Rex Reed

A real-life story with social issues about capitalism that is entertaining and funny while it makes you think, without being too earnest and serious.

Mr. Hanks, in yet another in a long line of diverse character studies, does a beautiful job as the voice of reason and logic, trying to inspire bravery and maintain order amid the noise and panic. In the big emotional scenes, as well as the small, nerve-jangling scenes, he is an artist at the top of his skill.

"Enemy" and "Sicario" were unspeakable disasters, and Arrival, the director’s latest exercise in pretentious poopery, gives me every reason to believe I have parted company with Denis Villeneuve for good.

Blue Valentine is about real life, warts and all, over narrative conventions like action and plot mechanics. It is brutal, compassionate, beautiful in its ugliness and one of the bravest films of the year.

Belgian writer-director Lukas Dhont sustains the balance of mood and physical beauty with a thrilling eloquence and Eden Dambrine as Leo and Gustav DeWaele as Remi are stunning young discoveries who will not easily be forgotten.

Elegant and wrenching, Coming Home is a quiet, haunting masterpiece.

It’s a riveting film and I understood every word.

It’s an amalgam of dramatic all-American themes including ambition, paranoia, greed and the ice cubes in the blood that fuel the ruthless pursuit of success in the competitive world of sports. Color it hair-raising.

The best thing about Beginners is the way it accepts every character in a nonjudgmental way.

Better films about senior citizens displaced by a greedy housing market have been made. (Anyone for Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D, or Ira Sachs’ recent heartbreaker Love is Strange, about a homeless elderly gay couple?) But the humorous script by Charlie Peters (based on a novel by Jill Ciment), fluidly directed by Richard Loncraine, makes this an agreeable experience.

Never embroidered or rehearsed, the way so many biopics are, this is a wonderful movie that feels freshly observed, like an uninvited peek through some forbidden White House keyhole, at the woman we called Jackie.

Word to the wise: Start saving the vomit bags from your airplane flights. With movies like this, you’re gonna need them.

Exactly what you might expect from the fearless, controversial director of "Pulp Fiction" - it's overlong, raunchy, shocking, grim, exaggerated, self-indulgently over-the-top and so politically incorrect it demands a new definition of the term. It is also bold, original, mesmerizing, stylish and one hell of a piece of entertainment.

An hour and 20 minutes into this two-hour-and-11-minute endurance test, a hungry Kaiju attacks the city of Hong Kong and eats the neon signs of every Cantonese restaurant in Victoria Harbor. It’s sort of worth waiting around for.

Bond is back, and so is high-octane entertainment.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Francisco Reyes a particularly likable beam of strength and light as the unfortunate Orlando, but the film’s great triumph is Daniela Vega, a transgender actress and singer, who makes an indelible impression in the leading role.

Melancholia is his latest pile of undiluted drivel, nauseatingly filmed by a wonky hand-held camera and featuring a crazy, mismatched ensemble headed by Kirsten Dunst, who won an acting award in Cannes last year for looking totally catatonic.

One thing that defies debate: Zac Efron is going places as an actor of value. But he deserves better movies than Charlie St. Cloud.

Overwhelmed by bad country-western ballads, Two Step is flawed but it makes you laugh and cringe at the same time, and passes 90 minutes painlessly.

In a film so ripe with temptations for posturing, exaggeration and satirical overacting, nobody is anything less than natural, unpretentious and funny as hell.

Beautifully designed and photographed, sensitively written and directed by England’s acclaimed Terence Davies, and impeccably acted by a distinguished cast that turns life into art, Benediction is one gorgeous motion picture.

My biggest problem with Flight is not the unanswered questions it raises, but the eleventh-hour epiphany just in time for a happy ending. Maybe I'm naturally cynical, but I simply don't believe that people are basically good at heart - and I don't buy into sudden salvation. Otherwise, Flight is one hell of an entertainment.

It's a slow, repetitive, meandering, mostly overacted little picture - perfectly agreeable but nothing special, and directed with a steamroller by David O. Russell. Go figure.

