a poetic touch.

Super/Man should introduce many people, young and older, to a fine actor’s work and, more importantly, to what Reeve accomplished for himself and so many others in the life he was dealt.

Uneven but rollicking, The Pirates! has a personality to call its own.

Southside with You is best taken as a reminder of the value of the slow relational build, of taking your time and actually talking, and actually listening, with someone new. Even if there's not a staggering political future in your shared future.

Spiritual journeys, even if they’re comedies, don’t really lend themselves to the extreme, anal-retentive formalism found in every frame of The Darjeeling Limited.

Dreamgirls is performed, shot, edited and packaged like a coming-attractions trailer for itself. Ordinarily that would be enough to sink a film straight off, unless you're a fan of "Moulin Rouge." But this one's a good time.

Too often Coco mistakes chaos and calamity for comedy, and it’s a little perverse to prevent this particular story from becoming a full-on animated musical.

At its best, Hobbit 2, which carries the subtitle The Desolation of Smaug, invites comparisons to Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" threesome.

Whatever the film's limitations, it's certainly engaging to watch. As is Mohamed Fellag, as Lazhar.

Some of Cregger’s swings between straight-up horror, missing children mystery and deliriously gory comedy may lead to mass audience whiplash. But it’s pretty gripping, fiercely well-acted and — paradoxically, given its devotion to pitch-black cold creeps — one of the bright lights of a generally disappointing movie summer.

Despite the familiarity of its themes — the bottom-feeding news media; the pathology born of extreme isolation and a little too much online time; the American can-do spirit, perverted into something poisonous — Gilroy's clever, skeezy little noir is worth a prowl.

The film basically and improbably works, even with some limitations.

A knockout one minute, a punch-drunk crazy film the next, Interstellar is a highly stimulating mess. Emotionally it's also a mess, and that's what makes it worth its 165 minutes — minutes made possible by co-writer and director Christopher Nolan's prior global success with his brooding, increasingly nasty "Batman" films, and with the commercially viable head-trip that was "Inception."

It’s half-crock and half-sublime, which seems about right for its subject.

The results offer a collective shiver (not a lot of shrieks here) for those in the mood for sprightly, short-form misfortune.

At its best, it's buoyant pop entertainment focused on three things: speed, racing and retina-splitting oceans of digitally captured color.

Director Hancock knows a few things about directing crowd-pleasing heartwarmers, having made "The Blind Side." This one wouldn't work without Thompson.

It moves with confidence; it’s vivid; it pulls off a riskier, full-on musical fantasy version of one pop superstar’s story.

Rock takes his Good Hair job as a documentarian seriously enough to be interesting, but not so seriously that the film groans with earnestness.

The actors, remarkable and seasoned, take care of their end of things, stylishly and (when and where it can be arranged) truthfully.

The film itself, fond and intriguing, is by no means a hard-charging confrontation. Rather, Lewins' film is an affectionate series of memories, as recalled by Ali's family and associates.

Certain things get fudged in The Founder, among them Kroc's middle marriage, and director Hancock can't completely resolve the warring strains in what he sees as Kroc's personality. But that's what gives the movie its tension, and it works.

At its best, Wright's film is raucous, impudent entertainment.

Big Miracle tells its sort-of-true version of events in a democratic and humane fashion, by way of a rangy, lively group of competing interests who actually do on occasion act like real people.

It's best to approach this crafty, intriguing offshoot as its own thing. And this time you actually notice the people.

As composite sketches go, it's a good one.

Parts of Pride are shamelessly escapist, as when party-mad Jonathan (Dominic West) busts loose with a disco routine, surely the most outre thing ever to hit Onllwyn. But nearly all of it's engaging.

The film is a river of pain, weirdly funny in places, as are all of Herzog's filmic essays.

The funky, enjoyable Hamburg-set comedy Soul Kitchen is a celebration of co-writer-director Fatih Akin's home base, a spacious, moody city of apparently limitless industrial warehouse space - like Chicago.

Monsters is a sharp little low-fi monster movie operating from a tantalizing premise.

Wan is a humane sort of sadist. His latest offers little that's new, but the movie's finesse is something even non-horror fans can appreciate.

Some of it's schematic and on the nose. But the grace notes are what make 50/50 better than simply "good enough."

This movie's good. It's fast, deftly paced and funny.

