Roger Moore

A Royal Affair...is a lovely history lesson, but a film without the spark of invention that makes this modern parable feel modern.

Veteran TV writer and director DeYoung lures the viewer in and leads us in amused, faintly contemptuous but always nervous laughter.

If you’ve ever been curious, without wanting to endure a drawn-out day-long slaughter by the world’s best-dressed and best-compensated butchers, “Afternoons of Solitude” will put you in that ring with a celebrated torero.

Maclean and his cast create a sound, tone and feel that makes even a moldy tale like this lean, mean and fresh, even if it never quite transcends the gun smoke of its genre.

As history, Intelligent Lives is invaluable at reminding us of the speed of change, once such change is recognized and accepted as necessary.

Deutch is is just-short-of-dazzling as the persuasive opportunist who convinces one and all that “debt is JAIL,” and what they’re selling to debtors is the chance to “break these people OUT.”

Jokes, sparkling bits of dialogue, a few touching third act twists and laughs in surprising places.

In a film with righteous outrage yet limited violent action, it takes a great performance to make us root against meeting violence with violence. Isaac and Chandor make that come off.

A revealing documentary.

Matt Damon is an interesting, chatty choice to play Laboeuf.

For all its plot trickery, mind science and relationship square dancing, Trance doesn’t have the emotional tug or technical pizzaz of Boyle’s best films – “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Trainspotting” or “127 Hours.”

It’s still a fine showcase for great acting, a great setting and a pretty good, if not great yarn unraveling the social fabric of a family, its history and the ugly secrets Everybody Knows but nobody has talked about — until now.

If its jolts are few, the chilling tone sells it as one of the smarter horror tales to come along of late, north or south of the border.

I still found it engrossing, and in a country where most hotels have chambermaids that look just like Evelia, occasionally moving and often troubling.

A taut, riveting police procedural that maintains suspense even as it finds humor in the people, their funny accents and way with profanity, and pathos.

It's rooting against grandma that drives this violent, hardhearted film, and waiting for the pride of lions she's created to devour her that gives Animal Kingdom its animal energy.

You have to remind yourself to breathe.

We Like It Like That fills in some very necessary course requirements in Americans’ college of musical knowledge. Just hearing how that seminal, signature hit “Bang Bang” came about is worth the price of admission.

It doesn’t trivialize Mud to label it Tennessee Williams lite — at least in its romantic notions. Nichols gets good performances out of one and all, but lets himself get so caught up in his sense of place that this potboiler hangs around more than a few minutes after that pot has come to a boil.

Good Boy makes the humans all but superfluous as its star delivers some of the most realistic reactions to the unexplainable this time-worn genre has ever seen.

It's a plucky film that covers a lot of ground and uncovers this wonderful, ancient ritual that people of many faiths and from all walks of life take on.

Hard Truths is reminder that filmmaker/artists/observers of his stripe are once-in-a-generation, one-per-culture talents.

In the hands of director Thea Sharrock, screenwriter Jonny Sweet and a sparkling cast, it becomes a parable on shifting social mores, sexism, morality confused with legality and women’s suffrage. It’s a vulgar hoot.

Even Mice Belong in Heaven is the most adorable and unusual animated offering for kids this year.

Touching and funny, awkward and wistful, it’s also evidence of a Hollywood crime.

It’s a documentary concocted out of decades of film and TV interviews — some confrontational, some awkward, often quite funny.

The new film from award-winning Venezuelan filmmaker Lorenzo Vigas is a lean, quiet and disturbing parable about global capitalism as it is practiced in much of the Third World.

What I found most interesting was getting at the places where Warren himself screwed up.

Petzold emphasizes the dreamy nature of the story, which can be nightmarish if you fear drowning in the dark.

The film doesn’t judge, either. Viewers who might cringe at the subject matter can decide for themselves if the sweeping changes in the culture that the ensuing decades have brought have been glorious, catastrophic or a seriously mixed bag.

Apte is the riveting center of it all, making sense out of nonsense, and when she can’t, just bluffing and bullying her unfiltered way towards enlightenment, or something just short of it.

The triumph of “Miseducation” is how lightly it treads down a well-worn path, how quaint and out of date it makes the attitudes of early ’90s authority seem to modern eyes.

Skiing/sledding gags, a Roomba run amok bit — there’s just enough going on to keep the littlest kids interested. And a tiny dollop of heart helps.

Bit actor and sometime director Ari Gold and his co-writer/collaborator Elizabeth Bull conjure up a warm, wistful movie about nostalgia itself — its traps, and its rewards.

The harrowing nature of the work is the primary focus of this film and many others on this subject. But Colvin never comes off as the classic adrenaline junkie/Hemingway wannabe that too many of these films turn their heroes into.

It’s a healthy reminder that fighting corruption, even in something as mundane as college admissions, is vital to society’s health, that Americans need to at least believe there’s a “level playing field,” and that not guaranteeing that is how we mediocre our way from the top of the world to Banana Republic in just a generation.

Merchants of Doubt has its moments when the professional deniars hem and haw about who pays them to do what they do. But mostly, they’re glib, smug, self-confessed and self-righteous tools of Big Coal, Big Chemical or Big Oil.

A quote by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke opens White God — “Everything terrible is something that needs our love.” But that goes for the film, too. Who will want to see a movie so focused on dogs, in which they’re brutalized and killed?

I could have done without a talky, explain everybody’s motivations third act. But there’s no getting around the crowd-pleasing nature of the bloody, vengeful and self-righteous wrath that rains down upon one and all in the finale.

Murray and writer-director Theodore Melfi play us like a music box, manipulating and charming our socks off even as the Vincent for whom the film is named curses, gambles, drinks and cheats — all in front of an impressionable 10-year old.

