Rex Reed

It’s such a pleasure to see four mature women, more beautiful, glamorous, desirable and pulled together than most of the ladies today who are half their age, share the screen in all their glory that it’s easy to forget how disappointing the movie is.

As docs go, it’s not as informatively or entertainingly good as it should have been and not as shamefully self-serving as it could have been, but as wistful as it made me feel about the New York I once loved that will never come again, it put a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

Only masochists try to make movies out of Chekhov. They keep trying, and they never get it right.

I cannot count the number of reservations I had about Anything, an idea with every possibility of being a cheap publicity gimmick aimed at selling the sensational and luring the lurid. What a shock, then, to discover that Anything is anything but.

A turgid, pretentious, and incomprehensible existential joke. What a star on the rise is doing in it is a question mark for the archives.

A well-directed thriller with knuckle-chewing suspense. A cast of unknowns give some first-rate performances, doing everything right to milk the throb of panic and anxiety from “what would I do?” situations. Terror builds from start to finish.

No matter how you regard its limited commercial possibility for success, there is nothing funny about Tully. Having forewarned you, I must add that suffering through her never-ending agony is less daunting than it has to be when it is Theron who is doing it for you.

There are so many ideas rattling around in Backstabbing for Beginners that are never resolved, and so many duplicitous characters that are never satisfactorily explained, that the end result is a muddle of confusion and violence that could end the future of tourism in Baghdad forever.

The film, poorly edited and weakly unfocused by Turkish writer-director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, is a real mess.

It’s not much of a movie, but it feels good and leaves you with life-affirming optimism.

It’s a good story, but too slow-moving for its own good. The cast works diligently, and Keener is scrappy but calm throughout, with a convincing naturalism as a woman with tremendous strength and a powerful belief in civil rights—at a time when most women were reluctant to speak out against political corruption.

Well-considered and sincerely acted, Kodachrome is a character-driven drama that has been wrongly labeled a comedy by some so-called critics. There is nothing funny about it.

A thriller with no thrills.

Several aspects of this sad, grim story remain a mystery, but I am pleased to report that for the most part, Chappaquiddick catalogues the facts and eschews the sensationalism. The result is a film of integrity and disclosure, a controversial chapter in American history that substitutes clinical accuracy for Hollywood embellishment, with an impressive attention to detail and an admirable respect for suspenseful narrative.

Unusual and invigorating.

The result is an old-fashioned play turned into an old-fashioned movie that looks like an old-fashioned play. Nothing happens and everybody talks incessantly.

A fresh and valiant attempt to breathe some fresh air into the #MeToo movement, Submission is stimulating and intelligently rendered until the final act, when predictability sets in.

There’s nothing else to watch or care about in the entire film anyway. Once again, a great actress is on her own.

Movies about coming of age and out of the closet are nothing new, but Love, Simon is so honest, funny and real it never fails to capture your imagination and lift your spirit.

It’s an espionage cartoon sideshow that is inarguably pointless, with occasionally entertaining moments. Color it preposterous.

The latest in this ossified cornball genre is The Cured, which at least tries for a soupçon of freshness.

A well-meaning, expertly acted film, it unfortunately drowns in its own sorrow.

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

All I know is it’s excruciatingly dull. It pains me to see industrious people wasting time, chasing their tails and turning into butter when they could be taking a nap — which is what I did at regular intervals during The Female Brain.

Despite good intentions, the movie never lives up to the breathless excitement the real-life story promises.

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.

This lumbering trilogy of trash based on the books by E. L. James has so run out of blood and oxygen that it has varicose veins.

Though the film has minor charms (the highly regarded actress can sing, and co-stars Tyne Daly and Scott Bakula are seasoned Broadway musical veterans) Basmati Blues is the kind of easily forgiven early career move that is best released on home video and forgotten.

If "Mother" is still the worst abomination ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting and undeserving public, Mom and Dad is at least the perfect companion piece.

Movies about dying with dignity are always a box-office challenge, but this one doesn’t even qualify as a sad reflection on life’s bittersweet third act. It’s a soggy lump.

It’s a long haul, but Please Stand By, meticulously directed by Ben Lewin (The Sessions), chronicles the pitfalls, terrors and triumphs of the trip with heart-wrenching realism.

