Moira Macdonald

Not a perfect movie, but a truly moving one.

Filmed with great respect and palpable love for its subject, Big Sonia is one of those documentaries that seems to bring its own light — just like the woman at its center.

A conventional but thoroughly entertaining film.

A rare charmer from the DC Comics universe.

Ultimately, The Room Next Door is as much about love as it is about death — not the romantic kind of love, but the sort in which two friends hold each other up (quite literally, as Martha takes Ingrid’s arm during their walks) and give each other what they need, selflessly. Its final, magical moment finds uncanny beauty in sadness.

By the end, you look at the musician’s faces — particularly Ma’s beaming smile — and find a truth: through music, we can always find our way home.

Prisoners is a dark, deeply serious examination of how loss can unhinge us; it grabs onto you, and you may have trouble shaking it away.

You get caught up in the way Tucci lets a round lamp fade into a glowing moon, or how Rush’s posture suggests a lifetime of bending over a canvas, or how a face on that canvas slowly emerges, from a forest of lines — and suddenly, time passes, and art happens.

It should have worked, and it almost does, but Black buries his characters in a sputtering, chaotic story, seeming to realize only sporadically that we aren’t watching this film for the plot and the stunts...but for the byplay between the two main characters. And — who knew? — Crowe and Gosling have comic chemistry to burn.

I found myself admiring The Bronze for its stalwart refusal to soften Hope, and for Rauch’s carefully detailed performance.... But admiring isn’t quite the same as liking. This film is a comedy wrapped in barbed wire; approach with caution.

There’s more going on here than pretty pictures: This fascinating portrait of a lady has ice and steel at its core.

It feels odd to be evaluating a dog’s performance, but Bing (the canine actor playing Apollo) definitely broke the heart of this cat person multiple times during the film. It’s a pleasure watching him and Watts connect, and to watch a film about so little and yet so very much.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 gives us a lot to look at, and Hathaway and Blunt in particular are a pleasure (they have a scene together, late in the film, that’s almost worth the ticket price right there), but it’s flat Champagne: maybe worth drinking in a pinch, but unsatisfying.

Ultimately “Pérez” seems strangely underwhelming, like a lavish party that falls just a little flat.

Cooper, carrying the movie from start to finish, has a final, devastating close-up that’ll haunt you for quite a while. Darkness has enveloped this man; he won’t wake from his own nightmare.

Like Kaling’s Molly, Late Night is immensely likable; so much so that you wish it were perfect.

It’s ultimately a gentle exploration of what we think we want from love, and how those things can change when the right person arrives. It’s also, disappointingly, about what happens in a movie when only two-thirds of the principal casting hits the mark. Materialists is a wistful near miss.

It’s not terrible, but it’s an elegantly filmed stumble.

It’s a mesmerizing story, particularly that vivid first half, told with great economy and few words.

What Bradley Cooper’s beguiling A Star Is Born is very, very good at is showing us how a song can transform a person, or a moment, and how that transformation just might make us fall in love with the person singing it, for a moment or for longer.

The familiarity is part of what makes The Dry tick along so nicely; it reminds you of other good movies even as you enjoy its own special flavor.

The likable tale of a real-life friendship, Green Book lets us spend two hours in the company of two electric actors.

It’s Hedges who owns the film, who lets us see Jared’s pain and confusion on his tightly clenched face — and who, in a gentle epilogue, gives us a lovely, wordless demonstration of freedom.

Along the way, we learn that all four actors are not only charmingly believable as friends but also brilliant at physical comedy.

Dark fare indeed, and you won’t shake it off easily.

The performances feel wonderfully lived-in, particularly Jackson’s weary, noble Doaker and Deadwyler’s brave, watchful Berniece, a widowed mother determined to make a good life for her daughter and leave the past in the past.

It’s part of the strength of Parker’s film that the current controversy doesn’t entirely overshadow its impact — and that Birth of a Nation immediately becomes part of another crucial conversation, about race.

Sometimes, a movie can just make you feel better, and that’s no small gift.

Rylance (“Bridge of Spies”) anchors it all, creating a character with unexpected layers, like a suit with an elegant silk lining you didn’t realize was there.

It’s fun to watch Samantha playing her sources like a teenager plays a video game — expertly, offhandedly — and fascinating to witness the machinations between Naomi and Erin, neither of whom ever tells the other what she’s thinking.

Take “Billy Elliot,” trade the refined world of ballet for the “soap opera in spandex” of professional wrestling, swap the preteen boy for a young woman, throw in The Rock — because every movie is better with The Rock, right? — and you’ve got Fighting With My Family, a shaggily likable underdog tale.

These characters don’t seem like types chosen from a screenwriting manual but like people we might know, with quirks and feelings and flaws and hearts.

Most of the movies from the British stop-motion wizards at Aardman Animations are pure delight, full of endlessly replayable moments and the kind of enchanting silliness that seems to transport you, however briefly, to a better world. Early Man, their latest effort, is merely good, which is to say that it’s well-crafted and enjoyable.

