Unmistaken Child stands as a window on a beautiful and mysterious world. The questions it leaves hanging are for us to untangle.

To Dust has several things to recommend it. It’s decidedly different, and that is no small accomplishment in this day and age. Snyder’s direction has real assurance, though not enough to overcome the films self-conscious — maybe self-congratulatory — weirdness.

This third installment is the loudest, dopiest, and least inventive of the three. But what the movie...lacks in intelligence it makes up for in sheer doom.

Shadow Magic isn't interested in psychology or character study. It's a series of tableaux and on that level succeeds admirably.

Rehearsals are frequently more fascinating than the results. Last Dance, whatever its flaws, fulfills one facet of its mission in making me want to find out whether, in this case, that's true.

This is blissful moviemaking. Much of the pleasure we have in watching it comes from seeing Tucci and, obviously, Streep connect.

Ultron’s goals never make much sense beyond the basic kill-the-Avengers-and-destroy-the-Earth checklist, nor does he develop as a character over the long haul. He’s just a static baddie, fun to look at and handy with a quip but ultimately as dull as unpolished chrome.

This is what the ongoing onslaught of comic book movies lacks: stars. Real stars. Robert Downey Jr. is the exception when he should be the rule. It's possible we take these movies for granted because the marketing tells us we should.

Gore fans will want to bump the two-and-a-half-star rating up a star, whereas those who can't handle on-screen violence will want to stay the hell away.

Ironically, Born to Be Wild banks solely on its tameness to captivate and inspire, aided by an upbeat, sometimes incongruous soundtrack.

The decidedly lo-fi robot elements give the proceedings a bit of charm, as does the North Wales location, but they are not enough to save this buddy comedy from sapping the audience’s patience and goodwill.

A strident, contrived, surprisingly lovable Noo Yawk City family farce.

Doesn't America's 50-and-fabulous set deserve better than a movie this superficial and pandering?

Fair warning: I had to see The Girlfriend Experience twice before its pieces settled into coherent shape.

All right-thinking minds will properly detest the movie. I have to admit I laughed my asparagus off.

Yet The Life Ahead works admirably well — meaning you’re reduced to soggy Kleenex but honestly — in large part because of the grounded, magnetic performances of the two leads.

It's a morality play, full of hopeless tosh. Still, Hitchcock manages to include a hallucination sequence and a highly suggestive spurt from a soda siphon. [12 Jan 2020]

Horror movie Rule #1: The only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the brain. George Romero himself laid this maxim down with his first film, the endlessly influential 1968 gutter classic "Night of the Living Dead." Forty years later, with George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the venerable filmmaker has done something almost as startling: He has put brains back into the zombie genre.

The best thing about the movie is its look. The great Dick Pope, Leigh’s go-to cinematographer, returns to the 19th century he so masterfully re-created in “Mr. Turner,” earning an Oscar nomination. The colors in Peterloo are rich but not at all sumptuous. They look lived in. The moviemaking line between beauty that’s absorbing and beauty that’s distracting is thread-thin. Pope, who also served as chief camera operator, makes sure that the thread never breaks.

The sad thing about Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart is that it fails in every important respect, yet is in no way cheap or exploitative. [20 Sep 1990, p.81p]

Knoller manages to make even a withdrawn character compelling, and worth rooting for as Yossi struggles to shed his shell.

Alan Partridge is the cinematic equivalent of Marmite: a much-loved condiment in Britain and a puzzlement almost everywhere else. An acquired taste, certainly, but on the basis of this movie, well worth sampling at least once.

Not a happy time at the movies. It bears the distinction of bringing to the screen a dark nugget of history.

Sure, go ahead and take the kids. But, for pity's sake, read them the book first.

Uplifting? Not bloody likely. Mesmerizing? Very, thanks to Greg Kinnear's eerie performance as Crane and director Paul Schrader's lucid depiction of the character's happy-go-lucky descent into hell.

Though it hits all the expected beats, it’s the attention to the little details that makes Devotion take flight.

At its best moments, Creed II manages a feat nearly as striking as anything that Michael B. Jordan’s Rocky Balboa protégé pulls off in the boxing ring: It doesn’t play all that much like a sequel.

Any movie on this subject that’s not uncomfortable isn’t really doing its job, and Ben Is Back puts an audience through a wringer of emotional and physical suspense. If you’ve dealt with addiction, personally or in your extended family, the movie should probably come with a trigger warning.