Steve Davis

Director Winterbottom and screenwriter Hossein Amini could have given the story a bit more resonance, particularly in character development, if they had allowed some of the scenes to go a little longer.

40 Years in the Making is a cliquey undertaking that leaves you mostly on the outside looking in, but after witnessing the joy of its participants at the end, there’s little to begrudge.

Viewers hoping for a foray into "Donnie Darko" territory will be disappointed by this shift in tone. But those who like things sentimental and sweet – and there’s nothing wrong with that – will find comfort in the notion of leaving the past behind to allow the future to go forward.

The Vessel speaks eloquently. It’s a testament to the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.

The film's cast, all unknowns with the exception of comic/Broadway performer DeLaria, acquit themselves well, with the skinny, innocent-eyed Stafford a credible Candide navigating a new world of experience. His grounded performance charters Eric's stumbling progress to a sense of self that befits Edge of Seventeen: without apology.

Don’t expect any hokey scare tactics here. Under the steady hand of Oscar-nominated director Abrahamson (Room), the film is a calculated slow burn, one that plays a cunning head game with those viewers willing to be entranced.

For most of the film, Bateman, the director, manages to bring out the two principals’ anguish without resorting to sentimentality, until the unsatisfying last quarter of the film.

Takes you back to a time in which people – children, in particular – still created whole worlds in their heads, inventing characters and situations as far away as their flights of fancy would take them.

Ultimately, one has to chalk up The Pink Panther to the good old traditions of Hollywood greed and chutzpah. Nothing this slapdash and badly executed is done for the love of movies.

The movie is as lifeless as a mannequin until Ferrell appears near the end as the absurdly coiffed villain Jacobim Mugatu.

The comic strip’s late creator Charles M. Schulz would undoubtedly approve of The Peanuts Movie, given his progeny have ensured the film remains true to his artistic and humanist vision.

Mention must be made of James’ guileless turn as Cinderella. Like the beautiful crystalline-blue ballgown worn in the film’s centerpiece section (you can’t take your eyes off it; it literally dazzles), she looks as if she’s lit from within.

This oddly dispassionate film about a young man dying of cancer is the French antidote to those Hollywood weepies in which the heroine courageously faces her own mortality with every hair in place.

It’s easy to see why Richard Turner is the stuff of inspiration, regardless of whether he wants to you think so or not.

The real delight here, however, is Broderick’s mensch, a middle-aged man painfully aware that he’s become a loser.

The set and art direction are superb, evoking Sixties and Seventies décor with a dazzling precision.

Hopelessly muddled but doggedly entertaining.

The casting is solid, with an even more pumped-up Jordan once again anchoring the movie as the conflicted young boxer in the title. But it’s the underdeveloped villains of the piece who ultimately prove more intriguing, despite their one-dimensionality.

In the end, trying to compartmentalize this movie in some neat fashion is folly. This is Todd Solondz and, refreshingly enough, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Though Take Me to the River also offers up some civil rights history lessons between recordings, it feels like a mishmash effort overall, more a home movie than a theatrical release. That’s fine. If you approach it on those terms, you can’t help but feel the love, too.

It's the most compelling American movie to come around in a long, long time.

That Zellweger had the audacity to decide to actually sing the standards in Garland’s act, rather than lip-synch them, and then perform them with such bravado in a voice eerily channeling Garland is the real icing on the cake here. In Judy, a star is reborn.

Elisabeth Holm and Robespierre’s screenplay is both quirky and grounded, gleaning pearls of wisdom about the toxicity of secrets in the face of truth without getting preachy.

Animated films have trended toward a perceptive intelligence in the past few years, but Storks wades in shallow waters most of the time.

Although there are some exhilarating moments here, they're offset by frequent distractions: Lewis' standard (and now boring) weird performance, an occasional lack of logic in the story line, a tendency to go operatic, and the overall feeling that the movie is unsure of where it is going.

The next time he (Baumbach) attempts something similar, he might take care to lessen the bile and amplify the heart.

