Cuts back and forth between a tragic story involving the Holocaust and an essentially trivial, feel-good story about a modern-day reporter. It's an awkward fit and diminishes the impact of the earlier story.

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.

For all its stylistic flourishes, “The Silent Twins” winds up a relatively superficial entry in the genre of mental health biopics.

“Between Two Ferns” is filled with hilarious alternate-universe moments.

The movie isn't as funny or entertaining as "Evil Dead II," however, maybe because the comic approach seems recycled.

The movie's interest is not in the plot, which is episodic and "colorful," but in the performances.

The movie is not plot-driven, for which we must be thankful, because to force their feelings into a plot would be a form of cruelty. The whole point is that these lives have no plot.

There is undoubtedly a movie to be made about this material -- a different movie.

Directed with grace and grounded style and a keen eye for outdoor visuals by Anders Lindwall, and filmed in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin, this is a warm and authentic slice of farm life, with magnificent work by the 80-year-old Craig T. Nelson, who looks every inch the world-weary Wisconsin farmer.

Unlike so many sequels, this fun-filled 3D adventure is sure to entertain younger kids but also charm the adults who will be accompanying them to the multiplexes.

Funny and moving, and more entertaining than some of the movies you are considering this weekend.

Godzilla vs. Kong is the kind of movie you can pretty much forget about almost instantly after you’ve seen it — but it’s also the kind of movie that makes you forget about everything else in your life while you’re watching it.

For the first half of this movie, I was able to suspend judgment. Interesting things were happening, the performances were good and it is always absorbing to see how other people live. Most of the second half of the movie, alas, is taken up with routine cloak-and-dagger stuff.

An absorbing experience.

This buddy/road film builds tension with its missing person quest in a border-crossing underworld.

In the hands of director and Stevenson High School grad Gene Stupnitsky (“Good Boys”), who co-wrote the screenplay with John Phillips, this is a hit-and-miss romp with just enough wit and heart to carry the day over the utterly predictable plot and the occasional bit of physical comedy that misses the mark.

Some of the callbacks to “The Shining” are chillingly effective; others felt gratuitous and missed the mark. Still. A tip of the REDRUM to Doctor Sleep and to Ewan McGregor’s memorable performance for giving us the opportunity to catch up with Danny Torrance in a most satisfying manner.

The characters are allowed to be smart, to react in unexpected ways, and to be more concerned with doing the right thing than with doing the expedient or even the lustful thing.

Steven Spielberg, a gifted filmmaker, should have reimagined the material, should have seen it through the eyes of someone looking at dinosaurs, rather than through the eyes of someone looking at a box-office sequel.

One of those rare movies where you leave the theater having been surprised and entertained, and then start arguing.

Yet Love! Valour! Compassion! has power and insight, and perhaps what makes it strong is its disinterest in technical experiments: It is about characters and dialogue, expressed through good acting--the very definition of the "well-made play."

When politics do not create walls (as apartheid did), most people are primarily interested in their families, their romances, and their jobs. They hope to improve all three. The movie is about their hope.

Intelligent and subtle.

As a period biopic, J. Edgar is masterful. Few films span seven decades this comfortably.

Walter Hill's Streets of Fire begins by telling us it's a rock & roll fable ... from another time, another place. The movie is right on the rock & roll, but the alternative time and place are mysteriously convincing -- especially if, like me, you believe the most beautiful post-war American cars were Studebakers.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman” is a whip-smart, consistently funny and good-natured film with some terrific voice performances and one of the most hilarious appearances ever by an animated version of a living human being.

The best parts of this sweet film involve the middle stretches, when time, however limited, reaches ahead, and the characters do what they can to prevail in the face of calamity. How can I complain that they don't entirely succeed? Isn't the dilemma of the plot the essential dilemma of life?

Whatever its deficiencies, there's no downplaying the emotions of parting with Ripley. So much attention is paid to the special effects in movies like these, Weaver's accomplishment in developing, deepening and richly glorifying her character stands to be underestimated. [22 May 1992, p.51]

Sometimes The Railway Man is hard to watch. It’s also hard to imagine anyone watching it and not being deeply moved.

The film looks great, the songs are wonderfully visualized, and the characters are appealing.

The result is a movie character who seems half real, half animated.

What they've done here is to recapture not only the look and the storylines of old horror comics, but also the peculiar feeling of poetic justice that permeated their pages. In an EC horror story, unspeakable things happened to people - but, for the most part, they deserved them.

Thanks to the sure-handed, fast-paced work and creative framing by director Michael Showalter (an alum of “The State” who helmed the Nanjiani-starring “The Big Sick”); a clever screenplay by Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall, and the impeccable comedic timing of Nanjiani and Rae, The Lovebirds is one of the funniest movies of 2020.

Richard Dreyfuss, who is sometimes too exuberant, here finds the right tones for Mr. Holland, from youthful cocksureness to the gentle insight of age. His physical transformations over 30 years are always convincing.

