Movies exist to cloak our desires in disguises we can accept, and there is an undeniable appeal to Thirst.

Adult Beginners has a casual, comfortable, low-budget authenticity, though it loses some of its edge near the end with some overly predictable and familiar resolutions.

Williams has extraordinary success in channeling this other person.

There are times the family-friendly slapstick comedy and heavy messaging about the heartbreak of animals in tight, dark, cold captivity don’t exactly mesh. But the visuals are truly impressive and the story has an uplifting arc, and oh do these actors have fun hamming it up.

This isn't a coming-of-age movie so much as a movie about being of an age.

Overall it’s a lovely and refreshingly breezy adventure with an adorably plucky lead, an infectious soundtrack and arresting visuals.

The movie is ingenious in the way it surrounds its essentially crass subject matter with a camouflage of romantic scenery.

The movie is both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwangler simply because his interrogator is so vile.

Dog Eat Dog occasionally positions itself as social commentary, but it’s mainly a bloody, trippy, bare-fanged pulp thriller featuring terrifically entertaining performances from old dogs Cage and Dafoe.

This isn’t a heartfelt amateur night, but a film by an artist whose art has become his life.

If there is anything lacking in the movie, it may be a certain gusto. The director, Stephen Frears, is so happy to make this a tragicomedy of manners that he sometimes turns away from obvious payoffs.

This conclusion is too pat to be satisfying, but the film has a kind of hard, cold effect.

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.

Charlize Theron is one of the few actresses equal to the role, bringing to it beauty, steel-edged repose, and mystery.

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

More evolved, more confident, more sure-footed in the way it marries minimal character development to seamless action.

Kudos to writer-director Frizzell for demonstrating a sharp ear for comedic dialogue, a fine sense of storytelling as a director — and for incorporating Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” as well as Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” into the soundtrack.

It is not a children's film and it is not an exploitation film; it is a disturbing and stylish attempt to collect some of the nightmares that lie beneath the surface of Little Red Riding Hood.

What's best about the movie is the sense of madness and mania running just beneath its surface.

Middle of Nowhere isn't a highly charged drama, as you might have gathered. Most of the action takes place within the mind of a lonely woman. That's why Corinealdi is so effective in the lead.

Hartnett shows here a breezy command of his charming, likable character. It is a reminder of his talent and versatility.

Whatever else it may be, Frank Zappa’s “200 Motels” is a joyous, fanatic, slightly weird experiment in the uses of the color videotape process. If there is more that can be done with videotape, I do not want to be there when they do it.

Sayles handles this material with gentle delicacy, as if aware that the issues are too fraught to be approached with simple messages.

This is more of a do-over — a mulligan — than a reboot, with writer-director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) delivering a darkly funny, blood-spattered, cheerfully gross, violent and bat-bleep crazy mashup of wisecracking humor, elaborate and CGI-infused action sequences and even a rom-com interlude that ends with one of the participants quite dead while the other expresses regrets but there was no other way, this being a Suicide Squad movie and all.

The movie is not a comedy classic. But in a genre where so many movies struggle to lift themselves from zero to one, it's about, oh, a six point five.

A surprisingly effective film.

What could have been a great B-movie winds up being merely solid.

Michael doesn't set up big drama or punch up big moments. It ambles.

Nothing at all is surprising about Next Generation except how enjoyable it is. It won't become a classic, but is quite a hoot, like the cockamamie Motel Hell, as funny as it is frightening. [29 Aug 1997, p.32]

This is a good, solid, well-executed crime story. Nothing more, nothing less.

The Edge is like a wilderness adventure movie written by David Mamet, which is not surprising, since it was written by Mamet. It's subtly funny in the way it toys with the cliches of the genre.

Here is an entire movie about looking cool while not wiping out. Call it a metaphor for life.

Going All the Way is a deeper, cleverer film than it first seems.

A comedy, but a peculiar one. Peculiar, because it never quite addresses the self-deception which causes Christiane to support the communist regime in the first place.

Pleasant, harmless PG-13 entertainment, with a plot a little more surprising and acting a little better than I expected.

A brave film in the way it shows two people who find any relationship almost impossible, and yet find a way to make theirs work. The problems with the film come because it overstays its welcome.

Boxcar Bertha is a weirdly interesting movie and not really the sleazy exploitation film the ads promise.