The best thing in this movie is the performance by a cast that rarely falters. It’s solid, from top to bottom.

This love letter dedicated to opera’s biggest rock star, the larger-than-life Luciano Pavarotti, achieves something most documentaries about the deceased rarely do: It brings a man back to glorious life.

While the movie’s nonlinear construction is its selling point, at least for those moviegoers who prefer a bit of a challenge, an underlying vibe of melancholy gives Mothering Sunday thematic weight.

Like a classroom history lesson, the script by director Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard dutifully recounts the life of this extraordinary person. The movie feels prosaic, although Tubman’s occasional intonation of a timeless spiritual in lieu of dialogue is an unexpected lyrical touch enhanced by the purity of Erivo’s voice.

It’s hard to take your eyes off Walker in his penultimate film appearance, cognizant of his mortality and the way he was gracefully aging much in the same way as another fair-haired, blue-eyed actor named Paul.

Frankie & Johnny is an episodic romantic comedy of opposites attracting; there's a real joy in watching the courtship of these lovers and the consummation of their undeniable attraction for one another.

For no matter how derivative this carefully calculated sentimental journey may be, there’s still an undeniable magic in its voice and its step likely to enchant adults – and hopefully kids – alike. Uncle Walt would be proud.

The not-so-fresh Prince charts a familiar cautionary tale about the bad choices economically disadvantaged young men sometimes make early in life, but to its credit, it seldom feels hackneyed or cliched.

It honors this extraordinary couple’s defiant and unwavering love for each other, but it doesn’t celebrate it much beyond a cliched falling-in-love montage and a chaste wedding-night scene. You can look, but you better not touch.

A documentary with a decidedly prurient slant, Gay Sex in the 70s isn't for everyone – it's definitely aimed toward the older gay crowd who somehow lived through the experience and the younger one who might wistfully wish that it had.

Something this bad can’t help but be good.

Amidst the rubble of political rhetoric that underlies Arlington Road, one thing is clear: The enemy is us.

In contemplating whether the world will end with a bang or a whimper, it reveals a little something of the human condition as we enter a new age.

The saving quality here is Thompson’s performance as the prickly Travers.

While admirably eschewing any "God’s Little Acre"-like sensationalism, the movie has little compelling dramatic energy. While the near-absence of emotional commotion doesn’t hobble Bull, there’s no question it keeps it tied down.

The movie’s constant meta-comedy recognition of the endearing yet aggravating earworm quality of the first film’s “Everything Is Awesome” theme song may be its most effectual in-joke.

Emotionally urgent, The Living End excites you about the state of independent filmmaking; it's a road movie that leaves a skid mark on the psyche.

As in "The Pianist," Polanski is content to allow the film's narrative to evoke the emotions he wishes his audience to experience.

Sharper ticks so assuredly in execution the hitches won’t distract you – and that may be the biggest con of all.

In the end, the preordained ménage à quatre that culminates the evening’s funny games titillates neither mentally nor erotically. Without any such catharsis, the whole thing feels like a big tease. No doubt what The Overnight could use at this point is another happy ending.

Blessed with an ensemble cast of young actors without Brat Pack pretensions, Where the Day Takes You is often so authentic in its depiction of street life that you'll find yourself flinching, a response undoubtedly intended to result in a little consciousness-raising.

Outbreak has the feel of a movie written by a committee of writers -- it's totally lacking in personality.

Unfortunately, there's not much of a story to go with Hunter's engaging performance and LaGravenese's words.

Like something by Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, but -- of course -- on a much smaller, less ambitious scale, it is a work that weighs on your mind long after you leave it.

This is a movie you feel deeply in the pit of your stomach. Sometimes, it literally hurts to watch it.

Its affection for this prince among putzes is infectious: Within the first five minutes, you’ll find yourself liking this man despite hardly knowing him.

