Rene Rodriguez

I Killed My Mother fares less well when Dolan gives in to some ill-conceived stylistic flourishes (understandable for a young, first-time filmmaker) or when his reach as a dramatist exceeds his grasp (an incident involving thugs who gay-bash Hubert, for example, feels superfluous). But the crux of the film is the furious, tempestuous bond between Hubert and Chantale, and through their volcanic fights, you can see Dolan's considerable talent at its least adorned. [23 Apr 2010, p.G7]

The movie is at its best when it flirts with becoming a meta-sequel — a film whose characters know they’ve been in a movie called “Trainspotting.”

Kong: Skull Island is fast, playful and ridiculous, a big-budget extravaganza with the soul of a spirited B-movie.

In Logan, the clawed mutant Wolverine finally gets to slash through the constraints of a kid-friendly PG-13 rating, and the result is bloody, vicious fun. The squeamish will avert their eyes, and young children should not be allowed anywhere near this movie, no matter how many X-Men action figures they own.

The Salesman doesn’t have the same precision and emotional wallop of his previous films: The plot hinges on a couple of convenient contrivances, and the first half meanders a bit.

The filmmakers’ fondness and respect for all things Batman are what elevate The Lego Batman Movie past the trappings of a funny cartoon. Who could have guessed, in the era of non-stop comic-book pictures, that a movie that uses toys as protagonist would do the most justice to the enigmatic Bruce Wayne?

The movie is quiet and serene, but it stirs and inspires and amuses. In the small details of an ordinary life, Jarmusch finds wells of beauty and empathy. The movie is an exploration of the deep pleasures of creativity.

Silence feels like a career summation for a filmmaker who has spent his life exploring his faith through his work. Here is a movie about the importance of religion that will move you, regardless of whichever God you worship — or don’t.

Here is a celebration of the artistic drive that is also a daring feat of showmanship, as technically accomplished in its own way as “Mad Max Fury Road” or “The Revenant."

The good news about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first in a planned series of stand-alone movies set in the “Star Wars” universe, is that the last half-hour of the film is a sustained stretch of rousing action, indelible images and cliffhanger thrills. It’s pop sci-fi bliss...The bad news about Rogue One is that getting to the good stuff is a slog — and the movie is pretty long.

But this is also his funniest, nimblest picture: There are long stretches in it that could pass for a comedy.

You don’t buy into their romance the way you buy into, say, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in the upcoming “La La Land.” All you see are two big movie stars playing make-believe.

In his debut, Alwyn comes off as a likable, sympathetic screen presence capable of handling more difficult material. He’ll have plenty more opportunities. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, though, will be forgotten in a month’s time.

She's such a fascinating, faceted character that halfway through "Christine" you almost forget about what's coming.

The actors all suffer beautifully, but their pain doesn’t register: It’s all affectations and red-rimmed eyes.

The best science fiction leaves you with questions and ideas to ponder. Arrival is the sort of superficially profound movie that initially seems deep and weighty but stops making sense the moment you put down the bong.

Hacksaw Ridge may be too syrupy for cynical tastes and too brutal for the timid.

This may not be Park’s best or gravest picture. But it might be his most entertaining.

Sometimes, the simplest, smallest things require the greatest courage. Moonlight is Miami’s first bonafide movie masterpiece.

For all its respectable airs, The Accountant mostly induces shrugs. Sometimes, B-movies fare better when they settle for being their lowbrow selves.

Falling into the trap that sinks most horror sequels, Blair Witch amps the jolts and shocks with more visceral frights (there’s some business involving an infected foot wound that is truly unnerving and also super gross) to diminishing results.

You start out fearing Don’t Breathe, but by the end you’re laughing at it — and the humor is not intentional.

It’s ABOUT something, which has become a rarity in Hollywood pictures. Sometimes, the smallest stories cast the largest shadows.

Phillips keeps the movie funny and riotous without glamorizing his characters’ misdeeds. The film is a comedy, but it’s never trivial, and the filmmakers don’t let the government’s participation in what transpired slip by unnoticed.

If watching cartoon characters spout four-letter words is your thing, this might well be the greatest movie ever made.

Best of all, the story moves as fast as that bullet train, careening from one impossible predicament to the next while the characters jostle to survive.

