Peter Travers

Writer-director Richard Shepard gives Brosnan his meatiest role ever, and he digs in with relish.

Panic Room is Fincher's high-style testament to the cool things movies can do to make us jump out of our seats in the dark.

The mischief Thornton does make adds up to wild, rowdy fun.

Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump (his wife) have energized Ballard's parable of class warfare in the technology age with a daring approach that will touch a nerve or have you bolting for the exits.

Araki gives his hypnotic film a raw intensity heightened by a surreal landscape and a jagged score from the likes of Braindead Sound Machine, KMFDM and Coil.

Even with sex, drugs, hip-hop and a murder, these four stories are dull, dull, dull, dull.

It’s the same old tornado twaddle, but the destructive power of weather has never been more timely, the sparking star charisma of Glen Powell never more evident and the tenderness director Lee Isaac Chung shows for the land and its people never more appreciated.

Carell shows a whole new side to his talents.

Before it goes off the rails into strained sermonizing, this sorta-sequel to 2008’s delightful "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" gets in big laughs.

The Art of Self-Defense sets itself up as the 90-pound weakling destined to live forever in the shadow of "Fight Club." The good news is that writer-director Riley Stearns gets in a few good licks at toxic masculinity before odious comparisons to David Fincher’s masterpiece blunt the film’s comic and dramatic impact.

It's all a blur, except for the music. That's workin'.

Ali is a bruiser, unwieldy in length and ambition. But Mann and Smith deliver this powerhouse with the urgency of a champ's left hook.

In substance and style, the movie is more than a few tears short of Jordan's "The Crying Game." But Murphy is an actor to watch. Even in heels.

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time.

A riveting Anna Kendrick brings her own experience with a psychologically abusive relationship to this tale of a young woman who learns to stand her non-violent ground against a male predator through female friendship. The result is quietly devastating.

This expertly-done B movie plunges breakout star Meghann Fahy into one of the scariest situations ever—a first date. The dude (Brandon Sklenar) is a charmer, yet her phone keeps buzzing with text messages to kill him. Hang on for a nerve-jangling ride.

Best of all, Jason Mewes is out of rehab to play Jay and spar with Smith as Silent Bob, his dope-dealing partner.

Sadly, Lumet's skill at bringing out the juice in actors isn't enough to save the film from overkill.

It's not the identity of the killer that gives Seven its kick -- it's the way Fincher raises mystery to the level of moral provocation.

Gorgeous filmmaking that brims over with funhouse thrills and ravishing romance.

It's unlikely audiences will be echoing a starving Oliver's most famous line: "Please, sir, I want some more."

Bale, in a piercing, quietly devastating performance, holds the film's center with commanding authority. It's a film whose brute force tempered with contemplative grace. It's a potent and prodigious achievement.

Even though the ending fizzles out, the star power of Julianne Moore and Sebastian Stan turns this tale of con artists on the hustle among Manhattan one-percenters into a sleek, sexy sophisticated thriller with twists that won’t quit.

The satire loses its edge as the filmmakers wrongheadedly try to humanize this nest of vipers. Soapdish is more fun when it's spitting venom than when it's licking wounds.

Brice, who made an impressive thriller debut with 2014's "Creep," has a knack for getting the most out of four people talking.

Harris offers an adrenalin rush of energy and talent. Her artfully stylized, explosively funny film also manages to be deeply moving without jerking easy tears.

As Hanna confronts her past, the movie becomes like nothing you've ever seen. I'd call it a knockout.

What pulls us over the rough spots is the mind meld between del Toro the artist and the child inside him. They both want to astonish us. Geeks everywhere, salute.

Hamilton manifests her vision of what politics can do to individual thinking with subtlety and sophistication. Remember her name. She's a genuine find.

The battle, expertly shot by Dean Semler, captures the chaos of guerrilla warfare paralleled in "Black Hawk Down" and gives the film a scarring documentary realism.

Down in the Valley is a wild thing that sticks with you long after it's over. You know, a real movie.

An emotional powerhouse.

A trio of appealing actors is trapped in an action-spiked romcom death-sentenced by a lack of humor, heart and a coherent reason for being.

This film is a muckraking provocation whose time has come.

Estevez keeps his touch light, with a minimum of pedantry. The Way is really a gift from this son to his father. Sheen, gradually revealing a man painfully getting reacquainted with long buried feelings, who gives the film its bruised heart.

All you really need to know is that The Rover is a modern Western that explodes the terms good and evil; that its desolation is brilliantly rendered by Michôd and cinematographer Natasha Braier; that Pearce and Pattinson are a blazing pair of opposites.

With lyrical intelligence and scrappy wit, Coppola creates a luscious world to get lost in. It's a pleasure.

Altman orchestrates Dr. T's odyssey with the precision, heart and lively wit of a virtuoso.

Writer-director Gerard Stembridge keeps the amoral laughs bubbling.

It's a gimmick, it's not a movie.

Hess and his terrific cast -- Heder is geek perfection -- make their own kind of deadpan hilarity. You'll laugh till it hurts. Sweet.

What makes Suffragette a relevant rabble-rouser, besides Mulligan's fierce, affecting performance, is the way it won't bow to the kind of Hollywood formula that tsk-tsks about how bad it was then — only to wrap everything up with a comfy banner that says, "You've come a long way, baby."

