Fighting — presented with Jackson’s usual double helpings of visual splendor, emotional oomph and low-key comedy — is what Battle of the Five Armies is all about.

It would be a cliché to call In the Heights the Feel-Good Movie of the Year, but it would also be accurate. Perhaps for these times we might call it the Feeling-Better Movie of the year.

You might be tempted to think that Arthur would be a bore, because it is about a drunk who is always trying to tell you stories. You would be right if Arthur were a party and you were attending it. But Arthur is a movie. And so its drunk, unlike real drunks, is more entertaining, more witty, more human, and more poignant than you are. He embodies, in fact, all the wonderful human qualities that drunks fondly, mistakenly believe the booze brings out in them.

A big budget historical drama that carries Denmark's hopes into the Oscar season. It provides still more exposure for the rising Danish star Mads Mikkelsen, the latest male sex symbol of the art house crowd.

One view of what happened that day, a very effective one. And as an act of filmmaking, it is superb: A sense of immediate and present reality permeates every scene.

This is the kind of movie where every note is put in lovingly. It's a 1950s crime movie, but with a modern, ironic edge: The cops are just a shade over the top, just slightly in on the joke.

A tight, taut thriller with a twist.

It has the unsettled logic of a nightmare, in which nothing fits and everything seems inevitable and there are a lot of arrows in the air and they are all flying straight at you.

The movie is dark, intense and disturbing.

And the movie succeeds in two different ways: It's sweet and good-hearted, and then again it's raucous slapstick and bathroom humor. I liked both parts.

I enjoyed the film very much. It was a visceral pleasure to see a hard-boiled guy like David Carr at its center.

The two women are very beautiful, gentle and sad together, and the movie is all but stolen by Chowdhry, as the servant who lurks constantly in the background providing, with his very body language, a comic running commentary.

With all the wonderful supporting performances, the true standout is Sabrina Carpenter, an actress-singer from TV’s “Girl Meets World,” who infuses Nola with such heart and such authenticity and such resolve.

The latest and one of the most harrowing films set along the religious divides in Israel.

In many ways this feels like an update on the exploitation movies of the 1970s and '80s that played on drive-in theater screens before eventually making their way to VHS and late-night TV cult viewings. It’s Sharp Cheddar Cheese on Wry (sorry) and it’s a cool and breezy 84 minutes of fun.

I like the way Last Resort ends, how it concludes its emotional journey without pretending the underlying story is over. You walk out of the theater curiously touched.

Bride Flight takes this melodrama and adds details of period, of behavior, of personality, to somewhat redeem its rather inevitable conclusion.

Ritchie has so messy targets that he misses some and never quite gets back to others. But Smile does a good job of working over the hypocrisy and sexism of a typical beauty pageant.

Twins is not a great comedy - it's not up there with Reitman's "Ghostbusters" and DeVito is not as funny as he was in "Ruthless People" and "Wise Guys" - but it is an engaging entertainment with some big laughs and a sort of warm goofiness.

A con within a con within a con. There comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor gets pulled out again and we fall another level.

Here's a movie that lets you know from the start which strings it's going to yank, how hard it's going to yank them, and even how many times. But caught in its emotional rigging, you're unlikely to find yourself bothered by its hokey predictability or strained plotting. However coolly you fight off the film, you eventually find yourself throwing in the towel and allowing your tears to be jerked. [13 Aug 1993, p.37]

Ron Howard’s claustrophobically intense and captivating “Thirteen Lives” is one of those movies where you find yourself marveling at the daunting logistics involved in re-creating one of the most famed and complex rescue efforts in recent history—but with an excessive running time of 147 minutes, by the time the story wraps up, we’re almost too exhausted to fully appreciate what we’ve just experienced.

Even with my misgivings about some of Randi’s methods, anyone who can challenges faith healers, psychics and mediums who claim a special bond with the dead — and often wins those challenges — deserves a standing ovation. An Honest Liar is an honest portrait of just that man.

Even if you don’t know the true story behind the heartwarming and uplifting “Ordinary Angels,” I can’t think of a single plot development that will surprise you and sometimes that’s OK. Sometimes it’s enough to sit back and settle in for a Comfort Viewing Movie that reminds us that even in these dark and stressful times, there are a lot of true and decent people out there who are capable of doing miraculous things.

If there is a weakness in East Is East, it's that Om Puri's character is a little too serious for the comedy surrounding him.

[Lillard's] performance dominates the film, and he does a subtle, tricky job of being both an obnoxious punk and a kid in search of his direction in life. He's very good.

It was probably the right time to say goodbye to “Ray Donovan,” as the series had begun spinning its wheels in recent seasons, after the action moved from California to the East Coast, but with this movie, Ray gets the send-off he deserves.

Was a sequel really necessary? Probably not, but thanks to Burton’s offbeat genius and a fine cast that is game for anything and everything, it’s a welcome exercise in ghostly nostalgia.

Provides an untidy and frustrating but never boring look at his life and times.

Whether you will like Jay and Silent Bob depends on who you are. Most movies are made for everybody. Kevin Smith's movies are either made specifically for you, or specifically not made for you.