If you require that you "like" a movie, then Rick is not for you, because there is nothing likable about it. It's rotten to the core and right down to the end. But if you find that such extremes can be fascinating, then the movie may cheer you, not because it is happy, but because it goes for broke.

The point is not really what is said, but the tone of voice, the word choices, the conversational strategies, the sense of life going on all the time, everywhere, all over town.

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.

Just babies. Wonderful.

The movie doesn't crank up the volume with violence and jailhouse cliches, but focuses on this person and his possibilities for change.

Will no doubt be a hit and inspire the obligatory sequels.

Crush is an Aga romance crossed with modern retro-feminist soft porn, in which liberated women discuss lust as if it were a topic and not a fact.

There is a kind of music to their conversations, now a lullaby, now a march, now a requiem, now hip-hop, and they play with one another like members of an orchestra. The movie's so good to listen to, it would even work as an audio book.

As the Gardner family descends into madness, with the purple-pink light seemingly taking possession of the house and the grounds, director Stanley and his creative team come up with original and in some cases quite effectively nauseating touches.

BAT*21 was shot on location in Malaysia, however, and it looks authentic and gets us involved through the energy of its performances.

A certain genre of thriller depends more upon style and tone than upon plot; it doesn't matter if you believe it walking out, as long as you were intrigued while it was happening.

Though this direct prequel can’t match the sheer creative audacity and heavy metal awesomeness of “Fury Road” — which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won six and is widely considered to be one of the all-time great action movies — it’s still a rousing and thunderous and fiery dystopian thrill ride that only occasionally pauses to take a breather over a 2 hour and 28 minute run time.

The movie was directed by Perkins, in his filmmaking debut. I was surprised by what a good job he does. Any movie named Psycho III is going to be compared to the Hitchcock original, but Perkins isn't an imitator. He has his own agenda.

Murder on the Orient Express is a splendidly entertaining movie of the sort that isn’t made anymore: It’s a classical whodunit, with all the clues planted and all of them visible, and it’s peopled with a large and expensive collection of stars.

The investigation itself must remain undescribed here. But its ending is a neat and ironic exercise in poetic justice.

Not as awe-inspiring as the first film or as elaborate as the second, but in its own B-movie way, it's a nice little thrill machine.

The movie resembles Mad magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" series, elevated to labyrinthine levels of complexity.

Under the cover of slapstick, cheap laughs, raunchy humor, gross-out physical comedy and sheer exploitation, Get Him to the Greek also is fundamentally a sound movie.

Although I liked the first "MiB" movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. But I had fun. It has an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters, audacious cliff-hanging, and you know what? A closing scene that adds a new and sort of touching dimension to the characters of J and K.

If Wayne and Garth ever grow confident of their success, the series will be over. Everything depends on the delighted disbelief with which they greet every new victory.

Holland does fine work as the novice, but it’s Bernthal who owns the screen as The Mute, who will protect the relic and his brothers at all costs. It’s fiercely effective work.

There comes a time in some movies when sheer spectacle overwhelms any consideration of plot, and Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction is a movie like that. It has a plot so unlikely and confused that we can't believe it for much more than 15 seconds at a time, but its action sequences are so absorbing and its mountaintop photography so compelling that we don't care.

Most audiences will find it baffling and unsatisfactory. Those who are open to its flywheel peculiarities may find it bold, funny, peculiar and delightful.

The mother-daughter dynamic in Four Good Days is powerful and lasting and devastating and maybe the thing that will help Molly save her life.

Smart, sly and subtle, Georgetown is in the tradition of Reversal of Fortune, The Informant! and Catch Me If You Can — fictionalized and stylized entertainment based on true crime events.

A lightweight rom-com elevated by its performances. It is a reminder that the funniest people are often not comedians, but actors playing straight in funny roles.

Wicked and cheeky.

About 40 percent of Neighbors falls flat. About 60 percent made me laugh hard, even when I knew I should have known better.

The performances are spot on, and I especially like the spunky Gyllenhaal, who with this film and the underrated "Secretary" (2002), has built up a nice sideline in sexual exploration.

Stylish, intriguing, and very violent.

For all the beautiful and lovely music Whitney Houston gave us, for all those soaring notes she hit, the documentary Whitney. Can I Be Me is a nearly joyless and melancholy piece of work. Because we know how it ends.