The movie operates with a nicely unpredictable rhythm, both short and longer shots ending abruptly, sometimes comically, popping us into the next one.

Visually here’s the crucial thing with Ant-Man and the Wasp, and it sounds like a small thing, but really it’s a big thing: The sequel has upped the instances and exploits of the rapidly changing superheroes, and every time the movie cuts to a shot of the heroes’ miniaturized car, scooting around the streets of San Francisco, it’s good for a laugh.

The film is worth seeing, if you have any fondness for the writer who co-created "Beyond the Fringe" and who is second only to Stoppard in his sprightly but mellow wit.

The script embraces certain character archetypes wholeheartedly (pig-headed crew mate; ramrod-stiff officer) and not always successfully. Yet the tone, the mood of the picture, with its desaturated color palette, maintains the right atmosphere.

As written, “Rustin” does a pretty good job of making the (re-)introductions. As acted, the movie transcends pretty-good.

From director Ken Loach, England's longtime disciple of social realism, comes his most audience-friendly picture yet

The depiction of Havana neither sugarcoats nor grunges-up the harsh reality. The movement intoxicates, but the situations are tough.

Gere remains a unique camera object, with a stunning mastery of filling a close-up with an unblinking stillness conveying feelings easier left behind.

This one’s good! Also supergory, merrily heartless in its body count and its methods of slaughter. And funny.

But Hanks, especially, keeps the trolley on the rails, and everything Heller is after in this film comes together in a remarkable final shot depicting Rogers alone in the TV studio, having made another friend.

A surprisingly heartfelt father/son relationship, handled with restraint by director Todd Holland.

The clever and nicely gory Sputnik comes from Russia with love, slime, and an impressive lesson in efficient, low-cost pulp filmmaking.

Mountains does what it sets out to do with grace, and a sure instinct for music, color, faces and moments of decision regarding where we’ve come.

In the end it depicts its subject as lost, and pitiable--like Richard Nixon, but more a pawn than a dark knight.

The new film A Private War ranks higher than most, in the truth department and in cinematic storytelling. Whatever your personal interest or disinterest in Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin’s line of work, the way she did it — and the bloody global conflicts she ran towards, full gallop — makes for a tense, engrossing account.

Director Morelli and editor Daniel Rezende know how to set up complex lines of action and keep the screws tight.

The film’s peculiar, lingering pathos do not depend on any sort of strict genre definition. The effectiveness depends on caring about the people in the bar, waiting for last call.

Some will take it and like it, all the way to the heart of darkness. Others may feel they've been jacked with, manipulated. Villeneuve collaborates with unusual sensitivity with his actors. The script operates on one level; the interpreters on another, higher level.

Unlike “Creed II,” which had little visual distinction and a storyline forgettable enough to send me straight to Wikipedia for a refresher, Creed III tries a few things. And it showcases two charismatic stars who are also genuine, ambitious actors.

Uncommonly good ensemble storytelling.

As with the series, the best scenes here remain slightly off-plot yet wholly on-target and devoted to the characters as well as matters of corrupted, corrosive character.

Rye Lane celebrates Black romantic adventure, simply by finding new avenues (literal and figurative) to explore. Director Allen-Miller works extensively in commercials, and it shows, but her compositional eye is very effective.

Enjoy the love in your life, and don't squander it: That's all Curtis is selling here, really. With Gleeson and McAdams at the forefront, About Time has a beguiling pair of rom-com miracle workers helping him close the sale.

The movie’s a rom-com at heart, but there is no other one like it.

The movie is small, but the actors make it seem larger, like binoculars turned around the right way.

The movie’s full of acidic wisecracks and zingers, though its attempts to be funny aren’t really funny. I found Paul Stewart, who dates back to Welles’ “Mercury Theater of the Air” days, to be the strongest human presence in this ghostly affair.

In the scenes between mother and daughter in their apartment, the world outside no longer judging every action, new worlds open up. And therein lies the cinema's role in our lives: It reveals what is concealed to others.

The best of Molly’s Game, however, is more on the “Social Network” level, edgy and rhythmic. This is Sorkin’s feature directorial debut, and I’m happy to say it doesn’t look that way.

Less polished but more fun than "Dreamgirls." Both are drag revues at heart, one funny, the other serious. I prefer the funny one.

Call The Grey "Deliverance" Lite, with snow, and wolves. And call it a solid January surprise.

