Peter Travers

Do you really need me to tell you how scary this horror show isn't?

It's funny as hell, and like all comedy that stings, sorrowful at its core.

The ending leans to soap opera, but Van Sant, revisiting the closet-genius theme of "Good Will Hunting" is too keen an observer of character to let this funny and touching film go soft.

Draws an electric performance from Peter Mullan.

The Photograph comes down with a teary case of "The Notebook," laying on flashbacks that yank us out of the present, where our stars live, and into a past riddled with sentimental clichés.

Down in the mud with the guys, Moore finds the heart of her character and a career beyond vanity and hype. She's never looked better.

It's still a first-class charm assault.

Despite the lofty tone of his literary, artistic and metaphysical allusions, Greenaway is working the same streets of human depravity as John Waters; he's just more pretentious about it. At best, Greenaway's film is a provocative and diabolically funny foray into the roots of passion and cruelty. At worst, the symbolic bric-a-brac gets so thick you lose sight of the characters.

The Wachowskis have put together a mix of culture, kung fu, sci-fi and speculation, that makes them the warped wonders they are. When the film ends with a "To Be Continued," the hooks are in for The Matrix Revolutions on November 5th. Maybe I've been programmed to say it, but I am so there.

It's hysterically, gut-bustingly funny.

I'm OK with Entourage onscreen because it's really a victory lap for a cast that once earned our DVR-ready affection. To echo Perry Farrell: "Yeah! Oh, yeah!" As for the haters? Hug it out, bitches.

Eddie Murphy is 63 now and sometimes the jokes seem just as retirement ready, but seeing the this comic legend return to the cop role he created four decades ago—along with many of the old gang— at least squeaks by as primo fan service.

This live-action re-imagining of Disney’s 1941 animated classic may be the sweetest film Tim Burton has ever made. It’s also the safest.

Blazing performance will burn in your memory. Same goes for the film.

The Woman in Black doesn't break new ground, but in its suggestions of fine film ghost stories, from "The Innocents" to "The Others" and "The Orphanage," it works you over with riveting restraint.

A rip-roaring action adventure.

Fanaticism is Dannelly's target, not faith. That's what makes his film a keeper: It sticks with you.

The role is a beast, and Cranston, in a tour de force of touching gravity and aching humanism, gives it everything he's got. It's astounding to watch, and an award-caliber performance from an actor who keeps springing surprises.

The acting is of the highest caliber. Winger, magnificent and too long between films, is a volcano of repressed anger.

Amid the clamor from outraged purists and Shakespeare spinning in his Stratford-on-Avon, England, grave, you should notice that Luhrmann and his two bright angels have shaken up a 400-year-old play without losing its touching, poetic innocence.

Though Exit is often bold and imaginative, it is also curiously lifeless. The screenplay, by Desmond Nakano (Boulevard Nights), which combines the novel’s six separate stories, never adds up to a coherent whole.

Drags and sags at 124 minutes. Luckily, the movie never runs on sitcom empty. How could it, with a terrific cast.

Ryan Reynolds piles on the charm as a bland bank teller who discovers he’s just a pixelated extra in a violent video game. The comedy could have been sharper, spikier and riskier—like ‘The Truman Show’— but this summer funfest goes down easy, even for non-gamers.

Hart is a comic fireball. Don't leave till after the final credits when he and Hall bust a few more hilarious improv moves.

In the case of Una, the play's the thing, with the stage production coming at you in a rush that doesn't allow the characters or the audience to take a breath. In this personal hell of Harrower's creation, there is no exit. The movie, however, keeps opening the door and letting the air in.

The best hip-hop film of all, taking on obvious targets (misogynist lyrics) and sacred cows (political rap) alike.

A deeply touching human story filled with humor and heartbreak is rare in any movie season, especially summer. That's what makes The Help an exhilarating gift.

Passes muster as an old-style biopic with its heart in the right place. There won't be a dry eye in the house.

With this cast, you are guaranteed moments of inspired lunacy. It's still fun watching Cleese get caught with his pants down. But the material seems familiar and overworked.

Kazan’s technique drafts seductive promises that the empty-headed Dream Lover can’t keep.

With the Bard’s words, Henry roused his soldiers to action: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” With this mediocrity, it’s more a case of how the war was wan.

This is Kidman’s show. She neatly negotiates every twist the script throws at her, even when the plot slams into too many dead ends. This is a movie star who knows how to stay the course, no matter how twisty, tangled or down and dirty it gets. She’s dynamite.

Like Vardalos and Corbett, who play their roles with vibrant charm, the film, directed by Joel Zwick, is heartfelt and hilarious in ways you can't fake. It's a keeper.

A fine case ... but none weighty enough to keep this fluff from evaporating as you watch it.

That the performances are uniformly outstanding is a tribute to Rob Reiner, who directs with masterly assurance, fusing suspense and character to create a movie that literally vibrates with energy.

It's rare that a a movie leaves you pinned to your seat, wanting to see it again -- right now, this minute -- to work out the pieces of the puzzle. Unbreakable is one of those movies.

Wilson drops the ironic smirk to give a sincerely affecting performance. His scenes with Murray provide the ballast when the script veers off into unconvincing pirate attacks and animated sea creatures.