The results are a mixed bag of charm and calamity, marking the feature-length directorial debut of Trudie Styler who, in real life, is the wife of singing star Sting. She’s a talent worth watching.

As impeccably made and beautiful to look at as it is, Phantom Thread, under close scrutiny, is a disappointment, as elusive as its meaningless title.

The whole thing has a certain “been there already” deja vu that dilutes the movie’s intended wow factor. Everything else in The Commuter is a yawn.

Fortunately, this is a filmmaker as talented as he is brave and stubborn. Hostiles breathes fresh oxygen into a genre as old as a Confederate cough.

Ridley Scott does a meticulous job of unraveling myriad gruesome facts in the case, and although it’s no surprise how it all turns out, the way a complex crime is played to the final throw of the dice by opposing forces is both admirable and focused.

After seven and a half years in the making, it’s a dumb, dull, lackluster letdown. Hugh Jackman still does everything right. It’s the film that gets it all wrong.

The more I try to find some kind of justifiable meaning and relevance, the more I find The Shape of Water a loopy, lunkheaded load of drivel. Not as stupid and pointless as that other critically overrated piece of junk "Get Out," but determined to go down trying. I call this one "Maudie Meets the Creature From the Black Lagoon."

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.

Vile.

It may not be one of the best, most inspired and fully realized classics in the master director’s oeuvre, but it towers above almost everything else in the junk pile of 2017 year-end releases.

A pretentious load of swill made in Portugal that should have been buried in a locked vault without a key.

Even though it does so through a dull and talky haze of cigar smoke, it is always Gary Oldman’s phenomenal performance that keeps the film airborne.

So skillfully directed, photographed and acted that it sucks you into its powerful emotional storyline from the start and holds interest to the finish. Despite its length and intricacy, you can’t call this one boring.

Call Me By Your Name is a masterpiece of subtle emotions, intense sensuality and breathtaking beauty.

A mixed bag of dumb jokes and unspeakable violence that is a big improvement over his (McDonagh) other work (it towers over Seven Psychopaths, which was one of the worst movies ever made) but not good enough to write home about at today’s inflated postal rates.

The new, inferior and totally unnecessary 2017 re-make is a sorry disappointment in which nothing measures up to the Sidney Lumet movie, including the train.

The best thing about Last Flag Flying is that Ethan Hawke is not in it. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, and the business is excruciating to get through.

Woody Harrelson in the title role has enough spice to keep the viewer alert and attentive. That’s more than I can say about most of the junk that greets the year-end 2017 holiday season.

It’s not for the squeamish, but required viewing for anyone with a conscience and the need for justice.

Lady Bird is that rare movie in which everything astonishes and leaves you charmed, breathless, and anxious for more.

Part social melodrama, part violent crime drama and part send-up of family values gone haywire, it’s a curiosity that stubbornly fails to come alive until it’s almost over, and then it’s too late.

You learn things from it that should be required viewing for the screening room at the Pentagon.

You can call Novitiate divinely inspired and mean it.

A benign thriller that fails to thrill is like a wet match that fails to light: frustrating and pointless.

It’s so sincere and admirable that it seems churlish to voice objections, but the fact remains that it isn’t very good.

It’s quite a story and a cinematic task writer-director Angela Robinson is not always up to. But I wasn’t bored, and in this anemic year that’s saying a mouthful.

A gallant performance by that wonderful and versatile young actor Andrew Garfield.

Labored and boring, The Mountain Between Us is a soap opera in the snow that fritters away the time and talents of Kate Winslet and Idris Elba for all the wrong reasons.

Eventually The Florida Project (the working title Disney gave to his dream in its planning stages on the drawing boards) sucks you into a world you would never otherwise know anything about.

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.

Shot is sobering, suspenseful and exemplary.

Hack director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is lucky to engage Cruise’s box-office appeal for a tale that otherwise would never have seen the light of day.

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.

A trite little comedy so jumbled, disconnected and bad you can’t believe it doesn’t star James Franco. Instead, it fritters away the talents of the charming Justin Long, a seasoned and resourceful actor who deserves much better.

Grim and hopelessly despondent, but superbly acted and strangely effective as crime on the screen goes.

Judi Dench can do no wrong, and playing Queen Victoria for the second time in the richly satisfying Victoria and Abdul is an acting lesson par excellence that proves how rapturous it is to watch this great artist do everything right.

