Rex Reed

Turns out to be more suspenseful and keenly plotted than most, with a compelling centerpiece performance by Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) that deserves attention.

As a movie, it's so tightly framed you gasp from claustrophobia. As a film of cryptic boredom, I cannot believe the actors were able to say their lines without cue cards.

A pointless, pathetic and profoundly boring send-up of universally acknowledged anti-social author Philip Roth, Listen Up Philip is a juvenile experiment in pretentious idiosyncrasy by amateurish writer-director Alex Ross Perry. He calls his miserable protagonist Philip Friedman, but who’s kidding who?

Nothing new in any of it, but the tenderness of his performance stretches Bernal’s talents to the point of heartbreak, and his fearless and startling determination to “let it all hang out” results in a challenging star performance that is a thrill to watch and a privilege to applaud.

The issues the film raises about journalistic integrity and broadcast morality make September 5 the most rivetingly responsible film about journalism since Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Not to mention the obvious fact that in light of the current political climate, this is a film of gravity that screams relevance and is one of the best achievements of the year.

Unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. What the bloodsuckers in this frolic actually do, in or out of the shadows, is make you laugh.

I can't imagine what attracted these two megahunks to such a bore.

This meticulously nuanced, sensitively acted film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire gives Nicole Kidman her best role in years, and she chews it like raw steak.

It’s a late-life coming-of-age story, and it’s not great. But she gives it all she’s got, and she’s never been sunnier or funnier.

It keeps you creeped out and fascinated.

Like all Wes Anderson movies, it is enigmatic, artificial, infuriatingly self-indulgent and irrevocably pointless.

Enough is enough. One good thing: The jungle scenes were shot in Hawaii, so at least they all got a paid vacation.

The movie knocks itself unconscious trying to be offbeat, but instead of cinematic heart, the director self-indulges in cinematic art, drowning the whole thing in freeze frames, slow-motion and color-coding, owing everything he knows to the worst of Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson.

It’s one of the year’s most galvanizing cinematic experiences.

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.

Powerful, devastating, depressing and deeply unsettling, the documentary Path of Blood by British filmmaker Jonathan Hacker gives new meaning to the word terror.

At a time when few movies display either a shred of originality or a fresh slant on an old genre, and so many are little more than cookie-cutter derivations of each other, it’s energizing to see something as keenly observed and uniquely competent as Emily the Criminal. It’s a tense and engaging thriller that looks and feels distinctively different.

As a film, it’s uneven and clumsy, but as a responsible political statement about the chaos we live in now, it’s both enlightening and troubling.

You can't fault the theme that life's darkest moments brighten when two people need each other, but there's no drug strong enough to get me through another movie like Love and Other Drugs.

The power in this movie is the way Chris Weitz trusts us to discover the facts for ourselves.

With a strong cast, tight script, and exemplary direction, The Order is first-rate filmmaking above and beyond the usual expectations of your standard thriller.

Creepy and serenely suspenseful, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a riveting study in what it's like to escape from a physically, psychologically abusive cult, and how hard it is to return to normal life after being brainwashed.

Poignant, funny and irresistibly charming.

Sensational entertainment. This $100 million extravaganza is — let’s face it — rampantly over the top. Hell, it’s by Martin Scorsese, who is always over the top.

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.

It's a delectable slice of Southern Gothic humor, a side show of rednecks and Bubbas and Aunt Tooties.

Mr. Fiennes admirably humanizes the characters while exploring their contradictions and emphasizing their feelings. But his no-frills direction is a bit stodgy for my taste, and although this is not the Dickens you’d ever pay to hear read "Little Dorrit," there’s more vitality in his performance than the film itself.

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.