Winkler's script creaks with melodrama, especially in the scenes with Merrill and his ex-wife, Ruth (Annette Bening), though Bening gives the role spine. Director Winkler fails to modulate the performances.

This French bonbon, Woody Allen’s best reviewed film in years, is no career landmark. But its blend of humor and homicide shows Allen, 88, still moving forward, creating the kind of film he made his name on, the kind that makes you laugh till it hurts. And that's a stroke of luck indeed

Stick with it for Miller’s gutsy tour de force and the kick of watching Buscemi, as actor and filmmaker, turn an experiment into a mesmerizing battle of wills.

A groundbreaking film that leaves you in stitches while quietly breaking your heart.

The seventh chapter in the creepy-crawly franchise shamelessly feeds off the DNA of the first two sci-fi space classics. But new director Fede Alvarez dishes out serviceable funhouse horrors with the gory enthusiasm of the alien fanboy he most truly is.

Hartley's debut deserves heralding; he combines a rigorous social conscience with the exuberance of fresh comic thinking.

Disney delivers an uneven but sensationally entertaining sequel to the Oscar winner that pulls out all the stops.

In Mother and Child, he (Rodrigo Garcia) creates an emotional powerhouse.

Bateman, in a rare dramatic role, is just tremendous, finding depths of emotion where they're least expected. Disconnect works they same way. Even when it trips on its ambitions, it hits home.

Goat means to shake you, and does it ever.

Whatever you call this one-of-a-kind bonbon spiked with wit and malice, it's classic oo-la-la.

It makes you laugh till it hurts.

Brutal, sexy, built to thrill and minus a scintilla of redeeming social value, the movie -- based on a series of comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones -- explodes like summer fireworks.

Branching out in a bold new direction, Stallone is quietly devastating. James Mangold has directed Cop Land from his own ardent, audacious script, and despite some draggy, overdeliberate moments, it's the strongest piece of material to come Stallone's way since he invented himself as Rocky 21 years ago.

It’s a power house.

The film’s low-key charm and quirky humor grow on you and create a rooting interest in what happens next. It doesn’t take the Supreme Intelligence of the universe (who we always figured would resembled Annette Bening) to know it’s wise to play the long game. Captain Marvel is not just another wonder woman. She plans to build an army.

This movie will get under your skin.

A movie that offers hard speculation and harder truths. You won't be able to get it out of your head.

Harron needed just the right actress to play Bettie. And she lucked out big time. Gretchen Mol (The Shape of Things) is hot stuff in every sense of the term. She delivers the first performance by an actress this year that deserves serious Oscar consideration.

Brendan Fraser excels as a failed American actor adrift in Japan. Is his film a shameless soap opera or a far flintier look at human frailty? It’s more like both.

Williams gives a performance that is riveting in its recessiveness and, as a consequence, truly, deeply scary.

The actors are world-class charmers, and the magnificent Dame Maggie is the diva divine. Her wit still stings, as it does on "Downton Abbey."

The ending isn't squishy scary or deeply satisfying. Bummer. Otherwise, Prometheus – especially in its spellbinding first hour – kicks ass so hard and often that it's impossible not to be thrilled by it.

The tightly-focused origin story of Ruth, played with ferocity and feeling by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, is still one hell of a heroic odyssey.

It’s an irresistible romantic romp that turns the familiar into something sweet, sassy and laugh-out-loud funny.

The movie's soul is with Huffman. Speaking in a low voice, her posture as stiff as her vocabulary, her eyes a pool of sadness and hope, she turns this small, resonant film into a cry from the heart.

Smith wins our hearts without losing his dignity, as Chris suits up for success by day and fights off despair by night. The role needs gravity, smarts, charm, humor and a soul that's not synthetic. Smith brings it. He's the real deal.

For all its bile and incoherence, In Praise of Love is filled with haunting images and insights. Godard may be a lion in winter, but the lion still roars.

An explosive piece of entertainment that also means to make a difference. Listen up.

Polarizing is too tame a word to describe reactions to Luca Guadagnino’s radical rethinking of Suspiria. Either you’ll dig in or bolt for the exit — no in between.

Heebie-jeebies are guaranteed.

A riveting and surprisingly romantic ride.

Even when the laughs evaporate in the final stretch, Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone know how to breathe comic life into a stoner buddy comedy that’s high on its own shitfaced supply.

There are times when this mindbending bromance actually achieves a twisted tenderness. There are also times when you'd like to ride Manny's farts to the nearest exit. It's your call.

Menace and mirth can cancel each other out. But the combo clicked in 1985's Fright Night (banish the 1988 sequel), and it clicks again in this frisky 3D remake.

The wow factor of Ready or Not helps you jump the hurdles of any plot predictability.

Che looks dazzling, whether the camera is weaving through a battle or trying to bore into Che's haunted soul. Del Toro stands up to Soderbergh's relentless scrutiny. As for the movie, it's a reward to audiences eager to break from the play-it-safe pack. Game on.

Youth is superior cinema, ardent and artful. Sorrentino, an Oscar winner for The Great Beauty, fills every frame with ravishing images that evoke his idol, Fellini. Gloriously shot by Luca Bigazzi and scored by David Lang, the movie engulfs you like a dream.