At 88, after nearly seven decades in show business, Ms. Stritch is sharp, funny, brittle, caustic, demanding, exaggerated, critical (especially of herself) and infuriating. She is also elaborately unique and awesomely brilliant.

The kids make stunning debuts, but their accents are thicker than porridge, rendering a good 90 percent of the dialogue so unintelligible that it might as well be in Swahili. Some subtitles are provided out of necessity, but not enough.

Waves is a demanding and absorbing family drama that unfolds in two parts without lines of division, yet both parts are distinctively and stylistically different. The film is too long, but I was impressed and riveted throughout.

A lot of the information in The Martian will be incomprehensible to the lay audience and the climax is…well, not exactly original. But it makes for one hell of an entertaining ride.

A triumph of sensitivity, humanity and good taste that manages to admirably transcend every tendency inherent to the usual label of “tearjerker.”

The value of sensitive, balanced acting to enhance a mediocre movie has never been more evident than in After the Wedding, a ruminative though pointless remake of Susanne Bier’s 2006 Danish melodrama of the same name. Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams are splendid bookends in a well directed yet clumsily written sudser by Moore’s husband, Bart Freundlich.

This one he (Pattinson) could have skipped. Vile and repulsive, Good Time is just under two hours of pointless toxicity.

Sachs gives his actors the space to develop complex characters that make us feel their unhappiness and disillusion. The film captures the moods of relationships in transition without ever being condescending or judgmental. The sex scenes and nudity are so graphic that it’s safe to say this is not a film for everyone, but is as relentlessly moving as it is fascinating.

The results are realistic and refined, but uneven and disappointing.

The original western won John Wayne a puzzling and undeserved Oscar for finally falling off his horse. Don't expect the same miracle for Jeff Bridges. In the numbing hands of pretentious filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, history does not repeat itself in any way whatsoever.

In one of the most wrenching performances I have seen on the screen in some time, it’s thrilling to watch a young actor with passion and charisma explore so many avenues of damage control with so much depth, allowing the viewer to grapple with an unsettling variety of personal emotions.

Stephen Dorff, a good actor who seems to have temporarily run out of luck, is back in a loopy and desultory “psychological thriller” without a single thrill and the psychology of a paperback called "Psychology for Morons."

The movie is so carefully observed and quietly calibrated as the old man moves from one scene to the next, as unobtrusive as a lap dissolve, that you can’t tell Harry from Lucky, or vice versa, and it doesn’t take long before you stop trying.

The movie moves as slowly as the oncoming fog, but Juliette Binoche is always a pleasure to watch, despite an awkward coda set in London that I found jarring.

Unfortunately, it turns to be duller and infinitely more stagnant than most Hollywood dreck. But it is partially saved by very good actors who struggle valiantly to make it less monotonous than it is.

The magical chemistry between Redford and Spacek cannot be overestimated.

Soars above the ordinary with a timely narrative and a magnetic performance by Glenn Close that is nothing short of miraculous.

The Sessions is fascinating, informative, engaging and heartbreaking stuff. Its easygoing, matter-of-fact tone makes it subtle and rewarding, not weird. Roses all around to all and sundry for one of the year's most captivating films.

Annihilation is a demented science-fiction comic book of a movie that makes less sense than a butterfly mating with a buffalo.

A joyous, well-researched and liberating film in the feel-good spirit of "Billy Elliot," "The Full Monty" and "Calendar Girls."

It's all about personality and Joan's inimitable style, which fills every second of its 84 minutes.

I Am Love fuses the past with the changing future in a marvelous traditional narrative without a shred of the sloppy trends of contemporary filmmaking.

Preposterous, illogical, senselessly over-plotted and artificial as a ceramic artichoke, David Fincher’s Gone Girl is another splatterfest disguised as a psychological thriller about the disintegration of a murderous marriage that I find one of the year’s grossest disappointments.

A structurally messy but emotionally effective coming of age movie that gets a lot of it right. High school is an ordeal only the fittest can survive.

For an old-fashioned crime thriller, you need real pros. Mr. Statham is to acting what Taco Bell is to nutrition.