She's glorious, as she always is. But even Ronan can't totally cut through the academic stuffiness that comes with this posh literary adaptation.

What elevates The Rental is the dynamite acting from the four leads.

The Interpreter bristles with the smart, steadily engrossing tension that marked such 1970s goodies as "All the President's Men," "The Parallax View" and Pollack's own "Three Days of the Condor."

Theo James plays twin brothers on the run from a toy monkey with blood-splattering murder on its mind. Director Oz Perkins doesn’t disappoint with his ferociously funny take on Stephen King’s short story even if he never reaches the horror heights.

So it's a shame that in the end Madden can't keep the tear-jerking from drowning this delicate cinematic flower. The book knew how to hang tough. The movie, not so much.

Amirpour dips into an seemingly bottomless supply of signs and symbols to show us an imploding society all too recognizable as our own, and you'll marvel at hallucinatory brilliance of her images. Yet The Bad Batch never finds a way to fuse its scattered intentions into a cohesive whole.

But for all its visionary brilliance, the movie version of Interview never lets us close enough to see ourselves in Louis. We're dazzled but unmoved.

Stupendously exciting and emotionally engulfing... With probing intelligence and passionate feeling, Cameron has raised the adventure film very close to the level of art.

This little-hyped thriller emerges as a dark-horse winner by reminding us of how pleasurably exciting a popcorn movie can be when it's populated by actors who are in it for more than an exorbitant fee.

Contact aims to be a film of ideas but serves too many of them half-baked.

Remember "Limitless," the 2011 thriller in which Bradley Cooper becomes a whirling killer dervish from a drug that lets him access 100 percent of his brain? Well, Lucy is basically the same movie with Scarlett Johansson in the Cooper role. It's not a good trade-off.

Sinfully funny.

It's a tale so used, abused and broken you can hear it wheezing.

Delpy is boundlessly appealing. And Rock is acerbic fun, notably in the imaginary debates he stages with Obama. But the frenzied cross-cultural gags take the piss out of the real subject: how blood ties can turn love into a battlefield.

Even when the script slips into sentiment, Peirce sticks with her troubled, questing soldiers, and through this raw and riveting movie, they stick with us.

Shepherd wants to say something profound about the effect of a deceitful government on human values. But it's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.

From the lowercase lettering of the title to the deadly familiarity of the plot, there is much to grate on your nerves in this TV Afterschool Special trying to pass as a real movie.

Hackman and Hoffman, old pals in their first film together, make a lively business of their one scene together -– in a toilet, no less. The rest you can flush.

In a rare instance of truth in advertising, the movie actually is a good time.

Before it reverts to moldy zombie tropes, this low-budget, no-frills survival thriller puts a fresh spin on the familiar thanks to Daisy Ridley as a human living among the walking dead.

Margaret, for all its flaws, is a film of rare beauty and shocking gravity.

The ending is a TVish cop-out. But until then, watching Wood sweat emerges as a pulse-pounding experiment in terror.

Keanu Reeves is an angel of fun in this bright but tonally broken Aziz Ansari comedy about the hell of living in a gig economy.

This funny and touching movie depends on two can-do actresses to scrub past the biohazard of noxious clichés that threaten to intrude. Adams and Blunt get the job done.

The result is a failed and lifeless experiment in which everything goes wrong.

An almost-there comedy with diverting compensations.

Sam Rockwell has yet to find a movie as good as he is (Moon comes closest). He's still looking.

It sounds pretty cheesy and sometimes it’s a whole cheese wheel, but Hugh Jackman and especially Kate Hudson sing and act their hearts out.

What was once riveting now feels rote. What once made us want more of the same now makes us eager for the shock of the new.

It looks like a documentary...Don't let anyone tell you more.

Want your skin to crawl? This one's for you.

The new Count moves with the smooth, plastic efficiency of a TV miniseries. Inspiration and originality may be in short supply, but the movie gets the job done.

Mamet's incendiary writing and the potent performances are teasingly ambiguous. Though he exposes the widening gulf between the sexes, Mamet leaves the audience to find ways to explain it. That's what makes Oleanna such a powerhouse; it's a brilliant dare.

Broken Arrow delivers the hippest action fun around. Travolta's "Dr. Strangelove" exit will blow you away. Ditto the movie.

Veering between sentimentality and exploitation with a few misguided stops at raunchy sex farce, Reign Over Me never finds a tone to suit its purpose.

Somewhere along the road of development hell, the movie settled for delivering standard-issue jolts for jocks.

An animated fluffball that does everything to drive you crazy and ends up by being totally irresistible.

When is a movie fall-down funny even when some scenes fall flat on their fat ones? When it's Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

Hirsch opens his heart to the role. And Dorff, matching the depth of feeling he showed in Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," excels at digging deep into Jerry Lee's pain.

For all its imperfections and borrowed horror inspirations, this cheeky romcom scarefest is still one movie Valentine that delivers the goods for shudders and cuddles.

DiCaprio's swaggering, swinging-dick performance is the wildest damn thing he's ever put onscreen.

There's about an hour of terrific movie in this love-hate look at lurid Old Hollywood. Too bad it’s trapped in three hours plus of self-indulgent bloat. Even the starshine of Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt dims as director Damien Chazelle rabidly bites the hand that feeds him.

