The beauty of the film is in its quietness.

Stevie seems destined to end the way it does, and is the more courageous and powerful for it. A satisfying ending would have been a lie.

And yet Philadelphia is quite a good film, on its own terms. And for moviegoers with an antipathy to AIDS but an enthusiasm for stars like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, it may help to broaden understanding of the disease.

With the great American filmmaker R.J. Cutler (“The War Room,” “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”) delivering a briskly paced but thorough film that ticks off the many amazing chapters in Stewart’s life, “Martha” is one of the best documentaries of the year.

I have a weakness for actresses like Greta Gerwig. She looks reasonable and approachable.

The brothers Maeda are pure gold; the film captures what feels like effortless joy in their lives, and it is never something they seem to be reaching for.

Filled with juicy performances and unforgettable visuals, Nightmare Alley is one of the best films of the year.

Some of Jackie's dialogue is so good it would distinguish a sitcom.

This truly IS must-see cinema — one of the most visually striking films you’ll ever see, featuring magnificent performances from the two leads.

In the end, the filmmakers have given us one of the most fun movie-going experiences I’ve had this year. Huge kudos go to Johnson, Hart and especially Black for providing some truly entertaining performances for kids of all ages.

A formula thriller done as an elegant genre exercise. Johnny Hallyday was brought in by To as a last-minute sub for Alain Delon, and could have been the first choice: He is tall, weathered, grim and taciturn.

It’s deliberately over the top, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some observers say Pitt made huge miscalculations in his acting choices with the result being the worst performance of his career — but I found it to be a brazenly effective piece of work, well-suited to the material.

Gandolfini is effortlessly, quietly great.

What draws us into Private Property is how so many things happen under the surface, never commented upon.

It's an exquisite short story about a mood, and a time, and a couple of guys who are blind-sided by love.

It’s refreshing to find yourself immersed in a film that zigs and zags between genres — and occasionally zaps your senses with an electric charge of shock and awe.

A no-holds-barred comedy permitting several holds I had not dreamed of. The needle on my internal Laugh Meter went haywire, bouncing among hilarity, appreciation, shock, admiration, disgust, disbelief and appalled incredulity.

Ready or Not is a warped and audacious and absolutely ridiculous slapstick gorefest. The gross-out visual punchlines might have you doubling over with laughter. Or gagging to the point where you’ll regret ordering those nachos. Or both.

The film uses a slice-of-life approach to create a docudrama of chilling horror.

A complex, deeply knowledgeable story about a truly lost soul and her downward spiral.

What makes Jackson's film enthralling and frightening is the way it shows these two unhappy girls, creating an alternative world so safe and attractive they thought it was worth killing for.

Sidewalk Stories weaves a spell as powerful as it is entertaining.

Amidst all the fireworks and the cascading champagne and the insanely over-the-top parties, we’re reminded again and again that The Great Gatsby is about a man who spends half a decade constructing an elaborate monument to the woman of his dreams.

Ritt directs with a steady hand, and the dialog by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Flank bears listening to. It's intelligent, and has a certain grace as well.

There are some moments in The Witches of Eastwick that stretch uncomfortably for effects - the movie's climax is overdone, for example - and yet a lot of the time this movie plays like a plausible story about implausible people. The performances sell it. And the eyebrows.

This movie is knowledgeable about the city and the people who make accommodations with it.

While Southpaw will surprise almost no one who has seen a fair amount of boxing movies, Fuqua’s direction and the excellent performances keep the action humming.

The movie is wonderfully entertaining, red-blooded and rousing, and with a production design that makes it uncommonly handsome.

Even as TÁR delivers as an intellectually soaring, elaborately constructed and passionate tribute to the technical AND emotional joys of playing, conducting and appreciating beautiful music, it also becomes a knowing and timely #MeToo fable.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a sometimes daffy, occasionally baffling, surprisingly touching and even romantic adventure with one kinetic thrill after another. It earns a place of high ranking in the Marvel Universe.

McKellen is brilliant throughout, his piercing blue eyes revealing the gallantry of youth and the sadness of a life’s worth of memories slipping further away. His understated and charming approach to the role makes it all the more potent and engaging.

The film has an odd subterranean power. It doesn't strive for our sympathy or make any effort to portray Rosetta as colorful, winning or sympathetic.

Miss Hepburn is perhaps too simple and trusting, and Alan Arkin (as a sadistic killer) is not particularly convincing in an exaggerated performance. But there are some nice, juicy passages of terror, and after a slow start the plot does seduce you.

It's an astonishing film: weird, obsessed, drawing on subterranean impulses, hypnotic.

I’m not going to pretend I always knew exactly what everyone was talking about as we plunged ever deeper into the weeds of double-crossing and triple-crossing among a batch of mostly iniquitous secret agents, but it’s a zippy and darkly funny ride every step of the way. The dialogue jumps off the page, and the performances are universally brilliant.