Everything that makes Ethan Hawke an extraordinary actor — his energy, his empathy, his fearless, vanity-free eagerness to explore the deeper recesses of a character — is on view in Born to Be Blue.

Baz Luhrmann’s bejeweled battering ram of a biopic is all over the place, which can be distracting, but the grit and grace of Austin Butler’s performance as The King is a thing of beauty. A star is born right here.

Araki constructs the hot-blooded Kaboom as a high-wire act without a safety net. Go with it.

An uneven movie that nonetheless bristles with stinging wit and exerts a perverse fascination.

A ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets -- the first film, porn included, in which a woody is actually made of wood.

Grand Canyon is most gripping when Kasdan shows people waking up to the world and finding that they need more than bromides.

Even when it goes off the rails, this epic take on the notorious French emperor boasts state-of-the-art battle scenes from master tactician Ridley Scott, 85, and a big acting swing from Joaquin Phoenix in a beast of a role that will keep you riveted.

LaGravenese may be unsteady at the helm, but his film insinuates like a torch song that keeps messing with your head.

Murder is just another day at the office for corporate America, and the film hammers that theme home with diminishing returns. But the acting is aces, especially Pitt mixing it up with the superb James Gandolfini.

Downsizing brims over with the pleasures of the unexpected, a hallmark of Payne's artistry.

The movie is a small miracle, lifted by Ruffalo and these two remarkable young actresses. Refusing to soften the edges when Cam is off his meds, Ruffalo is a powerhouse. He and Forbes craft an indelibly intimate portrait of what makes a family when the roles of parent and child are reversed.

Now that the fanboy hype has cleared, we can see Cloverfield for what it is: borrowed inspiration, trite screenwriting and amateurish acting all in the service of a ballsy idea -- that a horror movie could maybe, just maybe, have a soul.

Like "Born To Be Blue," Miles Ahead is allergic to all things biopic, especially the cheap psychology and the effort to tie up a complex life with a neat bow.

Pitt is tremendous in the role, a conscience detectable even in Wardaddy's blinkered gaze. But it's Lerman who anchors the film with a shattering, unforgettable portrayal of corrupted innocence. Fury means to grab us hard from the first scene and never let go. Mission accomplished.

In this haunting portrait of America as no country for old men or young, Hillcoat -- through the artistry of Mortensen and Smit-McPhee -- carries the fire of our shared humanity and lets it burn bright and true.

At first it's a kick to watch Clint Eastwood play Steve Everett, a horn-dog newsman...Is Clint being Clinton-esque? Even if he's not, these scenes are the liveliest part of this dog-tired movie.

Sloane is a nasty piece of work. Yet Chastain draws us in, making us see what the character keeps inside by the sheer force of her fireball performance. There are times when Miss Sloane plays like a pilot for a TV series. No knock on that. If Chastain stars, I'm in.

Malkovich weaves something delicate and devastating.

The film goes beyond historical anecdotes. Besides fresh and funny insights from the likes of Norman Mailer and John Waters, it shows how little censorship politics have changed from Nixon to Bush.

A sense of injustice runs like a toxic river through Everett’s film, an affront to homophobia through the ages, even our enlightened one. In the end, The Happy Prince makes its strongest mark as a heartfelt salute to Wilde from an actor and filmmaker who was born to play him.

Sollett, hoping for a "Before Sunrise/Before Sunset" vibe, sadly settles for a soggy aftertaste.

The latest film franchise culled from Marvel's comic-book universe packs a ton of fun into a teeny package. Its low-key charm helps glide us over trouble spots in tone and pacing.

Delivers the dazzle without sacrificing the smarts. The suspense is killer. Ditto the thrill of the hunt. The film uses the extra time to, of all things, develop characters and give this dystopian fable a human scale.

No laugh in this doc – and there are plenty – goes out without a sting in its tail.

Lennon's spirit, like his music, shines through this movie like a beacon. Powerful stuff.

Lurie has crafted a different kind of thriller, one with a mind and a heart.

For all its backsliding into bleak—what’s with torturing Bradley Cooper’s talking raccoon—this spirited summer kickoff delivers the requisite thrill ride and ends the GOTG trilogy with the sweet sorrow of saying goodbye to Star Lord and his wacky space dorks. It’s been a trip.

A sinfully scrumptious bonbon.

The villains, an incestuous brother and sister played by real-life marrieds Amy Poehler and Will Arnett are a hoot. And "Office" honey Jenna Fischer is welcome as Jimmy’s love.

Even when her film dips into melodrama, Rose Byrne grounds her portrayal of an unhoused woman living her car in a humanity that feels detailed and true.

Affleck may strike you as off-putting at first, hitting wrong emotional notes, but hang on. State of Play keeps the twists coming.

I could puke.

You'll go limp from laughing.

Stay in your seat for the end credits, in which Murray waters a dying plant and karaokes to Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm." That alone is worth double the price of admission.

Appaloosa is gripping entertainment that keeps springing surprises.

There's only one star in this movie: Everest. Kormákur couldn't shoot higher than base camp, around 14,000 feet, without sickening the actors. But a crew traveled to the top to get footage, while much of the climbing was shot in the Dolomites. No matter. You watch Everest and you believe.

The actors have a ball with the fun and games. And you will, too, unless — as noted — you and the TV series have never crossed paths.