Beauty can be an ugly business so it’s too bad this tense, fitfully funny satire about vanity scammers only goes skin deep. But it’s all flowers for Elizabeth Banks who is sheer bonkers perfection as a cosmetics control freak losing control.

Ron Hagen’s camera work captures the delirium of carnage that drives out rational thought. Ignore the prudes who think you shouldn’t make films about things that scare you. It’s a first line of defense. This Aussie Reservoir Dogs opens up a brutal world that needs to be understood.

Credible? Not really. But Cage and Rockwell play off each other with devilish finesse. And Lohman (White Oleander) is on fire -- she's a comer.

The estrogen overload damn near did me in.

Does Carey go too far? Duh. But why gripe when you can't stop laughing?

Hero heads for the high ground of the dark, sorrowful comedies of Preston Sturges (Hail the Conquering Hero) and Frank Capra (Meet John Doe). Credit the film then for having a goal, even though it loses sight of it with disturbing rapidity.

One of the worst movies of this or any year.

So what if star and co-director Channing Tatum lays on the sniffles in this tale of an Army Ranger and a K9 warrior named Lulu, who steals every scene she's in. They’re both PTSD-scarred combat veterans who try to heal each other and they hit you like a shot in the heart.

Hamstrung by a script that seems determined to stop at all the big moments in Frida's life (she died in 1954 at age forty-seven) without giving anything time to resonate.

We get bracing bro banter, pectoral flexing and the whole gang going wild on Molly. Good times.

Ethan Hawke brings back the mask that launched a thousand screams in a tricky treat of a horror sequel that’s perfect for Halloween

In the end, The Soloist isn't about BIG MOMENTS, it's about the grace notes, the kind that stay with you.

Part thriller, part meditation on life and art, part portrait of a man on a tightrope, The White Crow may be juggling more themes than it can handle. But Fiennes makes the result a thing of bruising beauty and an exhilarating gift.

In Vice, the writer-director is tossing grenades every which way — it’s a movie that’s ferociously funny one minute, bleakly sorrowful the next.

Ocean's 8 is a heist caper that looks gorgeous, keeps the twists coming and bounces along on a comic rhythm that's impossible to resist. What more do you want in summer escapism?

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?

This by-the-numbers Aretha Franklin biopic is all about Jennifer Hudson doing Aretha proud. And does she ever. As the legendary Queen of Soul, Hudson does not, will not, cannot hit a wrong note, creating a respectful tribute to both their radiant talents.

We're getting more of the same, but less of the impact, like weed from a bad dealer.

A clumsy package of clichés.

Bosworth is a star in the making, but even she can't outshine the surfing footage, which is flat-out spectacular.

Moore's fireball of a movie could change your life. It had me laughing with tears in my eyes.

If it's hip to be square, then this racehorse movie is the ultimate in cornball cool.

The film has been clobbered with complaints: John Cassavetes, Rowlands and their frequent co-star Peter Falk would have played these roles better; the script is old hat; the improvisatorial style smacks of self-indulgence masked as raw truth. Blah, blah, blah. The detractors should shut up and drink their beer or at least accept She’s So Lovely for what it is: a gift.

With raw shock and a riveting Uma Thurman absent this time, Nymphomaniac: Volume II is a metaphoric limp dick.

It’s kickass trash that never pretends to be more. Bonus points for that.

From the Eastern flavor of the opening theme, hauntingly sung by Nancy Sinatra, to the Japanese setting, the fifth film is the Bond series just gets better and cooler with age. The tasty script by Roald Dahl junks most of the Fleming novel, spinning its own witty Cold War fantasy.

After the delicious treat of 2011's "The Muppets," with Jason Segel and Amy Adams joining Kermit, Miss Piggy and the gang, Muppets Most Wanted feels like tasteless leftovers.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. But first you have to cut through the noise.

Slick thrills and the star's blue eyes are enough to make Ransom the fall's monster hit. Instead, Howard and Gibson stake out a Moclock side in all of us that won't be banished, not even by a happy ending. I'll be damned.

Judge is in the business of social satire, and his laughs can sting, but his movie is a comic salute to free enterprise. And, boy, do we need it now.

Sadly, Abominable fails to carve out its own place in a crowded field. The movie huffs and puffs, but there’s no fear of any houses being blown down.

Sometimes a shamelessly stoopid, proudly profane R-rated comedy is all you want out of life. Role Models more than fills the bill. It's killer funny.

Both boys give such heart-rending performances that fear of reprisals for participating in the scene persuaded the studio to postpone the film's release to give them time to leave Kabul.

Here's the problem: The movie was made just four years ago by Argentinian director Fabian Bielinsky. It is called "Nine Queens," and it is vastly superior to this blah U.S. remake from director Gregory Jacobs.

But just watch Hanks, with the effortless grace of a Jimmy Stewart, turn the loony into something sweetly logical. Now that is magic.

The final confrontation between the Hulk and Blonsky, now the roaring Abomination, is like the clash of Downey and Bridges in "Iron Man," only not as exciting.

Not even Jackman, one of the most persuasive actors around, can sell the argument that personal weakness doesn’t stain public character in the era of #MeToo.

