Peter Debruge

Hardly anything in Top Gun: Maverick will surprise you, except how well it does nearly all the things audiences want and expect it to do.

Mundruczó and Wéber gave her the pieces from which to assemble this character, but only Kirby could have taken that puzzle and turned it into such an astonishing portrait.

Director Christopher McQuarrie delivers a formidable concept and several hall-of-fame set-pieces while somehow also managing to tie the storylines back into these movies’ core mythology.

"Toy Story" ushered in the era of computer-animated cartoon features, and the fourth movie wraps up the saga beautifully. At least, for now.

The movie’s pulse seldom rises above resting, but the director invites audiences to dive as deep as they want to go into the film’s themes, to read subtext into body language, silence and the space between characters.

Had James Thurber worked in animation, the waggish result might look and sound a bit like It’s Such a Beautiful Day, indie cartoonist Don Hertzfeldt’s alternately poignant and absurdist triptych.

From the opening scene, set in an unfinished chalet in the French Alps, it often feels as if the movie is eavesdropping on moments too intimate to be shared.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then DreamWorks’ desire to extend the Dragon franchise has propelled the creative team in the most admirable of directions, resulting in what just may be the mother of all animated sequels.

Director Maggie Betts has a rousing old-school crowd-pleaser on her hands with this truth-based (albeit strategically embellished) drama featuring the most entertaining performance yet from Jamie Foxx, who makes a day in court feel like going to church.

It’s the human side of the character that makes this McCarthy’s best performance to date, revealing haunting insights into friendship, loneliness, and creative insecurity.

Is this a fantasy? A fable? A new kind of horror movie? Actually, Dream Scenario is all of the above and then some, for it also shares a certain postmodern DNA with two of Cage’s most boundary-pushing movies, “Adaptation” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”

In both tone and approach, this animated treasure couldn’t be more different from the lavish high-tech toons competing in the American marketplace.

One can’t help but feel inspired by both Jones’ sparkplug attitude and the gentle way those around her respond to her needs.

The movie wouldn’t have worked half as well had Dunham not discovered Ramsey, a “Game of Thrones” veteran soon to be seen in HBO’s “The Last of Us.” The young actor has a face one might find in a medieval Madonna portrait and a rowdy contemporary sensibility that makes her instantly relatable.

Presented as if filtered through a sunny Instagram setting, Greener Grass won’t exactly make you envious of the over-idealized lifestyle it skewers, and yet it’s such a delightful place to inhabit, you won’t want to leave when the credits roll.

[Francis] Lawrence and his team have calibrated the entire experience for maximum engagement. And while its pleasures can’t touch the thrill of seeing the Death Star destroyed — not yet, at least — the film runs circles around George Lucas’ ability to weave complex political ideas into the very fabric of B-movie excitement.

Far more ambitious than "The Hurt Locker," yet nowhere near so tripwire-tense, this procedure-driven, decade-spanning docudrama nevertheless rivets for most of its running time.

Ira Sachs’ Little Men is a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. It won’t change the world, but it does understand it

It’s like “The Sopranos,” as seen through Meadow’s eyes. And though we’re all familiar with the lesson that the cost of vengeance is a never-ending circle of violence, Colonna’s retelling lands like a bullet in the head.

On one hand, the cartoon is never afraid to be cute, but more importantly, it’s committed to being real.

With no shtick to fall back on, Sandler is forced to act, and it’s a glorious thing to watch.

Vivo is strategically contrived to hit audiences’ pleasure spots, blending a grown-up-friendly story of a Latin-music couple whose careers took them in separate directions with all the hyper-caffeinated comedy action the kiddos expect from the medium. Plus, the songs build on one another, hooking in your head and snowballing as the movie develops.

Beneath the Harvest Sky offers a heartbreakingly authentic, vividly realized account of adolescent frustration and yearning.

Wright is both a virtuoso filmmaker and a natural showman, interpreting the screenplay as no other director could have possibly imagined it.

Incredible and enraging in equal doses, the project plays like a tense spy thriller as Rodchenkov is assigned a security team and shuffled from one safe house to another, while enemies of the state — Sergei Skripal and Alexei Navalny — are poisoned with the Russian nerve agent Novichok.

Binoche leaves audiences with the same exhilarating feeling here — of having witnessed something precious and rare — answering the challenge of Assayas’ script by revealing a character incredibly closer to her soul.

What the film lacks in context it gains in visceral eyewitness value.

Blending wit and modesty, Mann fits the bill, coming across as an overgrown kid with a good heart, but virtually no practice in relating to others — which is perhaps the thing that makes his experience so profoundly relatable.