DiCaprio is terrific, but he can't save this lecture from the shame of using Africa as a vehicle for another white man's redemption.

Sometimes a movie comedy just clicks. Welcome to one of those times.

Leave it to Hilary Swank. Even when her film's pace lags behind its cliches, she sparks this true story, about a California teacher who sparks her students, with the passion the subject demands.

By the time Fry lets darkness encroach on these bright young things, the fizz is gone, and so is any reason to make us give a damn.

Expertly directed by Richard Eyre (Iris) from Jeffrey Hatcher's play, the film is bawdy fun.

Ferrell is effortlessly uproarious. And watching hardass Wahlberg, in his first starring shot at farce, shake his sillies out is not to be missed.

What happened, bitches? Didn't the letdown of The Hangover Part II – basically Part I set in Thailand but minus the laughs – teach you anything? Guess not.

A spellbinder that features Richard Gere in one of his best performances ever.

A qualified thumbs up for this sequel that can’t match the Oscar-winning best picture that spawned it, but the crowd will roar nonetheless thanks to expert razzle-dazzle from director Ridley Scott and a sensational, scene-stealing Denzel Washington as a villain worth cheering.

Bob Odenkirk aces his first role as an action star in this wild, twisty ride. He’s such a canny, captivating actor that even when the plot gets silly you're willing to follow him anywhere.

Ignore the film’s foolish framing device and Halston emerges as a fascinating study of a fashion artist who allowed women to live an idealized vision of themselves.

Oscar winner Emma Stone teams up again with her Poor Things ’director Yorgos Lanthimos for a mesmerizing mindteaser, costarring a fabulous Jesse Plemons, that tells three stories that you can’t stop thinking about as they entertain and exasperate.

Bummer. The vampires have no fangs. The humans are humdrum. The special effects and makeup define cheeseball. And the movie crowds in so many characters from Stephenie Meyer’s book that Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) is less a director than a traffic cop. But there’s a reason that Twilight has already become the movie equivalent of a bestseller: The love story has teeth.

Spielberg's visual inventiveness is unflagging.

Regrettably, Bergman can't do much with a one-note script by Jane Anderson that reduces Perez to a grating cliché, Cage and Fonda to a parody of Ken and Barbie and our interest in what could happen to them to dry ash.

Madden directed Paltrow in the play on the London stage, but he does his "Shakespeare in Love" goddess no favors by filling the screen with big close-ups that betray the theatrical origins of the piece and drain the movie of life and urgency. Proof hasn't been filmed at all -- it's been embalmed.

The movie stays alert to the dreams and disappointments of four average people on an emotional roller coaster. It's a sublimely acted movie, hilarious and heartfelt.

When Short is onscreen, a movie that provides only fitful laughter bubbles over into bliss.

The Lodge strains credulity beyond the breaking point; “contrived” is the mildest word you could use to describe the plot. Luckily, Franz and Fiala are masters of setting a mood that makes your skin crawl. And Keough — she’s Elvis’s eldest granddaughter — is a subtle sensation.

Café Society isn't peak Allen, in the manner of such recent high points as "Midnight in Paris" (2011) and "Blue Jasmine" (2013), but the film — which could be helpfully subtitled Manhattan v Hollywood — feels lively, lived-in and fallibly human.

Thompson, Kaling and up-for-anything director Nisha Ganatra spin comic gold.

Despite a hint that Peter (Jeremy Sumpter) and Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) might get it on, there's nothing to crow about.

I refuse to render a final verdict on the latest cinematic outrage from Danish provocateur Lars Von Trier until Volume Two drops its undies on April 18th. But I will say this for Volume One: It's a mesmerizing mind game.

Way better than you may have heard, this mesmerizing look at young Donald Trump (a sensational Sebastian Stan) and his legal dark prince Roy Cohn (a dynamite Jeremy Strong) provides funny and scary insights into the ego Trump developed to rule the world.

The trouble does not emerge from the movie’s noble intentions, but from the stodgy manner in which they play out.

Thanks to the clever, caring touch of director Ismail Merchant, working from a script by Caryl Phillips, this steadily engrossing film captures the book's bracing humor and humanity.

Eddie Murphy is funny again. Sadly, he lacks the guts to follow through on the cathartic self-satire that gives the film its distinction.

Even when the drama gets overcooked, Lymelife sends off sparks.

If there is such a thing as hard-core with a soft heart, this is it.

A terrifically exciting, deeply unsettling survivalist epic.

It's less an expose of junk-food culture than a human drama, sprinkled with sly, provoking wit, about how that culture defines how we live.

John waters and Kathleen Turner bring out the sicko best in each other in Serial Mom. It’s a killingly funny spoof of crime and nonpunishment that couldn’t have come at a better time for us or them.

In short, this is a genre mash-up has no agenda except providing escapist fun. Mission accomplished.

For all its fancy pedigree, the spellbinding Dancer in the Dark aims right for the heart and aces its target.

Official Secrets remains a compelling tale of injustice on an individual and global level. It’s a shame that it hasn’t been told better, but give it points for being told at all.

Until Richard Wenk's script drives the characters into a brick wall of pukey sentiment, it's a wild ride.

Even director Carl Franklin, an artful purveyor of sterner stuff in "One False Move" and "Devil in a Blue Dress," can't prevent One True Thing from descending into chick-movie hell.