What to do when a great actor is stuck in a not-so-great movie? You bite the bullet and watch anyway for Russell Crowe at his cunning, commanding best as Hermann Göring, a Nazi whose soft-pedaled narcissism gives him gobs of unearned confidence. Enough to fool his shrink (Rami Malek) and the tribunal judges at Nuremberg? That’s the idea.

The thrills in the first Latino superhero epic from DC Comics are mostly generic but the personal relationships between protagonist Jaime Reyes (a charming Xolo Maridueña) and his irresistibly rowdy and resilient relatives make all the difference. Viva la familia!

If you’re looking for an orgasmic trip to heavy-metal heaven, this is it.

Director Regis Warginer ("Indochine") lets his film degenerate into a turgid melodrama.

Spellbinding.

The film version of Carnage hasn't just lost God from its title, it's lost the laughs from the play that brought it life.

Dawson digs deep and nails every nuance, making the dizzying suspense resonate with raw emotion. She is, in a word, electrifying. Even when the wheels come off the too-busy plot, so is the movie.

Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break.

Charmer of a comedy.

Director Paul Schrader has fashioned a film of surpassing creepiness. It's pretentious, too, and sometimes maddeningly dull. But the erotically unsettling atmosphere – exquisitely rendered by cinematographer Dante Spinotti – soon seeps in.

Velvet Buzzsaw is never less than a feast for the eyes even when it reduces the plot to B-level butchery. What’s missing is the potent provocation that Gilroy seemed to be developing at the start.

If you tamp down your expectations -- those gaping plot holes are dangerous! -- there is a storm of scary fun to be had in this Scandinavian splatterfest.

Kidman gives the most emotionally bruising performance of her career in Dogville, a movie that never met a cliche it didn't stomp on.

Bahrani is a gifted filmmaker. But he shoots himself in the foot by throwing in a contrived plot device that creates drama at the expense of credibility. Suddenly, we're isolated from a film that had made us believe. It's a breach of trust that comes at too high a price.

Gilroy stages two riveting shootouts involving Marta at work and home. And there's a killer chase scene in Manila as the bad guys try to knock Aaron and Marta off their speeding motorcycle. It's all sound and fury signifying nothing except a desperate need to feed a franchise.

Like District 9, an allegory of apartheid that took four Oscar nods and put Blomkamp on the map, Elysium delivers sci-fi without dumbing it down. It's a hell-raiser with a social conscience.

Director Brad Anderson tightens the screws of suspense, but it's Bale's gripping, beyond-the-call-of-duty performance that holds you in thrall.

A sharply observant and witty film that plumbs unexpected depths of feeling.

This pissed-off man of Adamantium claws is stalking new ground (Japan), and his fight with yakuza on top of Tokyo's speeding bullet train is a wowser.

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.

Short review of three little words: Way. Too. Long.

Love it or loathe it—there’s no in between—Emerald Fennell’s deliciously depraved takedown of the upper classes keeps you glued to Barry Keoghan as a poorboy driven to madness and worse by a rich Adonis (Jacob Elordi) and his sweetly vampiric mom (an Oscar-ready Rosamund Pike).

A film that could have been the first cleareyed view of the jazz world from a black perspective ends as a romanticized fable. For the only time in his remarkable career, Spike Lee has failed to tell it like it is.

Kingsman is all over the place, sometimes to its detriment. But you won’t want to miss the surprises it delights in springing.

The fight scenes grow numbing as the birds take on the goons in melees that add up mostly to noise. All you feel is numb as Yan piles on one brawl after another to give the illusion that something is happening. Nothing really is. Birds of Prey and its ilk are empty calories, not meant to disturb when they dazzle. Joker, whatever its shortcomings, tackled a festering society that created its own monsters. Slapping the topical theme of female empowerment on a story that trucks in business-as-usual violence does not qualify as a game-changer — or a reason to go to the movies.

De Niro's decision to make Dwight a loony from the get-go throws the delicate symmetry of the story out of whack.

Jason Reitman energetically tracks the lead-up to the first episode of SNL in 1975, but the result is only fitfully funny, leaving the cast struggling to register. Best in show are Dylan O'Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Nicholas Braun in a surprise dual role.

It's the work of a major talent. Apatow scores by crafting the film equivalent of a stand-up routine that encompasses the joy, pain, anger, loneliness and aching doubt that go into making an audience laugh.

Life mirroring nature in all its wayward ferocity. Too much? You bet. But Fassbender (Magneto in X-Men) and Vikander (an Oscar winner for The Danish Girl), who fell in love during the making of the film, fully commit to their roles and hold us in their grip. The movie, sad to say, can't keep its head above water.

The movie steps lively with buoyant humor and palpable sexual tension, but keep an eye out for the dark places.

This all-over-the-place, all-silly, all-star (Bullock, Tatum, Radcliffe, Pitt) throwback to 1980’s escapism—think “Romancing the Stone”—radiates such a puppy-dog eagerness to please that you want to pet it instead of pointing out its faults.

Hornet's Nest is talky but indisputably terrific, and it ends in a dazzling display of courtroom fireworks. Rapace is hot stuff in any language. Oscar, take heed.

Craig puts heat and heart into Spectre, as if he's taken Bond as far he can. The movie is a fever dream of all the Bond villains and all of Bond's efforts to see a life past them.