The American Meme traces this democratized/Americanized form of “celebrity” back to its origins and profiles some of the web’s more notorious creations in a generally entertaining and somewhat illuminating account of recent history.

In an age when a New Prurience might be a part of the “Control Women” agenda that Poor Things is puncturing, Lanthimos, McNamara and Stone have given us a picture that prods, provokes and delights in any discomfort it might create, a bawdy odyssey that, whatever your reservations, insists on being the Must See Movie of the season.

Creadon presents all this in a brisk, lively film, with lots of topical music underscoring the archival footage, and interviews with everyone from former students who became journalists or members of Congress to Ted Koppel and former Senator Alan Simpson.

Maysles could have made this another “Grey Gardens,” seeing Apfel as just a well-heeled hoarder. But Apfel never comes off as eccentric, just singular.

The film tells Annie Parker’s story with heart and wit, and finds a few funny insights into the stubborn, brusque woman, Dr. Mary-Claire King, whose lonely quest to find proof would bear fruit.

A feisty, funny, down-and-dirty farce as nasty as a Supreme Court dissent, as timely as a Jenner magazine cover.

Her style, smart outspokenness, controlling her image and art, are a wonder to behold.

This intimate saga is an alternately sad and intense take on “the sins of the father” and the rippling effects of violence. And if it’s not quite as incident-packed as a movie of this length ought to be, what’s here is rich in character and a rewarding experience.

The first pleasant surprise of spring, a gorgeous kids’ cartoon with heart and wit, if not exactly a firm grasp of paleontology.

The formula may be worn from a dozen or more Hollywood pictures covering the same ground. But the novelty of the setting and the working class characters and accents — “D’y-knowhutImean?” — are fresh.

Nobody knocks anything out of the park, but this “Fletch” piles up the singles and doubles, an endless parade of funny lines almost always just thrown away, casually.

Enjoyable mainly for its performances — Pegg’s comic venality, Palmer’s nagging ruthlessness, Brown’s quiet cruelty — and the creative ways it kills its way toward an ending that we’ve seen pretty close to the beginning.

Bernthal’s resolute, fearsome and touching performance make this Pilgrimage well worth the journey.

It’s all so damned sweet, maybe not “strictly PG,” but as our heroine lives her season-long story arc, she comes out in a different place than where she started, bonds with her “a little too cool” grandparents, works out some Mommy/Daddy issues and grows.

An action picture whose aging hero we care about and root for, a thriller with tension and style, a B-movie Hitchcock would have been happy to call his own.

It’s not one of [Zhang’s] very best, not on a par with “Hero” (Jet Li’s finest hour) or “House of Flying Daggers” even. But it still becomes a rousing, stately entry in the martial arts genre. Eventually.

Yes, this remake is old fashioned, and maybe the “mark” (Alex Sharp of “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”) is a tad green and less interesting. But sometimes, it’s fun watching two wildly different stars mix it up in sumptuous settings, and seemingly have a ball doing it.

Kiley has created a pretty engrossing and somewhat moving story of a selfish, self-destructive drunk who finds, if not faith, at least the willingness to look outside of herself to try and help others and the chance to actually join the human race.

Wonders of the Sea doesn’t break much in the way of new ground. We’ve seen slow-motion sting-rays, spiny lobsters, hermit crabs, octopi and moray eels before. But the extreme close-ups, vivid colors of the various habitats the Cousteaus take us are worth the price of admission. And if ever there was a time we need to be reminded of what we need to save in the briny blue, it’s now.

The movie feels lived in, greasy and real. [Bujalski] just needed more funny lines and help figuring out the most promising thread among the many he introduces to pursue.

Winslet is convincingly flinty, uncompromising and American in the part, a feminist in the truest traditional sense of the word. Excellent supporting cast aside, she’s the reason to see “Lee,” a one woman argument for why what Lee Miller documented and how she documented it mattered in a movie that honors her memory, and the memories that haunted her to the end of her days.

The familiar, easily-guessed plot points and story beats entertain just enough to compensate for how unchallenging and unsurprising most of this is. Whatever one thinks of poets, movies about poets are always a tad on the pretentious, tin-eared side.

It’s just competent, light entertainment.

Oh Lucy! is a slight comedy of offbeat, culture clash charms with a dark, flinty edge. It benefits from spot-on casting, testy-funny situations and cultural stereotypes that well up just below the surface, stereotypes popped almost the moment they’re exposed.

Ahead of the Curve does a decent job of summarizing a forty year blur in gay history and Stevens’ role in it as a spokeswoman for her sexuality and community on TV in the ’90s — “Power Dykes,” on the next “Geraldo!” — a pioneering publisher and a leader in the culture’s breathtaking shift in attitudes on sexuality, marriage and gender identity.

McFarland is old-fashioned without being dull, pandering without feeling cloying or racist.

Where the film is fascinating is the ways it examines the wandering lives of working musicians who stay in touch with the tunes even as life goes on.

It doesn’t amount to much more than some winsome smirks and a chuckle or two, but its mere existence is a delight.

Longoria keeps her directing eyes on the “feel-good movie” prize, which limits the film’s ambition as we bounce from scene to uplifting scene, many of them involved adorable moppets taste-testing very hot chili baths to bake into the Cheetohs.

There’s a reason romantic cliches became cliches. This is one way love develops, and as the script is taken from the memoirs of actor Sergey Fetisov, there’s only so much criticism that’s warranted about the waypoints of this romance.

Tiny profundities, clever twists and lots of giggles are the hallmarks of Table 19, a wedding comedy with on-the-nose casting and slight, uneven charms.

If the movies are going to talk about labor, human rights, cruel “leaders” and love in the world Gen Z is growing up in, the raw deal facing Mickeys 1-17 is a good place to do it.