There isn’t a moment of spontaneous fun or humor in this long, turgid movie, the latest let-down for rabid DC Comics fans who’ve been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind and do this universe justice. With “Suicide Squad,” the long wait continues.

The movie will disappoint basement-dwellers who worried a female-centric Ghostbusters would somehow ruin their childhoods, because it isn’t bad enough to hate. But the film is an even bigger letdown for fans of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, who are forced to play most of this material straight, with no room for comic improvisation.

The Legend of Tarzan doles out big beats of action at regular intervals to keep you awake, like a drunkard clashing trashcan lids in an alley late at night. But your eyelids grow heavy anyway.

De Palma never achieved the box-office and Oscar glory of his contemporaries (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese), but this documentary is a testament to a talent that merits a place at their table.

The Neon Demon is a voluptuous provocation, a stylish free-fall down a gonzo rabbit hole that is as entrancing as it is maddening. Here is a rarity in this season of summer movie doldrums: A film that is guaranteed to elicit strong reactions.

The movie generates suspense by keeping its focus on the detective and the attorney, two professionals trying to do their jobs the best they can. They just happen to be required to confront unspeakable evil, try to understand it, stare it in the eyes.

The scale of Finding Dory is bigger than that of "Finding Nemo," but I started missing the smaller, more intimate excitement of the fishing tank inside the dentist’s office in Nemo.

The Warcraft hardcore can rejoice. Everyone else can move along. There’s not much to see here.

Another strange, sometimes harrowing exercise in absurdity that resonates despite its weirdness.

Weiner tells a different story — a riveting portrait of a man so consumed by hubris and confidence that he is utterly blind to his failings.

The emotional connection we develop with her as the movie unfolds pays off in the final 20 minutes, which is about as happy of an ending as anyone could imagine, except this one really happened.

This is more of an exercise in experiential cinema, as well as a blistering critique of a society that drives its poorest to unimaginable acts for mere survival.

Set almost entirely in one location and shot in widescreen to accommodate its ensemble cast, The Invitation seems tailor-made for a talented filmmaker who wants to show off skills within the constraints of a small budget. But the script, by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (who somehow still find work after having written The Tuxedo, R.I.P.D., and Clash of the Titans), is flimsy and nonsensical in the manner of cheap, straight-to-video-not-even-VOD horror pictures, and Kusama’s direction is clumsy and uninspired. She also telegraphs too many of the plot’s twists.

In its last half-hour, A Bigger Splash becomes a specific kind of story, and it’s not as pleasurable or strange as what preceded it.

The Nice Guys never lives up to the promise of its hilarious first 10 minutes, but Crowe and Gosling are good enough to leave you hoping for a sequel.

After the nihilistic deconstruction of Deadpool and the flattening self-importance of Batman v. Superman, Captain America: Civil War reminds you how funny and exciting these pictures can be when they’re done right — you know, like comic books. The summer movie season has barely begun, and already the remedy for superhero film fatigue has arrived.

The movie has been smartly built to satisfy hardcore fashionistas and red-carpet gawkers in equal measure.

Viva is "Rocky" in drag and sequins, transplanted to Havana. The movie is pure formula, but it’s surprisingly effective anyway, because director Paddy Breathnach and screenwriter Mark O’Halloran don’t sugarcoat the reality of life on the island.

The most intriguing character in the movie is the confused, tormented Conrad, who initially comes off as the kind of troubled adolescent who will end up riddling his classroom with bullets.

Played by Adrian Sparks in a style better suited for dinner theater or a Key West tourist attraction, Hemingway comes across as a complete cypher. Everyone in the film keeps talking about his genius, but other than a scene in which he writes a short story on the back of a napkin, the movie doesn’t try to humanize or explore his talent.

The movie has an exhilarating energy that is never exhausting, and the filmmaker’s trademark excesses, although toned down, are still at play. The meek should be wary; for everyone else, it’s party time.

The Jungle Book has its moments — the panther Bagheera voiced by Ben Kingsley, the python Kaa voiced by Scarlett Johansson and a funny porcupine voiced by the late Garry Shandling are all memorable creations — but the overall film feels cold and mechanical, befitting a movie that was made primarily because technology made it possible.

