Steve Davis

For the incomparable Streep, it’s yet another performance in high C.

The dialogue is enough to make your hair stand on end.

This weighty French/Polish production is chock-full of moral dilemmas borne from its unthinkable scenario. At times, it’s not an easy experience.

Up until now, Roberts and Franco have been second-tier actors in the industry food chain, but their first-rate performances in this better-than-average genre flick exude something called charisma. After this film, the two of them may graduate from watchers to players.

For a while, the freeing experience of the clan’s nonconformity gets tamped down, and the movie appears headed toward some kind of moralized conclusion. Once back on familiar ground, however, Captain Fantastic rights itself toward as happy an ending as possible, without too much compromise.

If the movie isn’t so fabulous, should die-hard fans who can quote the show by heart see it? Absolutely. (The gays are sure to love it.)

This is a guy who marched to the beat of his own drum, even one that’s got two spoked wheels and some handlebars.

Scatologically speaking, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is best described as one of those summer movie turds: It passes easily and then disappears with a single flush. It’s crap any way you look at it, though there are less pleasant ways to spend your time on a day marked by triple-digit temperatures.

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.

This young actor is good, very good in fact. Watching him become beautifully alive in Viva is this little gem’s greatest pleasure.

It’s a movie from which you can’t look away, no matter how hard you may try.

While the underdog element of this tale is emotionally gratifying, it’s the humanity on unadorned display here that will move you beyond words.

It’s like being haunted by outsized chimney sweeps that never bathe. And for the most part, it’s about that scary.

In a film that otherwise prides itself on the subtlety of its anecdotal narrative and character development, the diagnosis is jolting, and about as welcome as some of the unsought counsel that streams from Marnie’s mouth.

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.

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.

When it rolls, Barbershop: The Final Cut lets its hair down like few others do.

The studio’s 1967 version of Kipling’s classic tales (the current film qualifies as a remake of sorts) softened the source’s edges a bit, but it offered a New Orleans jazz-infused score unlike anything in the company’s previous animated features. The new Jungle Book retains the two best songs, although their inclusion may strike the unfamiliar as clunky and unexpected.

Admittedly, the original had its unruly moments, but there’s little to no discipline here. The storyline goes in six different directions, and the actors are unleashed in an apparent free-for-all as they vie for center stage at the Parthenon.

As the goofily endearing Doris, Field is perfect. She makes this movie work.

As Christy, Garner gives an earnest performance, her perpetually worried expression put to good use here as the Beams grapple with the unimaginable possibility of losing Anna.

Avoid it like the plagues.

In Triple 9 and so many other films today, the twists and turns of the contemporary thriller have become a Gordian knot that audiences are not invited to untangle. You may rightfully ask: Where’s the fun in that?

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

It may not sound like much of a storyline, but there’s a subtle beauty in the ability of human compassion to cure one’s shortcomings.

Given the likely reception to this movie, it’s unlikely there will be a sixth wave anytime soon.

The snap of a twig, the rustle of a branch – that’s about as scary as it gets in The Forest, a supernatural horror movie afraid of its own shadow.

At its best, Joy celebrates the passage of a demoralized woman who finds the steel in her spine. At its worst, it panders in the name of female empowerment, occasionally delivering moments of pseudo-inspiration that ring so falsely it’s difficult to hear anything else.