Moira Macdonald

I’ll admit to a weakness for this sort of thing (which Merchant-Ivory, a couple of decades back, made into elegant art), but even I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for this one, a tepid love triangle set in the Ottoman Empire in the early days of World War I.

Kong: Skull Island won’t win any points for the brilliance of its writing (or for the way it reduces a terrific actor like Larson to a personality-free camera-clicker) — but oh, that ape

Even Deutch’s charming radiance (she never entirely sells Sam’s nasty side) can’t quite get us through the slog of this plot.

The chemistry between the two actors is a pleasure.

Get Out will scare you, make you laugh and perhaps make you uncomfortable. It’s supposed to.

The Red Turtle doesn’t answer the questions it raises, but it doesn’t need to; it’s about moonlight on the water, a hand held out to another, and the way a wave, rippling onto a shore, leaves no trace of its brief life.

If Verbinski could have trimmed about an hour from the film (which weighs in at a portly 146 minutes), he might have had something.

It’s not a terribly good idea to base a movie on a book in which almost nothing happens for 500 pages, but that’s what we have here.

You sense that a lot of the funniest stuff is flying by too quickly to land.

It’s not a biopic, but I Am Not Your Negro leaves you wanting to know and read more of Baldwin, to experience the language that pours from this film like a fiery balm.

Every scene in this film, which stars Robert De Niro as the washed-up title character, is dragged out — kicking and screaming — far longer than it needs to be.

A haunting and lovely documentary.

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.

The drama of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women takes place in Annette Bening’s masterful pauses.

You can see why McAvoy was drawn to the role — it’s as if he’s playing every character in a very populated if not particularly well-scripted play — and he demonstrates a shellacked creepiness that’s effective. But Shyamalan can’t find much else that’s new or appealing in this overlong girls-in-peril exercise.

Older audiences braced for tragedy may be drawn to its imaginative visuals — the stories told by the monster are rendered in delicate, painterly animation — and to the achingly vulnerable, growing-up-too-fast boy at its center.

Feels utterly fresh for our times.

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.

Though every performance is splendid, it’s Washington and Davis who create a mesmerizing symphony of emotion, finding both love and tragedy in every look, every line.

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

There are several ways you can watch Elle, only one of which is mildly enjoyable.

It’s hard to get too excited about Sing, which takes a bit too long to travel its familiar path, but it’s also quite impossible to dislike it.

Passengers turns out to be a very strange journey indeed; here’s hoping these two team up again, in something more worthy of them.

Collateral Beauty is a pretty terrible movie, but it left me with one overarching thought: My life, and surely yours, too, would be vastly improved if only Helen Mirren were perpetually lurking nearby, offering advice.

Jackie is mesmerizing; a familiar story told from an entirely different angle. It’s voyeuristic, to be sure — the scenes of Jackie alone in her White House bedroom, after the shooting, feel almost unbearably intimate — but you can’t look away.

Like a gift from the movie gods, here comes Damien Chazelle’s dreamy La La Land, right when a lot of us are in desperate need of some light. It’s a valentine to cinema, splashed with primary colors and velvety L.A. sunsets.

It’s fun to spend time with these performers, but you wish they were invited to a better party.

Every Manchester scene gives you a sense of the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, where it’s bitter cold but nobody makes too much of it, where the past stays with you whether you want it to or not. This is a movie that pays careful attention to details.

Allied runs out of steam before its overwrought ending. It’s as if the film, struggling under the weight of the classic epics it recalls, just gives up.

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

Malick, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and the cast create a mood that lifts the viewer through the occasional head-scratching moments and into a place of serenity, where answers somehow seem in reach.

It’s a film about heroism and the right to love, told without stirring speeches. Instead, it unfolds movingly in the tiny moments between Richard and Mildred.

The Edge of Seventeen, in its R-rated way (booze and sex play supporting roles), is a sweetheart — just like Erwin.

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.

So much of the pleasure of Denis Villeneuve’s poignant science-fiction drama Arrival lies in watching Amy Adams figure things out.

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.

So much of Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s disturbing drama set in the world of law enforcement and Mexican drug cartels (the title is the Mexican term for a hit man), takes place on Emily Blunt’s face.

It’s Hall’s performance that jolts Christine, carrying the movie on her slumped shoulders.

Barry Jenkins’ beautiful Moonlight seems to have more in common with poetry than with a typical narrative film. It’s less a story than a collection of moments, which leaves its viewer feeling moved and changed, as if you’ve spent time in someone else’s dreams and woke up understanding who they are.

It’s an unfinished story, which leaves Dancer slightly unsatisfying, as if we’re abandoning a book mid-chapter. But what a pleasure to wallow in the talent of a ballet rock star — and to watch a troubled young man find peace in a split-second of perfection.

You have, I promise, never seen a movie quite like Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. It’s a period drama gone mad; a lavishly colorful, beautifully-filmed-erotic-revenge-crime thriller set in 1930s Korea.

