Moira Macdonald

The Goldfinch feels like a series of often-elegant moments, in service to a story that never quite comes into focus.

The film’s better than you’d expect from a late-summer offering, mostly due to a strong cast led by the great Oyelowo.

Is After the Wedding a great movie? No, not especially. Are these two women treasures of cinema? Absolutely.

Like Bernadette, the movie’s lost; you’ll need to read the book to truly find her.

If “golden retriever voiced by Kevin Costner” rings any alarm bells for you, steer clear.

All of this silliness is actually great fun, particularly the bantering chemistry between Johnson and Statham, who spend much of the movie squabbling and calling each other names.

"The Farewell" is so unexpectedly and deliciously funny that watching it feels like a tonic — an immersion in love and art.

A taut, gripping documentary about one young woman’s dream ... Maiden is wonderfully suspenseful — especially if you, like me, have no idea how the race turned out.

Ultimately, despite Nanjiani’s best efforts, it’s a disposable fast-car summer movie, neither terrible or good, for those biding their time before the next “Fast & Furious” installment.

This film celebrates Halston’s work but shows more interest in the man — and the unexpected corporate drama — behind it.

Much of the film’s pleasure is in hearing Morrison speak.

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

None of these stories feel monumental, and all of them resolve themselves neatly in a quarter-hour or so. But they have a kindness to them; a way of seeing people as they are, with their flaws and their goodness.

Like the toys of a child now-grown, or an antique lamp gathering dust on a shelf, “Toy Story 4” isn’t needed. But it is, for many of us, very much wanted: one last adventure, one last chance to say goodbye.

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

The Dead Don’t Die isn’t just deadpan — it’s dead.

You feel for the actors, who you know are better than this stuff, and you wonder if director F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”) just threw up his hands. And you wonder if, somewhere, Smith and Jones are chuckling. At least somebody was.

Olivia Wilde’s raunchy yet adorable high-school comedy Booksmart understands a basic truth: For so many former teenage girls, your first love is your high-school best friend.

It’s all quite wistfully romantic, and mostly winningly so, despite the sometimes wise-way-beyond-their-years dialogue and not always plausible plot.

It’s a haunting, heartbreaking story, told by a movie that never quite makes a case for itself to exist.

Hathaway and Wilson, instead of exuding odd-couple comic chemistry, seem to barely be in the same movie; they don’t click, with each other or with a bland Alex Sharp as their tech-bro mark.

It’s a movie full of small pleasures.

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.

There’s exactly one good jump-scare, which probably would have caused me to drop my popcorn if I hadn’t finished it already; otherwise it’s fairly uninspired. But something about Quaid’s delivery had me giggling throughout — or, at least, until things got rather too dark in the final minutes.