“Pitch Perfect” writer turned first-time director Kay Cannon makes some of these big moments pay off, and delivers the sweetest, most sensitive “coming out” scene at the prom that you can imagine. What Cannon can’t do is keep this picture from stopping cold every fifteen minutes or so, sensitive moments that kill the comic momentum and make us notice that the kid actors aren’t in the same charisma league as the grownups.

David Dastmalchian wrote and co-stars in this generic but well-acted trip down junky lane.

The Big Sick makes good use of some vintage Nanjiani 9/11 comebacks, some winning (if not new) backstage backbiting comedy club observations and marvelous, heartfelt work by three great actors who carry their leading man and his overlong, not-a-million-laughs “personal” story across the finish line.

The courtroom finale, eating up much of the third act, is a corker. And Pearce holds our focus, still or animated, chewing up a scene or so underplaying it he’s still the center of attention. Like the Great Master he is, he knows how to grab the eye and hold its focus, with or without a menacing mustache.

It’s not all that original and not actually on a par with the benchmark films of this corner of horror, “Night of the Living Dead,” “28 Days Later,” “World War Z” and “Zombieland.” But Hernández shows a flair for thrillers and an eye for showy visual storytelling that, with his third film (after “La casa muda” and “You Shall Not Sleep”) establishes him as a horror director to watch.

It seems as if almost everybody in this fascinating artifact has a megaphone at some point, even Bogdanovich, doing his Jimmy Cagney impression, maybe a little Tennessee Williams, quoting Welles’ beloved Bard in line that gives the entire enterprise its one truly poignant moment. “Our revels now are ended.”

It’s a lovely film, stately, sylvan and slow. It would take an insensate child and a very cynical adult to not fall for at least some of its charms.

Andrew Rossi’s documentary is a bit scatter shot in its approach.

It’s a formulaic dramedy with a little pathos, some wit, some unusual-in-real-life-but-not so-much-in-rom-coms situations.

Moretz is as real as ever, and Knightley manages Megan’s transition from annoyingly naive to adorably confused. But for that she has help, and for that she and we should thank Rockwell. In this case, the actor most accomplished at playing slackers is the one who gets everybody — and the movie — to grow up.

"Gattaca" director Andrew Niccol's sense of the zeitgeist is as on the money as ever with In Time, a sci-fi parable that plays like "Occupy Wall Street: The Movie."

The surprises are few, and none of it am0unts to a whole lot. But for those up to taking yet another British sentimental journey to “their finest hour,” A Royal Night Out manages something unheard of in the decades of Windsor wooliness since. It makes them cute, if only for one night.

Tram finds the heart, humanity and humor in all this in the kids, their simpler understanding of the world and simple, goofy solutions to confrontations.

Evans is convincingly rugged, convincingly smart and convincingly wearied from the weight of deciding this child’s future.

I was wholly taken in by the forlorn setting and by the racism subtext in play here. But too little happens in “Limbo” for my taste, and there’s a fine line between “patient” storytelling and a film so slack in its pacing as to lower the stakes and test the viewer’s patience.

You’ve got to be in the right frame of mind for “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” which can be as much a downer and a chore as “Anomalisa” or “Synechdoche, New York.” In the end, it’s a morose puzzle of a tale that one can appreciate, even if you don’t mind if you never see it again.

The lapses in logic and anachronistic hardware, pistols that never miss and the like might make the historically-minded cringe. But if you like your commando raids bloody and bloody fun (at times), The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare more or less fills the bill.

This terminal illness tale rises above the form, mainly thanks to a stellar cast and a refusal to drift into maudlin, a film that saves its big emotions for a wrenching finale that it earns.

The script, from a story by actresses Thomas and Reiner, is fiercely feminine and adept at juggling conflicting agendas and “needs.”

It works the deadpan side of the street, spare in its dialogue, leaning on sight gags and situational ironies. What you get is an intimate parody of a parable, a comedy content to earn smirks and knowing grins and never reach for belly laughs.

Charisma and old-fashioned talent, what we glibly file under the label “chemistry” when actors click with every single co-star they share a movie with, carry him through in The Equalizer 2, a dawdling thriller that sacrifices thrills, surprises and at times coherence for the sake of character.

The final act isn’t as interesting as the first two were to me. But Hirsch impresses, as usual, as a man losing his wits and Dern always gives fair value as a canny old coot who knows more than he’s letting on.

Icelandic filmmaker Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir uses images, melancholy reveries and the voice-over narration of her nine year old protagonist to turn Guðbergur Bergsson’s novel into an austere, chilly and cryptic film.

I like the way writer-director Kat Candler, expanding a short film she made a few years back, doesn’t give away the whole back-story — what killed the mother, who might have been to blame.

Technically spare and smart, fascinating in the dilemma it wrestles with, Realive is, in the end, too chilly to warm up to.

The patience of the sport and the tranquility of the settings casts a spell, and it all comes together in modestly, honestly moving ways.

What “Cure” doesn’t do particularly well is introduce a mystery, add menace and heighten suspense in racing towards a conclusion. There’s no “Race” for the “Cure.” Still, it’s just chilling to experience, a novel and thought-provoking take on what ails us and our fruitless search for relief.

The lightly abrasive way Bibb and Duhamel connect and the hurt hanging over most everybody lift this predictable dramedy out of the goat corral, pig pen and barn and into something perfectly serviceable and sweet and a cut or three above what you find on The Hallmark Channel

It would be nice if this generally laudatory, understated and reflective film served as Gilliam’s victory lap. It captures his dogged persistence and his artist’s eye, and humanizes him by letting us see him playing with his son in home movies, then playing with his grandchild in others.

An eye opener.

