Rex Reed

It’s too twisted and implausible to be everybody’s cup of tea, but it keeps you glued to the screen from beginning to end. Boredom and bathroom breaks are not an option.

Nothing much revelatory here, but what makes the movie a keeper is the energy of director Ben Younger (Boiler Room) and the charisma of Miles Teller, the sensational young actor from "Whiplash," who invests the role of a prizefighter with the same intensity he brought to the role of an obsessively driven drummer in that film.

The best war film since "Saving Private Ryan." It is violent, harrowing, heartbreaking and unforgettable. And yes, it was directed by Mel Gibson. He deserves a medal, too.

People who ask nothing more for their money than a lot of nerve-scrambling computerized special effects might get through Doctor Strange, another in a long line of lengthy, stupid and unbearable Marvel Studios comic books on film, with minimal brain damage.

This film is too long for a documentary, and only a true Sidney Lumet fan is likely to sit through nearly two hours of it undistracted. Still, it’s a fascinating exploration of how a great mind worked by allowing the quality of his scripts to determine the style of each film—including not only the inner life but the camera, the clothes, the entire visual approach.

American Pastoral tries to be loyal in its adaptation, but the material is film-resistant and flat as cardboard.

King Cobra is a cut above most homoerotic masturbatory screen fantasies, but not by much.

A guaranteed cure for insomnia, an abomination called The Whole Truth is a courtroom movie that looks like a colorized version of an old Perry Mason TV show, starring Renée Zellweger’s new face and Keanu Reeves, who has the charisma and animated visual appeal of a mud fence.

Desierto is an action thriller that delivers unforgettable punches at a feverish pace. You won’t doze through this one.

Comprising three separate, unrelated and thoroughly inconsequential short stories about lonely, miserable women in the isolated landscape of Montana, Certain Women is the latest thumping bore from Kelly Reichardt, a writer-director-editor who makes bland, low-budget films about various hidden aspects of women’s lives they are reluctant to reveal, then take forever to do so.

Special praise goes to Alex Wolff as Jamie and Stefania Owen as his sympathetic, agreeable girlfriend Dee Dee, and veteran actor Chris Cooper makes a complex but astonishingly convincing cameo as the great Jerome David Salinger himself. I went to Coming Through the Rye expecting nothing and left feeling enriched, enlightened and warm all over.

So it’s less bloody and gruesome than "12 Years a Slave." But make no mistake about it; the legion of protestors with no plans to see The Birth of a Nation is growing.

Sweet but inconsequential, The Great Gilly Hopkins will satisfy family audiences and pre-teens with minimal demands for their money.

A rewarding family film indeed, at a time when we badly need one.

Australian films are like local wines from Australian vineyards. They don’t always travel. A bore called The Dressmaker is the latest example.

This is a movie about action, not acting, and although, under the circumstances, the cast does yeoman work in roles that can only be called generic, in the long haul they can’t save the script and direction from being sometimes boring and always predictable.

Another illuminating performance by Rachel Weisz and a brilliant screenplay by the distinguished British playwright David Hare make Denial one of the most powerful and riveting courtroom dramas ever made.

The most moving moments in Sully occur in a coda that introduces the actual passengers and crew who lived through the experience and Sully himself. No movie defines heroism with the same impact as reality itself.

Come What May is not exactly a new idea but a sensitive, polished and carefully executed film anyway, extremely thoughtful and well worth seeing.

Directed by the accomplished Joshua Marston, who made the riveting "Maria Full of Grace," this one is slick and wonderful to look at but too slight to hold its own weight and too inconsequential to generate much suspense.

A tender showcase for a different kind of Jerry Lewis that utilizes the strengths and frailties of a 90-year-old show business survivor as few films have ever done.

A mesmerizing, engrossing and beautifully made cinematic experience, rare as a pink unicorn, that enchants for more than two hours and makes you wish for at least one hour more.

It doesn’t eventually add up to much, but the acting is deeply sincere, and I was touched in unexpected places.

Five Nights in Maine is too inconsequential to spend money on in a major release, which, I predict, will be brief.

A debut feature by American writer-actor Brady Corbet, the film is sketchy, confused and too self-consciously aimed at arthouse audiences to thrive commercially, but it has a chilling impact.

Another teenagers-in-turmoil movie, Quitters has more style than substance, but it’s a cut above most, mainly because first-time director and co-writer Noah Pritzker has a lot of sensitivity toward a familiar subject that renders it real and touching if not exactly original.

The fun wears out fast and so does the “gotcha” factor.

Romantic, bittersweet and funny as hell, Café Society turns Hollywood inside out, rooting through the superficial tinsel to find the real tinsel. You go away gobsmacked, beaming and happy to be both.