Its images are classic, its story immediate and urgent. That's a pretty vital combination.

Only Yesterday is a mature work of art, no matter what the genre, no matter what the format, no matter what.

Trachtenberg is patient building this world, and the actors do a good job inhabiting it. Winstead is a terrific actress, and she makes Michelle's desperation and inventiveness believable. Goodman is never better than when playing a nut, and while we aren't sure if that's what he's doing here, the possibility makes for an intriguing portrayal.

It's an interesting movie, odd and disturbing by design. But it's also effective.

The effect is initially giddy but it ultimately wears the viewer down.

The Boy and the Beast might not quite have the storytelling sophistication to win over every adult, but for teens and tweens in the midst of their own coming-of-age stories, it has the potential to be a wondrous eye-opener.

Ficarra and Requa never quite strike a successful balance between comedy and drama, making the whole thing feel a bit off.

What it lacks in thematic innovation it more than makes up for with enough memorable characters and visual splendor to make Zootopia a perennial Disney favorite.

It's all silly and meant to be fun, except when Najafi tries to throw in some serious bits, which wind up being sillier still.

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.

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.

It's a movie as warm and fuzzy as a comfortable blanket, and as safe as the milk Edwards prefers to anything stronger. Not as exciting, perhaps, but it gets the job done well enough.

It’s a compelling journey into the deep, if a meandering one, guided by a moral compass that operates by a different magnetic field than our own, and often leads astray.

Miele also made the similar "Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's," a look at another ultra-expensive store in New York. That film, however, did a better job as a social investigation into how the other half lives. Crazy about Tiffany's is more shallow, as befits so many of the interview subjects.

There’s never a sense the filmmakers are preaching the gospel of legalization, although they are certainly not preaching against it, either.

It’s ambiguity without engagement, art you can admire but not feel.

With incredible attention to detail and an unwavering commitment to the world he has created, Eggers slowly, surely builds tension until it's almost unbearable. And that's delightful, if you're a horror fan. It's a terrific film.

Where does creativity come from? And how do the lucky few who are touched by it make it last? Can they? Touched with Fire isn't a perfect study of the question, and it can't really provide a complete answer, probably because there isn't one. But thanks to Holmes and Kirby, it at least asks in a compelling way.

The film, directed and co-written by Kevin Reynolds ("Fandango," um, "Waterworld"), is a nice-enough telling of the Resurrection of Jesus, which at times seems like it also wants to be a Very Special Episode of "CSI: Jerusalem." It's well-made and well-acted.

It’s a stumble down the catwalk not even Blue Steel can save.

How to Be Single has enough laughs and heartfelt moments to appeal to all generations.

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.

The zombification of Austen’s material is frequently funny and sometimes clever, but the film stumbles hard when it loses sight of just how ridiculous it is.

What grates is the lack of attention to details. There is a grating sloppiness to much of The Choice, both narratively and stylistically.

While individually some of the scenes are terrific, they don't add up to much, making Hail, Caesar! one of the Coens' lesser comedies, better than "Intolerable Cruelty," say, but nowhere near the genius of "The Big Lewbowski."

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

The Finest Hours is set in the early '50s. But did it really need to feel like it was made during the Eisenhower era?

If directors Alessandro Carloni and Jennifer Yuh don't reinvent the panda-as-martial-artist wheel, they avoid making the story seem stale. The terrific animation helps, of course.