Steve Persall

The Descendants would still be a splendid movie without him; with Clooney, it's one of 2011's very best.

Brand is amusing, in a nutty "Get Him to the Greek" sort of way, while Moore delivered one of the funniest performances ever.

A terrible title for a not-much-better movie, missing a grammatically correct question mark and most of the point with romantic comedies.

Wright is an insanely funny filmmaker (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) yet only the front half of that description carries over to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

It's a story languorously told in three chapters, the first two in the late 1980s and the third 15 years later. Each could be a movie unto themselves. Together they prove Cianfrance to be an effectively unobtrusive storyteller, crafting without artifice what book critics would call a page turner.

Barbershop: The Next Cut's heart is in the right place, and I enjoyed nearly every unkempt minute of it.

A movie as fun as it is flawed.

This is a gorgeous production, even by Miyazaki's standards.

Out to Sea is nothing more than a puffed-up Love Boat episode sailing on risque gags that wouldn't be amusing at all if they weren't recited by old folks. [02 July 1997, p.1D]

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite creates a fascinating character study of Tilikum, part of a revered species without a single confirmed kill of a human in the wild. Captivity is where Blackfish's evidence continually points the blame for Tilikum's deadly behavior.

The choicest performance in Animal Kingdom is Weaver's sing-song sinister matriarch of the Cody clan, a cheery sort with the benign nickname "Mama Smurf."

Hugo is Scorsese's most personal film, from the standpoint of both an artist and a grandfather. He is as interested in Melies' posterity as in making a movie that his descendants can see before they're adults.

The jokes fly at a pace demanding viewers to either refrain from laughing (highly unlikely) or see The Lego Movie again to catch all the wondrous sights and amiable wit sliding by the first time.

There's something fairly malignant in the way Glazer's strange movie holds attention, against the urge to give up and leave. There is no doubting its boundless artistry or pretension, a dangerous position for any movie in today's love-me pop culture to place itself in. Under the Skin is exactly where it gets.

Gabe Polsky's movie about the dynastic Soviet Union hockey team is surprisingly light on its skates, despite being a Cold War history lesson and conventional sports documentary.

Steven Spielberg’s The Post is a fake news movie, a true story told phony to further an agenda.

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.

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.

Monsieur Lazhar becomes a deeply affecting film not for pathos but for the way sadness is conveyed so subtly. It's a small triumph of restrained compassion, coaxing throat lumps rather than jerking tears.

It's gory and gut-wrenching but strangely life-affirming.

The soundtrack is a small marvel of music hall tunes and dialogue that is mostly garbled, allowing expressions and body language to be interpreted.

War for the Planet of the Apes seals Caesar's place in the pantheon of movie messiahs and the trilogy's place among the finest ever.

The Lobster remains strangely romantic throughout, an absurdist take on the notion that great love stories — Casablanca, The Way We Were, Gone With the Wind — don't always end tidily.

Technically dazzling but emotionally empty. [22 Oct 1993, p.5]

The new, vastly improved Star Trek moves at warp speed through a marvelously reinvented sci-fi franchise, reverent to the past and firmly entrenched in the now.

This movie is smart terror that’s a lot of fun if you let it be. Stay quiet or stay at home.

Baumbach keeps everything dialed down to medium cool, with occasional flashes of exuberance like Frances dancing down a street to the beat of David Bowie's Modern Love.

As a wisely devised teenage drama, The Spectacular Now treats kids and adults respectfully, even their foolish weaknesses. That respect extends to the audience.