Richard Roeper

Café Society is a gorgeous and lightweight confection, a love letter to the Hollywood of the mid-1930s, as well as the New York of the same era.

I Am Ali serves as further testimony Ali wasn’t simply a great boxer, he was a great man who happened to be a great boxer as well.

Just about every scene features an Oscar winner or an Oscar nominee or an Emmy winner and/or a first-rate character actor — and just about every scene is a bloody mix of taut thriller and utterly implausible noir plot point. This is a sordid but slick and gutsy mess that comes across like a cover-band version of a Michael Mann movie.

Drawing from behind-the-scenes footage and photos on the “Rust” set, police footage from the scene and from interrogation rooms, interviews with actors and production staffers as well as director Joel Souza (who was wounded but fully recovered) and Hutchins’ personal archives, “Last Take” is a powerful piece of work.

Writer-director Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a sweet and intelligent and sometimes absolutely heartbreaking slice of modern-day, eighth-grade life, which, in some ways (hello social media), is radically different from the eighth-grade experience of 1998 or 1978 or 1958, but in many ways is absolutely relatable to audiences of any age or gender.

Ferrell and his longtime collaborator Adam McKay have a unique gift for creating characters that are human car wrecks yet somehow win our affection.

It’s a crazy kaleidoscope of bright colors, dark corners, David Lynch-style set pieces and shock moments designed to keep you up at night — and it features a quintet of memorable performances from two of the best young actors around and three iconic Brits.

With Pamela Adlon (“Better Things”) directing in a style reminiscent of the best Woody Allen and Nora Ephron movies of the 1970s and 1980s, a sharp and hilarious and poignant screenplay by Glazer (“Broad City”) and Josh Rabinowitz, and winning performances from the co-leads, “Babes” is one terrific friend-com, or should we say a mom-com, and I can already picture Eden and Dawn making fun of that latter term.

The Homesman is not an easy, comfortable viewing experience. That’s part of what makes it unique.

The formula has rarely been mined to such resounding success. This is one of the funniest movies of the year AND one of the most romantic movies as well.

Equal parts film noir, relationship drama, dark comedy and mood piece, Digging for Fire is a movie made by someone who clearly loves the art of movies.

Levinson’s dense and richly layered, albeit sometimes overly theatrical, script affords Washington and Zendaya multiple opportunities to showcase their considerable talents and for the discourse to expand beyond the fraying relationship.

A vicious and cheerfully twisted psychological thriller dripping in deception and dread, bathed in pop-art colors and infused with a wickedly dark sense of humor.

An astonishing, horrific, fascinating and complex true-crime story that starts with a brutal act of murder in the late 20th century and winds its way well into the 2000s and 2010s.

There’s a terrifically entertaining sequence late in the film that plays like an homage to a certain element of the original “Poltergeist,” and a thrilling and nerve-wracking extended final sequence that will put you on the edge of the proverbial seat.

It’s not easy to make an emotionally involving film in which some of the most pivotal moments are about phone calls and making copies of documents and a source circling names on a document — but save for a few overly dry moments, Spotlight prevails.

Regardless of Crudup’s ranking as a box-office draw, he’s every inch the movie star in Rudderless, a rather strange but engrossing film with one of the more jarring twists of any film in recent memory.

Fighting With My Family works as a cheeky but never condescending story of one of those “chin-up” working-class British families so often featured in the movies, and of course primarily as the story of an undersized, overmatched outcast who is determined to succeed against all odds.

Aubrey Plaza is a sensation as Ingrid, who is alternately charming and sad and pathetic and absolutely insane. Plaza has a unique and magnetic screen presence that creates great empathy, even when she’s portraying a mostly off-putting character.

One of the many surprising delights in the bright and brassy and wonderfully funny Thor: Ragnarok is the recasting of the God of Thunder as a perpetual underdog.

While The Good Lie certainly doesn’t shy away from scenes designed to make us shake our heads at man’s inhumanity to man and scenes designed to make us dab at our eyes, it’s the kind of movie that earns those moments.

It feels as if about 50% of this movie accurately captures the music business, while the other half is a fluffy confection of pure fantasy — and that’s a formula that works perfectly in an escapist film such as this.

Even on my most Ebenezer of days, I wouldn’t have been able to resist this sentimental journey.

This is one of the most stunning visual treats of the year and one of the most unforgettable thrill rides in recent memory.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is crazy good.

Watts achieves a kind of early Coen brothers, early Tarantino feel.