Moira Macdonald

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.