Steve Persall

James Schamus makes an impressive directing debut with Indignation, an oasis of summer movie intelligence.

Bridge of Spies is solid work but feels like Spielberg's best intentions as a filmmaker and world conscience on cruise control.

It's good to know Solondz hasn't lost his ability to shock, or his indifference to anyone thinking he goes too far. Wiener-Dog is gentler material than usual for him, sweet, even goofy at times, yet no comfier than a sandpaper hug.

Stoker operates in a perpetual state of dread, a sophisticated Southern gothic that starts out confusing and winds up as a perversely humorous coming-of-age yarn.

They're an entertaining foursome, and Estevez guides them through lovely scenery, clever sight gags and personal confessions with leisurely skill.

With everything it's doing all over again, The Book of Life often finds fresh ways to do it. That's all it takes.

It Follows has an impressively sustained sense of dread, less explicit gore than measured tension. Mitchell slyly inverts the conventions of dead-meat teenager flicks, although not with wink-wink comedy like the Scream series. This movie is serious about creeping out viewers, and Mitchell is just artistic enough about it to create a minor masterpiece.

Horror is an impatient person's game these days, and Crimson Peak isn't hurried at all. It seduces with creepily erotic atmosphere, and performances in perfect tune with the script's melodrama.

This is how a romantic vampire flick should work.

X-Men: Days of Future Past effectively passes the torch from one generation of socially segregated mutants to the next.

The Fate of the Furious doesn't merely suspend disbelief, it expels it like a delinquent student told to never come back.

Alien: Covenant is smarter than the average horror flick with a healthy dose of gross.

The Runaways isn't just about rock 'n' roll; it IS rock 'n' roll, as loud, sexy, sometimes sloppy and ultimately exhilarating as the music can be.

The role of Albert in Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said is closer to who the man was, and who the actor seldom got the chance to play: bearish yet soft-spoken, a self-confessed slob with a soul bigger than his gut. There's warmth pouring from those slitted eyes, loosening up guarded smiles as Albert takes a chance on love again.

Green Room is a blunt instrument of terror announcing Saulnier as a filmmaker to watch, just as soon as you pry those fingers off your eyes.

This movie is a last chance to save the series, which it does.

It's deja vu all over again in The Hangover Part II, only dirtier and more dangerous, if you can imagine that.

2 Guns is a movie based on smart callbacks and sly flip-flops of loyalty, regularly interrupted by spasms of well-staged violence.

If comic book movies are the last place you look for a soulful, serious performance, The Wolverine should be your first.

Whatever Career Girls lacks in polish or ambition, it compensates with three memorable performances and an unwavering filmmaker working on nobody's terms except his own. [5 Sep. 1997, p.3]

The pleasures of The LEGO Batman Movie are plentiful, especially its cockeyed reverence for the Dark Knight's past.

The makers of Jingle All the Way have the nerve to declare what the rest of us have only grumbled about: that the superficial reason for the Christmas season is found nestled in your wallet. Schwarzenegger's ho-ho heroics should have moviegoers gladly tapping into that source into the new year. [22 Nov 1996, p.3]

Roger Michell's revival of My Cousin Rachel is a graceful note amid summer's movie din, adapting Daphne du Maurier's black widow mystery with class bordering on defiance.

There is a genuinely epic quality to Unbroken, cribbed from masters and capably traced. That's really all this inspiring story needs.

A Dangerous Method is a movie believing the most formidable sex organ really is the brain.

Carnage gives Polanski the best opportunity to express his devilish sense of humor in decades, proving again that comedy really is tragedy happening to someone else.

Chronicle is so clever about the absurd, and so much fun to watch, that I'm almost disappointed the ending doesn't leave room for a sequel.

Pierce Brosnan is dashing and deadly, finally meeting the gold standard. And director Lee Tamahori detours from convention, taking the franchise up a notch in Die Another Day.

There is still Spider-Man's personal turmoil, crises of romance and loyalty, that Webb occasionally holds a few beats too long. Yet the performances ring true, with arresting chemistry where it counts.

Gloriously, uproariously, there’s Rose Marie herself, sharp and tart as ever with total recall of every juicy moment, every conversation. A portrait of an indefatigable entertainer emerges, restless when she wasn’t working and fearless when she was.

Eat Drink Man Woman cleverly leaps between the two generations, with a wise sense of humor that illuminates the security and restrictions of the ties that bind. [02 Sep 1994, p.6]

What happens in Vegas happens a lot in movies. Think Like a Man Too goes to the same casinos, strip clubs and pleasure pools with a fistful of jokers and an ace up its sleeve, the irrepressible Kevin Hart.

