Rex Reed

Poignant, funny and irresistibly charming.

The first thriller of the new season is a bomb called State Like Sleep, and it’s about as thrilling as a power failure in Antarctica. One of the January cast-offs that failed to make the cut in the 2018 year-end releases, it’s a good example of why January is always dreary, in more ways than one.

Some subjects grow weightier and more substantial with time, and this one has never been more relevant.

The two stars deserve bigger vehicles in grander epics, Pawlikowski cements his reputation as a major filmmaker to reckon with, and although it leaves you wanting more, Cold War is a film that is both illuminating and haunting at the same time.

Jennifer Lopez can’t act, the meatheads responsible for the stupidest screenplay of the year can’t write, and I don’t know anybody with one hour and 43 minutes to waste in a busy holiday season, so a cinematic disaster called Second Act has nothing to recommend it, even as a temporary refuge from traffic gridlock.

The movie is full of joyous, unexpected things to applaud.

If Beale Street Could Talk is sad, sobering, gritty and graceful — more a reflection of the underrated James Baldwin than the overrated Barry Jenkins.

Implausible even for an overly ambitious sci-fi monster flick, it also begs, borrows and steals every effect, idea and image from other people’s horror movies that were much better the first time around.

As Earl, Clint Eastwood is so believable and such a charming curmudgeon that when the cops from the Federal Drug Administration led by Bradley Cooper turn the tables, you don’t want them to.

Another truthful, intelligently calibrated and fully committed performance by the remarkable Lucas Hedges following this year’s previously acclaimed "Boy Erased" rewards the sensitive, pulsating and intimate family drama Ben Is Back.

You go away from Mary Queen of Scots sated but exhausted. The problem, as I see it, is that in spite of director Josie Rourke’s solemnity, her passion for translating history into modern terms doesn’t always jell.

Swimming with Men doesn’t tackle the plight of middle-age in any relevant new way, but even though it’s not a great film, it’s not a waste of time. Oddly enough, it’s been playing on airplanes for months. Catch it now, on dry land, before they empty the pool.

The result is such a bomb—exaggerated, infuriating, and about as funny as a root canal without anesthesia.

The film is as disappointing as his fate, but it’s worth watching for the rugged, nerve-wracking performance by Colin Firth.

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

Regardless of your tolerance for Restoration jabberwocky, you will be forced to admit the performance by Olivia Colman as England’s dim-witted Queen Anne is a masterpiece of madness.

Witty and warm as cashmere, Green Book is a two-hander in which both stars soar with humor and heart.

I wish I could have enjoyed Widows half as much as the critics who are salivating over it with rapturous praise, but Steve McQueen, Oscar-winning director of 12 Years a Slave, directs movies with a jackhammer. Turning his methodic violence with a camera from the brutality of slavery to a commercially driven feminist heist movie, he does not enhance the old Hollywood genre. He pulverizes it.

Add up the ingredients and you get a mostly enjoyable dog-eared formula for escapist entertainment without critical perception.

Aside from bad filmmaking, I don’t know what any of this means. I do know Harris Dickinson is the chief attraction as well as the only reason to suffer through a revolting score of punk rock songs and an interminable series of fuzzy, flashing camera angles advertising neon signs for sex clubs and gay bath houses.

Brilliantly directed by Jason Reitman, from an intelligent, carefully researched and fast moving screenplay by Reitman, Jay Carson and Matt Bai (based on Bai’s marvelous book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid), this enthralling film is a mirror to the shifting relationship between the media and politics, and the events that changed the last 30 years in American history.

Nothing seems real, including the fact that the star is playing an allegedly legendary jazz singer without a single indication that she has any talent for the job. Although she looks weary and downbeat for good reason, she is touching and fearless in an underwritten role, and the considerable vocal chops she has displayed onstage in Broadway musicals serve her well, even when the movie doesn’t.

The nicest thing that can be said about this demure little Canadian trifle is that it’s a film that finally gives the gifted, self-assured and sadly underrated Alessandro Nivola a leading role.

The details in every scene and the polish and precision of a perfect cast make Boy Erased one of the finest and most unforgettable films of the year.

Because it concentrates on her professional risks and accomplishments at the expense of the personal conflicts that give the film its title, it’s not a perfect film, but Rosamund Pike is so good in it that she’s certain to be remembered when the 2018 awards season rolls around.

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 film eschews a Hollywood happy ending in favor of bone-chilling reality, which makes Viper Club doubly relevant amid current headlines.

The miracle is Melissa McCarthy, whose tortured portrait of disgraced celebrity author and convicted forger Lee Israel is the consummate performance of her career and the crowning achievement of her life. I have seen Can You Ever Forgive Me? twice, rubbing my eyes with astonishment and discovering something new and wonderful each time. This is my favorite film of 2018.