McTeer and the transporting music hold you in thrall.

Lane is a force of nature. Her slow-burning, fiercely erotic performance charges the movie.

Cautionary tales aren't new. What sets Kids apart as daringly original, touching and alive is its authenticity.

Technically amazing but conceptually old-hat, this sci-fi epic from Gareth Edwards makes a case for artificial intelligence through a bond between a protective human (John David Washington) and a dangerous human simulant packaged as an insanely adorable six-year-old girl. Discuss

Backbeat catches the Beatles in the act of discovering themselves. It’s a thrilling spectacle that rocks the house and a lot of lazy misconceptions about how legends are made.

Writer-director Andrew Niccol, who worked impressively with Hawke on the topic of genetic modification in 1997's "Gattaca," puts a lot out there.

Even when the acting is hammy, notably Wilford Brimley’s turn as Chance’s Cajun uncle, Woo stages every fight with hypnotic grace.

Geena Davis and her director and husband, Renny Harlin, recover from their "Cutthroat Island" fiasco in grand style, and screenwriter Shane Black ("The Last Boy Scout") juggles jolts and jokes with a mad fervor that almost earns him his $4 million salary.

It's a kick to watch Denzel Washington do a movie just for the hot, sexy fun of it.

A film of startling humor and feeling. For that, director Steven Shainberg, who co-wrote the script with Erin Cressida Wilson, owes much to two remarkable performances.

A thunderous spectacle.

The tricky thing about parody movies is that the jokes get old fast and they're hit-and-miss. Walk Hard, a spoof of every musical biopic from "Ray" to "Walk the Line," is guilty on both counts. How lucky that when the jokes do hit, they kick major ass.

What jump-starts the film is the casting of Johnny Depp as Don Juan and Marlon Brando as his shrink. They bring a playfully romantic touch to a drama that could have been dead weight in clumsier hands.

Credit Rachel Weisz, who's just the dynamite actress needed to play a character who could be a misunderstood innocent or a fortune-hunting seductress who could be a cold-blooded killer. How delicious to watch the star keep us guessing.

This is rock-solid entertainment. McConaughey, a cunning mesmerizer in the courtroom, steers this Lincoln into what could be a hell-raising franchise. More, please. Soon.

The film itself occasionally plods, but Pacino, tackling a tough trap of a role, raises the bar in a mesmerizing acting triumph.

It's frustrating that a movie about a woman who dares so much has a script that dares so little. But Annette Bening’s body-and-soul acting as marathon swimmer Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster’s brilliance as her dynamo of a coach will have you cheering.

Odd as it is to say, Kingdom of Heaven loses its momentum the more Balian gets religion.

Sarah Silverman is the most outrageously funny woman alive.

Go with the whimsical flow that includes a hilariously morose robot named Marvin, voiced by the great Alan Rickman with the weight of the galaxy resonating in every bored, cynical syllable. Adams would be pleased.

It's the bruised history of these brothers that gives Out of the Furnace its beating heart and the power to grip you hard.

The sequel is more musically varied, though Kay Cannon's script amps the sass at the expense of structure. But the MVP here is Elizabeth Banks.

The second film continuation of the Brit series knows it’s old-hat and out of touch. But it’s also comforting fan service and if you can shut out the real world in favor of a fantasy remembrance of things past, you’re in for a treat.

For starters, the follow-up to 2016's Sicario is not in the same essential-viewing category as the original – that's what happens when you remove inspired director Denis Villeneuve from the equation.

Sure, it’s a bit predictable, but actress Zoe Kravitz—in a promising directing debut— milks every ounce of suspense out of this #MeToo thriller set on an island paradise where pretty young things accept invites from tycoon Channing Tatum at their own peril.

By any fair standard, this lushly produced film is a long, bumpy ride to a major letdown.

A black-comedy gem.

What could have been a sentimental train wreck emerges as a funny and touching portrait of three bruised people.

Theron, in the middle of her action-hero phase and at her "Mad Max: Fury Road" best here, just nails it.

The story has been filmed many times, but never with this kind of erotic charge. Knightley is glorious, her eyes blazing with a carnal yearning that can turn vindictive at any perceived slight.

Bad Influence will do in a pinch if you're starved for intrigue. For a while, it's nasty fun watching Michael sink into depravity. Erotic and spine tingling, this thriller has undeniable allure. But Bad Influence lacks daring, moral ambiguity and the pleasures of the unexpected, the elements that might give it distinction.

Until predictability seeps in from the edges, first-time director James McEvoy offers an invitation to a rap party that’s hard to resist as two Scottish MCs fake their way to the hip-hop top as Americans.

With Pfeiffer, 50, radiating uncommon beauty, grace and feeling, Frears uncovers a fragile story's grieving heart.

Their banter is fun at the start until it becomes relentless.

A crowd pleaser that spices a tired formula with genuine feeling.

For a movie made from spare parts - take "The Exorcist" and attach to "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity" - The Last Exorcism delivers the heebie-jeebie goods.

I don't blame you for backing off a movie that focuses on a suicidal teen who learns warm life lessons by spending five days in a Brooklyn hospital's psych ward. Stop worrying. It's Kind of a Funny Story, based on Ned Vizzini's semiautobiographical novel, breaks the jinx.