This is still a most original take on the consequences of following your own "yellowbrickroad" when you don't know, for sure, that there's an Oz at the end of it.

We know where it’s going before it gets there, but a game cast act as if they don’t. But they know there’s no heavy lifting here, and they make something that should be easy feel and especially sound easy. Amazing how few rom-coms manage even that.

Susan Johnson ensures this adaptation of the Jenny Han novel maintains a wistful, winsome view of first love, first scene to last.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead made a magnificent drunk in “Smashed,” so it should be no surprise that she kills as a stand-up comic in All About Nina.

It’s too long and wildly uneven. And the longer it goes on, the more uneven and oddball it seems.

[Franti] asks good questions, doesn’t overwhelm the film with his own story and just oozes empathy and easygoing charm everywhere he goes.

A diverting and picturesque romance that will have you dreaming of a French vacation and the lovely sights — human and otherwise — to be seen there.

Angelfish is seriously undemanding, but benefits from novel settings (few New York movies are set in Marble Hill/Kings Bridge) and a period piece story that strips away the artifice and distraction that love in the age of cell phones promises. Back in ’93, you had to use a pay phone when you wanted privacy, had to write somebody’s number down and had to wait in the apartment if you were expecting a call...That's true love.

This is spooky on an effects and story-telling level, downright chilling on a personal one.

It’s thorough, almost academic textbook/video-accompanying-a-film-studies-class broad in its scope.

A lively, silly opening and a deft and daft finale rescue it from all its Avengers/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. back-engineering.

Even when it strays away from its core messaging, Wildflower never steps on a mine. And when you’re working your way through a minefield, you call that a win every time.

Let’s not think too much about the resolution to Stacey Gregg’s haunting Here Before. It’s too pat to feel satisfying after all that we’ve invested in that’s come before it. But what we’ve seen and settled into up to that climax is another sublime performance from Andrea Riseborough, one of the subtlest and most expressive actresses working today.

There’s little that’s new here, but the performances give this time capsule picture heart, with Madsen, Smith and Chiklis taking their archetypal characters beyond “type.”

The ending is laugh-out-loud ludicrous, and the stops (the train gets snowbound — imagine that) dictated by a very old formula. But it is the stylish journey, my friends, that matters , not the destination.

Beyond that, what is the drive — personal, psychological , body image or otherwise — that they must have in common? “Glitter” never gets close to that.

It’s no great surprise that the great Australian director Bruce Beresford wrings every ounce of sweet out of Ladies in Black.

The story isn't particularly organized. It's more a collection of scenes - than a coherent coming-of-age tale.

Dafoe is always a wonder to watch. But the picture needed more drama, maybe a touch of humor about its “Martian” styled “work the problem” exercise, and more of a sense of self-awareness in our thief who is trapped “inside” a just deserts parable of his own creation.

The Consequences here are a movie that’s more intriguing than arresting, and not harrowing enough to be the most convincing recreation of the real thing.

The frights are passable, the foreshadowing (extreme close-ups of nails being pounded through boards, etc.) telling and the humor — sick as it is — quite funny.

I found Cordelia an intriguing, immersive mystery that left me with more questions — not about what’s really going on, but about more mundane third act specifics — than it has answers to.

What is here –a good if not “all star” cast, colorful characters, the settings and the story — has charm enough to get by even if no one will ever confuse Mr. Malcolm’s List for “Sense & Sensibility.”

There’s nothing deep in this script, and the delayed romance, between real-life lovers Roberts and Evan Peters (of “American Horror Story”) sets off no sparks. The characters are sort of a grab bag of “types.”

Put these elements together with some solid acting by James and a touching turn by the Parisian Martin, and Archive becomes a genre film that, if it doesn’t transcend the sum of its parts, at least has the parts to let us buy in and enjoy the story that it’s telling, derivative as it is.

So The BFG isn’t the “BFD” it might have been. Lovely as it often is, it’s a one hour and fifty-seven minute long kids’ movie designed to be watched, at home, with interruptions. And believe me, you’ll know it.

The Beta Test is a wired, wound-up and instantly-hip/instantly-dated Hollywood riff on relationships — romantic, business and otherwise.

Gleeson, Pinsent and Kitsch make this a diverting comic travelogue for anybody who misses “Northern Exposure” but has no intention of moving to Alaska, or in this case, Newfoundland.

A very good cast headed by Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano and Tye Sheridan stars in The Stanford Prison Experiment, a film as straight-forward and clinically chilling as its title.

The result is a film that lacks fury and outrage, that straddles a morally murky fence. It’s not that Whale of a Tale lacks a point of view, it’s that it lacks conviction about any point of view.

Writer/director Callie Khouri and screenwriter Angelina Burnett (TV’s “Boss,” “Halt and Catch Fire”) correct that. And with the two Broadway stars they cast, women who do their own singing, they give us a brisk (OK, rushed), sentimental “behind the glamour” gloss of a bio-pic.

No, there’s not much to this thin plot and the monotonous visual limitations don’t deliver the claustrophobia you might expect to heighten the growing dread. But for horror that’s alarming in the most primal, aural and piloerection ways, Undertone hits enough right notes to recommend.

Streep, Marshall & Co. still manage to do the “Woods” justice. And if it’s more impressive than embraceable, remember your Sondheim (“Sweeney Todd,” “A Little Night Music,” etc.). That’s kind of his thing.

Like “Cocaine Bear,” Borderline was built with “midnight movie” appeal in mind. And even if it never quite adds up to more than that, it doesn’t disapoint.

No, it’s not deep. But the film, a sung-through (virtually no dialogue) musical by Jason Robert Brown, is sweet and sunny and occasionally funny.

It’s interesting enough as it invites the viewer into interpretations, messages it might be sending and observations Devos is making about our changing world and those best adapted to roll with those changes, taking comfort and pleasure wherever they settle and accumulate.

