Rex Reed

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.