Wesley Morris

By the end, you don't entirely understand either of these people, but you come to understand why they need each other.

Canner is either overwhelmed by so much impressive access to so many alarming business opportunities or lacking the investigative rigor to drive home the moral problems of these drugs and the existential problems of these women.

But that ending is a whopper all the same: a heartless blast of tragedy, exploitation, amusement, and general flagrance.

Never achieves the exhilarating feat of exemplifying the types of Hollywood movies it wants to unpack.

Basically an addiction thriller in which the thirst is for the acquisition and execution of knowledge. So you need an actor who seems surprised by how smart he is but not afraid to be charmingly intelligent. Cooper turns out to be perfect for the part.

Does a lot of winking and teasing.

The good news is that the movie advertises Dolan's delirious visual talent.

Kaboom lets Araki play with carnality as opposed to cautioning against it.

This is a movie whose power comes from the alignment both of Mija's discovery with ours and of a tremendous writer and director with his star.

The characterization couldn't be more flagrant if the soundtrack creaked out an oldie by a certain ancient pop quintet: You're a candy girl.

Whether this movie works for you largely depends on whether you're willing to work for it. To which I say: Bring your gym clothes.

Drive Angry is something new for Cage - a movie that feels like it's straight FROM cable.

Hall Pass is the brothers' 10th movie, and their most gangbusters since "Me, Myself & Irene."

The movie shouldn't work, yet it does.

Neeson is much better suited to the loneliness and self-doubt of Martin's crisis than he was for the thuggery of the previous movie.

"Angélica" feels most like the film that argues Oliveira is this close to the beyond without ever bothering to knock first at death's door.

The movie usefully, carefully, and cogently argues that Bieber is more than his hair. He is his hoodies. He is his pop-hooks. He is his many handlers.

Part of the trouble is casting. This is a movie that needs a great or gonzo performer to give it depth or heft.

Seeing her (Kidman) in junk like this is a bit like watching the Queen of England eat a Taco Bell chalupa.

It's the latest in the blank-from-hell genre, in which misogyny and entertainment are made to seem indistinguishable while the blank makes life hell for someone who then is cornered into striking back.

Like most films about gay men, Undertow can't envision a normal life of couplehood. But Fuentes-Léon works in a blithe and breezy magic-realist manner that fends off attendant feelings of depression.

The movie wails in pain. And it's that sort of grand empathy that makes Iñárritu both impossible to dismiss and impossible to live with.

The movie isn't a critique of zoo life. But it's possible we have on our hands, in Nénette's captivity, a microcosm of celebrity star-gazing.

Like "Life Is Sweet," "Secrets & Lies," and yes, 1971's "Bleak Moments," to name but three of Leigh's 10 semi-improvised character studies, Another Year is another frowning comedy.

Basically, talented French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire has too much style on his hands. His film isn't as amorally grandiose as "City of God." Nor does it achieve the hulking tragedy of "Gomorrah."

Many of the backgrounds look like watercolors that are either drying or dying.

Howard never decides on tones that complement each other, and the dissonance is jarring.

While the words belong to the storyteller, the story in And Everything Is Going Fine appears to be telling itself.