The movie has a caffeinated spirit worthy of its graveyard shift milieu, a darkness artfully breached by cinematographer Robert Elswit, who previously framed L.A.'s unstill life in Magnolia and Boogie Nights.

Frozen impresses by conveying coldness in all its frostbitten beauty, from northern lights and blizzards, to ice magnifying, refracting and reflecting light. The movie is a lovely example for animation enthusiasts to study.

When she's (Hawkins) on camera, I'd swear the screen bends into a smile.

Like the genre's top filmmakers - the Coens, Polanski, Hitchcock - Capotondi builds dread with wicked winks at the audience, dropping subtle surprises along the way.

Director Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female) has the proper foreboding drive in his technique to make every minute of his movie hum with fascinating dread. [21 Apr 1995, p.2B]

The easiest way for filmmakers to show injustice in the world is through the eyes of a child. In the case of Haifaa al-Mansour's movie, the injustice is Saudi Arabia's male-centric culture, and the child is a preteen girl named Wadjda.

It takes a while for Arteta's ideas to click but his finale begins as revenge served cold and ends with chilling symbolism.

Frankenweenie is stitched together with love and a bit raggedy, like Sparky the dog in question.

It's a lesson that African-American culture offers more inspiring stories than Hollywood has chosen to tell.

Eye in the Sky remains gripping even when Hibbert tosses in one or two side-taking circumstances too many.

There are a few typos in The Paper, but they're honest - and honestly funny - mistakes. [25 March 1994, p.5]

Much Ado About Nothing is simply a fun time among Whedon and his friends, and for the most part it's contagious.

Farrell's diction is a noticeable upgrade from Schwarzenegger's but there's also his superior portrayal of sweaty apprehension and killer instinct.

Director Charles Martin Smith presents the kind of movie that gives squeaky-clean a good name.

If Fences occasionally feels cinematically inert, it's emotionally resonant thanks to Davis and Washington the actor, not the director as much.

This is what the holidays need: a good, Swift kick in the funny bone.

If this was December, Kevin Hart might be in the Oscar mix, he's that good in About Last Night. Explosively good, a comedy nova who won't shut up and never should.

Even when Magic Mike is skimpier than a g-string it soars on daring, as if Soderbergh asked himself who could possibly make a good movie from such offbeat material, answered "I can," and did.

Ronan is Brooklyn's linchpin, and its saving grace.

True Grit is a very good movie that might be more embraceable if we didn't know who was pulling the trigger.

I'll See You in My Dreams is a disarming romantic dramedy, constructed from "geezer flick" cliches, to be sure, yet lifted to another level by the performances, top-to-bottom.

These characters don't realize they're funny, and the actors are determined not to push it. Willis fares best, playing against in-control type; Murray fans expecting a comedy explosion won't find it here.

It's silly, derivative and too wacky for its own narrative good; traits that the director and Proft wear like a Congressional Medal of Honor. But it's also the funniest 86 minutes I've spent in a movie theater since, well, Hot Shots! Anybody else ready for Part Trois?

The movie always fascinates thanks to Olsen, who'll never be just a semifamous sister again.

This is old-school monumental filmmaking, without CGI tricks or many soundstage comforts for a dedicated cast. David Lean would probably approve.

There are no boundaries in this movie, so deal with it or leave.

For the initiated, however, Alfredson weaves a tidy web from loose ends left dangling.

Creed proceeds to hit the same beats as six Rocky movies preceding it, all the way to the Big Fight. But there's a difference here. This is the first Rocky movie Stallone didn't write, enabling Coogler and co-writer Aaron Covington to bring new perspective and respect.

In addition to being one of the finest golf movies ever, this film raises the bar on faith-based cinema.

A Most Violent Year has its share of wham-bam moments — a car-truck-foot chase into the city's bowels is superb — but the action never speaks louder than Chandor's hard-boiled words.

This movie embraces its inner yokel.

Lawrence makes every moments as Katniss count, pouring out mixed feelings through puffy eyes.

The Jungle Book could use better lighting and less of John Debney's musical score insisting each moment be melodically underlined twice. Still, it's a movie to thrill and perhaps inspire kids to play Mowgli games again. Not outside, of course. Now there's an app for that.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is how to make a sequel, when it gets its head out of the clouds.

Arbitrage is a classy soap opera with a charismatic louse at its center, without "Margin Call" didactics, or the misplaced empathy of "The Company Men."

War Horse takes time reaching its full emotional gallop with a late sequence combining man, beast and barbed wire. Yet it remains a technically magnificent ride throughout, and a checklist of visual influences from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "Gone with the Wind."