Sherilyn Connelly

A fascinating character study.

The heart of this mostly bloodless picture is Max's relationship with her mother's film character, and there are some genuinely touching moments about grieving and the acceptance of loss.

The fast-paced Gravy is kind of like a Rob Zombie film by way of Bobcat Goldthwait's Shakes the Clown... and succeeds where so many other horror-comedies fail by remembering to be funny first and shocking second.

Greenwood brings his usual A-game, generating great chemistry with Purnell in their ad hoc paternal relationship, but she's the revelation.

Craig William Macneill's The Boy tries so hard to be ominous that it nearly strains itself in the process.

That the most vicious homophobes are often closet cases is not news, but Dolan seems less concerned with that self-evident fact and more about creating a mood of unease.

The original Brothers Grimm stories were hardly feminist, but The Seventh Dwarf's female characters are deplorably retrograde on both the script and design levels; they have little to do except be rescued, and Snow White is a vain, buxom sexpot whom the dwarfs leer at.

Twinsters is a heartwarming true story that might not have happened without social media, so score one for modern technology.

Jones and Connolly have terrific chemistry, particularly as Lottie works through the fact that adults encourage dishonesty and lying when it suits their own needs, and that secrets are more pervasive than openness.

Beautifully animated and often moving.

In Stereo is not without its merits, but it doesn't really get going until the last ten minutes, which play like the opening of a movie that would be much more interesting than the one that preceded them.

The tepid Jackie & Ryan's only real strength is its supporting cast.

As is to be expected from Green in his pensive mode, there are lovely images in Manglehorn... But Manglehorn is also the latest entry into the tiresome Sad Man Learning to Love Again genre.

The way the two story lines come together, involving paintball guns and morphsuits, is more mundane and less spooky than the tone up to that point suggests, but the point of Sunset Edge isn't really the surface narrative.

At its most beautiful, Yonebayashi's picture is about the magic of female friendship at its purest.

Maya the Bee Movie does what it does very well, moving along at a brisk pace and with a strong underlying message for its young audience.

O'Hara and Attie never judge the players, letting their words and actions speak, though those actions are often intercut with footage from the real war.

A Girl Like Her focuses on the characters' emotional traumas while eschewing moral panic about how Kids These Days are so wrapped up in their phones and the internet.

Blethyn is wonderful as an all-too-rare character, a middle-aged woman who holds her own in a position of authority over violent men.

Christopher Denham's Preservation is a violent yet agreeably goofy throwback to the survival-in-the-woods genre.

The picture is beautifully rendered in pencils and watercolors, with some CG, giving it an appropriately timeless storybook look, even though it's set in a mostly modern world of buses and 3-D glasses.

Expelled isn't going to change the world, but it's a fun and promising debut film.

As compelling as an individual thread or scene might be, the picture as a whole lacks forward momentum, as is often the case with films with asynchronous timelines.

The rom-com elements don't always work, and the conclusion is a bit pat, but Always Woodstock is never less than charming and funny along the way.

This occasionally charming November-December romance has elements of a Douglas Sirk woman's weepie... but the movie eventually goes into Woody Allen territory in the best way possible.

The original story was called "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," but Takahata's title puts the focus where it belongs.

While it has its moments, Miguel Arteta's comedy relies too much on gender-shaming and emasculation jokes.

Frank Gladstone's animated kids' movie The Hero of Color City is a perfectly pleasant pastiche of other movies, the most obvious antecedent being the Toy Story films.