Todd McCarthy

A gritty, intense and supremely accomplished sci-fier.

A thriller more contrived than it is exciting.

There's something about novelist Stephenie Meyer that induces formerly interesting directors to suddenly make films that are slow, silly and soporific.

Sam Mendes' much-anticipated second effort after his Oscar-winning "American Beauty" finds him working in a very different key while displaying an even more pronounced attentiveness to tone, genre variations and artistic niceties.

A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.

It's the selective but cumulative use of seemingly arbitrary but significant experiences that gives Boyhood its distinctive character and impressive weight.

It's a true-life yarn loaded with extremes, of wealth, personal eccentricities, grief, tension, daring, criminal means to political ends, maternal drive and luck, both bad and good. It is also a peek into a rarefied world where money knows no bounds and yet means everything.

A romantic comedy as lamely generic as its title.

This surprising collaboration between director Clint Eastwood and "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black tackles its trickiest challenges with plausibility and good sense, while serving up a simmeringly caustic view of its controversial subject's behavior, public and private.

The wealth of behavioral detail and observational humor make for some rewarding drama that will resonate with many viewers.

Colaizzo’s dialogue often crackles with modern idioms and good pithy comments, flowing from the distinct characters in easy fashion. As a director, he’s paced the action well. He knows what he’s doing, even when he’s doing the wrong thing.

An intelligent, visually ravishing adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel.

Fennell’s film could be called a polemic, but dramatically it’s so sharply and boldly laid out that its narrative shocks rule the day. It’s jolting to witness how it refuses to let anyone off the hook.

A knockout documentary with a renegade personality ideally suited to its anarchic subject matter.

Anthony and Joe Russo place too much faith in the ability of their talented thesps to carry the day over precariously thin material.

Digging deep into the archives for rare and revealing material to accompany interviews with many of his collaborators and intimates, filmmaker Amy Scott packs a lot into 90 minutes with this insightful and warm look at an artist whose best work always revealed a heightened social conscience.

The characters in The Thomas Crown Affair are cool -- too cool, in fact, for the film to develop much of a pulse.

[An] accessible and informative close-up documentary.

Respectable when it should be thrilling, honorable when it should be rough and ready.

A rich dramatic tapestry lightly stained by some strained comedy, rigorous political correctness and perhaps more adherence to Disney formula than should have been the case in one of the studio's most adventurous and serious animated features.

Refreshingly revisionist in the sense that it takes a relatively clear-eyed view of the messy lives and equivocal circumstances of many of the key participants.

For all the film's intellectual pretensions, both good and bad, Duke's great gravitas and Beetz' spontaneity lift the film partway out of its quasi-spiritual morass; they provide a hint of the real, of a beating heart, even if the drama itself exists in a parched desert realm devoid of actual life.

Wallace was clearly a very ambitious, capable and confident man, but the film, as absorbing as it is, is two-dimensional.

Grandly conceived and sensitively drawn.

A witty and sometimes surreal sci-fi comedy, Men in Black is a wild knuckleball of a movie that keeps dancing in and out of the strike zone.

Because of its cast of young men being buff and hormonal and good at their jobs, one could say that Only the Brave is the Top Gun of firefighter movies, the difference being that the new film feels like it's embedded in reality rather than in an aerial wet dream.

A densely packed documentary that earnestly and obsessively addresses campaign finance reform, its history and vital importance.

A compelling look at the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler by his photojournalist son Mark.