Besides being a feast for the eyes and ears, Les Misérables overflows with humor, heartbreak, rousing action and ravishing romance. Damn the imperfections, it's perfectly marvelous.

Hot Tub Time Machine should have been better than this. It could have been poignant.

There's no sense to the scene in which the boys get together for a close-harmony rendition of "Afternoon Delight" -- just pure pleasure.

Just what we didn't need: another kick-ass cop flick in which we know the guys are macho because they rough up their wives and the gals are hot because they totter on spike heels like hookers.

Jolie is inspired casting. She plays the role like a gathering storm, moving from terror to a fierce resolve. And Eastwood, at the peak of his artful powers, tightens the screws of suspense without ever forgetting where the heart of his film lies.

M. Night Shyamalan can be too fuzzy, earnest and full of himself. But this doomsday thriller starring a never-better Dave Bautista as a modern horseman of the apocalypse confirms that the Sixth Sense maestro knows how to fill the screen with tension and squeeze.

Alternately terrific and tepid, Bill Condon’s swirl of song, dance and Technicolor keeps the musical alive on screen with the help of Jennifer Lopez, a star who can hold the camera and bend it to her will.

Just when you're ready to puke, the old Bill Conti theme ("Gonna Fly Now") kicks in -- are you feeling it? -- Stallone steps in the ring and every day is Christmas. All together now: Rock-ee! Rock-ee!

Depp swans through this swashbuckler with a scene-stealing gusto unseen since Marlon Brando in "Mutiny on the Bounty." He's comic dynamite, but this plodding, repetitive bore should walk the plank for timidly refusing to light his fuse.

Miller's wake-up call is meant to be ours. Too little and too late? Maybe. But even in this Bourne Zone, Damon and Greengrass haven't shirked their duty to enlighten and entertain.

This riveting film qualifies as the anti-crowd-pleaser -- but Penn makes it unthinkable to turn away.

In updating Shakespeare’s "The Tempest," writer-director Mike Cahill focuses on the magic worth finding between a father and daughter. That’s why the film sticks with you. It’s a gift.

Damsel won't work for everyone. It's too quirky for that. But it goes its merrily deranged way with prankish enthusiasm and a genuine sense of the absurd.

With its pokey pace broken by bursts of violence and racial tension, the end of Paul Schrader’s man-in-a-room trilogy falls short of the master’s peak. But this mesmerizer is the work of a true film artist continually striving to connect his tortured soul to ours.

These performers keep you mesmerized, making the most of what they're given even when the film sinks into a swamp of whose-dick-is-bigger competitions and sports clichés about product endorsements.

In this slow but touching biopic, Claire Foy excels as an academic who buries her grief about her father’s death by caring for a predator goshawk, so both can relearn to fly.

River may not be high art, but it is the perfect high old time for audiences in the mood to be tossed into the spin cycle for a pulse-pounding thrill ride.

Viggo Mortensen scores a standout directing debut, showing the artful sensitivity and offbeat humor that define him as an actor with this heart-piercing drama in which he stars as a gay son coping with the dementia of his racist father (a career-best Lance Henriksen).

Foy's performance is something you don't want to miss. Whether spewing f-bombs, kneeing a suspected assailant in the balls, or promising a blowjob to Nate for a few minutes on his secret cell phone, Foy comes on like gangbusters. Fans of her prim, proper regent on "The Crown" are in for a shock.

It's no go. Green and Gothic make for a clumsy fit.

Don Roos's script for Single White Female, from the 1990 potboiler SWF Seeks Same, by John Lutz, is as empty as a hack's head. Schroeder goes through the motions — the movie is elegantly made — but this synthetic Hollywood package panders shamelessly to the baser instincts.

As Alien, a gun-crazy Florida drug dealer with tats, beaded cornrows and a grill any rapper would envy, Franco is a bug-f--k blast. Too bad the movie itself is rarely as outrageous as he is.

Elegant, funny and unexpectedly touching, this whodunit about a murder aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst represents a bracing comeback for Peter Bogdanovich.

The ending -- a more devastating surprise than "The Village" could manage -- caps eighty sweat-job minutes of imaginative, jolting suspense.

The callous inequity of what you see and hear will floor you. It can't happen here. But it did. It does.

A brightly-colored, dizzying pinwheel of 3D animation in which nothing much happens. Sounds like summer is here early.

Damn the cliches! Kevin Costner lends star power to this high-tension thriller, but even he can't match the wallop of seeing Diane Lane and Lesley Manville in action as mothers pushed to the limit.

Del Toro is the movie's force field. This is a performance you will not forget.

In Cry-Baby, Waters has created a crackpot jamboree that captures the Fifties, then parodies and transcends the period; any resemblance to Nineties greed, prejudice and repression is intentional. At forty-three, Waters remains unrepentantly juvenile. It’s his saving grace. What he can’t fight, he ridicules. The mirror Waters holds up to the world is distorted, turning everyone into a grotesque. But we can still see ourselves in it And laugh.

World War Z is still as smart, shifty and scary as a starving zombie ready to chow down on you, baby, you.

Angelina Jolie fires up the best actress Oscar race as opera legend Maria Callas, but director Pablo Larraín's muffled cinematic take on the prima donna’s last days commits the cardinal sin that Callas never did as an artist by leaving us on the outside looking in.