Walter Hill's "Geronimo," a film of great beauty and considerable intelligence, covers the same ground as many other movies about Indians, but in a new way.

Avoids all sports movie cliches, even the obligatory ending where the team comes from behind.

Deadpool 2 is wicked, dark fun from start to finish, with some twisted and very funny special effects, cool production elements, terrific ensemble work — and for dessert, perhaps the best end-credits “cookie” scene ever.

What is perhaps most interesting about Wolfen is that the story remains plausible given its basic assumptions, of course. This is not sci-fi, fantasy or violent escapism. It's a provoking speculation on the terms by which we share this earth with other creatures.

Though set in a real place and occurring within a historically accurate framework, The Nightingale often feels like a journey through Hell itself. It’s that punishing. That bleak. That horrific. That haunting. It’s also a powerful, gripping, masterfully filmed tale.

A meandering documentary, frustrating when Moskowitz has Mossman in his sights and still delays bagging him while talking to other sources. But at the end, we forgive his procrastination (and remember, with Laurence Sterne and Tristam Shandy that procrastination can be an art if it is done delightfully).

Regardless of language, this film speaks volumes about the human condition. About childhood. About loss. About family. About unconditional love.

Even when it's baffling, it's never boring. I've heard of airtight plots. This one is not merely airtight, but hermetically sealed.

For those looking for non-stop action, pretty dazzling special effects and solid acting by the young protagonists, Insurgent will not disappoint.

Jeunet brings everything together -- his joyously poetic style, the lovable Tautou, a good story worth the telling -- into a film that is a series of pleasures stumbling over one another in their haste to delight us.

With a richly layered and resonant screenplay by Kata Wéber, surehanded direction from Mundruczó and a stunningly authentic performance by Vanessa Kirby (“The Crown”) sure to garner an Oscar nomination, Pieces of a Woman is a stark and unforgettable character study about love and loss, and what loss does to love, and how some tragedies are so devastating, so huge, the survivors will never be the same.

We get the sense of a live intelligence, rushing things ahead on the screen, not worrying whether we'll understand.

Now Singleton, too, dares to take a hard look at his community. His characters are a little older, and he is older, too, and less forgiving.

A movie so strange that it escapes entirely from the family genre and moves into fantasy. Like "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," it has fearsome depths and secrets.

So what we're seeing here is the emergence of a promising writer-director, an actor and a cinematographer who are all exciting, and have cared to make a film that seeks helpful truths.

This is just sheer, escapist entertainment from start to finish.

All the time Phil and Claire seem like the kind of people who don't belong in a screwball comedy. That's why it's funny. They're bewildered.

An intimate, often heartbreaking chronicle.

The whole movie is quiet, introspective, thoughtful.

You’d have to start looking into ancient Greek tragedy to top it as a showcase for pure, unadulterated hubris. That’s one of the things that makes The Armstrong Lie, which has more on its mind than the mere debunking of a tarnished hero, so worthwhile.

One of those joyous films that leaps over national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature.

We learn that the emotional roller coaster of his formative years probably contributed to the complexity of his lyrics.

At times Reitman (adapting Chad Kultgen’s 2011 novel) can be a bit preachy and scolding about the pitfalls of surrendering one’s “RL” (real life) to one’s online existence, but just about any parent or any teenager seeing this film will empathize with any number of the interconnecting plot lines.

Paul Walter Hauser, perhaps best known for his portrayal of another sad-sack wannabe in “I, Tonya,” delivers screen-commanding work as the title character.

It's a comedy, but there's more in it than that; it's a movie about the ways we pursue, possess, and consume each other as sad commodities.

Lumet is exploring the clichés, not just using them. And he has a good feel for the big-city crowd that's quickly drawn to the action.

[A] dark and wickedly funny and sometimes flat-out wiggy little number.

Battle of the Sexes stands on its own as a finely tuned period piece, a vibrant comedy, an effective character study and, yep, an inspirational sports movie.

Winslet and Ronan are magnificent together, conveying the escalation of intimate moments, from holding hands to kissing to embracing to an extended and graphic coupling that beautifully conveys the avalanche of feelings each is experiencing as they make love.

Joe Lynch’s fantastically creative, subversive and Tarantino-esque Mayhem stands alone as an entertainingly bloody and dark and twisted social satire — but it’s even more satisfying for those of us who loved Steven Yeun’s Glenn on The Walking Dead.

The movie is, indeed, perhaps the most believable that Herzog has made. For a director who gravitates toward the extremes of human behavior, this film involves extreme behavior, yes, but behavior forced by the circumstances.

The film had a curious effect on me. I was sometimes confused about events as they happened, but all the pieces are there, and the film creates an emotional whole. It's more effective when it's complete than during the unfolding experience.

The photography and sound here are very effective in establishing that a train is an enormously heavy thing, and once in motion wants to continue. We knew that. But Scott all but crushes us with the weight of the juggernaut. We are spellbound.