Demolition is so busy trying to be profound, the film doesn’t have much use for humor.

One question in particular hangs heavily over the entire film, a plot hole so distracting it becomes the only thing you can think about.

This is a smart, wise and compassionate movie about young people in the act of finding out who they are and not always behaving properly but never crossing the line into cruelty or crassness. If you happen to have been around during 1980, the soundtrack is just a bonus.

This huge, unwieldy movie is busy and overcrowded.

The Wave builds up a nice bit of genuine tension and hits some surprisingly dark notes.

No, it’s not all that sophisticated. But compared to glib junk like Zoolander 2, The Brothers Grimsby is practically high art. Unlike Ben Stiller, at least Cohen is trying.

Dark, nasty fun that gets better when you play it over in your head. But the plot holes seem even larger in hindsight, too. Just tamp down those expectations, then tamp them down some more.

Race never delves under the skins of its characters, because they’re intended to be used only as symbols — reminders of an important chapter in history rendered quaint by this noble but patronizing movie.

The Coens feel out of step this time; they’ve lost their rhythm the way they did in The Hudsucker Proxy, where the style consumed the entire picture, turning what should have been humorous and snappy into a grating chore.

The movie is filled with small, loaded moments that resonate like gunshots in an echo chamber.

The film’s visual artistry works as an ideal counterbalance for Kaufman’s heady brand of middle-aged despair.

The fact that the last line of dialogue is spoken five minutes before the end credits roll is telling: Words matter little in a movie that favors seeing and feeling above all else. It’s a work of pure, furious sensation.

Although not quite as over-the-top visually as his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, Youth is still spectacular, filled with tableaux (a group of people sweating silently inside a sauna, a naked man and his prostitute inside a hotel room) that juxtapose the desires and personalities of young and old without dialogue.

But there is so much information to process in The Big Short that only hedge fund managers and stock brokers will be able to track every nuance and shading of this complicated story.

But Tarantino isn’t glorifying the ugliness; he’s condemning it. He just wants to put on a grand show at the same time. “Are you not entertained?” he seems to be asking. Yes. Yes, we are.

What’s missing in The Force Awakens – and this is a major, critical flaw – is a fresh story template, a plot that doesn’t build toward a climax you’ve already seen, played out in practically the exact same way. That’s the kind of failing that a lot of fans will overlook while they bask in the undeniable bliss-out the movie delivers. But in hindsight, as you play the film back in your mind, the huge lack of imagination and freshness become more problematic.

You come away from the movie lamenting the missed opportunity and wondering what a stronger, bolder filmmaker would have done with this material.

Flowers is a quiet, eloquent movie about big, overwhelming emotions, and the constant presence of its eponymous plants, in all kinds of colors and shapes, is a metaphor for the ways in which we respond to what life throws at us, be it a sudden trauma, a perpetual state of melancholy or an unexpected opportunity for romance. Some people blossom and bloom; others wither and give up.

Director Ryan Coogler has pulled off a miracle: He taps into the beautiful simplicity and deep well of emotion of the 1976 original, capturing its essence and spirit while branching out into a new story.

Most of this is tedious instead of unintentionally amusing.

Return to Ithaca is a bracing and surprisingly vocal expression of angst and frustration by people torn between love for their country and the harsh letdown that resulted from their loyalty.

Spotlight is simply a great story exceedingly well told, through characters whose fingers are perpetually stained with ink.

Grim, relentless and immensely satisfying, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 sends out the dystopian sci-fi franchise on a feel-bad high. Readers of Suzanne Collins’ source novel, who already know what’s coming, will be pleased by the movie’s merciless fidelity to the source material (or perhaps, considering the book is the least popular in the trilogy, will just be annoyed all over again).

The movie, shot in lovely, grainy 16mm by cinematographer Ed Lachman, is so elegantly staged you can practically smell the characters’ perfume. Haynes’ direction is methodical and precise without being fussy or oppressive. Every detail has been weighed and considered.

Familiarity is not without its pleasures. But Spectre is so confused and inert that Craig can’t even sell the signature “Bond. James Bond” and “Shaken, not stirred” lines.

