Todd McCarthy

The Lost City of Z is a rare piece of contemporary classical cinema; its virtues of methodical storytelling, traditional style and obsessive theme are ones that would have been recognized and embraced anytime from the 1930s through the 1970s.

All the more frustrating because of its conceptual freshness and Ben Affleck's sly turn in the title role, this sleek action thriller ends up delivering standard shoot-'em-up goods after initially suggesting it might provide something rather different.

The puzzle of how the various personal and narrative pieces will eventually fit together exerts a smidgen of interest, but the characters are so dour and un-dimensional as to invite no curiosity about them.

To say 13th is stimulating and thought-provoking is the understatement of the year.

Music naturally plays the central role here, but the film usefully lays in historical and political details that lend it more heft and poignancy than most films of its type.

For a time, an appealing gentleness prevails that's rooted in this unique inter-generational romance, a feeling augmented in particular by Purnell's slow-blooming flower of a performance, and if the film had remained focused more on the improbabilities of this love story, it might have emerged as something rather special.

Cedar impressively creates a complex and intricately detailed portrait of the web of political, financial, social and religious affiliations that has everything to do with how the world works.

Director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg deliver the goods again with a rugged drama about an incident that created an environmental disaster and a worldwide scandal.

Barry emerges as an involving and credible portrait of a smart young man with a good deal of growing and learning yet to do.

Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut, in which he also stars, is decently performed and delivers some potent scenes of inter-generational discord between a concerned father and a radicalized daughter who becomes a murderous terrorist. But the filmmaking is prosaic when it should crackle with tension and disruptive undercurrents,

The somber tone and low-end production values may not be exactly in tune with young neo-noir enthusiasts, but more seasoned fans of the genre and the filmmaker will recognize and embrace Hill’s use of noir to play with and comment on topical issues in a deliciously subversive way, political correctness be damned.

Except for the fact that virtually every shot, chop or stab the good guys make hits its mark to make the bad guys quickly drop like toy soldiers, the climactic showdown delivers what it needs to action-wise, leading to a satisfactory wrap-up.

A stellar, warmly persuasive starring turn by Sally Hawkins as crippled, self-taught painter Maud Lewis is the raison d'etre of Maudie.

Bleed for This is a gritty, pungently Rhode Island working class-set boxing drama that connects with most of its punches.

A vigorous and involving salute to professionalism and being good at your job, Sully vividly portrays the physical realities and human elements in the dramatic safe landing of a crippled US Airways jet on the Hudson River on January 15, 2009.

For Chazelle to be able to pull this off the way he has is something close to remarkable. The director's feel for a classic but, for all intents and purposes, discarded genre format is instinctive and intense.

Misguided, diminished and dismally done in every way, this late-summer afterthought will richly earn the distinction of becoming the first Ben-Hur in any form to flop.

Hardly inexperienced at playing belligerent, outrageous and offensive a-holes, Hill offers a definitive account of one here, to which Teller can only play the blander, if useful, second fiddle who has to try, and try again, to stand up to the gruff bully.

A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn’t know what to do with them.

Up until a narratively implausible and logistically ridiculous climactic motorcycle chase through Vegas that feels like a sop to the Fast & Furious crowd, Jason Bourne is an engrossing re-immersion in the violent and mysterious world of Matt Damon's shadowy secret op.

The lead performances have power, whereas pictorially the film is pretty rough and ordinary.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates rates medium on the grossness scale (an all-body, pre-marital naked-Indian-guru-administered massage for the bride with a happy ending, anyone?), and pretty high in crude talk. But it's kind of a dud when it comes to endurance and imaginative moves.

The Legend of Tarzan isn't half-bad; actually, it's pretty good. Beautifully made and smartly set at the beginning of Belgian King Leopold II's rapacious colonization of the Congo in the 1880s, this is certainly the best live-action Tarzan film in many a decade (which, admittedly, isn't saying much) and offers a well-judged balance of vigorous action and engaging-enough drama.

Shallow is a mild word for it. Others would be silly, miscalculated, unconvincing, artless, pandering, hokey, ridiculous. Or just plain awful.

A compelling and little-known story of the Civil War period is studiously reduced to a dry and cautious history lesson in Free State of Jones.

Fascinating on personal, political and cinematic levels, the film resourcefully plumbs all sorts of resources, including secret tape recordings of Kim himself, but also omits certain aspects of the tale that would merely have added to its intrigue.

While rambunctious and passably humorous, this offspring isn't nearly as imaginative and nimble-minded as the forerunner that spawned it.

The film positively swills in its disreputability and all-around low-budgetness; sporting a healthy disregard for respectability, Schrader has just gone for it here with a highly focused recklessness that he turns to his creative advantage.