This saga of romance works with an unromantic style.

It's a high-gloss version of a Hong Kong action picture, made in America but observing the exuberance of a genre where surfaces are everything.

This is not a cute fantasy in which bears ride tricycles and play house. It is about life in the wild, and it does an impressive job of seeming to show wild bears in their natural habitat.

Feels a little uncertain, as if it's moving from present to past under the demands of a screenplay rather than because it really feels that way. But the growing-up stuff is kind of wonderful.

With Cage delivering the goods in a juicy supporting role, and Hoult and Awkwafina developing a nice buddy-cop type chemistry, Renfield is an uneven but entertaining enough vampire comedy that gets as many laughs from creative slicing and dicing than it does from the dialogue.

A provocative, visceral, sometimes heartbreakingly relevant drama/thriller.

The film is darkly atmospheric, with Herrmann quietly suggesting the sadness and obsession beneath Hearst's forced avuncular chortles. Dunst is as good, in her way, as Dorothy Comingore in "Citizen Kane" in showing a woman who is more loyal and affectionate than her lover deserves.

The characters are zany, the plot coils upon itself with dizzy zeal, and the roles seem like a perfect fit for the actors -- yes, even Brad Pitt, as Chad, a gum-chewing, fuzzy-headed physical fitness instructor. I've always thought of him as a fine actor, but here he reveals a dimension that, shall I say, we haven't seen before.

Spaeny, with the aid of Coppola’s finely honed script and the first-tier makeup and wardrobe teams, does a marvelous job of capturing Priscilla’s transition from a ninth-grader who finds herself starring in her own fairy tale to a 28-year-old mother who knew her marriage was over long before it was finally over.

I am recommending a movie that I do not seem to like very much. But part of the pleasure of moviegoing is pure spectacle -- of just sitting there and looking at great stuff and knowing it looks terrific. There wasn't much Schumacher could have done with the story or the music he was handed, but in the areas over which he held sway, he has triumphed.

Much of The Souvenir: Part II is about the collaborative process of creating a movie, and how filmmakers can use their art to tell their stories — not as the stories happened, but how they wished or imagined they could have happened.

In movies with this story structure, all depends on the precise timing of the delay and the revelation, and Bounce misses. Not by a lot, but by enough.

A Time to Kill, based on the first novel by John Grisham, is a skillfully constructed morality play that pushes all the right buttons and arrives at all the right conclusions.

Eraser is more or less what you expect, two hours of mindless nonstop high-tech action, with preposterous situations, a body count in the dozens, and Arnold introducing a new trademark line of dialogue (it's supposed to be "Trust me," but I think "You're luggage" will win on points).

Through the psychedelic journeys and the blood-spattered crime scenes and the brooding atmosphere, Synchronic is at heart a good old-fashioned buddy movie about two friends who will risk all for each other.

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.

Alien: Romulus sometimes plays like little more than a greatest hits mashup of the first two films, but that’s enough to carry the day.

Essentially an extended infomercial but works as a breezy, slightly goofy, occasional touching and infectiously upbeat slice of entertainment

Andra Day looks and sounds like every inch the movie star in the performance numbers and when Billie enjoys rare moments of peace and happiness offstage — and she is equally, heartbreakingly believable as Billie’s appearance deteriorates and her soul is crushed by years of drug abuse, and a lifetime of being physically and emotionally battered by a series of men who looked at this amazing, glorious, singular star and saw little more than a cash register.

Lone Survivor is primarily about the unflinching bravery of SEALs executing their mission and looking out for one another, even as they’re coming to grips with the reality of how this thing is going to end.

A sequel that’s never subtle, rarely surprising — and as rich, syrupy, sweet and satisfying as a tray of homemade baklava.

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.

Dirty Harry is very effective at the level of a thriller. At another level, it uses the most potent star presence in American movies -- Clint Eastwood -- to lay things on the line. If there aren't mentalities like Dirty Harry's at loose in the land, then the movie is irrelevant. If there are, we should not blame the bearer of the bad news.

Spy is a foul-mouthed, often hilariously disgusting, slightly padded comedy that soars on the strengths of writer-director Paul Feig’s wonderfully idiotic script and nimble camerawork, and the bountiful comedic talents of Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne and Jason Statham.

Although it has some contrived plot devices (including the looming deadline of the city's threat to the bathhouse), it is warm and observant, and its ending is surprisingly true to the material.

Oldman and Ryder and Hopkins pant with eagerness. The movie is an exercise in feverish excess, and for that if for little else, I enjoyed it.

It’s wildly entertaining and it has a sense of humor about itself.

The film doesn't tell a story in any conventional sense. It tells of feelings. At certain moments we are not sure exactly what is being said or signified, but by the end we understand everything that happened - not in an intellectual way, but in an emotional way.