Tasha Robinson

The film bounces along on cheap but entertaining Mel Brooks-worthy audio and visual gags, like the live-chicken-throwing fight, or the sequence where the camera discreetly pans away from Dujardin and a partner making out on his hotel bed--only to focus on a full-length mirror in which they're still fully visible.

While In Darkness sticks to formula, it brings across that formula effectively.

The story should be a standard mismatched-couple-falls-in-love tale, but the script and the sprightly directing give the story plenty of snap and humor, and the animation is so luminously beautiful that even a falling-in-love sequence cribbed in part from The Little Mermaid is overwhelmingly magical.

It's an accomplished potboiler entertainment, as calculated and clever as the stories Irving spins to stay afloat in the growing sea of his own lies.

The moody tone and carefully balanced drama turn a grubby premise into something unexpectedly elegant.

Like the best claustrophobic thrillers, the film keeps finding clever new ways to complicate what initially seems like a limited setting with limited story options.

Disney’s triumphant return to hand-drawn 2-D animation still holds an awful lot of familiar, comfort-food charm.

The King's Speech is admirably free of easy answers and simple, happy endings; it's a skewed, awards-ready version of history, but one polished to a fine, satisfying shine.

It’s a gorgeous, visually ambitious film, full of show-offy setpieces reportedly inspired by the work of Hayao Miyazaki.

It's a daring, even mildly challenging mixture for a superhero film, and while the pieces don't entirely add up, the puzzle is at least original.

Audiences will likely come away from The Last Jedi with a lot of complaints and questions. But they’re at least likely to feel they’re in the hands of someone who cares about the series as much as they do, someone who loves its history, but sees the wide-open future ahead of it as well.

Only Washington stands out; he's charming, intense, and charismatic as ever.

Spider-Man: Homecoming brings the character back to his basics. In the process, it shows why he’s always been such a popular draw, and it makes a strong argument for a branch of the MCU / Sony heroverse that operates on a smaller scale than the rest of the world.

Mermin presents all this without editorial comment, and her film would be worth watching if only for its look at a profound culture-clash. But it goes one better, and delves into one of those clashing cultures, capturing it in a moment of change that goes far beyond one beauty academy's superficial concerns.

While it's essentially just another slick Spielberg action machine, it's operating effectively on all cylinders throughout.

This caper film possesses Miyazaki's usual good-hearted charm, but he injects a manically energetic humor that his more sedate children's films never quite achieve.

The film has any number of chances to exploit the setting and Butterfield's wide-eyed innocence, but instead, it mines a vast, eerie tension by keeping both boys in the dark.

At its best, Micmacs is a robust, enjoyably lunatic game. It's social commentary by way of a good Looney Tune.

Anyone who's been closely involved with a wedding knows exactly how these beleaguered schmucks feel. Those who haven't may just take Confetti as a lighthearted but convincing argument for elopement.

A film so joyfully insane that it feels like Kon is overcompensating.

Public Enemy openly raises the question of why officers of the law hated Mesrine so much that they were willing to turn his death into a block party.

It’s a dark, grim, suffocating story that only missteps by overplaying its hand, making the larger message about prostitution increasingly overt.

After Yang is intensely internal and personal, as grief so often is, which guarantees it won’t connect with a wide audience. But as a collection of images and moods, all gently nudging at that central question of what defines a person, it’s gravely hypnotic. It’s an old question, asked in a new way, with deepest gravity and respect.

It’s a daringly weird debut, executed with real style and vision.

The whole film is too reliant on action-movie cuts and zooms, plus James Horner's insistent score, but it's beautifully rendered and convincingly exciting.

Mangold delivers a taut modern take on a lesser classic, preserving the "High Noon" themes about doing the right thing against all odds, and injecting a more modern pacing and urgency without going overboard. His film isn't Leonard's classic, but it's a solid, genre-respecting Western in its own right.

The surreality is distancing, but authentic, believable performances and a low-key affect keep Running From Scissors from turning shrill.

What is surprising is how he (Darabont) rebounds from his weak, awkwardly compressed opening to produce one of the scariest King films since Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."