Reality and fantasy become increasingly blurred. And if you want to enjoy Dark Horse, you're just going to have to go with it.

David Lowery’s film is about as quiet and patient as what is ostensibly a caper movie can be. Yet its engine never idles, in large part because Redford, at 82, remains a movie star, someone to whom we are drawn, even as he is politely robbing a bank with a note, a gun and a smile.

The cast is excellent, anchored by the one-two punch of Colunga and Yañez.

This is a man who knows things, and Hawke creates an inspiring platform that allows him to share (at least some of) them.

The Queen of Versailles is funny, sad, infuriating, instructive. It's the American Dream inflated to ridiculous extremes, until it bursts.

Calling Jackie, director Pablo Larrain’s absorbing film, a construction project is not to demean it but to praise it.

This is a smart movie, a treat for fans of the comics and the franchise. And it's a lot of fun.

The story Snowden tells is, of course, absorbing, disturbing and, yes, scary. Poitras' film, playing out as more and more is revealed, reported and published, comes off like a real-life spy thriller.

The lunacy begins early in The Pirates! Band of Misfits and never lets up.

It is high-spirited, buoyant and full of laughs.

Particle Fever does an excellent job of laying out what's at stake as it documents the creation and fine-tuning of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Director Thomas Vinterberg and Carey Mulligan, who plays Bathsheba Everdene, bring exciting life to the story.

The movie is fun, it's smart and there's plenty of action. There are enough knowing nods to old-school fans to satisfy them, but the nods don't get in the way. In fact - and a feel for this kind of thing is what makes Abrams so good - they're perfect, nice accents that won't slow down the uninitiated.

Yes, it has a bit of the watching-races-for-the-wrecks feel to it, and by the end of the film, it's not clear Piven has a destination in mind, or whether it's important to arrive at one. But this is a performance that demands your attention. It also deserves it.

For some, it will be tempting to say The French Dispatch is easier to admire than enjoy. But if you go into it knowing what Anderson offers, you can do both.

The first word that comes to mind when watching Landscape With Invisible Hand is "weird." It’s very weird. But in the most thoughtful way possible. This sci-fi film packs originality in every scene and plot point.

It’s a heartbreaking journey with moments of real triumph, including Turner playing to a crowd of 186,000 in Rio and the audience clearly adoring her during a curtain call at the musical based on her life. But every triumph here is offset by the sense that there are scars that never fully healed.

It’s a movie as much about white privilege as it is anything else, an examination of the incredible advantages the wealthy have — advantages that don’t prevent them from cheating anyway.

Despite the film's predictable nature, it's hard not to become engaged. The performances are excellent and Härö directs with a clean hand, pushing toward a suspenseful, stirring climax that hinges on the team's success as well as Endel's freedom.

Ostlund's film is beautiful, capturing both the stunning scenery and the danger of the slopes and the mountains. Sure, everything looks great, but it could all fall apart in disastrous fashion at any moment.

Is Whose Streets? the only story we should see and hear about what went on in Ferguson and after? No. It’s by its nature incomplete, one side of the tale. What makes it important is that it is the side that too often goes ignored. But here, at least, no more.

It’s a movie that maybe tries to do too much, but it does enough of it well to keep you glued to the screen.

Thanks to Larson’s songs, Miranda’s directing and generous, inspired acting — particularly from Garfield, who manages to be lovable and obnoxious, depending on what’s needed — tick … tick … Boom! is a moving tribute to a misunderstood process and the people who engage in it.

Although at times maybe not enough happens, it’s still a satisfying homage to a golden age of American film and an original achievement in its own right.

Combining his eye for expressive filmmaking, a mature performance from the three main stars and a droning pop score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Challengers is a seductive feast for the senses.

Cavaye is relentless in his quest to entertain, to thrill.

If anything, the movie's third act is the only thing that feels a bit a disappointing. The plot is carefully constructed, the performances are rich (both girls are excellent), the characters are believable and a sense of dread grows throughout. Heck, the movie is even great to look at, with its period sheen and slightly muted colors.

Cozi Zuehlsdorff winningly plays a young girl who works at the hospital. With her big smile and natural warmth, she is a charmer. Even better is Gamble, who gives a smart and sensitive performance without relying on any of the normal mannerisms that often afflict child actors.

It takes a strong stomach for extreme violence and over-the-top obscenity, but if you're willing to roll with that, Deadpool is a hoot.

Hoffman wisely gives his actors plenty of room to maneuver, and that they do. It's surprisingly fun to watch them play against each other. It's not as if you're going to learn anything new from Quartet. It's too straightforward for that. But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy seeing old pros at work. And you won't be exhausted by the end of it.

If this is a story told more broadly than what we’ve seen from Pixar the past few films, so be it. It may not be a masterpiece, but its message is one that can’t be expressed enough. Luca expresses it in a gorgeous, fun way.

Carroll purists and freshman English majors may be aghast at the change in story, but for those who watched "Avatar" and marveled at the images but were left wanting by the wooden acting and tired story, "Alice" is a treat.

If you're game, "Parnassus" is a richly rewarding experience. If not, it comes off like pretentious nonsense.