At its sharpest Elissa Down's feature directorial debut is guided by intense, rough-edged emotional swings that feel authentically alive, even when the script settles for tidiness.

If older kids and adults seek out this picture, which 20th Century Fox and Walden Media clearly aren't sure how to sell, they may well find themselves drawn into a subterranean world of considerable imagination.

Emily the Criminal delves only so far into character on the page, but working from what writer-director Ford gives her, Plaza creates a woman defined by incremental degrees of economic stress and simmering resolve.

Sicario doesn't fall apart in its second half, exactly, but it does settle for less than it should.

It has the air of an officially sanctioned tribute rather than a probing study, but it's stirring all the same.

The changes really help. The fleshed-out central romance, the performances of Halle Bailey (Ariel, the mermaid, with songs belted like nobody’s business) and, as her Above World love Prince Eric, Jonah Hauer-King — it all basically works.

Rhythmically Crimes of the Future maintains a rigorous sense of calm throughout, which can get a little pokey in some scenes. But Mortensen, Seydoux and especially Stewart invest fully, so some of us, anyway, can too.

It’s fun. In various ways, some better than others, you can tell the film was made by people who weren’t mapping out their entire careers to lead to the big moment when they tackle a Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.

Some movies pack such a terrific central idea, even their flaws can’t stop the train. District 9 is one of them.

I found it coldly gripping, as well as a mite ham-fisted. At its best, this vision of American end times, an election or two from now, sets aside its less persuasive “tell” for more persuasive “show,” without generic spectacle (though with a $50 million production budget, it’s Garland’s and distributor A24’s biggest gamble to date) or diversionary thrills.

This is a violent film. It's rougher, in fact, than "The Hunger Games."

It never should've been OK'd in the first place and never should've gotten past the first day. This has a mixed effect on the movie itself, which inevitably fights against its own sense of dulled outrage and methodical role-playing. But it's pretty gripping all the same.

It's a lot of fun. Its spirit is genuine and, even with the odd vomit gag, fundamentally sweet.

Anything made well in advance of the pandemic feels like a weird period piece these days, of course, yet Jury’s small, affecting picture fits snugly within the pandemic realities of 2020.

As bittersweet farewells go, this one’s quite good.

A lot of director George Miller's film is gorgeous and exciting. Its craftsmanship and ambition put it a continent ahead of nearly every other animated feature of the last couple of years.

The games have begun, and so far they're pretty gripping.

May have a dull title, but it's lively, idiotic fun, at least until it goes too far past "too far" into the realm of "far too far."

Is the movie fun? Well, Furiosa’s story doesn’t really welcome that word. It’s gripping, even when it’s a bit of a trudge. Miller’s a visual genius. And a pile-driver. He’s also an adult, with a mature master filmmaker’s sensibility and serious intentions to go with his eternal-adolescent love of speed and noise.

The core human/bear connection is treated with respect. Pooh’s wisdom and kindness cannot be denied. The same impulses worked for the two “Paddington” movies, God knows. Christopher Robin isn’t quite in their league, but it’s affecting nonetheless.

Cutler’s documentary skip-walks a fine line between a great, unstable talent’s rise and fall, and between the un-tender trap of addiction and the joyous energy of a Chicago-bred giant.

Meryl Streep excels as Margaret Thatcher. And the movie itself does not work.

It’s the junky, janky mid-winter Liam Neeson thriller we used to get with that first flip of the calendar, only this one stars Gerard Butler, and is directed by Jean-Francois Richet, whose two-part gangster biopic “Mesrine” was pretty juicy. This one’s more pulp than juice, but it’s enjoyable.

It’s a hearty stew of influences and rewards and, yes, some gristle.

For what it is - recessionary wish-fulfillment escapism, with a lot of highly skilled familiar faces in its amply qualified cast - it's fun.

The theater building is a four-story monster, and by the end of the picture we know it very well, in all its broken-down glory.

A lot of people have no use for Carnage, especially in its unapologetically hemmed-in film version. And yet there isn't a sloppily or casually considered shot in any of the 80 minutes.

When the actors are in cars, the movie's fun. When they get out to argue, or seethe, it's uh-oh time. Happily, director Scott Waugh comes out of the stunt world himself, and there's a refreshing emphasis on actual, theoretically dangerous stunt driving over digital absurdities.

Martin's a smooth enough director to make fuller and more ambitious pictures than Dean. This one's a promising start.