On the Basis of Sex is almost always solid. But “solid” is about as high as it goes.

Even though it feels as if we’ve seen this movie before, Run All Night is a stylish and kinetic thriller, with Neeson at his gritty, world-weary best, some of the coolest camera moves in recent memory and a Hall of Fame villain in the great Ed Harris.

Finian's Rainbow is the best of the recent roadshow musicals, perhaps because it's the first to cope successfully with the longer roadshow form.

This is an atmospheric, intense film, well acted, and when it's working it has a real urgency.

The movie is nice to look at, the colors and details are elegant, the animals engaging, the action fast-moving, but I don't think older viewers will like it as much as the kids.

Mantegna gives us just enough detail, enough exterior shots, so that we feel we're on a ship. All the rest is conversation and idleness. The lake boat is a lot like life.

American teenage movies tidy things up by pairing off the right couples at the end. In Europe they know that summers end and life goes on.

The work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air.

There is an underlying likability to Austin Powers that sort of carries us through the movie.

I admired Intacto more than I liked it, for its ingenious construction and the way it keeps a certain chilly distance between its story and the dangers of popular entertainment.

From start to finish, this film seems strangely out of touch, never more so than when it tries to come across as enlightened.

For the bulk of the ride, it’s a wickedly funny interpretation of the one of the great confounding moments in American pop culture and political history.

A featherweight comedy balanced between silliness and charm.

Cars 3 is a lovely, clever and entertaining generational tale with tons of heart, a simple and effective storyline, wonderful candy-colored visuals and winning voice work from the talented cast of returning regulars and welcome newcomers.

Levy now takes his quadruple-threat skill set to feature-length film by directing, writing, producing and starring in the warm and lovely albeit formulaic weeper “Good Grief,” which is not the story of the adult Charlie Brown (rats!) but the tale of a man who turns to his best friends for solace in his time of great need.

Not many movies know that truth. Moonlight Mile is based on it.

This is a very silly film, but one that will keep you laughing — or at least loudly chuckling — from start to finish.

A return to form for Stone's dark side, Savages generates ruthless energy and some, but not too much, humor.

Roll Bounce, a nostalgic memory of disco roller-dancing in the late 1970s, has warm starring performances from Bow Wow and Chi McBride, who are funny, lovable and sometimes touching.

You might well be tired of pandemic-inspired movies and series and I’m leaning in that direction myself, but I’m still recommending the blistering and razor-sharp two-hander Together largely on the strength of the searing and unfiltered and stunningly good performances by Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy.

The Lie is dark enough, but it has affection for its characters and doesn't destroy them. It paints them in three fallible human dimensions, and the actors are warm and plausible.

I enjoyed a lot of A Star Is Born. I thought Miss Streisand was distractingly miscast in the role, and yet I forgave her everything when she sang.

The bottom line on a film like this is, Tom Cruise looks cool and holds our attention while doing neat things that we don't quite understand--doing them so quickly and with so much style that we put our questions on hold, and go with the flow.

For all of its huge budget, Independence Day is a timid movie when it comes to imagination. The aliens, when we finally see them, are a serious disappointment.

It fails to make us care, even a little, about the characters and what happens to them. There is nothing at stake.

As we switched relentlessly back and forth between A and B, I found that I wasn't looking forward to either story.

My only complaint is that its plot flatlines compared to the 1979 version, which was trickier, wittier and smarter. Romero was not above finding parallels between zombies and mall shoppers.

This documentary by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi could have used more music for my taste, and fewer talking heads. But it’s absorbing all the same.

Surviving Progress is a bright, entertaining (!), coherent argument in favor of these principles I have simplified so briefly. It's self-evident and tells the truth.

The story is simple and obvious, but it's told with a lot of energy, and the cast is jammed, with character actors doing their things.

A clumsy, off-putting, uninvolving hybrid of domestic tragedy and sci-fi drama with zero payoffs and one of the most infuriating codas of any movie this century.

The Forgiven holds us in its grips until the very last frame.

The movie is not terrifically good, but the premise is intriguing.

Jurassic World is pure, dumb, wall-to-wall fun. When they hand you your 3-D glasses, you can check your brain at the door and pick it up on your way out.

This is an uncommonly involving thriller. I could call it a film noir, except that the sun never sets in the film. That makes a perfect contrast with the only other feature filmed in Barrow, the vampire movie "30 Days of Night" (2007), in which it never rises.

Take out the gangsters, pump up the Shogun role, give Taimak and Vanity a little more screen time, and you'd have a great entertainment instead of simply a great near-miss.

A lot of actors can hold big machineguns and stand convincingly in front of special effects and explosions. Not many can stand in front of a camera and be nine months pregnant, and actually make us care.

The movie moves confidently when it focuses on Collins and his best friend and co-strategist Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn). But it falters with the unnecessary character of Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts), who is in love with both men, and they with her.

LaBute has that rarest of attributes, a distinctive voice. You know one of his scenes at once. His dialogue is the dialogue overheard in trendy mid-scale restaurants, with the words peeled back to suggest the venom beneath.