Flawed but impressive, War for the Planet of the Apes finds its place comfortably, and near the top, of a surprisingly satisfying summer season. It’s a smart take on the old films, making this a series that can stand alone in its own right.

It's a well-written rom-com with rascally charm, a modest story of an awkward Brooklyn girl making a go of life. It's irreverent and rough around the edges with an imperfect protagonist, blue language, scatological humor and rambling confessional stand-up monologues, sometimes about bodily fluids. The laughs are frequent and ribald.

Much of the film is inert, like a still life with dialogue. That’s not a detriment. That’s an invitation to see a movie whose beauty stays with you long after it ends.

With a performance that is wide-ranging by necessity, Kazan makes Ruby immensely likable (as well as clingy, manic, sad, happy and whatever else Calvin wants her to be).

Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins’ long-awaited sequel, is a much better film. It’s not that it’s lacking in chaos. (With a running time of 2 hours and 31 minutes, it's not lacking in much.) It just uses chaos more judiciously. That's fitting for a film about wretched excess, about getting what you want and realizing that maybe you were better off without it.

It’s clear from the opening shots that a physically and psychically savaged post-war Poland is impossible ground for love to flower, and it’s a testament to Pawel Pawlikowski’s talent that this fatalism makes us more, not less, invested in the romance.

The best thing is that Nichol doesn’t adopt a luddite stance. He doesn’t try to impart the evils of technology, at least not much. (Some people in the film lean that way.) He’s more inclined to chronicle the joys of a fading delight, one click-clack at a time.

It would be unbearable if it weren’t so completely self-aware.

Capernaum is a tough slog, no doubt, even by tough-slog standards. But that’s a big part of what makes it so rewarding.

The Last Man on the Moon is one of those movies we didn't realize we needed, but turns out to be just the thing for our fractured, cynical times.

The characters are fully rounded, and you wind up emotionally invested in them.

Jude refuses to force a happy ending upon the audience. Things happen as they happen, and if one scene is especially hard to stomach, it leads to a kind of grim resolve to just keep forging ahead as best you can.

Gleeson is terrific as Faraday struggles — with his feelings for Caroline, with her feelings for him, with the notion that some of what’s going on at Hundreds Hall may not have a rational explanation. The evolution of his character is subtle, but hauntingly effective.

The acting is good throughout the film, but Gladstone and Stewart are a step up from everyone else. It’s tempting to say it could have been a feature all on its own, but as it stands it’s nearly perfect, making an already solid Certain Women that much better.

Green shows us nothing lurid, nothing explicit. Instead she lets the toxicity build, bit by bit, until it’s seeped in everywhere. That’s powerful, and that’s worse, too.

Fun, happily, is one of the many ingredients in copious supply here.

Fences is a feast of brilliant acting, in a story that’s sometimes as difficult as it is powerful.

Montana Story is a personal film, a small story told under the Big Sky. Those skies can make any story feel epic in scope — they frame tales as mythology in a way. But in Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s film (they wrote and direct), those same skies are so grand and far-reaching they can make you lose your perspective.

The cast is top-notch, the story is satisfyingly dark, the performances are fun and, of course, the songs are terrific.

Inherent Vice is an aggressively weird movie, which you should take not as a warning but as a compliment and an invitation to see it, to let its stoner vibes wash all over you.

A celebration of sci-fi flicks, fanboys and good, old-fashioned bromance, Paul is a thoroughly enjoyable road trip.

A dark comedy thriller that could be a “Black Mirror” episode and leaves you with the same existential turmoil as Bo Burham’s “Inside.”

If you stick with it, Evil Does Not Exist offers rich rewards, as well as lessons, no matter how inscrutable at times.

Lucky Them isn't a great film, all told, but thanks to the good-natured performances and the general vibe, it's an immensely enjoyable one.

It may be slow by Hollywood standards, but it's accessible at every moment, and we come away feeling that human character is more complex, and perhaps darker, than any studio is willing to test an audience with.

Sweet, gentle and defiantly retro (the 2-D hand-drawn animation is superb), the movie is irresistibly charming.

A heartfelt, moving and bracingly honest document of a famous man as he fades away.

It’s a throwback in some ways, offering the same feeling you might get from ’90s and early 2000s films like “Garden State,” “Walking and Talking” and “Flirting with Disaster,” not in content, but in mood and atmosphere — an indie vibe that permeates everything, in a pleasant way.

This is a difficult film, one that asks questions that can’t really be answered. There are a couple of surprises along the way, but more than anything Koreeda is getting at what really makes a family a family.

Freeland does a fine job, waiting for her characters to converge in a way that doesn't feel overly forced, though there is a bit of that "Crash" tidiness in how things fall together. Still, the film is moving and human.

In Bloom, whose title proves more and more ironic as the film goes on, is a fascinating snapshot of a country at war with itself (literally, eventually) as seen through the eyes of two teenage girls, whose lives are complicated enough as it is.

There's a glut of action-adventure-explosions to choose from, so it's refreshing to see a beautiful, character-driven story that feels small, but oh-so relatable.

Gondry’s illustrations are as fascinating as the chats. Sometimes they look like markers on a napkin. Other times they are reminiscent of something made on the old Lite-Brite toy. They’re always delightful.