I enjoyed large chunks of San Andreas, largely because the actors give it a full load of sincerity, and there's some bizarrely effective comic relief thanks to Hugo Johnstone-Burt and Art Parkinson as Brits who picked the wrong week to visit the Bay Area.

Affleck, in particular, finds something fierce and noble in uneven material and in his character's rage. He's not like any other actor in American movies.

Despite my McConaughey resistance I got more guilty chuckles from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past than "Failure to Launch" or "Four Christmases."

The Eagle becomes more interesting the further north it travels.

Cody would likely acknowledge she's working through her own contradictory feelings toward her protagonist - and that she may have been a draft or two away from shaping those feelings into a terrific black comedy, rather than a pretty interesting one.

This one may be soft and derivative. But the actors establish a groove and stay on-message.

50 percent good and 50 percent close.

This is almost entirely Angelina Jolie's show...this is a performance that goes from point A to point B without seeming rote, or ho-hum.

It's the knockabout biblical lark Mel Brooks never got around to making.

If Chi-Raq disarms even a small percentage of those who see it, and provokes any reflection about a gun culture, the uses of satire and the plight of a sadly emblematic city, it was worth the effort. However mixed-up the results.

Neither fish nor fowl, neither foul nor inspiring, director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky's strange and often rich new movie Noah has enough actual filmmaking to its name to deserve better handling than a plainly nervous Paramount Pictures has given it.

Sloppy, grimy but quick on its feet, which puts it ahead of certain other (“The Hangover”) R-rated comedies (“The Hangover”) we’ve seen this summer (“The Hangover”).

What’s missing is the vital emotional turbulence of Sciamma’s modern classic, or of any three-dimensional story of passion and feeling. The compensations here are smaller, but they’re welcome, too; they’re more about two fine actresses digging for what’s underneath the obvious contours.

The Great Buster, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich’s fond if slight appreciation of Buster Keaton, serves as the centerpiece of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s weeklong “Best of Buster” mini-retrospective starting Friday.

The script is corny and cliched and goes the way you expect it to go. But those things never stopped any movie from working with an audience.

However freely fictionalized, I like my docudramas with as much moral complication and human shading as filmmakers can provide. Years from now, it’d be wonderful to look back at something more than good actors, with or without wizardly prosthetics, taking our mind off what’s not quite right with the stories at hand.

Red starts repeating itself and spinning its wheels and looking for an ending, well before the ending arrives. The actors have considerable fun with it, though.

Betzer's title suggests a hardy spirit and the resilience of childhood; the story, which unfolds in elliptical but often intriguing chapters, indicates the healing might be a little more complicated and difficult.

It's a procedural, often absorbing, rarely surprising, about a briefcase bomb and a near-miss. Yet there's no question the film feels dodgy and vague when it comes to the personalities and ideology of the men onscreen.

Jackie Chan co-stars in Morita's old role of the humble maintenance man who coaches the Bullied One. The older Chan gets, the simpler and truer he becomes as a performer.

It’s a sidewinding but often effective L.A. crime thriller saddled with the wrong leading man.

For the film to be truer to the school’s reputation, it would have had to dig a little deeper.

Much like Bonello’s previous film, “Yves Saint Laurent,” Nocturama revels in pure experience. But the sum total of its gliding abstractions is a mite brainless.

Arnold's interpretation is taciturn, often entirely without dialogue, though it becomes increasingly conventional in its scene structure as it goes and as the actors hand off the key roles. In reality it's a bit of a slog. ... The movie plays like an idea for a 'Wuthering Heights' adaptation.

At its mean, snakelike best, it’s also a brutally assured commercial action picture, unburdened by the moral qualms or unnerving ambiguity of its predecessor.

It's well-crafted, but I wish the film showed us an additional dimension or two of the central figure, who once said the great challenge in writing, any kind of writing, is "to write the same way you are."

I liked Death on the Nile a fair bit more than Branagh’s previous Christie film, partly because it’s a less predictable and schematic narrative to begin with, and partly because Branagh the actor has a way of outfoxing his own pedestrian direction.

Vince Vaughn, plainly enjoying himself, plays his casually astonished sergeant, who encourages hazing and beatings of Doss.

By the end, the movie has become a shameless and, yes, effective ode to fathers and sons everywhere.