It's as if the brothers admired the Swiss-watch precision of the original and wanted to take it apart to see how the pieces would work in a new setting. As an experiment, it's fascinating. But damn if the fiddling doesn't suck the life out of the laughs.

There is nothing new in Robert Greenwald's sobering doc.

Lethal Weapon 3 offers mediocrity wielded by experts. It's not a movie, it's a machine.

The big surprise here is McKinnon, also an SNL MVP (her Hillary is already iconic). She's a live-wire whose every gesture, reaction and line-reading seems fresh and off-the-wall — a spontaneous eruption of hellfire hilarity.

The return of Benedict Cumberbatch to the world of Strange may seem chaotic madness to the uninitiated, but it’s thrilling to see livewire director Sam Raimi breathe hilarity and juicy horror into the Marvel formula that so needed a shakeup. This is it.

Our Idiot Brother comes off as a blueprint for a smart script no one really made. Now that's what I call dumb.

Mikey Madison, Oscar’s new Cinderella, leads a cast of crazies as a Brooklyn sex worker who finds her prince charming in the son of a dangerous Russian oligarch. No list of the year’s best films would be complete without Sean Baker’s whirlwind blast of fun and social provocation.

I only wish this richly imaginative movie had stayed truer to the dark heart of its visuals.

The film is just two people talking, but director Jim Simpson finds its grieving heart.

There's nothing ground-breaking about this backstage murder mystery in 1953 London. Dig under the froth and you'll only find more froth. But thanks to the inspired lunacy of Rockwell and Ronan, it's a wicked fun whodunit that goes down easy.

Flaws aside, Kill the Messenger inspires a moral outrage that feels disconcertingly timely.

The funny, touching and vital Jeff, Who Lives at Home reaffirms your faith in Jay and Mark Duplass. Their films hit you where you live.

Kudrow's Michele is a deadpan delight as she joins fellow misfit Romy (a deliciously funny Mira Sorvino).

The jokes are repetitive and the action is strictly formula, but the old-school star power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt having a laugh as lone wolf fixers stuck working the same job in New York gets by on the pleasure of their company.

Watching Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds is usually time well spent, but this woebegone wintery love story makes you want to jump into an Amsterdam canal.

Luckily, Trumbo has a powerhouse Bryan Cranston to light a fire under the moldier clichés in John McNamara's script.

Everett, whose scenes with Firth are a droll delight, nails every sly laugh. And Witherspoon adds her own legally blond American sparkle to this British party.

The pleasures of this endeavor, directed with a keen eye for detail by Pieter Jan Brugge, come from what the actors bring to the material.

This big-screen prequel to ‘The Sopranos,’ with a touching Michael Gandolfini playing the teen version of the role created by his late father, is good, but not good enough to score as a great mob epic in its own right.

It's easy to overlook the failings in The Last Five Years. Let it in and it knocks you back on your heels. Just like love.

Ronan (Lady Bird) and Robbie (I, Tonya) were both nominated for a Best Actress Oscar last award season, and even when the pace of the film falters, these two performers hold you in thrall. That’s royalty.

In contrasting the sexuality and rebellion of Lucy's generation with his own, Bertolucci clearly yearns to rekindle his creative spirit.

What a handsome empty shell of a movie Allied is.

What Dick rendered potent, Nolfi renders preposterous.

Way fiercer and funnier than a fourth sequel has any right to be. Here's ‘Scream’ for a new generation – so self-aware that it mocks itself for relying on borrowed inspiration (the 1996 Wes Craven original) while squeezing the golden goose for one last payoff.

Richardson -- acting with her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, who plays her aunt, and her aunt Lynn Redgrave, who plays her mother -- finds the story's grieving heart. Fiennes is her match in soulful artistry.

More trifling lark than a new Pixar landmark, this toon hits the sweet spot as the story of astronaut Buzz Lightyear before he became a toy. Chris Evans voices the Buzz bluster, but it's breakthrough star Sox the cat who steals scenes to infinity and beyond.

This hoop dreams animation romp from producer Steph Curry isn’t NBA quality, but it gets the job done for family fun. The inclusivity messaging abut teamwork is laid on thick, but still worthwhile for immature audiences of all ages.

Good Boys rides highest on the teamwork of its three young stars.

It's the spirit that Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace, put into inventing himself and his music that ignites Notorious, a biopic that sees the flaws in the man but can't help accentuating the positive.

It’s Norton’s own performance that brings emotional connection to Motherless Brooklyn. Always a consummate actor, with Oscar nominations for "Primal Fear," "American History X" and "Birdman" — he deserved another for "Fight Club" — Norton is at his very best as Lionel, seeing beyond the tics to the things that make him human.

Brendan Fraser is on the march to Oscar. That's how astonishing his acting is as a morbidly obese recluse in this deeply moving character study. Accusations that wearing a fatsuit diminishes his tour de force performances are nonsense. This is essential viewin

The script is too primly PG-13 to really go for it. Warm Bodies even suggests that true love can help the right zombie grow a new heart. That's a con job that makes Bodies lukewarm at best.

A funny and touching date movie that dares to celebrate decency.

Thanks to the fleet direction of Niki Caro and no-bull performances by the boys, notably Carlos Pratts as the team's best runner and Ramiro Rodriguez as the worst. Along the way, McFarland, USA gives us a vital sense of hardscrabble lives and dreams of glory deferred. All cheers here are fully earned.

