Everything's laid out for us and made clear, we understand the situation we can see where events are leading... and then, in the last 30 minutes, he springs one concealed trap after another, allowing his story to fold in upon itself, to twist and turn, and scare and amuse us with its clockwork irony.

In writer-director Cord Jefferson’s timely and sharp and subversively funny “American Fiction,” Wright is accorded the relatively rare opportunity to take the lead, and he delivers a richly layered performance that reminds us he’s one of the best actors of his generation. It’s a joy to watch.

That the director, Paul Greengrass, treats the material with gravity and uses good actors in well-written supporting roles elevates the movie above its genre, but not quite out of it.

What he asks of the actors (those who are “soloists,” anyway) is not realism but the same kind of playful show-off performances he's getting from the musicians. And to understand the acting, it's helpful to begin with the music.

Silly at times, leaning toward the screwball tradition of everyone racing around the house at the same time in a panic fueled by serial misunderstandings. There is also a thoughtful side.

It is encouraging that well-crafted thrillers are still being made about characters who have dialogue, identities, motives and clean shirts.

A movie like this falls outside ordinary critical language. Is it good or bad? Is there too much melodrama? I don't have any idea. It triggered too many thoughts of my own for me to have much attention left over for footnotes.

Skincare is like a quick trip to the local spa. It’s not going to change your life, but it provides instant gratification and helps you escape for an hour and a half.

I admired the movie. It is made with quiet competence, and will remind some viewers of the Hitchcock who made “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and “Foreign Correspondent.”

The Parallax View will no doubt remind some reviewers of Executive Action, another movie released at about the same time that advanced a conspiracy theory of assassination. It's a better use of similar material, however, because it tries to entertain instead of staying behind to argue.

A three-year labor of love from a mother for her daughter. It is a touching movie that, at first, might seem like a public service announcement, but eventually takes us into some touching personal struggles.

While these folks aren’t always the most pleasant to be around, we understand them and can relate to them, and at times feel empathy for their predicaments.

Though it would have been lovely to take in the lavish set pieces and the cool CGI creations and the whiz-bang action sequences on the big screen, Artemis Fowl still plays well as a warm and funny and entertaining at-home family viewing experience.

On its own terms, it's funny at times and finally sad and sweet.

Adapted from Damien Lewis’ book “Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of World War II” and featuring stunning visuals from the location shooting in the beautiful city of Antalya, Turkey, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a fantastic blending of some basic facts and a whole lot of fictionalization, including shuffling of the timeline.

Green's approach certainly opens up opportunities for his students, and is a refreshing change from the lockstep public school approach, which punishes individualism.

Sometimes you are either open to a movie, or closed. If you're convinced that An Unfinished Life is damaged goods, how can it begin its work on you?

Serenity is made of dubious but energetic special effects, breathless velocity, much imagination, some sly verbal wit and a little political satire.

Not an extraordinary movie. In its workmanship it aspires not to be remarkable but to be well made, dependable, moving us because of the hurt in the hero's eyes.

Although sometimes convoluted and occasionally implausible, this is a well-filmed and ambitiously creative first effort from writer-producer-director Ravin Gandhi.

This is quite possibly the most self-referential, inside-jokey, look-at-how-clever-we-are, off-the-charts Meta Movie I’ve ever seen. Sometimes that’s pretty great. At other times, it detracts from the core story at hand.

While the pace is occasionally glacial and the screenplay indulges in any number of journalism-movie tropes, and She Said is not in the same league as those aforementioned classics, it is nonetheless a solid and straightforward telling, with Carey Mulligan (as Twohey) and Zoe Kazan (as Kantor) doing authentic and finely calibrated work.

In this movie the war is not quite over. For those who survived it, maybe it will never be.

This is a pure comfort-viewing experience, filled with authentic characters who talk the way real people talk, even when the situations stretch credulity.

Would a Republican enjoy this movie as much as a Democrat? Possibly. Party affiliations mean nothing to the characters, nor does the plot approach them. Then why are Huggins and Brady both Republicans? I'll save you the trouble. It's because Hollywood is run by a lot of rich liberals, right?

If I didn't feel the same degree of involvement with Point of No Return that I did with "La Femme Nikita," it may be because the two movies are so similar in plot, look and feel. I had deja vu all through the movie.

For the most part, thanks in great part to Benson’s rich screenplay and Chastain’s nomination-worthy work, I was immersed in this story no matter who was telling the tale.

Despite the rather washed-out color photography it's very much worth seeing.