Steve Davis

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.