Gathers a sort of darkness as it comes to its oblique conclusion.

How much you enjoy yourself depends on whether you’re a fan of the original, or of Amy Adams.

Working from a script by Will Tracy, Lanthimos creates a realistic ridiculousness, and trusts his leads to walk the tightrope with him.

American Made really does deserve to be on a double-bill with “Top Gun,” and I’m betting Cruise knows it. The first film embodies the glorious shallowness of the Reagan Era. The second wallows in that shallowness while hinting at everything it cost.

As directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), it’s a steady, compelling accounting of events that intends to leave you infuriated and succeeds.

Dancing on the edge of dullness, ''Girl'' is continually saved by the look of things: the hush of an atelier in midafternoon, dust-motes swirling in a sunbeam, pigment blooming under mortar and pestle. Impatience is forestalled, time and again, by rapture.

Aileen is Broomfield working compassionately. Perhaps it's only because he knows he can't save Wuornos that he can offer her as she might have been: part wounded animal, part self-destructive martyr, and all tragedy.

I don’t think the third act of Dream Scenario works at all. It’s too obvious. However, its saving grace is Cage, whose petulance in these late sequences never ceases to be as funny as it is uncomfortable to watch.

One last thought: Fahrenheit 9/11 is many things, but for pity's sake let's not call it a documentary.

The comedy is largely episodic and breezy, bolstered by strong support from Debra Messing, Amanda Bearse, Bowen Yang, Jim Rash, Kenan Thompson, Amy Schumer, and Kristin Chenoweth.

No one has really been asking for a fusion of "Independence Day," Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," and an old Buck Rogers serial, but here it is anyway, and the only thing keeping it from greatness is a good story.

Clearly, Strange World is a movie about saving the environment. It is also about the bond between father and son, and how parents must let their kids forge their own paths. Hall and Nguyen deliver these messages with the subtlety of a wrecking ball, but the excellent voice-over work plus the score by Henry Jackman make the preachiness palatable and the film fun.

One of the best things about Nolan as a director is that he’s not self-conscious. His movies unfold and fold in on themselves without the strain of labor or flash. But that lack of self-consciousness is also Nolan’s downside.

Vitkova brings a distinct gender sensibility to her story, especially with her recurring imagery of milk and blood.

Whose Streets? gives us more than enough stories from people not often enough heard, and their refusal to remain silent is invigorating.

Battle of the Sexes is slick and wholly enjoyable, a pop provocation whose medicine goes down easy via outsize, engaging performances in the leads.

The Purple Rose of Cairo, Woody Allen's tender Valentine to the movies, features poignant performances by Jeff Daniels and Mia Farrow. In the critical rush to canonize Allen, it's easy to forget how far Farrow has come as an actress. [31 May 1985, p.27]

I doubt anyone will be too bothered by the lack of character depth. The audience for “Last Breath” is there for the dangerous dive developments.

It’s both ridiculous and ridiculously romantic, which is an apt description of a work shaped like a heart and structured like a pretzel.

In Polanski’s hands, it’s an unholy pleasure: a diversion that stings.

A big, lascivious punch line about America's peculiar, embarrassed, hypocritical relationship with sex.

Despite its conceptual shortfall, is worth seeing, if only to update yourself on what can emerge from a keyboard these days.

It's a sunny, funny, fittingly cartoony blend of computer-generated 3-D representations of the flying squirrel and his pal the moose with actors.

This IMAX spectacular largely does what it’s supposed to fascinate, educate, and visually wow the audience, in 45 minutes or less.

The Spanish-Argentine comedy is about as far from being a CGI-fest as you can get, but Cruz’s hair is a very special special effect. Its oxblood abundance is torrential, jungley, diluvian, an in-your-face to the very concept of baldness. It’s also gloriously ridiculous, and ridiculousness masquerading as glory — male pomposity and artistic pretension, too — is what “Official Competition” is all about.

At its best, Still Alice is a moving inquisition into the emotions and memories and connections that make us us and how we might cope when they’re taken away with slow, impersonal cruelty.

There is a lot to recommend about James' Journey to Jerusalem. Its people are not among them. This searing little parable contains some of the more deplorable folks you're likely to see in a movie about faith.

Begins and ends as a fulsome Kerry campaign bio along the lines of the famed Bill Clinton convention short, "The Man From Hope."