Breakdown is a fine thriller, and its ending is unworthy of it.

This is a movie of substance and thrilling historical sweep, and its three hours allow Szabo to show the family's destiny forming and shifting under pressure.

The film is a consistently funny gem with moments of inspired lunacy.

Surprisingly sweet and gentle comedy.

Writer-director John Swab is clearly influenced by films such as the The Big Short and his grasp sometimes exceeds his reach as he indulges in a few too many stylized touches and meandering subplots, but Body Brokers keeps us in its grips throughout.

A series of well-drawn sketches and powerful scenes, in search of an organizing principle.

It’s a Hollywood story of a spectacular rise to the top that was quite apparently a real-life horror story all along.

One of the qualities I like about this film is that the writer-directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, are aware of the time when Beat scene was new.

To the degree that I was able to put aside my questions, forget logic, disregard continuity problems and immerse myself in the moment, The Matrix Revolutions is a terrific action achievement. Andy and Larry Wachowski have concluded their trilogy with all barrels blazing.

I liked the smaller-scale scenes the best, the ones where Hines and Crystal were doing their stuff.

All of these criticisms exist entirely apart from the performances of Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. It is a tribute to them, and to the core of honesty in the screenplay, that Ratso and Joe Buck emerge so unforgettably drawn. But the movie itself doesn't hold up.

The result is a comprehensive doc-biopic that works as an introduction to Del Close for those who might not know the name — but the comedy nerds who revere Close will certainly be geeking out over this deep dive into the man’s life and times.

While the plot is a bit shaky in parts, the overall effect of creating needed tension and some outright, out-of-your-seat jumps of fright is quite effective.

Sometimes the choices a film eschews are as valuable as the choices the film makes. In the case of Causeway, the result is a thoughtful and realistic slice of life that is set in present times but has the distinct vibe of indie films from a generation or two ago.

A documentary about a town of 33,000 so consumed by football it makes South Bend and Green Bay look distracted.

The Boston Strangler requires a judgment not only on the quality of the film (very good), but also on its moral and ethical implications.

I'm not sure I feel more at ease after seeing this prize-winning film about a child protection unit in Paris. No doubt a lot of children get protected, but the professional standards of the police sometimes seem inspired by TV cop shows, on which the plots center around the camaraderie of the cops.

There will be holiday pictures that are more high-tech than this one, more sensational, with bigger stars and higher budgets and indeed greater artistry. But there may not be many with such good cheer.

The script by Stallone and Juel Taylor is solid, adhering to the time-honored “Rocky” formula of relatively intimate character scenes, training montages and of course a couple of big fights.

The Book of Life is a delight. In an animated universe cluttered with kung-fu pandas, ice princesses and video-game heroes, Gutierrez and del Toro have conjured up an original vision.

[It's] like Tarantino crossed with the Marx Brothers, if Groucho had been into chopping off fingers...Fun, in a slapdash way; it has an exuberance, and in a time when movies follow formulas like zombies, it's alive.

The film is well-acted, with restraint, by Hoss and Sidikhin. The writer and director, Max Faerberboeck, employs a level gaze and avoids for the most part artificial sentimentality. The physical production is convincing.

It’s a great American story of a great American life, and “The Blues Chase the Blues Away” does that story justice.

Familiar family dynamics are amusingly exaggerated in the Paleolithic setting, where the most basic necessities require everyone's full-time attention.

Because the film marches so inexorably toward its conclusion, it would be unfair to hint at what happens, except to say that it provides a heartbreaking insight into the way that fear creates cowards.

If you think Kevin Hart is funny — as I do — you’ll laugh frequently, as I did. If you don’t, you’re not going to this movie in the first place, are you?

I’ve seen versions of the plot of “Necessary Roughness” in almost every other movie ever made about an underdog sports team - but I fell for it again this time, because it was well done, and because the movie doesn’t try to pump itself up into more than it is, a good-humored entertainment.

This film has few tangible pleasures, such as some somber shots of Demester walking far away in a field. Its achievement is theoretical. It wants to depict lives that are without curiosity, introspection and hope.

Ultimately, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 serves as solid if unspectacular first lap around the track of a two-lap race.

A gentle story that involves a great deal of violence, but mostly the violence is muted and dreamy, like a confrontation with a fearsome scarecrow that looks horrifying but is obviously not real --- or real enough, but not alive.