If the second hour or so isn't as strong as the first, it's because the filmmaking fails to rise to the injustice that's befallen its subjects since their exoneration. It can't, really.

The movie sprawls, almost entirely in a good sense, and it lets the audience draw its own conclusions. None of them is likely to be rosy.

The film makes its edgier, more uncomfortable arguments with conviction, forcing us to think about who the justice system trusts, and why.

As superbly crafted -- as good -- as this movie is, Condon never really owns up to the cloud of pessimism at its center.

The catch in Gabrielle is that the audience pays as well.

It's a spirited and essentially optimistic film, but it's also simplistic.

Slightly misshapen and unbalanced, with a few loose ends, a few extraneous dream sequences. But there's something going on all the time.

The larger point Harvard Beats Yale makes, perhaps, is about the inevitability of loss. Many of these men, now in their early 60s, look terrific. Others, let us say, do not. Either way, all of them look very different from the helmeted young athletes of 40 years ago. A sense of mortality shadows the documentary. On or off the gridiron, time is the only opponent who always wins. Even at Harvard, even at Yale.

Exhilaratingly slow, which for many will simply mean SLOW... Those who can downshift appropriately, however, stand to be enraptured.

I like this movie a lot, but it may be too intimate, too slow for some moviegoers.

McKellen and Coel give a master class in line readings throughout “The Christophers.” It’s a real pleasure watching two seasoned actors bounce off each other in service to creating their characters. It’s even more delightful to see this in a film made for adults that has plenty to say about human nature, love, and the inspirations that fuel our lives.

The movie’s being promoted as the third in the director’s unofficial trilogy of faith, after “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) and “Kundun” (1997), and it feels like a self-conscious masterpiece, a summing-up from a filmmaker who, at 74, may be thinking of his legacy.

Sarnet elevates his Rabelaisian folktale into a tragedy illustrated by haunting, metaphorical imagery.

A novelist and screenwriter, Claudel's directing for the first time here, and he leans on melodramatic contrivances more than he needs to. Still, he gives us a lean and observant weepie, and the mystery of Thomas's Juliette pulls you in.

It’s largely successful, if by nature all over the map.

Most refreshingly, Science Fair illustrates the many different kinds of STEM students out there.

You come out of the theater impressed by the scope of Eastwood's reach and frustrated by how little remains in his grasp. As gifted as this filmmaker is, this isn't the sort of thing he does best.

Reprise is exceptionally smart about the crushing expectations brought to the table by those who love us.

Where most documentaries offer us facts to hold on to, his (McElwee's) are obsessed with the mystery of things we don't know and never will.

GdTP starts out pretty slow and doesn’t speed up for far too long — it’s the rare movie that might accurately be described as more imaginative than good — but the occasional bit of inspiration like the tree-branch proboscis encourages the viewer to hang on. It’s a nose job like no other.

The Pigeon Tunnel is mannered, but one could argue that’s fitting. It’s hard to get more mannered than the le Carré prose style and plotting. Yet no character inhabiting the novels, not even George Smiley, is as riveting and memorable as David Cornwell. Anything that gets between him and the viewer is not a good thing.

A marvelous, uncommonly observant, and unexpectedly rousing group portrait.

Just as in the first film, I was put off by the white-savior narrative (Stilgar’s fervent belief quickly becomes grating), and the Hans Zimmer score that sounds as if Arrakis were in the Middle East rather than space.

The movie has you from its nearly wordless opening sequence.

Travels around the world via the oceans' floors to show us symbiosis at work in a variety of ecosystems.

The Fighter is this close to a triumph: a movie that steeps us in the grit of its time and place - Lowell, Mass., in the 1990s - and electrifyingly dramatizes Ward's battles with the family that almost loved him to death.

In retrospect, it’s obvious why the film was never produced: The director was a lunatic.

Part of what hooks you to this movie is how Leth outsmarts his taskmaster, and how the two men have divergent, almost incompatible aesthetic ideals.