These are characters so repulsive that it's hard to care what happens to them, but it's to the credit of a superb cast that you do end up caring.

Before the carnage ends, the entire cast has been tortured, mutilated and murdered by so many weapons it’s hard to keep them straight. When the shotguns, box cutters and machetes run out, it’s time to cue the flesh-eating attack dogs.

Despite the presence of Shirley MacLaine, the moments of pleasure provided by The Last Word are far outnumbered by scenes of exaggerated, phony, sugary marzipan-like make believe.

It’s so elegant and dreamlike — such a departure from most vampire epics — that you won’t be bored. It also has a wicked sense of humor you usually don’t find in the genre.

As vital as it is, racial strife is a subject that cries out for a more volatile treatment than this. The Alabama marching sequences and resulting violence, filmed in Selma, where they actually happened, are too understated for my taste. And the home life of King and his vacillating wife Coretta are muted.

Walking Out is a skillfully made thriller with a pair of very talented actors who knock themselves out, in more ways than one, to guarantee that it never becomes boring.

This works in her favor, since everything around her is trashy and forgettable. J-Lo is the only reason to see it. As a pop flick of no consequence, it’s inviting but forgettable an hour later — but the praise Lopez has received is well deserved. She’s developed nicely as an actress. Call it learning on the job.

The best ensemble work of the year

The intelligent script provides rare insight into character development and the meticulously layered performance by Macdonald give the film a credence and balance that touches the heart.

Based on her one-dimensional book Elvis and Me, the movie is a superficial chronicle of minutiae in the life of a naive girl, blinded by phony illusions of glamour, longing for affection from a child-man who never grew up, and trapped behind closed doors of toxic fame from Hollywood to Graceland. In the darkness beyond the klieg lights, it wasn’t much of a life—and it’s not much of a movie, either.

This exercise in hysteria is so over the top that you don't know whether to scream or laugh. Despite an emotionally gripping performance by Natalie Portman, it's nothing more than a lavishly staged "Repulsion" in toe shoes.

Although Enough Said never really surmounts its TV sitcom style and structure, the director provides a nuanced entertainment that is enjoyable. She is aided beyond measure by the charisma of her two stars — especially Mr. Gandolfini, who reveals a side of himself we’ve never seen before.

There is still something to be said for skillful, old-fashioned filmmaking, and director Joseph Kosinski has done plenty of it here. The result goes with popcorn like butter, and I liked it in spite of myself.

A dismal hack job pretending to be a take on modern relationships.

It’s fifty times more boring than the first one. It is also fifty shades dumber.

But to miss it would be a shame, because you won’t find a more spellbinding performance than the inimitable star in the title role.

Richly chronicled characters, sharp dialogue and that stupendous centerpiece performance by Cate Blanchett are contributing factors in the best summer movie of 2013 and one of the most memorable Woody Allen movies ever.

At a time when every penny counts, where do they come up with the money to finance a movie this boring?

New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town. This movie proves it like none other.

Despite the work of a first-rate cast, it doesn’t feel real to me.

Ms. Carano still has a lot to learn about acting, but she’s certainly the one you want around in case of a home invasion.

It is really not about anything at all except the mistakes, pitfalls and dumb decisions that plague the career of talented but misguided Australian actor Guy Pearce in his attempts to become an American film star.

Halfheartedly, I give The Dark Knight Rises - the third and final Batflick in the Nolan trilogy - one star for eardrum-busting sound effects and glaucoma-inducing computerized images in blinding Imax, but talk about stretching things.

The movie has its share of flaws, but you can’t say Charlie Hunnam, who plays the lead, has no charisma, or the story lacks excitement.

Mostly it’s a misguided mess.

The most memorable thing about it is the profoundly understated sensitivity of Harris Dickinson, a (surprisingly) British actor to keep an eye on.

When it finally ended, I felt like I had traveled the distance in the next sleeping bag. It’s exhausting but exhilarating.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, whose debut film Seventeen showed great promise, this maudlin soap opera is a disappointment, despite a strong performance by the extraordinarily gifted veteran actor Brian Cox. He makes every moment he’s on the screen throb with understated honesty, but Prisoner’s Daughter doesn’t boast much of anything else worth remembering.