Documentaries are utterly reliant on their subject to be appealing, and while “Remember My Name” does soften him a bit, it’s hard to make the case that it merits a total reevaluation of the man and his music.

The effects are off-the-chart dazzling, and if nothing else, the picture jumps out of the gate and sprints until one and all get good and winded entirely too quickly.

It’s a zombie comedy, so the laughs come in mostly very familiar places.

It’s a sad story, of course, with overdoses and deaths and sort of classical American “price of fame” arc. But it’s also revealing, and only rarely judgemental — even handed, I thought.

Watts masters Diana’s look — the way she carried her head and used those wide, coyly expressive eyes — but is only passable at impersonating the voice.

It’s not edgy enough to join the ranks of indie horror classics, but Body at Brighton Rock is a solidly just–scary-enough thriller that reminds us that it’s not “found footage” that makes us jump, it’s things that shriek in the pitch black night.

The scenery is still stunning, but there’s little of the brio of a filmmaker who went on to make “Deliverance,” “Excalibur” and the glorious “Hope and Glory” in it.

It's a sordid tale and, in Gibney's telling, a cautionary one.

The topicality — filming this well into the COVID outbreak and shutdown — and eagerness to offend are what recommend “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm.” It’s a fun character to revisit and an important time to bring him back.

No matter how convuluted and contrived the situations, motivations and conflicts within might seem, no matter how obvious the need to jam in other exotic, tourist-brochure locations, no matter how many female leads Cruise interacts-but-never-quite-“clicks” with, the entertainment value remains right on the edge of off-the-charts.

For all its fun flourishes and tepid over familiarity, fans are going to dig this. It is, after all, the movie they paid for. They’re the folks who “like this sort of thing.” The rest of us can be forgiven for waiting for it to show up on Netflix — on TV.

This isn't "Up in the Air," and we're not dealing with this awful event on a metaphysical level. But there's truth in between the cliches.

It’s an amusing gloss on a punk icon who never gave up the rebellion and never let go of the safety pins.

Paulson and Duplass make all this talk (never once mumbling) fascinating, lived-in and real, taking us into the sad, lost lives of these two long lost lovers.

Like the other famous current example of the mercurial, dimwitted bullying, sexually abusive misogynist/narcissist, we know the True Believers’ epiphany won’t be something they welcome.

The Shape of Water is first and foremost a genre picture. And as that, it’s a loving homage to cinema from an age where movies couldn’t be as obvious about this forbidden subject or that unspoken sexuality. It’s a good film of its type, just not a great one.

Showtime slick and boxing picture predictable, Cradle of Champions is about the New York epicenter of Golden Gloves boxing.

It’s very self-conscious and gets very meta and kind of arty. But if Adieu Godard rarely achieves laugh-out-loud chuckles, scene after scene finds grins, giggles and bits of comical outrage.

A good cast and amusing situations make it a pleasant, sometimes amusing if not particularly memorable experience.

For an emotionally-grounded disaster movie, I found it a harrowing recreation of the real thing, emotionally affecting and not bad. Not bad at all.

Monsters University is a prequel that is far more conventional, not nearly as witty or clever as that original.

It’s a romance novel, a romantic fable, brought to life by a pretty good cast that cannot make it more than is, that cannot give it more meaning and make it less frustrating than novelist M.L. Stedman intended.

Grasping for meaning in its unsettling, occasionally comic and always cryptic “relationship” can be an interesting thought exercise.

Miguel Arteta did “Chuck & Buck” and “The Good Girl,” and in star and co-writer Alia Shawcat, of “Arrested Development” and the TBS series “Search Party,” he’s got a collaborator willing to put it all out there and forget her comic crutches for an intimate, damaged and personal story packed into day and night of enforced intimacy with somebody who might “be the one.”

The broad, goofy jokes and one-liners land — even if they feel a little winded, this time.

The best of them you could certainly see as full length features, chilling little tastes of a complete vision — story, characters, horrific situations and visual aesthetic. The worst? Simply generic.

There are tips and too-obvious clues about what’s really going on here. And Miele drags out the finale, too, trying to bring on the tears. But Miller and Luna give this romance a history, weariness and testy spark that keeps Wander Darkly going even after we’ve guessed what its destination is.

As a movie, this One Night in Miami is more promising than polished, more righteous than riveting viewing.

Deneuve suggests the self-absorption of the beautiful, coping with the petty insults of age, making Bettie a bundle of nerves wrestling with a complicated past and an increasingly frazzled present. See it for her performance, and a lovely slice of French scenery.

Potter’s film is at is most artful in the painterly ways she composes the wordless scenes of the girls testing cigarettes, hitchhiking with the wrong boys and Rosa exploring heavy petting with another boy, showing off for Ginger.

It’s not high art or a great film, just a genre tale with a twist. And it’s a tad predictable, by the time that third act rolls around. But Monaghan and the kids sell the premise, and the movie plays.

Yes, most every joke churned out here has a “low hanging fruit” or “fruit food colored” air about it. But Gaffigan, Schumer, McCarthy, Grant and most everybody here has a chance to score. And so they do.

West. . .takes on nothing less than life itself, its eddies and the backwash that we struggle to understand as it is happening and only really pick up on after this or that phase has passed. And he does it via a sneaky story that’s just realistic enough to trick you into feeling it’s straightforward, when no, that’s not the idea at all.

Tom Doiron’s first produced script lapses into a long series of over-explained “expository endings” which spoil the mystery of what’s come before. But Eckhart reminds us of how good he can be when given a showy role, and a supporting cast worthy of his talents.

There’s not a whole lot to this, but Tsang injects a lot of visual variety, and a few laughs, into “The Black Hole” that Sammy must magically extract herself from.

