Nell Minow

Kuras understands the unique position of the photographer as intrusive but unobtrusive, sensitive enough to see where the story is but removed enough to maintain observer status. However, as for more about who she was, Miller stays frustratingly out of focus.

Sometimes we just need a nice, cozy movie featuring a heartwarming true story and actors with British accents. And if Bill Nighy is one of them, well, that's just a bonus.

The Summer Book is a haiku of a movie, conveying profound thoughts about time, memory, loss, and nature through a simplified, meditative, cinematic language of exquisite images and gentle music.

Director Matthew López makes an impressive feature debut with Red, White & Royal Blue, a love story that skillfully blends the familiar beats of a classic movie romance with the distinctive details of two of the world’s most public young men trying to keep their relationship private.

The superhero power of this movie comes from its endearingly offbeat characters, goofy humor, and gentle insights about finding optimism even when things go wrong.

Most Holocaust dramas show us the trains, the barbed wire, and the starving prisoners. This movie shows us what happened before, making the story real by making us identify with the people who were lost.

Barron’s Cove is a pulpy thriller awkwardly tied to a soapy story of bad dads and the wreckage they leave behind.

A Boy Called Christmas is a resplendent Santa Claus origin story with a star-filled cast, sumptuous visuals, and some melancholy details to keep it from being too sugary.

In Your Dreams is an exciting, imaginative, and sometimes funny adventure story about a sister and brother who try to use their dreams to change their reality. But it is also a wise and touching story about the challenges of family and of change.

Wise, touching, and often wildly funny,

Dog is uneven in tone and quality but shows promise in the way Tatum and Carolin approach the story with care and heart.

The passion for the food, the dream, and each other that fueled the beginning of the story is less vibrant when the details are revealed.

Lasse Hallström’s greatest strength as a director is deep humanity, with compassion for even the most flawed characters. The affection from all three family members for af Klint and for creating art shines through the film.

Skillfully weaving in themes of race, gender, abuse, and historic injustice while making each character authentically human, the film calls on us to consider the human strength and the human cost of history.

All the stylishness and enthusiasm cannot disguise the fact that the mystery itself never comes close to those concocted by Dame Agatha. Then again, no one else has topped her either.

It’s not a good sign when we find ourselves admiring the background art more than what is happening in front of it, but it is more imaginative than the characters and story.

Its lessons about how kindness and inclusion benefit both the giver and the receiver are welcome, but its gentle reminder to view even the oldest and best-known story with fresh attention and connection may be even more meaningful.

The scenes under water are exquisitely beautiful, but it is the screenplay that feels soggy.

We might not come away understanding Jacobs or his world better, but we can still enjoy spending time with him.

This one has familiar beats but appealing performers, better dialogue, and more depth of character than many more formulaic movie romances.

This is a movie that observes Sharpton; it does not try to explain him or measure his impact. Those who are not already aware of his history may find it superficial or confusing.

Lurie is especially good at the narrative and character elements of the practice and game scenes, using them to move the story forward and build to the kind of resolution we look for in underdog sports stories with compelling emotional stakes.

As in Almodóvar’s films, the heightened use of color and settings is stunning, and the filmmakers are not afraid to express passionate emotion. That creates movie magic.

Lee's irrepressible joi de vivre and his recollections of the wild days shifting from story-first to pictures-first and fill-in-the-story-later are as much fun as he would have hoped.

The movie gets a bit slow, with too much time spent on the human characters, who are dreary and underwritten, compared to the big dreams of the little snail. But the film picks up when the racing snails come back onscreen, thanks to the adorable character design, with expressive use of those googly eyes, and especially to the voice talent.

Cinematographer Mathias Herndl shows us that Floreana is not a postcard-pretty island paradise. Still, a harsh and unyielding setting, and Hans Zimmer’s score evokes increasing uneasiness as the story builds to a climax of violence and chaos.

If you are in the mood for a "they don't make movies like that anymore" movie, meaning soapy melodrama with enough glamorous glow to keep you from thinking too hard, then The Last Letter From Your Lover might do the trick.

Director Sarah Adina Smith has a gift for striking images and creating intriguingly spooky moods, bordering on gothic, but the plot is so overstuffed we hardly have time to even notice Jacqueline Bisset as the demanding director of the ballet group.