Nick Schager

Alterman's camerawork, panning and zooming about Christiaan's ants, rabbits, birds, and other assorted mecha creatures, conveys a sense of ominous religious awe.

Resembling an ethereal and despondent companion piece to Jonathan Glazer’s "Under the Skin," it’s a genre effort that’s off the beaten path—even if an invisible path is precisely what its protagonist traverses.

[Finn's] second feature may not be as consistent a rollercoaster ride as his maiden effort, but it gets the job done frequently enough to be a chart-topper.

The Contestant outs the Japanese reality show as a pioneering work of manipulative heartlessness, happy to put Nasubi through the ringer for ratings and, also, for spectators eager to chuckle at his mistreatment (and marvel at his cooperation in it).

There’s nothing very unsettling about its eventual horrors, in large part because the film is too infatuated with its sleek style to get its hands dirty.

The film risks self-importance, but when Peralta admits through tears just how much he loves his skater charges, it imparts what every parent knows: that even better than achieving one's own success is shepherding the success of others.

There’s no mystery to Speak No Evil, and even less disquieting creepiness; instead, it’s a bludgeoning beast, epitomized by McAvoy’s Paddy.

Tommy Lee Jones provides wisecracking levity as Rogers's commanding officer, Hayley Atwell supplies the aforementioned buxom chest and accompanying tough-girl grit as Rogers's British love interest, and Johnson directs with flair, his set pieces defined by both muscularity and clarity.

If not for its outsize IMAX presentation, this handsome nonfiction film would be little more than an uplifting episode of PBS's "Nature."

Coupled with a failure to comprehensively detail tactical patterns or the processes of transporting or fencing stolen goods, Smash & Grab’s inability to truly get underneath the surface of its subjects renders it merely a compelling true-life tale in need of better telling.

Director Declan Lowney's film operates from a conceit that affords only minor opportunities for true hilarity.

True cinema is John Lithgow terrorizing Geoffrey Rush in a nursing home with his creepy hand puppet.

Spike Lee’s documentary on this formative period in Michael Jackson’s career derives its electric, enlivening energy from these fantastic clips. Alas, they’re not enough to alter the fact that this non-fiction effort . . . is merely a nostalgic promotional puff piece meant to look back fondly, and uncritically, at an artist transitioning from a youth-oriented pop fad to the biggest star in the world.

A shallow and slender tale of lousy dreams, worse decisions, and painful regrets, all of it predicated on a lead turn that’s too one-note to wow.

From unique to generic, it's a gear-shift that may prolong the franchise's life (a mid-credits coda confirms that a sixth installment is on its way), but, in the process, also renders it redundant.

Often too clunky for its own good, and (ahem) doggedly apolitical throughout, this earnest feel-good tale nonetheless manages to pull on the heartstrings with sufficient gentleness.

If the Adam Shankman film's debasement of its subject into campy kitsch is the unavoidable fate of all culturally dangerous art, that doesn't make it any less palatable.

A reimagining that’s thrillingly, monstrously alive.