Nell Minow

The message about never confusing kindness with weakness is a valuable life lesson and a reminder of why the Smurfs are so enduringly beloved.

The storyline is complicated but not particularly engaging. There are elements that are too arcane or unsettling for children and not of any special comedic value for adults.

The movie's dialogue is clunky and the acting is uneven, which keeps the tone more preachy than dramatic.

The movie's characters are less compelling, however, and the film never deeply engages the issues of consent, culpability, and justice it asks us to consider.

We could use much more insight into what made [Reagan] “the great communicator,” but this movie is a poor communicator about the history and the man.

The film introduces us to some intriguing characters, several of whom deserve their own movies, but it would benefit from a clearer focus.

We see politicians, lawyers, and doctors trying to find a better way, and we see those struggling with recovery. But it is not just the addicts who need to come clean; it is those profiting from the current system. The most deadly addiction is not drugs; it is money.

Whatever it is going for, it does not get there. Poorly written, directed, performed, and edited, "Bad Cupid" is a Bad Movie.

And it's the blurring of boundaries that makes Wildcat more than just an excruciating series of intensifying scenes of torture, disorienting for the audience as well as the characters.

Whimsy is as delicate as a butterfly wing. But The Man in the Hat sustains a whimsical tone beautifully throughout its brief running time, perhaps because co-writers/directors John-Paul Davidson and Stephen Warbeck add a touch of melancholy to keep it from becoming too cloying or cutesy.

Long's screenplay pushes around the puzzle pieces of all of these characters, events, and discoveries so that they all line up as expected, but the process makes for a pleasant ride with some genuinely endearing moments.

Writer/director Ann Hu, who based the film on her own experience, has a gift for subtle details that illuminate character and culture.

The contrast between the edgy, high-energy songs and the thinly-drawn characters and predictable storyline will make it of most interest to viewers young enough to be unfamiliar with the formulas it never transcends.

The documentary mixes scenes of rehearsals, interviews, and performances with dreamy, impressionistic moments, one loading a car, one in a beauty salon, with the women holding hand mirrors, that add a poetic, wistful quality to the story.

The setting plumbs the depths but the movie stays on the surface.

Yelling and pratfalls do not disguise the lack of vitality or originality.

The film’s good intentions are evident, but its assemblage of experts and statistics is more lecture than movie. There is too much focus on families of comfortable or better means and too little focus on the impact that these conflicts have on the other members of the family.

There are compelling characters and telling moments.

The movie does not live up to the eternally enchanting music, but it serves as an enjoyable delivery system for experiencing it again, which is magic enough.

It was and still is a pleasure to see a film that gives actresses characters and storylines that do not reflect or depend on the men in their lives.

It is delicately told, sweet but never sugary.

As the conflicts move from the annoying to the existential, the one-room setting is appropriately depressing and claustrophobia-inducing.

Compared to the original or to more recent films like “Boss Baby” and “The Bad Guys,” it is slapdash and lightweight.

Given the complexity and near-fairy tale improbability of his real-life story, it is not surprising that Anthony is comfortable taking a break from plot to revel in the pure abstraction of movement. With this documentary, we can appreciate his story, and his relevé and pirouette.

It is actually not accurate to say that the documentary tells Lewitzky’s story. The best thing about the film is that it allows her to tell her own story.

The themes of the film are so resonant that they create an immediate connection with the audience, but producer/star Judd and writer/director Alec Tibaldi address them with sincerity but not much depth. The film is more about mood than insight.

The film carefully balances the most painful moments with glimmers of progress and hope and makes a powerful argument for looking at struggles so easily ignored.

It’s filled with stunning images of some of the world’s most beautiful mountains and canyons and heart-stopping GoPro footage that takes us into the air with the jumpers. It’s sometimes thrilling and sometimes horrifying as we see and hear terrible accidents.

Good Bad Things is an intimate, small story about the gigantic issue that challenges and terrifies us all: the collision between the desperate need to be seen and loved and the fear that what people might see will repel rather than attract them.

The mechanics of the chase scenes are well-designed, but the overall look of the film is lackluster, the characters are thinly imagined, and the dialogue is oddly obscure in a movie intended for children, especially one that wants to stay on the fun side of scary.

The film’s look and sound are lyrical, providing an apt setting for the poets who recite their work and discuss the kind of communication that fills in the gaps left by recitations of fact, archival images, or dramatic re-enactments.

It is the compassion the film has for its characters that is the film’s true grace.

It is the story of Dr. Audrey Evans (Natalie Dormer), whose accomplishments in diagnosis, treatment, and support for young patients and their families could fill at least three movies. “Audrey’s Children” manages to combine all three in a solid, often engaging and inspiring drama, anchored by Dormer’s committed performance.

The voice talent and character design are second-tier, and there are too many characters. But the action scenes are exciting, and the pacing, along with its reassuring humor and some nice character arcs, makes it a mildly appealing watch.

If we were supposed to take this movie literally, the metaphors would feel unforgivably heavy-handed. But if we think of it as a poetic, impressionistic meditation on life, death, love, art, and, yes, light, with excellent performances from the entire cast, we can be invited into its world.

In filmmaker Yael Melamede’s biographical film about her mother, pioneering Israeli architect Ada Karmi-Melamede, the two ways of seeing the world and telling a story come together.

The setting is more than a century ago, but the longing for love and the struggle for intimacy are universally human.

The documentary features some archival footage, but its power lies in the vivid, heartfelt interviews with the surviving twins and Richter and her husband, who respond to sensitive and sympathetic questions from filmmakers Perri Peltz and Matthew O’Neill.

Looking Through Water wants to tell us about the importance of uncluttered connections to the natural world and to each other, but too often it ignores its own advice.