Even when the film fails her, Field never loses her focus.

This hilarious, high-kicking nonsense cost two cents and looks it -- hell, it was shot in 19 days, but you'll laugh helplessly anyway.

This might have degenerated into a cheap gimmick if not for the way Shyamalan lets us inside the childhood trauma that pushed his tormentor into multiple personalities.

A fiercely funny human comedy with jokes that sting and leave marks.

The Dreamers may go slack when you most want it to soar, but it also seduces with eroticism and resonates with ideas.

Goldthwait's movie, shot on video that makes it look dragged through puppy poop, is an unholy mess. But it also possesses a quick wit and an endearing tenderness toward Amy as honesty wrecks her life. It's sweet, doggone it.

Until the end, when Robinson allows the lunacy to run into rant, the provocative Advertising adds up to frightful good fun. That is, if you’re not put off by accepting a preening pocket of pus as a leading man.

It’s the Mattfleck starshine, plus the indisputable action bonafides of director Joe Carnahan, that sell this cop thriller when formula threatens to overtake it.

The fierce and funny film version has been directed by Texan Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) with rare grace and compassion.

Even when the laughs don't always snap, Key and Peele are ready with another one or a dozen that do. These dudes really are the cat's meow.

You’ll either love it or hate it as director Ari Aster tasks Joaquin Phoenix with his most challenging role yet: a total loser just trying to get home to his mama (Patti LuPone). It’s not for everyone, except audiences starved for originality in copycat Hollywood.

Director Kenneth Branagh again stars as Agatha Christie’s preening detective Hercule Poirot, moving Dame Agatha’s mystery from London to Venice and into the land of the supernatural. This all-star (yay Tina Fey!), wickedly entertaining shakeup does them both proud.

Director Tom McGrath keeps the action spinning and trips lightly over the bummer spectacle of watching a bad boy go good.

It would be no country for movie lovers without the Coens. They still manage to run unmuzzled while the rest of Hollywood runs scared.

It’s been 18 years between ‘Matrix’ sequels, but beneath the action chaos of warring computer codes are Keanu Reeves as Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, proving that they’re still romantic icons of timeless cool in a movie that’s a stone-cold trip. Wowza!

DiCaprio, in his most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet, is the vessel Scorsese uses to lead us through the film’s laby­rinth.

Cage works hard to find traces of humanity in a man that God forgot, as do screenwriter Steven Conrad and director Gore Verbinski. But in the face of a character no one cares about, can audiences be faulted for asking: Why should we?

Eyes sees what it wants to see, but it's a riveting glimpse.

The idea of the boiler room as a Y2K gladiator ring for disenfranchised youth provides a proactive new twist.

What a bold notion for a movie, and what a bust in terms of execution.

Driver's tough core of honesty and wit is bewitching. So's the movie.

Amigo is combustible filmmaking, something that stays with you long after the final credits. In an entertainment universe of escapism and short attention spans, Amigo is a rousing antidote and a cause for celebration.

Teenagers, even non-ninjas and non-turtles, have been eating up this cinematic waste product for weeks now. In one way, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a triumph for producer Michael Bay in that it is equally as godawful as his "Transformers: Age of Extinction" and a hit nonetheless.

Forget the thin membrane of a soap opera plot— Timothée Chalamet acts and sings the young Bob Dylan to showstopping perfection, catching the famously withholding troubadour in the exhilarating act of inventing himself as multitudes, always creating and always in the wind.

A potent and provocative look at life unhinged. Bubble is said to be the first in a series of six low-budget films from Soderbergh. If they all rock the boat like this one, bring 'em on.

It's a bitch telling a coming-of-age story minus clichés and sappiness. So Youth in Revolt, with Michael Cera in his best performance yet, is a small miracle.

Aussie director Anthony Maras, in his feature debut, brings a Hitchcockian feel for suspense and a documentarian’s eye for detail to the brutal events that transpired over three days in November 2008 when the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba initiated an attack on the city of Mumbai.

Director and co-writer Christopher Smith, mischievously blending "The Office" with "Friday the 13th," keeps things fierce and funny enough to give Steve Carell ideas.

As an actor, Burns has worked the Hollywood game from "Saving Private Ryan" to "Alex Cross." But his core passion is for making indie movies without studio interference, guerilla style. Because he takes his films personally, so do we. The Fitzgerald Family Christmas is one of his best.

Never adds up to anything more substantial than shrewd observations. There's no dramatic core.

Keeps the laughs coming, and a dynamo named Steve Zahn is the cheif reason why. It's a one-joke movie, but the cast knows how to sell it.

The explosive V for Vendetta is powered by ideas that are not computer-generated. It's something rare in Teflon Hollywood: a movie that sticks with you.

Even when the sequel loses momentum, and it does like to repeat itself, Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci are comic virtuosos not to be resisted. That’s all.

Junkies for dark humor should prep for going cold turkey, despite the efforts of director Andrew Adamson to spice things up with combat and a rivalry between Caspian and Peter (good on Moseley for showing some backbone) that Lewis never imagined.

The movie ride delivered by Solo: A Star Wars Story is more mild than wild, a pleasant way to pass the time instead of a game-changer.

Lavishly produced swashbuckler that should have been far more entertaining.

