Tasha Robinson

Strangely, this Thatcher biopic might have been far more worthwhile if it wasn't about Thatcher: The aged, dotty stranger hanging out with her dead husband is a more compelling subject.

Inside Out 2 is full of passion and empathy, letting the audience in on Riley’s inner struggle without always painting her as the hero, even in her own story.

The tenor can be shrill, but there's no time to get bored. And on top of that, most of the gags actually work.

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

It’s a movie designed for people who like their future-fiction thoughtful and relevant, and for people who enjoy the runaway-train feeling of having no idea where a given story could possibly go next.

Pirates! comes with all the usual Aardman strengths intact, particularly the sense that its characters and creators alike are too good-hearted and sweet to nitpick.

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.

Holmes’ performance helps Miss Meadows considerably: It’s so relentlessly upbeat and deliberately artificial that it admits no cynicism or judgment, and it makes the film daringly weird.

It's a little unfair to any sequel to use its predecessor as a yardstick rather than considering it on its own merit, but in this case, it's impossible to put the original movie aside. Not just because of the title, but because Sword Of Destiny mimics its predecessor in so many clear and frustrating ways.

Cars is a fine example of the formula, with pleasant chemistry, the patented Pixar cleverness, and the usual sweetly melancholy nostalgia courtesy of songwriter Randy Newman.

The Host is a step up from the endless metaphorical lectures and gaping plot holes of Niccol’s last film, In Time, but its muffled emotions, delivered with Twilight-esque blank-eyed calm, put it in the same category of a creative idea hamstrung in execution.

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.

Eastwood's prim, respectful biography presents Hoover in turn as a muddy political metaphor, a lesson in self-mythologizing, and a case history in repression, but never particularly as a man.

The filmmaking is prosaic, the pacing sleepy. It's a solid but unremarkable experience, perfect for insomniacs watching the History Channel late at night, but not nearly as satisfying as simply re-reading Lee's book.

For all Thompson's talent and promise, King Jack still rests most on the actors, and the way they suggest inner worlds deep enough to get lost in, without pushing or forcing the point.

From a technical and filmmaking standpoint, nothing about Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower stands out.... It’s as dry and straightforward as a reputable news report. But from a content standpoint, the film is riveting.

This is the kind of film where viewers can let themselves flow with the film’s emotion, or entirely ignore the action and just get lost in the beauty of the imagination. Either way, it’s a luscious trip to take.

It's a wildly exciting ride, the fastest-moving, most enthusiastically kinetic kids' action film since "The Incredibles."

It plays with comedy and drama, but keeps failing to commit to one or the other.

Hail, Caesar! is immensely entertaining, but it's also frustratingly discursive, with so many incomplete sidelines and distractions that it suggests an overcrowded but exciting TV pilot more than a self-contained film.

There's a noble cause buried under all the clumsy speeches, blatant manipulations, and foreordained conflicts, but the thudding lack of subtlety proves exhausting.

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.

Elio is a big-swing movie, an attempt to push viewers out of their comfort zones and into a strange new setting. But while it successfully blasts off to a colorful new world of wonder, it doesn’t always land.

Slow West often feels like the Coen brothers’ rendition of True Grit, if they’d brought Wes Anderson in as a collaborator. It’s a shaggy-dog story full of colorful characters and aimless but diverting narrative byways, all delivered with Andersonian solemnity, against a backdrop of deeply saturated colors and meticulously dressed sets.

Just as trying to keep up with every geopolitical crisis on the planet all at once can be overwhelming, trying to track Geostorm’s name-checked concerns and its barely present characters is likely to tax viewers’ attention spans. Horror movies help people process some of our worst fears, but there’s a reason most movies don’t try to address every human fear at the same time.

It’s a quiet film of modest narrative ambitions and simple shifts. But its technical and visual ambitions couldn’t be higher. It’s as if Ghibli is still trying to raise its own bar, so that even if it’s going out, it’s reminding viewers what they’d be missing.

Nimród Antal's terrific feature debut Kontroll takes some time to get up to speed--but once it's fully underway, it develops a heady momentum and a devastating impact.

Until the "creep + orphans = happy family" formula starts demanding abrupt, unconvincing character mutations, Despicable Me is a giddy joy.