Scott Foundas

An appreciably moody but dramatically stilted crime drama that exudes a certain retro appeal before collapsing into a series of empty neo-noir poses.

A colossally overproduced white elephant of a movie that obfuscates both its own protagonist and his important message with layer upon layer of unnecessary “style.”

Those willing to enter The Club will discover an original and brilliantly acted chamber drama in which Larrain’s fiercely political voice comes through as loud and clear as ever.

A delightful if never particularly deep survey of an American comic institution.

What emerges, finally, is a film that gives an urgent, original voice to a people too frequently marginalized in both movies and society at large.

Porumboiu’s particular brand of farce is always shot through with the pulse of everyday life and its Sisyphean struggles. He is, simply put, one of our great contemporary observers of the human comedy.

A low-key but sharply observed work that benefits from real local flavor and a gift for lyric image making.

Melanie Laurent brings a sure, sensitive hand to tonally tricky material and draws superb work from relative newcomers Josephine Japy (“Cloclo”) and Lou De Laage (“Jappeloup”).

If Johnny Depp’s mesmerizing performance — a bracing return to form for the star after a series of critical and commercial misfires — is the chief selling point of Black Mass, there is much else to recommend this sober, sprawling, deeply engrossing evocation of Bulger’s South Boston fiefdom and his complex relationship with the FBI agent John Connolly, played with equally impressive skill by Joel Edgerton.

[A] talky, contrived and ultimately tedious actors’ exercise.

The Runner doesn’t lack for drama, but the characters are so thinly and predictably drawn, and the movie’s supposed insights into the art of political compromise so banal, that nothing catches fire.

If “Compton” is undeniably of the moment, it’s also timeless in its depiction of how artists and writers transform the world around them into angry, profane, vibrant and singular personal expression.

Key to the success of the Vacation movies was their underlying sweetness — the sense that, for all their foibles, the Griswolds were a surprisingly functional lot. Families looked up at the screen and saw a version of themselves reflected back. Look at the new Vacation and all that stares back is a great comic void.

A low-key but powerfully affecting urban drama that tells a familiar story — of drugs, power and respect on the inner-city streets — with such unusual authenticity and dramatic force that it’s as if we’re seeing it for the first time.

Where The Gift toys with our expectations is in its refusal to align itself with any one character or to manufacture obvious heroes and villains.

Even the resourceful, likable Reynolds is at a loss to elevate this rather dreary piece of would-be escapism, which calls out for the wry, pulpy touch of a John Carpenter (or his acolyte David Twohy) and instead gets the strained self-seriousness of director Tarsem Singh.

Both “Ted” movies are, ultimately, one-joke affairs rooted in the idea of taking some emblem of childhood innocence and vulgarizing it.... That joke, though, turns out to be a resilient one, and the chemistry between Wahlberg and MacFarlane is infectiously puerile.

If you haven’t come to see lots (and lots) of dance, you’ve come to the wrong place; and even if nothing in the second half of ABCD 2 quite reaches “Happy Hour” levels, D’Souza shoots and edits dance with a lot more savoir faire than most contemporary musical directors, mindful to keep the dancers’ entire bodies in frame, and cutting with a strong sense of spatial continuity.

Though likely to be variously praised and pilloried as a pro-choice film, Weitz’s film is really a movie about choice in both the specific and the abstract — about the choices we make, for good and for ill, and how we come to feel about them through the prism of time.

It’s fun enough while it lasts, but somehow, finally, all too much and not enough. The problem isn’t that dinosaurs have ceased to impress us, but that dinosaurs alone are not enough to sustain us

Whereas Wan (who retains a producer credit here, and makes a cameo appearance) is the sort of director who can effortlessly turn a billowing curtain or creaking floorboard into an unbearable portent of dread, Whannell rarely makes the neck hairs quiver, let alone stand at attention.

If “Mountains” feels a touch schematic at times, and awkward in its third-act English-language scenes, the cumulative impact is still enormously touching, highlighted by Jia’s rapturous image-making and a luminous central performance by the director’s regular muse (and wife), Zhao Tao.

Brize (“Mademoiselle Chambon”) makes compelling drama out of the most ordinary of circumstances, and draws a lead performance from frequent collaborator Vincent Lindon that is a veritable master class in understated humanism.

The opening of Sicario unfolds at such an anxiety-inducing pitch that it seems impossible for Villeneuve to sustain it, let alone build on it, but somehow he manages to do just that. He’s a master of the kind of creeping tension that coils around the audience like a snake suffocating its prey.

What keeps Dheepan engaging throughout is the tremendous charisma of the performers.

A respectful, lovingly reimagined take on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic 1943 tale, which adds all manner of narrative bells and whistles to the author’s slender, lyrical story of friendship between a pilot and a mysterious extraterrestrial voyager, but stays true to its timeless depiction of childhood wonderment at odds with grown-up disillusionment.

A tightly focused romantic drama that exudes the narrative terseness of a good short story and the lucid craftsmanship of a filmmaker in full command of the medium.

Allen’s visual direction and editing rhythms are particularly sharp and precise this time around, as is his work with the actors.