The movie, as relevant now as the story was then, lacks the same spark as live tennis, but the two stars are equally dynamic and unforgettable as the original players. You won’t be bored.

Nothing about mother! makes one lick of sense as Darren Aronofsky’s corny vision of madness turns more hilarious than scary. With so much crap around to clog the drain, I hesitate to label it the “Worst movie of the year” when “Worst movie of the century” fits it even better.

The surprising results are unlike anything I’ve seen lately, and the best surprise of all is a funny, inspired and career-enhancing star performance by Ben Stiller that left me touched, applauding and laughing out loud.

Salinger fans never seem to tire of new revelations about the man or his work, so if this is the kind of material that interests you, it should keep you sated until the next one comes along. I recommend it highly.

The Good Catholic is a sober, thoughtful and well-made little gem about a young priest torn between his dedication to God and his sudden physical and emotional attraction to an unconventional woman who forces him to question his faith and his purpose. It’s a small film in every way, but I found it riveting.

With so much to look at and a plot to digest as thick as Dutch cocoa, it is not without a few problems, but I found this astonishing movie so rich and satisfying that I liked it in spite of itself. It’s the kind of guilty pleasure that sometimes confuses, but never bores. Color it flawed but gorgeous.

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

It just seems exaggerated and silly. Maybe there’s an idea rattling around in here somewhere, but I’d like to see it in a better movie than Bushwick.

It does provide a welcome antidote to the usual surfeit of formulaic Hollywood junk.

Unflinchingly written and directed by Austin, Texas-based filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh, it’s too unnerving to recommend to the squeamish, but for anyone curious enough to find out what really happens to turn decent people into savages in the bedlam of the American prison system, this is one for the must-see list.

It’s a forgettable film, but what it says about the debilitating effect of technological abuse is sickening enough to make you think twice about upgrading your smartphone.

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

It’s one terrific, offbeat and heart-pounding thriller set in the frozen wilderness of a Wyoming Indian reservation that never ceases to surprise, enthrall and pump the adrenaline with an energy that stuns.

Berry knows how to seize the center spot and hold on tight. In Kidnap, she gets quite an exhausting workout, and so does the audience.

It is still Gerard Butler who keeps it all afloat, negotiating rough waters with superior skill.

It’s meant to be a gritty slice of cornpone about revenge from a woman’s point of view, but the female protagonist who emerges is nothing but a cartoon.

Plotless and leaden as a rusty drainpipe.

It’s a gripping addition to the canon of war on film that is definitely worthy of attention, and some of the images are electrifying.

Wakefield is a terrific movie, with a devastatingly bravura performance by Bryan Cranston that seizes and grips attention from first scene to last.

Together, as a grotesque mother-daughter team kidnapped in Ecuador, they’re the most depressing Mother’s Day present since "Mommie Dearest," only not half as funny.

Sometimes beauty and charm are enough to turn a middling movie into pure ambrosia. Diane Lane has plenty of both, and she uses them wisely in Paris Can Wait, elevating an otherwise mild and inconsequential film to unexpected heights of enchantment.

The awkward results are too contrived for comfort.

It’s a routine story, worth seeing for the galvanizing (pulverizing?) star performance by a smashing Liev Schreiber in the title role.

The best thing here is the muted cinematography, which caresses the wet leaves and cloudy purple Tuscan skies like an old Italian master oil painting that comes to life. In the desultory Voice From the Stone, it’s the only thing that does.

Informative, fascinating and surprisingly funny documentary.

Terry George remains a director I admire, and as movies go, the integrity and importance of The Promise are irrevocable.

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.

Watching Richard Gere’s charm and sweetness, as he turns into a metaphor for the nobodies of the world who hock their souls to be somebodies, is something very special indeed.

To quote the late, great Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?” I’m talking about Colossal, a delirious, moronic mess that landed with a thud at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and now opens commercially, seven months later, with a head-scratching “Duh”.

Beautifully cast, intelligently written and a gorgeously assembled range of beautifully gauged emotions about movies and war, Their Finest is one of the best films of a still-young 2017.

One only wishes they would put their talent and intelligence to better use than a formulaic and manipulative tearjerker that is really nothing more than a woman’s picture from a man’s point of view.