The most interesting aspect of Patriot Games, however, is the casting of Ford as Ryan, given that Alec Baldwin originated the character in the preceding film. In contrast to Baldwin's rather colorless CIA analyst ill-suited for work as an agent, Ford informs his character with believable world-weariness which subsequently transforms into rage at the prospect of harm to his family. In many ways, Ford grounds Patriot Games in a degree of emotion that distinguishes it from most run-of-the-mill action thrillers.

It’s a titillating story of social suicide worthy of Capote’s imagination, had he only dared to inscribe it with his own words.

Loses something in its translation to celluloid.

There will be blood in the ultraviolent Rambo, a movie that depicts both heinous acts and righteous reckoning with equal degrees of flying body parts and arterial sprays.

Though the third act ends surprisingly, if not anticlimactically – truth is indeed stranger than fiction – the film can’t resist one final finger wag, this time from the esteemed barrister (a likable Fiennes) who brilliantly mounts Gun’s legal defense by barely raising that finger.

Perhaps the film’s most telling moments, however, are wordless ones in which no actor appears. They’re the bird’s-eye views of American tableaux – suburban tract houses, elementary schools, interstate highways – that mimic similar sky-high perspectives just before a drone fires its missile.

There’s also something to be said for wanting a little bit more.

For both kids and adults, CWCM2 is little more than a vague memory as soon as it’s over.

The movie remains patchy as it continues to jump somewhat arbitrarily from day to day without fully realizing its subject matter. The one dependable constant in all of this is Christo himself. Smiling ecstatically one minute, despondently hangdog the next, he exhibits a genius lunacy on par with his life’s work.

When the movie shifts from psychological to physical terror, the film (like Sawyer) unravels and finally loses its bearings.

While the movie principally focuses on Flynn’s professional aspirations, including his desire to be accepted as a chef in his own right despite his age (the online trolls had a field day after the NYT article), a prickly relationship with his mother, Meg, provides a subtextual narrative that sometimes feels a bit uncomfortable.

With its unconventional take on pet sounds, Keanu is refreshingly silly, an unabashed mix of humor and violence topped off by a big dollop of cuteness.

Araki's self-described “guerrilla” style of filmmaking has just the right edge here, yet is polished enough not to distract. In this respect, Totally F***ed Up is a much better film than Araki's last effort, The Living End. Although the teenaged ennui in the film sometimes comes off as hip nihilism, there's no question that the pain and turmoil depicted is anything but heartfelt.

Starts off promisingly by empathetically depicting the fear and anger children feel when their parents separate, but ultimately its human emotions are dominated by goblins, trolls, and other CGI-generated creatures running amok on the screen.

Whether you view it as intellectually dishonest or just plain sloppy, Deception is a movie that more than lives up to its title.

Although a Norwegian production, the film has a muted Hollywood sensibility that keeps things real. It’s an absorbing and often lyrical piece of storytelling that doesn’t overembellish the facts or rely on a pumped-up score or whiplash editing to heighten the dramatic action.

Given the outlandish premise, you'll wish the film twinkled with a more savvy sense of humor and adventure, like the chapters of the "Toy Story" series, for example.

While the documentary offers a few delicate glimpses of a self the writer did not openly share during her 74-year lifetime – she lived as a lesbian, albeit privately – it falls short of conveying the vital essence of this modern and enigmatic woman of her time.

It ain’t Shakespeare, but if the bread-and-butter movies of Butler’s career were as compactly entertaining and as plausible (granted, a relative term) as Plane, he might get a little more respect

By the end of Bug, you may find yourself scratching yourself as well -- your head, that is -- wondering what the hell this is all about.

Speaking in a barely audible rasp bordering on monotone, Kidman bravely submerges herself in a performance with some genuinely harrowing emotional moments, and yet the unswerving conviction she brings to the role is conspicuous.

A notch above the mediocre movies that are usually made from mediocre John Grisham bestsellers. That may sound like faint praise, but it’s an endorsement for this surprisingly entertaining film.

Director Miner (Friday the 13th, House) executes some of the scary scenes competently (one in which Sands gives his male host the ultimate French kiss is grossly memorable), but he never takes the material beyond its rather limited parameters.