As a blunt-force Oklahoma oil rigger trying to save his daughter jailed in France for murder, Matt Damon gives an indelible, implosive performance in a deeply personal human drama disguised as a crime thriller.

The movie is marred by overkill, especially in the brutal and bloated allegorical ending, which feels lifted, clumsily, from The Godfather. State of Grace is most powerful and gripping when it stays true to the emotions of its characters.

Amateur is Hartley heaven, a sharp-witted thriller that takes off into dark and uncharted territory.

You'd have to be a real Grinch to hate on a blockbuster sequelthat's so puppy-eager to please. But despite the fem power of star Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins, all the CGI huffing and puffing over 2 1/2 hours can deflate momentum and audience endurance..

McCarthy is a force of comic nature. And she and Bullock mix it up like pros. In this dead-battery of a movie, these live-wires miraculously ignite sparks.

Here’s the thing about Bad Times at the El Royale: When it’s good, it’s very, very good — and when it’s bad, this retro whatsit is a whole lot of awful.

When Leguizamo lets go, this cautious crowd pleaser of a film takes on a defiant shine that shows just where the rest of Wong went wrong.

This unholy mess replaces the artful ambition of "The American" with torture, blood spray, kinky sex, twisted fun and a bizarro critique of U.S. policy on illegal immigration.

Stodgy? Maybe. But the sincerity of this old-fashioned crowdpleaser starring Ralph Fiennes as wartime choirmaster is a refreshing alternative to the glut of computer-generated junk that crowds our movie houses.

It's Hanson's astute directing that makes the film's life lessons go down painlessly, turning the smartly entertaining In Her Shoes into a comfy fit for both sexes.

Brad Bird's Tomorrowland, a noble failure about trying to succeed, is written and directed with such open-hearted optimism that you cheer it on even as it stumbles.

What saves Point Break from wipeout is Kathryn Bigelow's direction. Though the film lacks the formal beauty and allure of her Near Dark and Blue Steel, Bigelow keeps the action percolating in high style.

Screenwriter Robert Towne has certainly not challenged his gifts -- the script is loaded with stock cars and stock characters -- but he does deliver what's necessary: a workable setup for exciting NASCAR racing footage shot on sixteen Winston Cup tracks from Daytona to Watkins Glen.

Following his surprisingly subtle work in "Sleeping With Other People," Sudeikis again shows real skills as an actor.

This romantic fantasy from visionary director George Miller is all over the place structurally, but odds are you won't be too bothered given the sparks ignited by Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba as a magical djinn hellbent on granting her three wishes.

A long slog of a movie that insists on hitting the high spots like a Wiki page, which leaves little room to investigate the political and personal changes that altered Mandela's thoughts about violence and its uses.

Nonstop mayhem follows in a stampede of comic terrors ready made for Halloween. Sure it's exhausting. But Goosebumps, knowing its audience, lets it rip.

It's clear that Beatty, who has studied Hughes for decades, has an instinctive understanding of the man, from getting stuck on phrases he repeats endlessly to making deals he can't wait to run away from. No kids. No roots. Sex, movies and aviation are the only constants. Why? Beatty hints, but never tells us. But his performance, filled with comic bite and aching confusion, teases a much deeper portrait.

Imagine David Mamet rewriting his political satire "Wag the Dog" -- in which a president and his advisers declare war to distract the media from the prez's horn-dog activities -- as a joke-free kidnap drama.

It's Bettany's portrait of the monster as a young man that rivets attention. So remember the name, or don't. Just watch Bettany strut his stuff. You'll know a star when you see one.

Toothless satire relatively inoffensive and relentlessly mediocre.

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.

Thanks to the comic tornado at its center, Isn’t It Romantic is still your best bet for a Valentine’s date at the movies. You could do worse.

Suffers from franchise fatigue. Its rote suspense is strictly a business proposition.

The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster from a script by fearless first-timer Kyle Killen, is operating on a plane far above multiplex formula. This flawed but heartfelt movie has the power to sneak up and floor you.

An uneven blend of mirth and malice.

The Aeronauts is hobbled time and again by the attempt to add the juice of fiction to a story that could and should have stood on its own. The truth, in Hollywood terms, is never enough.

Imagine "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" for the age of antidepressants — that’s Little Joe, the seventh feature (and first in English) from Austrian provocateur Jessica Hausner (Lourdes, Amour Fou).

Not even the haunting images and Garfield’s haggard intensity can disguise the gaping void where the film’s soul should be. There’s no there there.

Whatever this is, it’s not a movie — it’s a product more deserving of a road test than a review.

Like the best war movies, Lone Survivor laces action with moral questions that haunt and provoke.

There’s not a twist you can’t see coming, but thanks to Kiefer Sutherland and a cast of up-for-anything actors, this trifle goes down easy and leaves a smile on your face for the holidays that might just last all season long.

What started as cute becomes cloying and bloated. Charm should never feel like it weighs a ton.

Amid the jumble of fake Italian accents and overall too-muchness, an Oscar-ready Lady Gaga is flat-out fabulous. Is this ravishing soap opera of high fashion and higher crimes outrageous camp or “The Godfather” in designer duds? I’m calling a tossup.