12 Years a Slave isn’t easy to watch, and it shouldn’t be; it’s one man’s tragedy, but it’s also the tragedy of countless thousands of souls beaten down, literally and metaphorically.

On this wintry landscape, with its endless plains and biting wind, it seems as if everyone — even the quietest — has a story, if you take the time to listen to it.

Ultimately Denial works, thanks to its strong cast — particularly Spall, who gives Irving a slightly mad gleefulness, and Weisz, whose smart, tough Deborah chafes against the quiet acquiescence expected of her.

Girl on the Train isn’t likely to haunt its shivering viewers the way the “Gone Girl” movie did. Blunt, however, makes the ride well worth taking.

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.

The time-travel element gets awfully twisty, perhaps a little too much so. But there’s great pleasure to be had in the performances, particularly Green’s deliciously avian Miss Peregrine.

Filmed during three separate trips to the Auschwitz site starting in 2010, the result is a movie so intensely personal that it amounts to an extended selfie.

Just try to resist the charms of Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, a triumph-of-the-human-spirit movie that’s ultimately, well, triumphant.

Feuerzeig lets us put together the puzzle pieces of Albert’s story. The film’s final five minutes — a punch to the heart — make it all clear.

The whole endeavor is so relentlessly lovable, like Bridget herself, that I defy anyone to not enjoy themselves.

The searing documentary Hooligan Sparrow is a portrait of courage.

Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki deftly create tension by twisting time around.

The first-rate cast — right down to that infant, who displays Streep-like instincts for the camera — toils mightily. But sadly, they’re trapped in what becomes a sort of A-list Nicholas Sparks melodrama Down Under.

Because these actors are Weisz, on whose beautiful face emotions flicker like fireflies, and Shannon, whose faintly mournful expressions imply a profound story not yet told, the film is never less than interesting.

The Intervention feels confident and accomplished: The cast immediately seems to bond as a group, with each playing a distinctive, recognizable character. And as the camera becomes a discreet ninth guest, you quickly find that you care about these people.

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.

It’s a sweet-natured, gentle film that might remind more than a few watchers of a special date in their own life, long ago.

Ira Sachs’ lovely, heartfelt drama "Love Is Strange" had at its center a New York City real-estate problem — as does his new film, the equally splendid Little Men.

As Kubo warns, early on, don’t blink — you might miss something. Something that — and what a treat this is — you’ve never seen before.

For me, a grown-up spoiled by Pixar, Pete’s Dragon seemed sweet but slow and a little bland. My guests, entranced by the friendly dragon and the film’s 3D depictions of flight, thought otherwise.

It’s a movie that, by its serene final scene, changes its viewer. You leave happier, honored to have been, for two hours, part of this family.

With impeccable performances — particularly an electric, extended scene between Marcus and the college dean (Tracy Letts), and Gadon, whose wistful character has a face full of secrets — Indignation is an elegant debut for longtime producer Schamus; a visit to the past, with both sunshine and darkness.

The film belongs to Streep, who makes Florence a sweetly feathery dreamer — singing like an angel, in a voice that only she can hear.

In this bleak West Texas landscape where everyone seems to be struggling, you find yourself rooting, inexplicably, for all of them against a clear villain: the faceless, predatory bank.

Ultimately, her run and Roseanne for President! meet the same fate: not quite entertaining enough to qualify as comedy, nor quite thoughtful enough to take seriously.

A smart, wistful and very funny movie.

Shot in artful, quiet light (many of the frames look like elegant paintings), The Innocents is beautifully performed by its nearly all-female cast; each nun, even those unnamed, is given her own personality and story.

There are moments in Gleason where it’s very hard — whether you know ALS or are new to it — to look at the screen; moments so devastating you wonder how this couple, and those who love them, can bear it. But there’s also, in this remarkable film, evidence of astonishing courage and miraculous love.

The message of Bad Moms is that being a mother today is impossible... But it’s a hammer brought down with a light, goofy touch (maybe too light; the male characters could use some punching-up), with a gleefully charming central trio that I enjoyed hanging out with.

The movie gets lost in its focus on flash and speed, and forgets about the man — and the fine, quiet actor — at its center.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers — busily splashing the film in crayon-colored light, vaguely sinister pop music and jittery camerawork — forgot to give Vee and Handsome Stranger (his name’s Ian) much personality.

It’s a small film that touches on large issues: the world of work, and how it defines us. You leave it feeling you’ve met someone, and wishing him well.

Like so many small-screen-to-big-screen efforts, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie isn’t really a movie, just a stretched-out TV episode with a parade of cameos and boatloads of Champagne.

Lights Out is an effective, tidy little chiller; basically the same sneak-up-in-the-dark scare over and over. But hey, as we’ve learned through decades of horror movies, that stuff works.

What’s crucial here, as in the original film, is the chemistry between the cast members. And though McKinnon’s the standout, the four women click together like Legos.