The intensity is overwhelming. Every war is hell, no matter when it was fought, but 1917, which is about a war far removed from contemporary reality, turns out to the best war picture since "Saving Private Ryan."

I found the whole thing pokey and plodding, but there’s no denying the fact that even when sitting through Mr. Holmes seems numbing, Mr. McKellen is a force so powerful he’s his own reward.

An unwatchable sci-fi creep-out by eccentric French director Claire Denis, it stars Robert Pattinson, who devotes himself these days to art films in an effort to live down his reputation as a sexy television vampire.

What one does not expect is a load of total trash full of gimmicks instead of ideas, stolen scenes from other movies instead of originality, amateurish posturing instead of professional performances, clueless meandering instead of organized screenplays, and pointless confusion instead of clear-eyed direction.

Mr. Christensen the director betrays Mr. Christensen the actor too many times to count, but it’s worth noting that his eclectic tastes in source music includes Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” Bizet’s “Habanera” from Carmen, and Billie Holiday.

Paddington is a harmless delight that blends live action with animated technology in the manner of "Ted," but without the raunch.

Written and directed with muscle and grit by Kitty Green, The Royal Hotel is loaded with grim ambiance, and there is even some suspense, mainly while the viewer waits to see if anything will ever happen.

The melodrama, unfortunately, is not always convincing. The quality of the acting is so strong that the emotional impact is undeniable. Knightley is so gorgeous, Skarsgård, the Swedish heartthrob, is so decent, and Clarke is so noble in the way he hides his vulnerability, that I liked them all.

A dreary bummer.

Dallas Buyers Club represents the best of what independent film on a limited budget can achieve — powerful, enlightening and not to be missed.

It’s a movie that knocks itself cross-eyed trying to be hip, clever and today about acerbic seniors, but instead it only makes you long for old ladies in aprons exclaiming “Land sakes alive, I smell something burning in the oven!”

It’s hard to label a film this empty, but the word “worthless” comes to mind instantly.

This remarkable movie — factual and funny, always surprising and unconventionally written, directed and acted — sets the record straight with an adrenalin rush that overwhelms the senses.

Maestro is the movie of the year. Amendment: not to slight the amazing Oppenheimer, make that one of the two best films of the year. But Bradley Cooper’s warts-and-all biopic about volatile conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein has more passion, tenderness and heartbreaking resonance—and it’s a lot more fun.

The formulaic cat-and-mouse game played to the death rattle by Michael Douglas’ rich, vicious corporate maniac and Jeremy Irvine’s nice, clean-cut, homespun country boy in Beyond the Reach is so old it’s hairy.

Filmed on authentic locations in Poland by meticulous Canadian director Louise Archambault, Irena’s Vow is one of the most astounding true stories to ever emerge from the ashes of the Holocaust.

It’s as exhilarating as any epic American thriller, and better than most. Racing pulses and a state of awe and terror are guaranteed.

This is a feel-good comedy bordering on farce, but [Squibb] makes every scene and every line so natural that when you laugh, you’re reacting to genuine humor, not calculatedly constructed punch lines.

Downbeat, depressing and heavy as lead, Calvary is nevertheless an unusual film that never bores. Impeccable performances by Chris O’Dowd, Aiden Gillen, M. Emmett Walsh and Kelly Reilly are riveting. And Mr. Gleeson is a bear-like centerpiece of conflicts and contradictions who anchors the floating pieces of the Irish puzzle in faith and doctrine, while mercifully refusing to sermonize.

It’s to the star’s immense credit that his spellbinding appeal provides a tension that the script’s funereal pace often lacks.

This disoriented drivel was written by — and marks the directing debut of — Geoffrey Fletcher, who won an Academy Award for writing "Precious." It’s weird, but not in a good way.

Watching the misguided artistry at work in Empire of Light, it’s hard to fathom just what attracted so many top-tier talents to a project of such torpor.