They’ve built up a vast ensemble of character types, all of them played by better-than-average actors, and that they can mix and match the drama, comedy, or action as they see fit.

By turns strikingly original and dramatically slick, deeply felt and a little cooked up. It’s well worth seeing, though.

Going the Distance earns its R rating, often by daring to say what goes frequently unsaid by women in raunchy comedies. It's not a very good movie. The entire second half is a sitcom.

The movie star Julie Christie turned 62 last month, and anyone under the impression that she merely floated through her prime heedless of the age in which she worked should catch her in A Decade Under the Influence.

From start to finish, you don’t know what’s coming next in Nope. When was the last time you saw a movie where that was true? Nope is deeply strange, and Jordan Peele knows exactly what he’s doing with that strangeness. It’s designedly strange. It’s coherently strange.

It’s as slickly enjoyable as anything you’d see on VH1.

There are many indicators of star power. Not the least of them is unforgettability. On screen, no less than in the laboratory, Eric Kandel has star power.

There’s no backstage dirt, then — for that, pick up the 2002 “uncensored history” written by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller — but there is an honest appraisal of the show’s peaks and valleys over the years.

The good news is that the movie advertises Dolan's delirious visual talent.

A small film and, ultimately, a satisfying one.

The Cuckoo is smart enough to steer away from allegory and into the specific every chance it gets, though -- so much so that when the film finally does slip the mortal coil, you still hang with it.

Most of the color and zest among the movie's many talking heads comes from the refreshingly irreverent opera director Jonathan Miller.

Cruise is believable as an athlete; and the cocky bravado he emits to impress his girlfriend (played with matching complexity and maturity by Lea Thompson) has a fetching sense of lift, too. But his vulnerability is what's most refreshing and ingratiating about Cruise's Stef. [05 Nov 1983]

It's flawed, but it's also rich. And how many films make you feel that you and the filmmaker are following the course of a dream?

The documentary is primarily a work of whimsy.

Wirkola tears through Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters with such giddy abandon, it ends up being splattery fanboy fun. Preposterous, clearly, but fun.

Shattered Glass, with its dumb title, is smart about good vs. evil. Incidentally, the good is Lane, who now works at The Washington Post and was a consultant on this picture.

Dillane is onscreen for the entire film, and he gives a performance that will stick with you long after the symbolism-laced last scene.

Part detective story, part coming of political age saga, and all teenage identity crisis, Captive is the first film written and directed by Gaston Biraben , who has worked steadily as a Hollywood sound editor since the early '90s. That professionalism shows in the polished filmmaking as well as an occasional tendency toward shallower melodrama than the situation deserves.

War Horse is the best film of the year. The year, unfortunately, is 1942.

When Ducournau keeps the viewer off balance and doesn’t lose her own, she shows signs of being an outstanding stylist and storyteller, balancing mood, composition, startling images, slow-burning suspense, and sardonic humor.

Actually, the movie's a better movie than the book was a book, in part because Meyer struggled to put her characters' galloping emotions into print whereas director Catherine Hardwicke just visualizes them in all their inarticulate purpleness.

While the words belong to the storyteller, the story in And Everything Is Going Fine appears to be telling itself.

An illuminating and entertaining study of an underground culture that has become part of the American mainstream.

Good Fortune showcases the virtues of the goofball side of Keanu Reeves. With all that great John Wick action, it’s easy to forget just how charming and lovable Reeves can be when playing an average joe or a misfit.

Like the title characters and the performances that go with them, Being the Ricardos has real zip. It’s a virtue of Sorkin’s tendency to glibness. His writing can be irritatingly slick, but never boring.

In its sweet, slightly melancholy, gently humorous way, it fills the screen with the freshest, most winning love story we've seen in ages. [14 Feb 1992, p.39]

It’s the mark of many a standout sports movie that you don’t necessarily have to be a fan to enjoy the story. The real-life pro wrestling portrait Fighting With My Family is a hugely entertaining case in point.