I have problems with Naqoyqatsi as a film, but as a music video it's rather remarkable.

Did I like the film? Yeah, kinda, but not enough to recommend. The first film arrived with freshness and an unexpected zing, but this one seems too content to follow in its footsteps.

The plot is simple-minded and disappointing, and the chase and action scenes are pretty much routine for movies in the sci-fi CGI genre. The robots never seem to have the heft and weight of actual metallic machines, and make boring villains.

It's an entertaining story about ambition, romance and predatory trading practices, but it seems more fascinated than angry.

Occasionally creative but mostly distasteful and thuddingly unfunny, this is the kind of story that asks us to take wild leaps of faith at every turn—and then buy into a redemption story arc that is neither plausible nor earned.

The film is one of those interlocking dramas where all of the characters are involved in each other's lives, if only they knew it. We know, and one of our pleasures is waiting for the pennies to drop.

For 20 years the news has reported from time to time of crimes alleged by employees of paid defense contractors. These cases rarely seem to result in change, and the stories continue. We can only guess what may be going unreported. The Whistleblower offers chilling evidence of why that seems to be so.

The movie has the potential to be a truly great story about communication between alien species; it could have been a space thriller with a mind and a heart. Instead, it gives us an alien that is too human, too familiar. It takes that amazing planet and gives it food, water, gravity and atmosphere that are suitable for both humans and Dracs. It depends on plot gimmicks like the convenient arrival of enemies and the equally convenient arrival of friends to the rescue. It doesn't dare enough.

Despite everything I have said, I found Memphis Belle entertaining, almost in spite of my objections. That's because it exploits so fully the universal human tendency to identify with a group of people who are up in an airplane and may not be able to get down again.

The movie isn't set up to tell a story about a boy who was young in the summer of 1942; it insists on presenting itself, instead, as an adult memory of that long-ago summer. We don't learn very much about the boy because the movie's adult point of view refuses to come to terms with him.

Director Sheridan and his co-writers Charles Leavitt and Michael Koryta (whose novel is the source material) have fashioned a thoroughly engrossing tale filled with memorable characters, dryly funny dialogue and show-stopping, often brutal confrontations in which the weapon of choice varies from semi-automatic firearms to a deer rifle to a fire extinguisher to handguns to an axe to bare fists, depending on the circumstances.

Almost nothing that takes place in the last 20 minutes of this movie could ever transpire in anything resembling the known universe. By then, you’ll have long since either checked out or decided to strap on the popcorn bag, put reality on hold and just go with it.

Is The Lover any good as a serious film? Not really...I wanted to know more. I believe true eroticism resides in the mind; what happens between bodies is more or less the same, but what it means to the occupants of those bodies is another question.

Inexplicably, there are people who still haven't had enough of these movies. The first was a nifty novelty. Now the appeal has worn threadbare.

Confounds all convention and denies all expected pleasures, providing instead the delight of watching Herzog feed the police hostage formula into the Mixmaster of his imagination.

At times the film overdoes it with the clown metaphors (including the use of songs such as “Everybody Plays the Fool” and “Send in the Clowns”), and I had major misgivings about one particular subplot, but with Phoenix appearing in virtually every minute of this movie and dominating the screen with his memorably creepy turn, Joker will cling to you like the aftermath of an unfortunately realistic nightmare.

Clash of the Titans is a grand and glorious romantic adventure, filled with grave heroes, beautiful heroines, fearsome monsters, and awe-inspiring duels to the death. It is a lot of fun.

The third act departs from Chekhov and is original with Miller; it not only makes a nicely ironic point, but, because he takes his time with it, allows for a meditation on the distance between art and life.

While the outcome is pretty predictable and borderline formulaic, this is a well-paced romantic comedy that works due to its engaging cast — with special kudos going out to Radcliffe and Kazan, but also Driver, who delivers perfectly as the fast-talking, libido-driven hunkster.

Material like this is only as good as the acting and writing. The Ref is skillful in both areas. Dennis Leary, who has a tendency, like many standup comics, to start shouting and try to make points with overkill, here creates an entertaining character.

We see different movies for different reasons, and Diamonds Are Forever is great at doing the things we see a James Bond movie for.

A well-made use of familiar materials.

The acting is actually pretty solid. These characters are never in the same room, so the performances amount to a collection of solo scenes. But these kids aren’t likable. Perhaps director Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves intended to create a Social Media “Scream” and a commentary on cyber-bullying, but Unfriended comes across as disdainful of millennials.

This is a film brimming with essential truth about the events at hand, and it delivers an impactful but also entertainingly resonant message. It’s also a crackling good, emotionally satisfying, old-fashioned thriller, with readily identifiable heroes and hiss-worthy villains.

The Gauntlet is classic Clint Eastwood: fast, furious, and funny. It tells a cheerfully preposterous story with great energy and a lot of style, and nobody seems more at home in this sort of action movie than Eastwood.