The life lesson and messaging is upbeat and sentimental.

When Evil Lurks is still one of the most original horror films of recent memory and a pretty convincing argument to turn out the lights when you’re not using them, no matter how scary the dark is, especially out in the sticks.

There are laughs and moments of warmth. And there are annoyingly familiar confrontations that have a grounding in legitimate cultural grievances, but which a lot of funny shouting cannot resolve, during or After Class.

As meaty as this script sounds — every line another morsel — it never allows Wahlberg the chance to make us care what happens to Jim. Do we want him to get what’s coming to him, or are we rooting for him? Either way, Wyatt, Monahan and Wahlberg succeed only in frustrating our will, cashing out with a cop-out finale, making our two hour gamble on The Gambler something less than a sure thing.

Its message is well-worth repeating in a time of economic upheaval.

Sally Field brings a bubbly, misdirected vitality to Hello, My Name is Doris, a cute better-late-than-never romance tailor-made for her talents and lifelong image.

Fortunately for us, Kendrick delivers. She immerses us in Alice’s efforts to keep her secrets and avoid sorting anything out even if she suspects the status quo is everything her friends seem to suggest it is.

Not all of Chokehold makes sense or seems logical. But as the threats rise and the deeds are done, Tatlitug and Saylay and screenwriter Hakan Gunday keep us engrossed and invested in this bad-man-turning-worse and his fate.

No, this isn’t deep. But there are some surprises and just enough laughs. If you’ve ever dealt with family over the death of a relative, the sting of recognition alone is worth an extra giggle or two.

Based on the children’s books by Aaron Blabey, the plot isn’t all that, but The Bad Guys sparkles to life when it’s at its most antic — frantic chases, capers going wrong or just heated, animated debates in the gang.

Hemingway wins us over and, in the end, comes off as earnest in her desire to use her celebrity to help shine a light on the maladies that have shattered her family, time and again.

Beyond the Lights is another pain-behind-the-music romance. But it’s so well written, cast and played that we lose ourselves in the comfort food familiarity of it all.

First-time writer/director Peter Sattler finds a few surprises to throw at us in this somewhat conventional “Stockholm Syndrome” story.

Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea merely unravels the yarn that inspired the great book, a good-looking film that never sinks, but never really soars either.

Director Dan Trachtenberg (“10 Cloverfield Lane” and TV’s “The Boys”) makes great use of locations (Alberta, Canada) and the film’s set-piece fights. Screenwriter Patrick Aison sticks to the “Predator” basics for the alien hunter, and creates some wonderfully visceral scenes that try to reason out how bow and arrow, hatchet and woodlore skills might be used against a super-sized/super-powered foe.

But the violence, when it comes, is shocking. The native cunning, when it makes itself known, is chilling.

We Are Living Things is more a movie of feelings than plot or explanations of that plot and the characters. And as such, dark as it sometimes gets, it’s a winner.

The sprawl of it, the seeming disorganization, all work to its advantage and betray Kings' ambition. Ergüven wasn’t going for documentary, she was aiming for an impressionistic “feel” — terror, outrage, helplessness, a city and a system that aren’t built for you, even when you’re hurt, even when you’re in trouble.

It’s all rater less than the sum of its parts, but the first two thirds of You Should Leave” impress and engross. It’s a pity we don’t get to see it with an audience. Because if there’s one thing that amplifies tiny frights, it’s other people overreacting as if they’re scared out of their wits.

The street life is vividly captured, and the dialogue — in English, Igbo and Yoruba (with English subtitles) — is sharp and expository.

BuyBust is brimming with life, furiously protected and furiously taken, a bracing introduction of Matti and Filipino cinema to the world.

The “hair” with a murderous mind of its own is more funny than scary.

The best effects are the simplest, and kudos to the effects rigger or production assistants who nailed this precision-slamming in one take. We, like Lee Pace playing Mark, his mouth agape, are shocked and shaken that something inexplicable has just happened.

Funny Boy is valuable in letting us see this world and this history through different eyes.

Reeves animates the action and the filmmakers surround him with wonderful co-stars; the quietly menacing McShane, the chop shop operator (John Leguizamo), the dapper “cleaner” (David Patrick Kelly of “The Warriors”) and the spitting, hissing Nyqvist.

Rock is more a genial presence here than an actor playing an addict tested by a bad day. He never lets us see the strain that could make him fall off the wagon. He scores laughs, but generously leaves the outrageous stuff to his legion of supporting players.

Campbell gets across the quiet struggle of knowing one’s fate and trying to keep it from breaking her son’s future — concealing, then revealing, edging up to “the talk.”

A scruffy, raunchy and random farce.

It can be cute, playful and romantic, then turn dishearteningly violent as it serves up a generous sampling of what life on the untamed frontier could be like. It’s also frustrating in its lapses in logic, its cumbersome, shuffled and dream-infused structure.

Not all of it works. But giddy moments and goofy touches — former Bond villain Steven Berkoff shows up as “my inspiration,” the ghost of infamous 1930s novelist, occultist, thinker and druggy Alastair Crowley — put Creation Stories over.

Antonio Banderas plays the growling veteran miner who shows flint and organizational moxie when the worst happens. And Lou Diamond Phillips, laying it on thick, is the guilt-ridden colleague, trapped with the others, whose job it is “to keep these men SAFE.” Which he does. Repeatedly. Loudly. Passionately.

As familiar as the path Then Came You generally takes might be, it’s got lots of clever laugh-at-death touches, a few sparkling surprises and a gut-punch third act “reveal.”

It’s pretty late in the game to be getting a primer on this years-long epidemic, but the least you can say about this super-slick, ADHD friendly film is that you can’t watch it and say you don’t have an idea how it could benefit you or your kid, and just a taste of exactly why it’s a bad idea.