Truth should have felt like a tragedy, a story about a monumental but fascinating failure of journalism, the flip side to the upcoming Spotlight, about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of sexual abuse within the Catholic church. Instead, Truth wants to make your blood boil. It succeeds — but not in the way the filmmakers intended.

The strained, strange relationship between father and son ultimately becomes the emotional center of The Clan, culminating with an astonishing closing shot guaranteed to induce startled gasps. It’s a great, jarring moment that is the work of a filmmaker clearly in love with his craft — and a flavor for the darker side of human nature.

Steve Jobs, which by many accounts plays loose with the facts, is at its weakest when it tries to humanize its protagonist.

Here is a crime drama that punches you in the gut, full on, and dares you not to blink.

The movie kicks off with a wonderful setpiece that shows off Spielberg’s ability to tell a story primarily through visuals — is there any other filmmaker working today better at this?

The sound never loses its urgency, its sense of immediate danger, straight through to the closing shot of the film.

This is a love letter to lunacy (and an unspoken tribute to the iconic towers) that lets you feel what it’s like to tread where only gods dare.

Yes, The Martian does look like it was shot on Mars, even though the film’s tone is suspiciously light and cheerful for Scott, who tends to thrive on a chillier, more dour habitat.

Breathe is empathetic and humane — the movie cares equally about both girls, each damaged in her own way — and it ends with a brusque, unexpected reminder that kindness and patience can easily curdle.

Depp isn’t doing anything different here than he did in "Dark Shadows" or "Alice in Wonderland" or the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. Once again, he’s unrecognizable under elaborate makeup and prosthetics, and he speaks with a peculiar voice (this time a thick South Boston accent).

What ultimately sinks The Visit is that Shyamalan, who had previously come up with new and ingenious ways to frighten us, resorts to familiar jump-scare tactics in which things suddenly pop into the frame, accompanied by loud sound effects. There’s no real sense of danger, no menace.

The movie is slight and, at 75 minutes without end credits, barely qualifies as a feature-length film. But Tomlin is a wonder.

Despite moments of intense suspense and glints of bizarre horror, Tom at the Farm is ultimately a psychological thriller.

Borrowing its title from a mix tape Cobain compiled as a teenager, the film, made with the cooperation of his widow, family and former bandmates, remains compelling and moving no matter how familiar you already are with the singer’s story.

The movie isn’t a thriller, but it still generates a strange sort of emotional suspense - an incredibly intense drama that makes you hold your breath, and it builds toward a total knockout of a final scene in which the story is resolved with hardly a word.

Fantastic Four is so bereft of all the things we expect from a superhero movie — humor, excitement, adventure, awe — that it plays like a drawn-out pilot episode for an upcoming TV series no one would ever watch again.

This iconoclastic filmmaker seduces you with ridiculous laughs, then sends you home contemplating your mortality and your place in the world.

A wobbly enterprise saddled by stilted dialogue and convenient contrivances. But view it as a Woody Allen film, and the plot thickens.

The movie is better when it’s poking sly fun at Cruise’s superheroic screen persona (look at the expression on his face when Ethan realizes just how big the guy he must fight is) than when it asks you to buy into its far-fetched antics.

Ardor is never boring, but it’s never all that engaging, either. Here is a movie that ends with a can’t-miss scenario — a siege on a farmhouse in which the heroes are vastly outnumbered and outgunned — yet still fails to ever quicken your pulse.

Condon and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher reward your patience by bringing the threads together in a beautiful, stirring manner that celebrates the genius of the literary icon while also honoring the man McKellen is playing.

Despite its considerable faults, this bizarre, fascinating story is impossible to shake off, like the expression on the face of one of the brothers as he's talking about his father and begins getting choked up (instead of crying, he smiles convincingly, evidence of a life led having to learn to hide his emotions for fear of reprisal).

Saring, often funny comedy.

If Inside Out doesn’t stack up with the best Pixar movies (Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Toy Story), that’s because there’s less plot here than usual, and even at a lean 95 minutes, the movie starts to drag a bit just before it ends.

That’s one of the great accomplishments of Ascher’s film: Intercutting his interviews with fictional recreations of what the subjects are describing allows you to see a version of what they saw, and you don’t need to believe any of it for The Nightmare to give you a major case of the creeps.