Ribisi and Macht are sleaze incarnate. James Caan, as a conniving lawyer, and Rade Sherbedgia, as a Russian crime boss, are even more cootified. Best of all is Wilson, digging into his juiciest role in years and putting a human face on this mesmerizing morality tale, a journey into the toxic heart of the American dream.

Sorkin distills what made Lucille Ball a comedy legend and a prickly feminist pioneer into one tumultuous week of production on “I Love Lucy.” As for those who thought Kidman would be all wrong as the fiery redhead, won’t you be surprised—she’s all-stops-out fabulous.

The movie cops out by going soft in the end, but it's still hardcore hilarity for stressed moms looking for a girls night out. Guys should also check out Bad Moms — you just might learn something.

The last part of the movie, which brings the whole cast together on “Super Trouper,” is almost worth the price of admission. Millions will happily get drunk on the film’s infectious high spirits. For the rest of us, who can’t get with the program, Here We Go Again will go down as more of a threat than a promise.

The intensity of Leto and Hayek goes deeper than the script into revealing what makes these two sociopaths in heat impervious to bloody murder. When Hayek and Leto are onscreen, you do not look away.

The final effect is stunning, but also sadly impersonal.

The blistering confrontation scene between Hopper and Walken -- both in peak form -- will be talked about for years. It's pure Tarantino: a full-throttle blast of bloody action and verbal fireworks.

What really lifts Celeste and Jesse Forever above the rom-com herd, besides breakout star performances from Jones and Samberg, is the movie's willingness to replace clichés with painful truths. It's irresistible.

Of all the World War II movies about the plots to kill the architects of the Third Reich, Anthropoid is guilty of being the dullest.

What’s never in doubt, however, is the compassion the movie shows to its protagonist, partly based on the women in the filmmaker’s own family and embodied by a great actress at her intuitive, indelible best. In capturing what Jones calls “the rhythm of living” even in the face of death, he has turned this character study into a shattering portrait of resilience — and an essential work of art.

Cillian Murphy’s gangster icon Tommy Shelby makes his big-screen debut in a standalone film that can’t stand up against the great series that spawned it. For all its entertaining fan service, it’s an unnecessary coda to an unforgettable TV classic.

One for the time capsule.

The Rock has a flair for action and comedy; he's a real movie star.

It's shocking, considering the talent involved, the The Perfect Storm looks and feels fake.

Zemeckis springs so many pow 3-D surprises you'll think Beowulf is your own private fun house.

The Humbling is a dark dazzler shot through with mirth and delicious malice. But be warned. It is not Roth's novel.

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.

There are delicious bits aplenty in Spider-Man 3 for those who care to notice.

Keeps the pulse pounding without sacrificing laughs or logic.

Does this sound like rock heaven? It is.

Jolie has an army of craftsmen in her corner, notably camera poet Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men). But it's her vision that gives Unbroken a spirit that soars. In honoring Louis' endurance, she does herself proud.

Rozema's minimalist approach pays dividends until a final third hobbled by overdone effects and a thrashing musical score. Too bad. The story being told on the faces of Page and Wood had eloquence and power enough to hold us rapt.

Dalton has training in classical theater; he has pedigree, looks, class. But as Bond he is – face it – dull as dirt. Too much spoofing is bad (see Moore), none is deadly (see Dalton).

While this nailbiter sure as hell ain't swimming in the same classic waters as "Jaws," it gets the jolting job done.

Gorden teases out some affecting scenes, but not enough to carry a film that promises more than it delivers.

How many movies these days leave you wanting more? The funny and heartfelt Home is a small treasure.

Silverman, digging so deep into her character that we can feel her nerve endings, is like nothing we've seen before. She's fierce and unerring. No showing off; she just is. This is acting of the highest caliber.

There's not much to say about a jerry-built caper comedy, except that this one has timeliness on it side, and some first-rate clowns.

The Rain Man-Dying Young elements in Tom Sierchio’s script are pitfalls that Slater dodges with a wonderfully appealing performance. His love scenes with the dazzling Tomei have an uncommon delicacy. But it’s Tomei and Perez who give Untamed Heart its bouyant wit. Their friendship could have sustained an entire movie. It’s certainly the best part of this one.

Talk about beating a dead orc. In dutifully completing his prequel trilogy to his three-part Lord of the Rings triumph, director Peter Jackson has sadly saved the worst for last.

The film is a mesmerizing erotic odyssey given gravity and heart by Cruz.

Branagh’s performance is a triumph of ferocity and feeling that shuns Shakespeare the literary rock star to find the flawed, touchingly human man inside.

Formula mother-brat stuff...It's only the deft teamwork of Portman and Sarandon that keeps the triteness at bay.

The movie, from the 1992 best seller by Olivia Goldsmith, isn't deathless art. But as pure entertainment, this witty revenge romp is sinfully satisfying.

Stoker is Park's darkly funny, deliciously depraved riff on Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt."

Forgive the exposition dump in the convoluted plot and go for a clash of the titans that is spectacular in every sense of the word.

With the help of Hamilton, Ross and Olmos, sublime actors who radiate grit and grace, Sayles has made Go for Sisters a movie that stays inside your head long after you see it. It's a keeper.