The movie is a genial comedy, but it has significant undertones. Like some of Frank Capra's pictures.

What is most valuable about Amistad is the way it provides faces and names for its African characters, whom the movies so often make into faceless victims.

What makes Mike Nichols' version more than just a retread is good casting in the key roles, and a wicked screenplay by Elaine May.

Godard works with a bright style and a sense of humor and his pictures leave a cumulative impression. (Review of Original Release)

Beast and Scorpion -- with its wicked giant arachnids that pluck human victims from a wrecked train like diners selecting shrimp from a buffet -- are fan favorites. [16 Jan 2004, p.11]

A peculiarly entertaining comedy, revisits the rapport that Favreau and Vaughn had in "Swingers" (1996), and rotates it into a deadpan crime comedy.

Falls so far outside our ordinary story expectations it may frustrate some viewers.

And Cruise is so efficiently packaged in this product that he plays the same role as a saint in a Mexican village's holy day procession: It's not what he does that makes him so special; it's the way he manifests everybody's faith in him.

The movie is funny, sassy and intelligent in that moronic Simpsons' way.

A good documentary that is good for you. The bad news is that broccoli and bananas are neither available nor affordable for many Americans. That's the message of Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush's A Place at the Table, a necessary report on the national issue of hunger.

Director Carl Hunter infuses Sometimes Always Never with creative visual touches, whether he’s using graphics to illustrate certain Scrabble words, or shooting a poignant scene through a patterned glass door, so we feel the emotions of the character in question just through the movement of his silhouette.

For its intended audience, I suspect this will play as a great entertainment. I enjoyed myself, particularly after they released the Kraken.

The movie is not quite the sitcom the setup seems to suggest; there are some character quirks that make it intriguing.

Even its depravities and imperialist Yankee misbehavior seem quaint. But as an example of lyrical black and white filmmaking, it is still stunning.

This one basically just sticks to the real story, which has all the emotional wallop that's needed.

It will, I think, entertain kids for whom stop-motion animation is the last thing they're thinking about.

Windfall left me disheartened. I thought wind energy was something I could believe in.

Documents what threatens to become an irreversible decline in aquatic populations within 40 years.

It has charm, a sly intelligence, and the courage to go for special effects sequences.

This is a sunny, admiring documentary about the British (and Los Angeles) treasure David Hockney, who remains productive at 78, is candid and entertaining in interview segments and seems utterly content and grateful for the life he’s had and the artistry he’s been gifted with.

If the movie had spent more time walking that tightrope between the acceptable and the offensive, between what we have in common and what divides us, it would have been more daring.

Bad Moms had me laughing out loud even as I was cringing, thanks to some fantastically over-the-top hijinks, crass but hilarious one-liners and terrific performances from Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn and Christina Applegate.

I liked the movie for the quirky way it pursues humor through the drifts of greed, lust, booze, betrayal and spectacularly complicated ways to die. I liked it for Charlie's (Cusack) essential kindness, as when he pauses during a getaway to help a friend who has run out of gas.

Watching the movie, I was reminded of the documentary "Crumb"...There is a line that sometimes runs between genius and madness, sometimes encircles them.

Co-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, working from a script they penned with Michael Gilio, have struck the right balance between high-stakes action, warm drama and clever comedy in a consistently engaging, mostly family-friendly romp that features some of the most spot-on casting of any film so far this year.

Of the voices, Griffith makes Margalo lovable and as sexy as a little yellow bird can be, and Lane does a virtuoso job with Snowbell, the only cat with dialogue by Damon Runyon. Fox's Stuart is stalwart and heroic--the Braveheart of mice. As for the parents, Davis and Laurie deserve some kind of award for keeping straight faces.

Until the last twenty or thirty minutes, however, First Blood is a very good movie, well-paced, and well-acted not only by Stallone (who invests an unlikely character with great authority) but also by Crenna and Brian Dennehy, as the police chief.

Tougher, less sentimental mirror version of "Save the Last Dance."

Essentially a hyperactive showcase for Tsui Hark's ability to pile one unbelievably complex action sequence on top of another.

The movie is charming and whimsical, and Binoche reigns as a serene and wise goddess.

I've seen Barcelona twice. It seemed deeper to me the second time. It appears at first to be about the casual lives of young men trying to launch their careers, but eventually (again, like an Allen movie) it reveals darker depths and meanings.

For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds.

It's all atmospheric, quirky and entertaining: the kind of neo-noir in which old-fashioned characters have updated problems.

It’s a family-friendly fun fest with the expected ingredients of fast-paced action, ingenious visuals, terrific voice performances and, yes, some heaping spoonfuls of upbeat messaging about family ties, the importance of being true to oneself and how we should all take great measures to take care of not only each other but the world in which we live, no matter how STRANGE that world might be.

Effortless in the way it insinuates itself into these families, touching in the way it shows how fiercely Romeo and Knocks are, despite everything, their own little men.

It is what it is, without apology or compromise. It made me smile a lot.