For all the clanking armies of iron knights on display to dazzle the eager kid in each of us, this summer epic rings hollow. There's no one home inside the suit.

The irony is that Affleck's battering at the hands of fame has prepped him beautifully to play Reeves.

This spark-free film has no place to go on their resumes except under the heading of "Cringing Embarrassment."

The first commandment of Dogma: Thou shalt not stop laughing.

The four actresses supply enough humor and heart to light any movie’s fuse, even this cliched retread of Thelma and Louise. Like the characters they play, the sisters deserve better.

Given Helgeland's rep as a screenwriter (including an Oscar for 1997's L.A. Confidential), it rankles that 42 settles for the official story. The private Robinson, who died of a heart attack at 53 in 1972, stays private. We stay on the outside looking in. Let it be.

Cool stuff. Cool movie.

Sigourney Weaver deserves awards attention for turning what could have been a cliched dramedy about a real-estate agent, who’s also a functioning alcoholic, into something funny, touching and vital. And cheers to Kevin Kline as the dazed dude who loves her.

Baldwin is a marvel in a casting surprise that pays off.

This slapstick road movie feels tossed off by people on a raunchy bender. I mean that as a good thing. The trouble with Hit & Run is that it can't sustain its trippy effervescence.

Seeing the scaly dude side with Mother Nature against the freaks is almost worth enduring the blather that precedes it. I said "almost."

Even when the film goes too far over the top to be saved, McConaughey mesmerizes.

Niccol is too good a screenwriter (The Truman Show, Gattaca) not to know that Hollywood cliches are hell on a film's political bite. They muzzle it.

Craig Lucas’s prince of a play has been turned into a toad of a movie.

Polanski has great wicked fun with sex, love, cruelty, books, movies and, of course, himself. If you don’t go along with the joke, you’re in for rough sailing.

It's rare to find a movie that uses music to define love without sentimentalizing it. But Begin Again, with songs by Glen Hansard and New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander, is a wonderfully appealing exception.

The actors could not be better. Sarsgaard, Scott and the luminous Clarkson negotiate the film's razor-sharp laughs and bone-deep tragedy with resonant skill. Lucas' powerfully haunting film gets under your skin.

Even the film's missteps (the score, by Barrington Pheloung, is cringe-inducing) can't stop this meditation on love -- Martin calls it "Jane Austen for the twenty-first century" -- from melting into heartbreak.

Blethyn's solid-gold charm turns Saving Grace into a comic high.

Brad Pitt doesn't really act in Ocean's Thirteen, he just glides through the third chapter in Steven Soderbergh's heist-flick annuity on the magic carpet of his own unimpeachable cool. Don't knock it. Genuine star power is rare. Pitt has it in spades -- all aces.

Smash acting debut of Combs, who brings ease and charm to a crime lord.

It's Knightley who makes The Duchess a royal treat.

Laced with such rampant misogyny that the laughs stick in your throat.

It’s a tough, achingly tender film that refuses to trade in false hopes or cheap sentiment. That truth is what makes Beautiful Boy hard to take and impossible to forget.

We’ve waited 36 years for this sequel and despite some rough plot patches, Michael Keaton returns in peak form to the funniest role of his career as the trickster demon who’s determined to let his freak flag fly. The Juice is loose, babe. Act accordingly.

A recent showing of Burton's artwork at New York's Museum of Modern Art attracted long lines and critical brickbats. Maybe that's why Big Eyes, for all its tonal shifts and erratic pacing, seems like Burton's most personal and heartfelt film in years, a tribute to the yearning that drives even the most marginalized artist to self expression no matter what the hell anyone thinks.

Director Wolfgang Petersen puts such a fresh spin on the familiar that it all works like gangbusters.

The Gift delivers the lurid goods as a scary, sexy, twist-a-minute whodunit.

Macdonald uses the "Das Boot"-like claustrophobia for maximum tension, then deadens the thrills with flashbacks to Robinson and his estranged wife. Ah, jeez. Law and the scrappy cast work best when submerged and going at one another like beasts.

There’s nothing new about this queer romance between a president’s son and a prince of England except the way it skips the sorrow to favor the joy. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But for audiences eager to connect instead of divide at the movies, it's about time.

For all the mirth and mayhem, Bob Odenkirk and his merry pranksters are exposing how violence is wired into the American character.

Thompson never disappoints, nailing every nuance of a judge who lets the world in at the cost of losing her own judgment. This is acting of the highest order.

The dialogue is clunky, the A-list actors are slumming and, yeah, you've seen it all before. But Kong: Skull Island is a creature feature that's damn near irresistible.

Timely and smartly entertaining.

The gifted Myers lets his once and (I hope) future shag king get lost in an elephantine Hollywood franchise. The first time was the charm, baby.

The uniformly fine performances are a tribute to Washington, who plays the shrink with his customary command.

It's Bell – riding high with the Disney-animated "Frozen" and Showtime's carnal-fixated "House of Lies" – you want to follow anywhere. Bell is irresistible, and she makes us care.

The Doors is a thrilling spectacle - the King Kong of rock movies - featuring a starmaking, ball-of-fire performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison.

Despite Bates' mastery at bringing unexpected depth to unhinged characters, Dolores is a few pints low on chills and challenge.