Beyond the Hills is an arthouse film from Romania, yet, in its slow, lurching progress toward a tragic exorcism, it is a stylistic nephew of America's "The Exorcist."

Episode III has more action per square minute, I'd guess, than any of the previous five movies, and it is spectacular. The special effects are more sophisticated than in the earlier movies, of course, but not necessarily more effective.

Tati is actually a silent comedian; his films are made with an amusing mixture of languages, but no one says anything very important and he doesn’t use subtitles because then we might read them and miss a sight gag.

Fukunaga is a dazzling stylist, and at times the shifting palettes of the cinematography and the brilliant camera moves (he’s also the DP on this film) are so impressive as to be marginally distracting.

Malek and Washington are electric together in this atmospheric, moody thriller that will keep you guessing and on the edge of the proverbial seat (or living room sofa). You won’t be able to shake this one off for a very long time.

That it works is because of the high-energy animation, some genuinely beautiful visual concepts and a story that's a little more sensuous than we expect in animation.

Despite his health problems and a career that carried as many setbacks as triumphs, Kilmer comes across as a self-deprecating, thoughtful, likable and almost jovial figure with a wicked sense of humor and a deep appreciation of artists, writers, poets, actors, thinkers.

A brave, funny, affecting film.

It exists somewhere between parody and melodrama, between the tragic and the goofy. There are moments when the movie doesn't seem to know where it's going, but for once that's a good thing because the uncertainty almost always ends with some kind of a delightful, weird surprise.

Forms a community that eventually envelops us.

The shots are beautifully composed, the editing paces the process of self-discovery, the dialogue is spare and heartfelt, the performances are deeply human -- especially by Efron.

It accomplishes an amazing thing. It explains the national debt, the foreign trade deficit, the decrease in personal savings, how the prime interest rate works, and the weakness of our leaders.

What makes Vice Versa so wonderful is the way Reinhold and Savage are able to convince us that each body is inhabited by the other character.

Another illustration of how absorbing a film can be when the plot doesn't stand between us and a character.

Mank is the kind of movie that makes you want to go back and re-watch not only “Citizen Kane” but the works of other characters featured in this story.

Antwone Fisher has a confrontation with his past, and a speech to the mother who abandoned him, and a reunion with his family, that create great, heartbreaking, joyous moments.

The spiritual angle in Serenity is just one of the many elements making this one of the most ambitious, one of the most challenging — and one of the most entertaining thrillers in recent years.

Win It All is just the latest stellar collaboration between Swanberg and Johnson.... This is their most conventional film in terms of story arc, but it still has a nifty, indie-without-trying-to-be-hipster feel.

There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts - but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in "The Freshman"? He is doing a reprise here of his most popular character, Don Vito Corleone of "The Godfather," and he does it with such wit, discipline and seriousness that it's not a ripoff and it's not a cheap shot, it's a brilliant comic masterstroke.

A first-rate, slam-bang action thriller with a lot of style and no little humor.

Although Newman is a delight, the best surprise in the movie is the performance of a new actress named Lolita Davidovich, who plays Blaze Starr. She has a comfortableness in the role that is just right.

Will this movie change anything, or this review make you want to see it? No, probably not. But when you come in tomorrow morning, someone will have emptied your wastebasket.

The bare story itself could be simplistic and silly: Cops chasing a couple of kids on a horse. But when relationships are involved, and social realities, and a certain level of magical realism, then the story grows and deepens until it really involves us. Kids will probably love this movie, but adults will get a lot more out of it.

Little by little, detail by detail, This Is Not a Film leads to a final scene of overwhelming power. I don't think it was even planned - no more than Panahi expected the little actress to take the cast off her arm. It simply happens, and then the film is over, having nothing more to say. Because, after all, it is not a film.

John Sayles and Haskell Wexler, who has photographed this movie with great beauty and precision, have ennobled the material.

This is a very “Star Wars”-y “Star Wars” movie. It’s not quite on the level of the original or “The Empire Strikes Back” (the best of ’em all, of course), but it’s on a par with last year’s “The Force Awakens” and it’s light years above “Attack of the Clones” and “The Phantom Menace.”

The gifted director Kelly Reichardt (“Old Joy,” “Wendy and Lucy,” “Meeks Cutoff”) adds to her impressive canon of minimalist, Oregon-set treasures with an immersive and deceptively simple and uniquely original frontier morality play set in the unforgiving Pacific Northwest of the 1820s.

Even with the uniformly good performances — and the standout work from Ms. Green — 300: Rise of an Empire is foremost a triumph of production design, costumes, brilliantly choreographed battle sequences and stunning CGI.

John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. is a go-for-broke action extravaganza that satirizes the genre at the same time it's exploiting it.

Some of the developments seem a bit rushed and forced, but then Shelton wraps up the story with the perfect grace note, and we find ourselves thinking about the lives of these characters beyond the closing credits and hoping they’re all going to be just fine.