Angela Robinson’s fascinating and surprisingly sweet-natured film is a different sort of superhero origin story, and an appropriate bookend to this summer’s “Wonder Woman.”

Eastwood’s very good with actors, and the central trio of Richard Jewell make the film worth watching.

There’s a lovely sense, throughout the film, of how real life sometimes interrupts things, the way a child’s prattling disrupts the pretty wedding ceremony, or how even in the midst of grief breakfast must be made.

Despite a plot twist you’ll see coming all the way from Vancouver, The Wedding Banquet is a worthy successor to Ang Lee’s classic, and a chance for a group of actors to shine together and separately. There’s plenty of silliness, but also time to be moved by quiet moments.

Thank You for Your Service is a harrowing, honest and beautifully acted film about lives blown to bits and then put back together; not entirely, not immediately, but piece by tiny piece.

It’s filled with moments that click, but it just feels too big.

Though it’s fun watching Pitt swanning about in his nonchalant way — and a delight to see Kerry Condon, as a F1 technical director, finding some playful chemistry with him — this movie is entirely about the driving, and the speed.

Nyong’o’s prodigious talents are sadly wasted in this noisy, pointless movie, which never approaches the cleverness — or the genuine scariness — of the first two in the franchise.

No Time to Die has moments of pleasure, lots of them, but ultimately it feels heavy in a way a Bond movie shouldn’t; its pacing is off and it can’t quite sell the earnestness and even sentimentality of much of its storyline.

Hayek plays her role with such gentle conviction, the movie quickly becomes something else: a sort of tragedy of manners.

His name might be a punchline, but his story — and the human toll that it took — isn’t.

You leave the film knowing that you’ve met a hero, but that this remarkable man deserved more.

Nocturnal Animals is, I think, a beautiful mess, but I might have to watch it again to be sure.

The Little Stranger is a haunted-house movie, but not one with cheap scares. In fact there are few scares at all — it’s mostly just an atmosphere of lingering, musty dread — and horror-movie fans should be warned that it’s all quite subtle. But it’s haunting, in its quiet way.

We fall in love with this couple, just a bit, and want them to be together. And Hathaway and Galitzine make a charmer of a pair.

A Private Life is a murder mystery only on its surface; at its heart, it’s an exploration of a lonely woman’s extremely active mind, and an unexpectedly moving story of becoming more present in one’s real life, rather than one’s imaginary one.

As rom-coms go, it’s pretty much everything you want, even if it’s not quite distinctive enough to linger.

“Jay Kelly” is a playful movie made with palpable love for cinema and its magic.

The cast is a delight — Cola, between this film and “Joy Ride,” is officially the funniest best friend of summer 2023 — and the film has some thoughtful things to say about identity, attraction, ambition and moving on.

Diana’s a superhero without a chip on her shoulder; she was raised in love, and Gadot lets that belief shine through her eyes. You’re both drawn to this woman and in awe of her.

It’s a raunchy comedy, with a plot that ends up hinging on a very R-rated video. And, most surprising of all, it’s also a conventional and rather sweet rom-com.

Having, presumably, run out of surfaces on the ground, the mad driving crew of Furious 7 resort to backing their cars off a plane and clutching their steering wheels while driving, er, falling through thin air. Why do they do this? Because it’s fun … to watch, that is.

“Scotty” the documentary, entertaining as it is, leaves its hero’s surface mostly unscratched; his life seems a story still not fully written.

The eighth entry in the movie franchise that began in 1996 (based on a television series that began in 1966), is a competent, smart, expensive and sometimes thrilling action movie; it is also a very long one, in which we are given time to wonder whether spy/superhero/very intense runner Ethan Hunt (Cruise) ever just gets up in the morning and decides to take it easy that day.

The Gospel According to André leaves you wishing you knew a little more about this complex, elegant gentleman and his lifelong love affair with style.

There’s so much that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever does right that it’s frustrating to blame it for the one flaw it can’t help. But you watch it wondering about the movie that never got made, the story that never got finished, the life cut short too soon. Maybe, in a few years, this franchise can make a truly fresh start; this movie efficiently and skillfully lays the groundwork for that. It takes time, as wise Wakandans remind us, to move on.

History almost erased Joseph Bologne; this film lets him live again.

A mostly agreeable but empty-headed mess. It’s sort of the movie equivalent of Derek Zoolander himself.

The bottom line, for any movie that purports to be a thrill ride, is whether the end result is thrilling — and I’d give a definite yes to that.

Score, directed by Matt Schrader, breaks no new ground in the art of documentary — it’s mostly talking heads — but it’s an enjoyable walk through the art and history of the film score, with dozens of contemporary composers lending their voices.

“Salvatore” is a pleasure for anyone who loves shoes and/or good movies.

One of the great pleasures of moviegoing is seeing an actor perfectly cast, in a role that takes all of the performer’s trademarks and quirks and transforms them into something we haven’t seen before. Such a performance is at the center of Paul Feig’s sly thriller/comedy A Simple Favor, and the actor is Anna Kendrick.

