From the opening graphic with its classic 1950s noir static shot, the sometimes appropriately overwrought music from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans and impeccable production design, “Windfall” quickly settles in as a sometimes tense, often comically absurd and always engrossing game of verbal chess, as the Intruder realizes he has been captured by a security camera and ups his game, demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Husband so he can disappear and start a new life.

Damon is in prime everyman mode as Paul, a good guy with a good heart who wouldn’t mind catching a break, a big break, just once. Waltz has a blast playing the party king Dusan, who has some wise observations about the ways of this new world. And Hong Chau is brilliant as the fiery and funny and fantastically blunt Ngoc Lan.

Sophisticated in its look and feel on the one hand (the warm hues and tones evoke a warmth that defies the wintry cold), it’s almost too retro for its own good on the other.

The movie isn't in the same league as Disney's big four, and it doesn't have the same crossover appeal to adults, but as family entertainment it's bright and cheerful, and it has its moments.

Gena Rowlands plays the role at perfect pitch: She is able to suggest, even in the midst of seemingly ordinary moments, the controlled panic of a person who needs a drink, right here, right now.

Taking Woodstock has the freshness of something being created, not remembered.

At the very least a superior action film, in which the action sequences are plausible and grounded in reality.

The Princess and the Frog inspires memories of Disney's Golden Age it doesn't quite live up to, as I've said, but it's spritely and high-spirited, and will allow kids to enjoy it without visually assaulting them.

Score is a straightforward film told in relatively broad strokes.

What I was left with was the goodness of Buck Brannaman as a man. He was dealt a hand that might have destroyed him. He overcame his start and is now a wise and influential role model. He does unto horses as he wishes his father had done onto him.

The movie, which should have been titled "Defend the Block," illustrates once again that zombie, horror and monster movies are a port of entry for new filmmakers. The genre is the star.

The five subjects of Home Movie at least know exactly why they live where they do and as they do, and they do not require our permission or approval.

Five minutes into the film, I relaxed, knowing it was set in the real world, and not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date.

The way all of this plays out is acted warmly by the principals, and Eigil Bryld's photography (of Ireland) makes England look breathtakingly green and inviting. The director, Julian Jarrold ("Kinky Boots" and the TV version of "White Teeth") is comfortable with the material, and it is comfortable with him.

Editing seamlessly juxtaposes the women’s stories with historical performance footage. Their stories are so compelling, many suggest their own documentaries.

Working from a clever if sometimes ridiculously over-the-top script by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, the British director Mark Mylod (“Game of Thrones,” “Succession”) teams with a well-cast ensemble to deliver a deadpan spoof of “Cabin in the Woods” type horror films, draped in a “White Lotus” setting.

Benny and Joon is a film that approaches its subjects so gingerly it almost seems afraid to touch them. The story wants to be about love, but is also about madness, and somehow it weaves the two together with a charm that would probably not be quite so easy in real life.

It has its laughs, but it’s a more thoughtful film, more softhearted toward its characters. It’s warm and poignant.

Duke and his screenwriter, Chris Brancato, don't make Hoodlum into a violent action film, though it has its bloody shoot-outs, but into more of a character study.

A film like The Last Mountain fills me with restless anger. I have seen many documentaries like this, all telling versions of the same story.

Gods and Monsters is not a deep or powerful film, but it is a good-hearted one.

You could think of Larry Clark's Wassup Rockers as "Ferris Velasquez's Day Off."

It's refreshing, this late in the summer, to find a hot weather comedy that doesn't hate its characters and embed them in scatology and sexual impossibilities.

Things Change is a delicate balance of things that don’t easily go together: farce, wit, violence and heart. Here they do.

Serious pianists sometimes pound out a little honky-tonk, just for fun. That's like what Steven Soderbergh is doing in Ocean's Eleven.

What he has here is a story that probably cannot be believed in any conceivable level, and yet, to give him his due, he tells it with such conviction that it works anyway.

The movie contains less of its interesting story and more action and battle scenes than I would have preferred.

Even though there’s a tragic offscreen death and a devastatingly brutal confrontation scene between the two leads, Military Wives is like that one friend of yours who’s always in a good mood and is forever lifting everyone’s spirits, even at somber occasions and during the toughest of times.