The emotional punches in this film (in Italian, with English subtitles) reminded me of “Peggy Sue Got Married,” thanks largely to how Puccini and Porcaroli play them. The poignant moments may be sentimental, but they work...That goes for the film as well. Contrived, manipulative? Sure. But sweet and subtle and even surprising, here and there.

There is virtually nothing here we haven’t seen in a dozen similar movies, particularly that “Kramer vs. Kramer” parenting arc (one parental “indulgence” leads to disaster, etc.). But it’s perfectly watchable, maybe even for the entire family. Just keep a finger on the “mute” button whenever Lil Rel opens his mouth.

Alone still takes a simple premise and smacks us around with it for 95 reasonably suspenseful, thrilling minutes. And that’s enough.

There’s not much new here, but it’s as engrossing as the better entries in this formulaic quest and that’s largely owing to [Radcliffe’s] charisma and focused self-martyrdom.

An engaging if undemanding romantic outing, newfangled enough to be social media-current, old fashioned enough to warrant bringing the whole family. Just remember to brush your teeth afterwards.

Veteran director Tim Story (“Barbershop,”Shaft”) knows to keep the camera where the joke is –in everybody’s face — and the pace quick enough for The Blackening to skip along its well-worn path, making merry and making scary the way of many a Wayans Brother did before them.

Chilean-born writer-director Sebastián Silva (“Nasty Baby”) gives us an intimate mumblecore (lots and lots of talking) allegory about the struggle to maintain your identity when everything around you seems to subsume it.

The obvious artifice doesn’t change the film’s essential adolescent truth. High school is all about “being lonely.”

Like some of Mel’s other B pictures, Blood Father delivers the goods. And that’s all it ever promises to do.

The Journey‘s wonderful stars — Spall, Meaney, Highmore, a testy Stephens and of course Hurt — make this sentimental saunter go down easily.

There’s not much new here, but at least Byzantium has well-acted, compelling characters telling its time-worn tale with style. That’s the best we can hope for, these days, from this genre that will not die.

It’s not much of a “Movie,” but the bottom line is that Galifianakis, the interviews and those being subjected to them are still funny. Enjoy a beverage while watching and you’ll be doing your own spit takes.

Nyong’o, Hounsou, Quinn and Wolff win our pity, our empathy and our respect as these New Yorkers face their fates at the beginning of a global nightmare which no one can see through, see past or realistically expect to survive. They make “Day One” both engrossing, and a great argument for why this “franchise” has said what it has to say and thus is ready to take its final bow.

A thoughtful, lightly-affecting drama about a lonely man’s search for feeling in a life without pain. It has an affecting gimmick, but lives on its engaging performances, good actors playing lived-in, flawed and realistic characters.

The movie’s messaging has a righteous and educational undertone that makes this a worthy addition to the genre.

The pacing isn’t comedy-brisk, and for all the implications of the story, what we’re shown of all the machinations and intrigues seems a tad thin. Sibilia doesn’t sweat a lot of details about how they built this thing, costs and logistics. He’s more interested in the nutty notion and the nut who had it, all to impress a very pretty almost-a-lawyer.

It’s not remotely as polished as the earlier contenders in the field, but “Klaus” is good enough to have earned a theatrical release, on a par with MGM’s “The Addams Family,” in any event.

It’s a smart, poignant skewering of lives of diminishing returns, two grown men flailing at life and failing at life at 33.

It’s all eye-rolling, laugh-out-loud action nonsense, and often damned entertaining, another highlight of King’s ever-lengthening highlight reel of a career.

Vengeance lets you appreciate its ambition and wince at its obvious overreach.

That doesn’t make Oblivion a bad movie, just a familiar one — generic.

There’s nothing much new here, but the performances and the milieu make Filly Brown an entertaining, honorable installment in a story that is the American Dream incarnate, and has been ever since the first wannabe showed up on Tin Pan Alley at the beginning of the last century.

It’s a thriller with few new wrinkles to time-tested formulas. But the plot is within the realm of possibility and the perilous situations never quite stumble into “heroine tied to the railroad tracks” cliches, even though they come close.

The film that tells the story of his life skips over the unknown and never seems much more than a surface gloss. But it’s a fitting tribute to an unforgettable fringe figure who played an important role in the preservation of America’s Passtime.

We few, we not-easily-bored few, can catch “The Goldfinch” in a theater and revel in unerringly modulated performances — everybody is so softspoken that the verbal explosions have alarming violence about them — and a world we might envy, or at least resent a little bit.

The Twilight Saga comes close to that sweet spot between swooning silliness and special effects slaughter with Eclipse.

One of the epic star vehicles of Ava Gardner‘s career earned a nice restoration a couple of years back. So if nothing else, Ava at her peak in glorious Technicolor should be lure enough to draw one to “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.”

The picture plays and Monroe and Withers make us invest in the characters and “This isn’t half bad” makes this a date movie that comes off, romance novel origins be damned.

If this rainforest bespoiling melodrama leaves the viewer unsatisfied, that’s because there is no happy ending here. You can’t help but think as you’re leaving the film that everything you saw here was doomed, save for the bureaucrats and Wall Street types. Everything green and everyone living in the green is under threat.

It’s the players and their points of view that let Bullet Head score something close to a bulls-eye, even if the shot is fired at easy, close range.

A tuneful, affable rockumentary.

The comic instincts are there, the novelty of the premise is a winner, but you can’t help thinking that it’s a promise that’s only half-kept.

Much of that plays like politically correct lip service, and like much of this Downton Abbey, feels unnecessary. But that’s the thing about a cinematic feast for the eyes and the ears like this. You trim the fat, you run the risk of making the whole meal tasteless and dull.