The film goes on longer than it needs to, and as with so many in its genre, its director loses control by the third act. But “Blink Twice” is a promising debut that’s haunting for its performances (Ackie gives a vivid, vulnerable star turn; Tatum finds, behind his good-guy smile, an eeriness he’s never shown on-screen; Geena Davis pops up to steal a few scenes, as is her right) and for its feminist sensibility.

That’s why we watch films like this, for that sensation of safely squirming from our comfortable seats — and for performances like McAvoy’s. With a smile like a demon elf — his teeth practically seem to be vibrating — and eyes that seem to pierce the house’s malevolent darkness, he’s wickedness personified. It’s a huge, pitched-to-the-balconies performance, and shivery fun to watch.

The “Trip” movies, like the anchovies Coogan and Brydon happily devour, aren’t to everyone’s taste.... But oh, those impressions.

Fascinating.

“Turn off your brain, and let your heart do da talking,” advised Rocky, and he was right. This franchise just might go on forever, and my heart kind of hopes that it does.

Most of all, you see Roberts, who takes hold of this movie like a lamppost in the winter darkness. That huge Julia Roberts smile turns up here, but it’s haunting.

The details of the story are often fascinating (you’ll learn a lot about burger production), and the cast find plenty of moments to shine.

It’s a performance that deserves a bigger playground — but this “Mulan” is still a treat, at any size.

Anderson, who may well have been waiting her entire career for a role this rich, finds something sweet and haunting in Shelly, whose whispery voice sounds like a shadow and who sees art and value where Hannah sees tacky exploitation.

It’s the kind of documentary that might serve as a perfect introduction to Lumet’s work; when it’s done, you want to watch all of these films immediately.

If “Fast Six” is as much guilty-pleasure fun as this edition, directed within an inch of its life by Justin Lin (even the occasional subtitles are excitable), it’ll do just fine.

Love & Friendship is pure pleasure, from the lavishly precise sets and costumes to the pitch-perfect tone. It’s self-consciously mannered and merrily playful; a mixture that Austen herself might find just right.

It’s a quietly competent film and a good story, and in the overstuffed summer movie season, often that’s more than enough.

Dinklage isn’t a strong singer, but it doesn’t matter a whit: his swaggering but vulnerable Cyrano, reveling in words but aching with love, will break your heart

Much of The BFG, perhaps a little too much, is devoted to watching Sophie madly scurry away from the giants; it’s a beautifully rendered chase but still just a chase. When the movie slows down to allow Rylance and Barnhill to converse, it finds its magic.

Eddie Redmayne’s performance in “The Danish Girl” feels like it’s in soft focus; like the movie, it’s gentle and blurry and not quite there.

The movie relies rather too heavily on McAdams’ charm, sort of like a limp cheeseburger that’s saved by some really good bacon. But hey, sometimes a fast-food cheeseburger satisfies, more or less.

This Frankenstein has no shortage of horrors, but it also finds notes of forgiveness and kindness; it’s a monster movie with a soul.

What’s most appealing about Zellweger’s portrayal is the brightness that peeps out from the clouds: her deep love for her children, her sly wit.

Wonka is the kind of movie that’s full of moments of enchantment.

I don’t know about you, but this particular time in history does not seem like the moment for a movie that will leave you a) miserable and b) wondering why nobody in Gotham City seems to have heard of light bulbs. Your mileage may vary, but for me — who loved both the Tim Burton and the Christopher Nolan “Batman” universes — this one feels like an earnest but bloated misfire.

A haunting and lovely documentary.

It’s not a perfect movie, but Zendaya makes it a great pleasure.

Marshall is a handsome, old-fashioned film about a real-life hero, with a message of equality and justice that always bears repeating.

Harriet is a handsome and surprisingly quiet film, taking the time to honor the main character’s deep religious faith.

There’s room for improvement in the “Fantastic Beasts” universe; perhaps we’ll see it in the next installment or two. Meanwhile — even if you, like me, are a bit Pottered out and wish Rowling would devote herself instead to her marvelous Cormoran Strike detective-novel series (magic comes in many forms) — it’s still a pleasure to revisit the author’s world.

Mary Poppins Returns, made with palpable love for its predecessor, is glorious and gorgeous, and I adored it.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is as good as it needs to be, though like the other movies it’s probably a complete puzzlement to anyone not already familiar with the franchise, and creator/writer Julian Fellowes can’t resist having someone earnestly intone something about Things Change And We Must Change With Them every two minutes.

The chemistry between the two actors is a pleasure.

Though Wright can’t quite sustain the tension through the final half-hour, Last Night in Soho is full of dark pleasures.

The movie is full of tiny moments of delight.

The film, directed by Paul McGuigan, is basically a weepie, and it doesn’t do quite enough to show contemporary audiences why Grahame was special. But its performances make it a pleasure to watch.

Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner is so crowded with characters and overlapping conversations and crammed-full rooms that it’s easy to miss the quiet at its center: the enigma that is Gary Hart.