Katyn will not join Wajda's list of masterworks. In its final flashback, however, when we're taken back to the forest and the details of what really happened, we see what we must see, the clear-eyed way we should see it.

Based on Glenn Stout’s nonfiction account of the same title, “Young Woman and the Sea” gets by on the careful engineering of clichés, Daisy Ridley and a really good piece of irresistibly rousing history.

Many, I suspect, will fall for The Prestige and its blend of one-upsmanship and science fiction. I prefer "The Illusionist," the movie that got here first.

You know what’s not bad? Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Dumber than a box of lugnuts, but superior to the Michael Bay-directed schlocktaculars that ran as long as 165 minutes. The new “Transformers” movie clocks in at 117 minutes, a lot of them pretty zippy.

Rightly, Jolie didn't want to tell the man's entire life story. But as is, at too-convenient dramatic junctures, the screenplay darts back into flashbacks of Zamperini's childhood or young adulthood, when we should really be sticking with the crisis at hand.

Stupid, predictable and fairly funny.

To be clear: The odds are in favor of you hating it. I hated a lot of it when I saw a barely dry work-in-progress print, 163 minutes long, at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s 19 minutes shorter and better now, though “better” is relative when you’re dealing with a whatzahoozy such as this.

While I wish the story and the banter had some snap (Groot had better dialogue, speaking of Vin Diesel movies), and while I wish the electromagnet-derived mayhem in F9 led to a truly magnetic movie, sometimes good enough is enough.

The beauty of the film is undeniable, as is the cruelty of the bull's lives. (This is not a picture for animal-sensitive viewers.)

I admire this film’s craft. And I would’ve appreciated a messier, inner-life impulse to go with it.

Caine and Law may not be playing human beings, but Pinter’s sense of humor is at least more interesting than Shaffer’s. Caine in particular appears to enjoy honing his cold-eyed stare.

It's easy to watch.

The cast's newcomers mix and mingle with ease with the hardened alums of Disney and Nickelodeon TV series.

I found the first 30 minutes of Wreck-It Ralph a lot of fun, the second and third 30 minutes progressively more routine.

It's less a western than a loping buddy picture.

This should've been a really good picture, especially with Hillcoat's crack ensemble. Instead it's a stilted battle waged between the material and the interpreters. It's up to you, the thirsty customer, to decide who won.

Smile 2 goes in a newish direction, to frustrating mixed results — but it’s a mixed bag you can respect because it’s not hackwork and it’s trying new things.

It’s a grubby, fairly intriguing genre exercise given a weird, did-it-myself-in-a-hurry visual quality.

For the record: Josh Duhamel brings some welcome exuberance to the role of the goofball suitor, Hobart. Like Oh, he's fun to watch. This is something never to be underestimated

A roughly mixed but interestingly plotted offshoot of "Death of a Salesman."

Directed, frantically, by Jaume Collet-Serra, written by Brad Ingelsby, Run All Night promises a sprint punctuated by a lot of gunfire, and bleeding, and bodies. Mission accomplished.

It’s a moderately diverting sequel. That means it’s also a distinct drop down from the 2017 origin story.

The results fall short of the grown-up comedy about seven-year itches it could've been, asking the Hamlet-like question: to scratch or not to scratch?

At its spiky, intermittent best, Tully is the best work Cody has done in the conventional feature format since “Juno.” And yet I’m all over the place on it.

The film's occasional toe-dips into real-world politics, sectarian conflict and the horrors of war are demure and unruffling. What's missing is a point of view beyond Hallstrom's interest in making his actors look as attractive as possible.

The material settles for amiably familiar observations about the difficulties of growing old and the glories of being surrounded by beautiful music.

A grim and fairly effective cross between "The Martian" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"?

Fairly inventive and exceedingly manic.

If the romantic comedy Morning Glory clicks with audiences, the McAdams factor surely will be the reason why.

The best thing about the film is Viggo Mortensen’s performance. A stealth talent of many shadings, Mortensen has a way of fitting easily into nearly any period, any milieu.

As is, it's worth seeing, but you may get frustrated at the way Dellal raises provocative questions about ancestry and prejudice, only to lose them in the shuffle of so many mini-portraits of musicians, getting to know each other and each other's foreign yet familiar musical language, on a long 16-city tour.

It's fun to see that charming underreactor Neve Campbell, looking about 20 minutes older, back as Sidney Prescott.