This is one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

Sometimes it’s a creepy thriller. Sometimes it’s a gripping and heartbreaking story of a man losing his memory. Sometimes it’s drive-in movie about a charismatic and thoroughly reprehensible cult leader. And then, from time to time, it’s for all intents and purposes a musical.

I feel like recommending the performances, and suggesting they be transported to another film. The actors emerge with glory for attempting something very hard and succeeding remarkably well. They deserve to be in a better movie.

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

Movies like this are not for everyone, but arrive like private messages for their own particular audiences.

Starts out with the materials of an ordinary movie and becomes a rather special one.

The claustrophobic, isolated Victorian household is a stage on which every nuance, however small, is noticed.

Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a great-looking, old-fashioned, at times soaring adventure ultimately brought down by a needlessly convoluted plot, some surprisingly casual violence and heavy-handed lectures about how we’re our own worst enemy and we’re going to destroy the planet if we don’t get it together.

The plot of Point Blank, summarized, invites parody (rookie agent goes undercover as surfer to catch bank robbers). The result is surprisingly effective.

And Cruise is so efficiently packaged in this product that he plays the same role as a saint in a Mexican village's holy day procession: It's not what he does that makes him so special; it's the way he manifests everybody's faith in him.

Three Thousand Years of Longing actually ends on a creative high note, but the path to that conclusion is filled with muddled adventures that play like something out of a 1980s B-movie. We find ourselves longing for the credits to roll.

Scanners is a new horror film made with enough craft and skill that it could have been very good, if it could find a way to make us care about it.

To its credit, Dark Night does not exploit or glamorize the gun culture, nor does it attempt to hammer us over the head with social or political views. Sutton is undeniably talented. Better, deeper, richer work is almost sure to follow.

At Middleton is an innocuous romantic comedy.

In the introspective The Last Sentence Swedish director Jan Troell invokes ’50’s and ’60’s Swedish cinema: masterly black-and-white cinematography, philosophical angst, a lifeless marriage and loved ones visiting from the afterlife.

Elba captures the fire and the passion of Mandela the young activist, the resilience of Mandela the political prisoner, and the wisdom and astonishing capacity of forgiveness of Mandela the elder statesman.

An honest, on-the-ground documentary about the lives of Americans fighting there. It has no spin. It's not left or right.

The film is not a compelling drama so much as a poignant observation of a sad situation.

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.

Red is neither a good movie nor a bad one. It features actors we like doing things we wish were more interesting.

This is a basic story, simply and directly told by Irish writer-director Ciaran Foy. He doesn't try to explain too much, he doesn't depend on special effects and stays just this side of the unbelievable.

The fulcrum to the success of Goosebumps, it must be noted, is the perfect casting of Jack Black as Stine.

The movie's screenplay is contrived and not blindingly original, but Barrymore illuminates it with sunniness, and creates a lovable character

Familiar in its story arc, but fresh in its energy and lucky in its choice of actors.

Essentially silliness crossed with science fiction. The actors make it fun to watch.

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

Schlaich portrays a society in which some are racists who act cruelly toward the black man, and others, even strangers, go out of their way to help him.

The patter is always fascinating, and at right angles to the action. [Mamet]'s like a magician who gets you all involved in his story about the King, the Queen and the Jack, while the whole point is that there's a rabbit in your pocket.