Any attempt to defend this movie on rational grounds is futile. The whole point is Jackie Chan, he does what he does better than anybody. He's having fun. If we allow ourselves to get in the right frame of mind, so are we.

If Eureka is not completely successful if, indeed, it is sometimes merely silly and often confusing, maybe that's the price we pay for Roeg's intensity. At least it is never boring.

The movie unreels his musical biography with an unending series of tastes of songs and performances. You may be surprised by how many you recognize.

The movie, written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, has the directness and clarity of a documentary, but allows itself touches of tenderness and grief.

Still, this is an involving and inspirational tale, highlighted by a Christopher Walken performance that is remarkably free of any showy tics or mannerisms and is a reminder Walken is a great actor first, a lovable caricature second.

This is a relatively gentle indictment of the cynical, money-driven political system, bolstered by winning performances from the ensemble cast. The insightful screenplay by Stewart takes Hollywood’s tendency to condescend to small-town America and turns it upside down in clever fashion.

May be pitching itself to the wrong audience. The ads promise: "The Rhythm ... the Beat ... the Love ... and You Don't Stop!" But it's not a musical and although it's sometimes a comedy, it's observant about its people.

Marling has crafted a nicely taut, suspenseful cinematic journey into the world of corporate espionage.

I did not really enjoy this movie, and yet I recommend it. Why? Because I think it's on to something interesting. Here is a movie about a woman who never stops thinking. That may not be as good for you as it is for her.

The kind of movie that leaves you with fundamental objections. But that's after it's over. While it's playing, it's surprisingly good.

The most important sequence in Late Marriage is a refreshingly frank sex scene involving Zaza and Judith. -- Watching this scene, we realize that most sex scenes in the movies play like auditions.

In Death Wish we get just about the definitive Bronson; rarely has a leading role contained fewer words or more violence.

Tom Cruise is perfectly satisfactory, if not electrifying, in the leading role.

In the funny and insightful and loosely structured comedy/drama 2 Minutes of Fame, Pharoah plays an aspiring stand-up comic not unlike the young Jay Pharoah, which presents the opportunity for him to trot out some of his Greatest Hits impersonations — but he also proves to be a more than capable actor.

Conventional as it may be, Shall We Dance? offers genuine delights. The fact that Paulina is uninterested in romance with John comes as sort of a relief, freeing the story to be about something other than the inexorable collision of their genitals.

For about an hour, The Lobster is pure absurdist greatness, brimming with pitch-black shock humor and big, wild ideas. The second half of the film isn’t nearly as imaginative and startling, but I walked out of the screening with the surefire knowledge I wouldn’t soon shake off its most inspired sequences.

The first hour of Neighbors is probably more fun than the second, if only because the plot developments come as a series of surprises. After a while, the bizarre logic of the movie becomes more predictable. But Neighbors is a truly interesting comedy, an offbeat experiment in hallucinatory black humor. It grows on you.

It's a good movie, and Channing and Stiles are the right choices for these roles. They zero in on each other like heat-seeking missiles.

The movie is well and fearlessly acted, and the writer-director (Fatih Akin) is determined to follow her story to a logical and believable conclusion, rather than letting everyone off the hook with a conventional ending.

Violet & Daisy won’t be everyone’s cup of tea... But view this as a modern comic book/fairy tale, and it’s easier to accept this saga of girls with guns and the life lessons they eventually confront.

Fear of a Black Hat, which treats rap with the same droll dubiousness that This is Spinal Tap provided for heavy metal, is not as fearless and sharp-edged as it could be - but it provides a lot of laughs, and barbecues a few sacred cows.

I wouldn't have thought that even in animation a 1951 Hudson Hornet could look simultaneously like itself and like Paul Newman, but you will witness that feat, and others, in Cars.

We’re the Millers is just good enough to keep you entertained, but not good enough to keep your mind from wandering from time to time. This is an aggressively funny comedy that takes a lot of chances, and connects just often enough.

Killing Gunther is filled with explosive action. As a director, Killam displays a veteran’s knack for shooting the shootouts and fisticuffs, nearly all of it carried out in slapstick, nearly “Three Stooges”-level comedic fashion.

I like Bob Roberts - I like its audacity, its freedom to say the obvious things about how our political process has been debased - but if it had been only about campaign tactics and techniques, I would have liked it more.

Everything we witness in this film is literally seen through the point of view of a spectral presence, but it’s the machinations of a deeply dysfunctional nuclear family that makes it all so intriguing.

The movie does not propose to be a comedy, a musical, a film noir story or a medical account. It proposes to be a subjective view of suffering, and the ways this character tries to cope with it. Understand that, and the pieces fall into place.

This is a film that provides more questions than answers but leaves plenty of food for thought.

Did I enjoy Ong-Bak? As brainless but skillful action choreography, yes. And I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd known going in that the stunts were being performed in the old-fashioned, pre-computer way.

The race is more like a private poker game held upstairs in somebody's suite during the World Series of Poker.

The news about this movie is that it makes it clear that both Timberlake and Kunis are the real thing when it comes to light comedy.