Dumb Money isn’t a documentary, and it’s not a go-to guide for beginning investors. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be something a little less weighty and a lot more fun than that, and it succeeds.

The Father has occasional splashes of humor, but, by design, it’s tough to watch at times. Hopkins’ performance makes it impossible not to.

As creepy as it is fun, and it's plenty of both, ParaNorman will delight fans of old-time horror movies.

A mix of comedy, science fiction, nostalgia, adolescent wish-fulfillment and beer, beer, beer, its parts shouldn’t fit together as neatly as they do. But somehow Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have again managed to make a movie that is knowing, touching and hilarious.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a biographical film about a real person, though one about whom a great number of details aren’t known. It runs up against some rough patches during the telling of the story, but overall it is immensely enjoyable, an unflinching (and nonjudgmental) look at faith, no matter how bizarrely we may think it’s practiced.

It is just a tremendous amount of fun.

When you can sell a movie in which you spend a large chunk of time talking to a rock and still manage to be magnetic, you're doing something right. And in "Project Hail Mary," Gosling definitely is.

Highlighted by great voice acting, especially from the four actors playing the main teenagers who are relatively unknown actors — and by Ayo Edebiri, who is taking over the summer with her starring role in "The Bear" — the movie will catapult the ninja turtle lore into yet another generation. Cowabunga!

Lawrence delivers a performance that’s long overdue. She finally gets an opportunity to show off her comedic chops and her biting humor and executes it with years of dramatic acting in her bag. She is brash yet warm, making this character extremely believable.

Taken strictly as a piece of filmmaking, Aranofsky's Noah is ambitious. And as theology, well, it may not hew exactly to the letter of the law, but the spirit survives intact.

What makes Joy Ride stand out among other R-rated comedies is its heart, smart writing and attention to detail in each of the characters that comes from the unique perspective of an Asian director and cast tapping into shared experiences, stereotypes and cultural particularities. I haven’t laughed this hard in a movie theater in a very long time.

What seems primed to play out like a by-the-numbers social message movie with a classic redemption arc becomes something much more sophisticated, and much more challenging for the viewer. Schoenaerts' performance deserves much of the praise.

It lags in a few places, but She Said gives you a journalism story to cheer for.

When it's good, The Imitation Game is very good. Cumberbatch is terrific, which is not surprising, given the marriage of role and actor.

What is so impressive is how deeply Abreu makes us feel what Cuca is experiencing.

The great strength of The Sower is that it doesn’t try to do too much. It zooms in on its microcosm with a tender urgency that offers a glimpse of complex humanity without reducing the story to some sort of pithy takeaway.

There is no denying that the environmental message is heavy-handed.

It is a fascinating document of making a comeback record — sorry, Tanya — while balancing the hard work and the gentle coaxing and cheerleading required when working with a complex talent like Tucker.

A really entertaining effort, aided by some terrific performances.

It is a brutal, beautifully shot movie that starts out to be about revenge but then becomes something more, something even more primal and disturbing.

What makes this film work is that it is exactly as advertised: a chaotic romp through a fantasy world that has enough structure to be believable. But the key here is that we don’t get bogged down in details over which race or land is which. We don’t care nor need to know all the details of this world. We just go along for the ride.

These characters are more than willing to risk their lives to further advances in science. That’s a passion and dedication that fuels Europa Report, and Cordero makes the most of it.

In The Disaster Artist, James Franco proves himself a good director, a really good actor and something of an alchemist.

Colossal is a monstrously imaginative movie with a premise so bizarre it’s amazing it ever got made. But it’s a good thing it did.

There’s a great journalism movie hidden in Bad Education. Forgive the biased viewpoint. Luckily, there’s also a really compelling, breezy comic crime drama — with a terrific performance by Hugh Jackman — sitting there in plain sight.

Brown is a sick man, but Harrelson makes him so interesting, so charismatic, so ... watchable, that you can't look away, even if his actions make you want to (and they will).

Through it all, you can’t stop watching Ben, Mortensen’s character. At some point, though, you realize it’s no longer because you admire him for his ideals but want to strangle him for his undying adherence to them.

The Joker’s superpower is his resentment, his narcissism, and Phoenix cultivates these methodically in his performance, slowly transmuting the character’s awkward fragility into a kind of raging charisma — aided and abetted, of course, by all the tricks of art direction, sound design and editing that a journeyman filmmaker has at his disposal.

One would expect a film about French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir to look beautiful, to be shot in warm, sumptuous colors. And one would not be disappointed in Gilles Bourdos’ Renoir.

By the end of the ride, we’ll see glimpse of happiness, sadness, joy, heartbreak, maybe even tragedy, if cell phone-shot recollections are to be believed. All bases are covered, in other words, in one late-afternoon ride, a ride Gondry and his cast will make you want to take.

If you’re a student of history or a Wikipedia devotee, some aspects of the film, particularly its conclusion, might bother you. But they shouldn’t. Watch a documentary if you want straight facts. Watch what Kreutzer and Krieps have come up with here for something more.

It's stunning (and amazingly well done) and hard to believe.