Poehler and Rudd riff and banter like old marrieds, and make even the cheesiest lines funny, make even the cliched dating montages set to syrupy pop music feel — if not fresh and new — at least funny enough to mock.

A brilliant conceit sets up a cutesy, just-clever-enough New York comedy in God’s Time, a tale of twelve steps and an addict with a grudge and a gun.

This light, wistful Canadian romantic comedy clings to its longing and amuses in its awkwardness. Well-cast, well-acted, a touch melancholy and a tad overlong, it’s one of those movies that would have passed me, you and everybody else by if a pandemic hadn’t derailed the global movie-consuming model.

A fascinating block of broadcasting trapped in amber, a little radio history about passionate people doing something they love, willing to beg for bucks on the air to continue doing it and finding enough kindred spirits, “people who don’t quite fit in” in a shrinking sea of radio listeners to cling to FM life a little longer.

It’s never less than watchable, but I can’t say it’s particularly memorable (save for that soundtrack). Perfectly Netfixable adventure in a minor key.

Kon Tiki directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg strike just the right tone, and found just enough heart left in this tattered tale.

Movies like this make one wonder if Netflix has found an algorithm that makes them pay off. Their track record with youth rom-coms and sex-comedies (this is the former, decidedly PG with a smattering of profanity) is stellar.

Jeffrey Wright plays the world weary library director trying to keep the peace and hold on to some semblance of the institution’s core mission — a fact delivering, education supplementing bastion of learning, civic responsibility and civility. That’s one thing The Public absolutely nails.

There’s a compactness to it all that I appreciate (“Big Little Lies” had more incidents, but like all limited-run cable series, the story drips out like molasses in winter). But the story and story arc here are truncated and can leave the viewer still-interested and somewhat dissatisfied when all is said and done.

Here, he’s made a good (not great) movie that’s not captured the interest of audiences or reviewers. Sure, he didn’t realize his “hero” was just one of its villains. And The Front Runner may not achieve its overreaching ambitions. But that’s appropriate, too. Neither did Gary Hart.

Don’t Look Away is a textbook film for anybody hoping to learn how to make a scary, fun and attention-worthy thriller with next-to-no-money.

As “Forrest Gump” proved, never bet against a supportive mom. There’s a need and a market for lump-in-the-throat, feel-good treacle.

There is little urgency to this spiraling disaster. Soderbergh has made a lot of noise this past year about quitting directing and taking up a less collaborative, more solitary pursuit - painting. This is an anti-social painter's movie. Millions are dying, but he doesn't care that much. So why should we?

Better than any animated film released in the doldrums of January has a right to be.

First Match is a gritty streetwise high school wrestling tale and coming of age/finding your “thing” drama. Emmanuelle makes a fearsome first film impression as Mo, a kid worth giving up on, which is why almost everyone has.

The sadness that courses through this uneasy and deliberate courtship won’t be to every taste. But for the brave, for those experienced enough to know about “baggage” and that no one gets out of here alive, this tale of finding a surprise connection in the twilight years, overcoming shrinking horizons and the burden of grief, disappointment and melancholy will resonate.

It’s not that ambitious, but it’s perfectly executed by Justice, her little-known supporting cast and veteran TV director (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) Stuart McDonald. I’d say it’s good enough that maybe Ms. Justice can start a little arm-twisting — get her studio to spend a little more on writers, co-stars, etc. That’s how Doris did it.

Actress turned director (TV’s “House of Cards,” “The Americans”) Roxann Dawson balances the hospital room action with the impact finding the lost boy had on the faithless paramedic. There are beautiful moments that capture the quiet terror of death by drowning.

If The Bad Guys 2 isn’t as hilarious as “Bad Guys 1,” it’s still got lots of giggles provided by a steller, comical voice cast providing a big part of the soundtrack to some genuine Tex Avery style eyeball-popping, gonzo, in-your-face animation.

The arresting, nightmarish visuals and sight gags pay off. It’s just the scanty supply of them that keep a clever idea or three and a novel setting from ever jelling into a movie destined to become an evergreen, a seasonal classic.

As dark comedies about communicating with ghosts go, Dead falls closer to “The Frighteners” than “Ghost Town.” It’s funny enough in a stoner comedy way, but as its got a serial killer in it, well, you see my point.

It’s a film whose best jokes are sight gags, but sight gags visualizing what eBay, Snapchat and Youtube look like from inside the web, mocking Internet Economics and the sorts of web content that lands “likes” and “shares.” These are plainly aimed at adults.

The cast is game, with Imperioli and Ventimiglia, Sandow and the Portuguese Padrão standing out. The players, the colorful milieu and the parade of nightclub acts make this a fun if somewhat undigested night out, chased with a hangover.

Modestly entertaining and uplifting version of a “greatest story” that has proven as malleable as it is timeless.

Actor Andy Serkis (“Black Panther”) steps behind the camera to direct here, and manages a genial, slow-moving and upbeat picture — for the middle acts. The first act courtship is strictly “Masterpiece Theater,” and the drawn-out third-act a grim different picture with an altogether different agenda.

Even though the film is period-perfect, using actual locations and accurate costumes (hoop skirts are good for a laugh), “Wild Nights” suffers from a cell-phone video flatness in its cinematography, a little too “Drunk History” for its own good in that regard.

Reverence for fallen comrades, a “leave no man behind” ethos, esprit de corps valued and a fondness for good ol’American made military hardware make this one worth checking out. Any film that reminds us how human beings are a lot alike in dire situations is a good thing.

The performers and performances sell The Delinquent Season.

The movie is so “interior,” it so zeroes in on Isaac and his baleful stare, that we’re relieved any time something overtly funny happens.