It is intelligent, moving and wholly original.

The danger in making a movie like Coming Through the Rye is in the constant referencing and hero worship of bigger, better, towering works of art — you can only exist in their shadows and pale all the more for the comparison.

The characters are clichés and the plot is assembly-line predictable.

[Gibson's] talent as a filmmaker, Desmond’s story and Garfield’s understated performance make Hacksaw Ridge a good movie, a straightforward story of faith and courage whose complications arise not in the story, but in the telling of it.

Derrickson’s use of computer-generated action is a strength instead of a strain, and it’s not just showing off; in the context of the film, the bizarre images make sense.

Moonlight is a minor miracle, a movie that mines beauty out of the ugliest situations, and a glimmer of hope from heartbreak.

Michael Manasseri’s film wants to be one of those sweet-with-sharp-notes comedies, and in some respects it is. But it is overwhelmed with clichés, stereotypes and overly broad portrayals.

The Handmaiden is everything, in that it is a mystery, a graphically erotic romance, a black comedy and a little bit of a horror story. And, of course, really good.

Inferno...is the kind of movie that stops — and stoops — to explain, early and often. Not that the explanations amount to much; the movie makes almost no sense.

What makes In a Valley of Violence a notch better than a simple genre exercise is West’s sense of fun.

American Pastoral is a movie, like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Philip Roth novel on which it is based, dense with passion, politics and historical import. But Ewan McGregor, directing his first feature, never brings the film fully to life.

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.

Relying wholly on good casting and the charisma of its actors, big and small, to elevate too-familiar material, the film’s stale humor hinges on two faulty premises: That the suburbs are inscrutable and that the people who live in them are clueless.

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.

The first scene in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back promises something interesting but delivers something considerably less. That’s a problem with the whole movie.

American Honey is a remarkable movie, which doesn’t mean it’s perfect — its imperfections, in fact, are what help make it so urgent, so vital, so real.

If you dig Hart’s stuff, you’ll probably love the movie. So go.

We’ve seen crusty old geezers with hearts of gold plenty of times in films. Here we see how this one got that way, and thanks to Lassgard and Holm, it’s a journey we care about taking.

While Cuaron’s technical chops are beyond question, his storytelling could use some honing here.

The script, by Bill Dubuque, goes sideways in a hurry. Characters do inexplicable things for no reason other than advancing the plot, and sometimes not even that. There is a jaw-dropping coincidence that is as ridiculous as it is obvious.

This is one of those little movies that stays with you, the announcement of an original voice worth watching. It’s a quirky, magical delight.

It is a somber slog through the lives of one miserable wretch after another.

Demon is a powerful film, one that makes us wonder what greater films Wrona might have made.

It’s a complicated movie about a complex man that courts controversy, both intentional and not. If that doesn’t make it a great movie, it makes it a necessary one, now more than ever.

Burton reins in his worst impulses, bad habits that he’s been cultivating for over a decade, to make a wickedly dark children’s movie that is, finally, blessedly, fun to look at.

Berg keeps the story personal, which is certainly one way to tell it, though it would have been nice to see a little more about the devastating effects of the massive oil spill triggered by the rig's destruction.

Sometimes it’s absurdist comedy. Sometimes it’s dark comedy. Sometimes it’s out-and-out killing-people drama (almost, but not quite). It’s often funny, but it never quite hangs together as a coherent movie.

It’s a slight film, but one that hits all the tricky emotional and comedic notes without a hint of cruelty.