Robert Redford has shown that he has a real feeling for the West--he's not a movie tourist--and there is a magnificence in his treatment here that dignifies what is essentially a soap opera.

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part doesn’t quite match the original’s spark and creativity, but it’s a worthy chapter in the ever-expanding Lego movie universe.

Brosnan redefines "hit man" in the best performance of his career, and Kinnear plays with, and against, his image as a regular kinda guy.

Maudie is one of the most beautiful and life-affirming and uplifting movies of the year, capable of moving us to tears of appreciation for getting to know the title subject.

Here’s the thing about bad bosses: they rarely realize they are bad bosses. Even if they’re manipulative, inflexible, uncaring, incompetent, out of touch and generally terrible at virtually every facet of the position, they think they’re doing a fantastic job. So it goes with Javier Bardem’s charming, hands-on, seemingly caring Blanco in writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa’s wickedly warped comedy/drama The Good Boss.

I would rather see one movie like this than a thousand "Bring It Ons."

A sly little comic treasure.

The movie resembles a chess game; the board and all of the pieces are in full view, both sides know the rules, and the winner will simply be the better strategist.

A well-made, rough-edged and solid frontier fable with a distinctive look and fine performances all around.

The movie is like a merger of his ugly drunk in "Bad Santa" and his football coach in "Friday Night Lights," yet Thornton doesn't recycle from either movie; he modulates the manic anger of the Santa and the intensity of the coach and produces a morose loser who we like better than he likes himself.

Director Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump are clearly playing much of as pitch-black satire, but High-Rise keeps hammering home the same points, and not even the wealth of strong performances from Hiddleston, Miller and Irons are enough to salvage the day.

The elaborate special effects also seem a little out of place in a Sherlock Holmes movie, although I'm willing to forgive them because they were fun.

The four main players are all excellent, with Amber Midthunder delivering particularly outstanding work that shows she is a young actor capable of great things.

What's best about the movie is that it considers interesting adults--young and old--in an intelligent manner. After it's over we almost feel relief; there are so many movies about clods reacting moronically to romantic and/or violent situations. But we hardly ever get movies about people who seem engaging enough to spend half an hour talking with (what would you say to Charles Bronson?). Here's one that works.

The movie gives people a piece of the AIDS nightmare - a view of HIV-infected men struggling to retain romance - but the piece is sharp and brittle, with little humor truly working. And despite the somewhat serene ending, it is really shot through more with the characters' rage than anything. [14 Aug 1992, p.42]

I'm glad I saw the film. It challenged me.

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

The movie therefore offers meager pleasures of character. Where it excels is in staging and cinematography. The running sequences, in races, on city streets and through forests, are very well-handled.

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.

Alan Rudolph’s Mortal Thoughts is a movie just like the true crime stories I enjoy the most.

The film is a visual pleasure, using elegant techniques that don't call flashy attention to themselves. The camera is intended to be as omniscient as the narrator, and can occupy the film's space as it pleases and move as it desires. Here is a young man's film made with a lifetime of experience.

Twisters is hokey and dumb, but spectacular fun.

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.

If the film has a flaw, and I'm afraid it does, it's the Sondre Lerche songs on the soundtrack. They are too foregrounded and literal, either commenting on the action or expounding on associated topics. In such a laid-back movie, they're in our face.

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.

Cadillac Records is an account of the Chess story that depends more on music than history, which is perhaps as it should be. The film is a fascinating record of the evolution of a black musical style, and the tangled motives of the white men who had an instinct for it.

A long, flat, curiously muted film about the heavyweight champion. It lacks much of the flash, fire and humor of Muhammad Ali and is shot more in the tone of a eulogy than a celebration. There is little joy here.

Twelve and Holding could have been a series of horror stories, but the filmmakers and their gifted young actors somehow negotiate the horrors and generate a deep sympathy.