This R-rated sex farce only plays at being dirty. Behind the carnal jokes lurks a Hallmark heart. But a never-friskier or funnier Lawrence, as a 30-ish Uber driver hired to seduce a college-bound kid (terrific newcomer Feldman) is well worth the price of admission. The rest gets a hard pass.

Doctor Sleep relies way too much on borrowed inspiration and eventually runs out of — pardon the word — steam. But this flawed hybrid and King and Kubrick still has the stuff to keep you up nights.

Until The Contender slips into partisan politics and platitudinous piety, it's a lively, entertaining ride.

Even when the film trips on its tall ambitions, you can't shake it off.

I never rooted for them as a couple, never felt a chemistry in their bond. And in a romance, even one with tragic notes, that really is the end of the world.

If Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) had more surprises and James Cameron's Aliens (1986) more thrills, David Fincher's austere, low-tech, darkly funny Alien 3 has more sharply observed characters.

Disney deserves praise for raising the ante on its ambitions in animation. Next time, though, a little less civics lesson and a little more heart.

Sing doesn't have the grit or the grace notes of Zootopia, which it resembles only in its concept of an animal kingdom.

This gifted clown has found the right vehicle for his souped-up silliness. Carrey is the ultimate party dude, and like the masked man says, this party is smokin'.

This intriguing fraction of a biopic rises above a clumsy script and stagnant direction on the strength of watching rock icon Bruce Springsteen, admirably played by Jeremy Allen White, show depression who’s the boss.

The Lovebirds knows how to send out a laugh with a sting in its tail. That’s what they call inspired lunacy.

Forrest Gump lives in spirit in this overbearing tear-jerker that takes two and a half hours to cover three baby-boom decades in an effort to prove that nice guys finish first, at least in the hearts of academy voters.

Call it RBG: The Early Years.

We Own the Night is defiantly, refreshingly unhip.

Brought to the screen awkwardly but ardently by Mamet-actor supreme Joe Mantegna in his feature-directing debut.

Follow Shyamalan's Signs. It will take a piece out of you.

Sounds godawful in title and concept — but which in execution is a fizzy delight.

It ain't fact, but it is damn entertaining fiction.

Witherspoon -- though miles from the keen satire of "Election" -- stays one sharp cookie even as her film crumbles.

What the film lacks is suspense, surprise (the new ending is a dud) and passion.

In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies -- the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous.

Saunders and Lumley are all about keeping the party going. So grab your Bolly, darlings, and party on.

Scenes with Burns crackle with the toxic energy that makes Confidence a game worth playing.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson bring a bracing charge to the premise of turning a romcom about wedding jitters into a deep-dish think piece about the limits of condoning violence, real or imagined. The ending doesn’t work, but oh the drama!

It's a wet dream for anyone who's ever dreamed of getting an edge on the information highway. The worst side effect is that you won't believe a word of the damn thing in the morning. Fair exchange.

This state-of-the-art dino epic is also more than a blast of rumbling, roaring, "did you effing see that!" fun. It's got a wicked streak of subversive attitude that goes by the name of Colin Trevorrow.

Ah-nuld’s swollen belly is the joke — the only one — but director Ivan Reitman (Dave) takes it for a few deft spins.

It’s feels like the New Puritanism (recently repped by the outcry over Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl) is seeping in. But in the barbershop? Say it isn’t so.

The actors nail the comic sting in every line, punctuated by eleven prime Elvis Costello songs.

Maybe money never sleeps, but this missed opportunity of a movie will have audiences dozing.

The film swings from melodrama to sermonizing, both blunting the human drama that needs to come to the fore.

The vigorous young cast enhances the excitement of the flight sequences, which are spectacular. Movie rah-rah has rarely been this entertaining.

Angelina Jolie, back in action mode as a haunted smokejumper seeking redemption, gets the job done if you’re looking for action escapism, but those who wish for something deeper and more resonant are plum out of luck.

It’s a bumpy ride for sure, but Smith and Lawrence haven’t lost their irresistible mojo and Bad Boys For Life plays like a blast of retro ’90s action. It’s like they never left.

I fully expect Paranormal Activity 3 to be box office gold. But it's barely worth two stars, let alone two cents. As for future followups, I offer this plea: STOP!

To sum up, Definitely, Maybe is crap with compensations.

As entertainment and provocation, Joker is simply stupendous.

While it can’t match the effortless charm of the 1989 animated classic, this faint but overstuffed live-action echo fills the title role with shining new star Halle Bailey who gives this musical fable just the oomph it needs—a heart that sings and a spirit that soars.

What If doesn't break new ground. But it has charm to spare, and Radcliffe and Kazan are irresistible. No ifs about it.

What kind of a movie takes place entirely on one screwed-up teen's computer screen? That would be Unfriended, a creep-you-out experiment in terror that damn near pulls off every trick up its cyber sleeve.

That's what makes This Is 40 so potently, painfully funny, even when it's gross. What other film would dare suggest rectal monitoring as a form of closeness?

Two Oscar-winning Emmas—Stone and Thompson—are dressed to wow and deliver much to enjoy in this beautifully crafted fluffball, but the end result is a decorative distraction that never runs the risks it promises.

There's no script to speak of, just two appealing actors volleying comic-romantic cliches at each other.