Eminem survives the X-ray truth-telling of the movie camera, which is so good at spotting phonies. He is on the level.

Tony Hale took neurotic brilliance to the next level on Arrested Development and then Veep, and he’s squarely in his comfort zone playing another cringe-inducing, socially awkward and hilariously tone-deaf character in the offbeat charmer Eat Wheaties!, one of the most endearing movies about light stalking you’ll ever see.

Dhoom:3 entertains as a spectacle of chases, bank capers, magic acts and song-and-dance numbers.

The film is entertaining in its own right, and thought-provoking. Why don't more people quickly see through their hoaxes?

I like the way the slacker characters maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger, and I like the way the British bourgeois values of Shaun's mum and dad assert themselves even in the face of catastrophe.

Sea of Love tells an ingeniously constructed story that depends for its suspense on the same question posed by Jagged Edge and Fatal Attraction: What happens when you fall in love with a person who may be quite prepared to murder you?

The film is upbeat, wholesome, chirpy, positive, sunny, cheerful, optimistic and squeaky-clean. It bears so little resemblance to the more complicated worlds of many members of its target audience (girls 4 to 11) that it may work as pure escapism.

The idea of the story within a story is one of the nice touches in The NeverEnding Story. Another one is the idea of a child's faith being able to change the course of fate. Maybe not since the kids in the audience were asked to save Tinker Bell in Peter Pan has the outcome of a story been left so clearly up to a child's willingness to believe.

It is an enchanted folly suggesting that romance is a matter of chance, since love is blind; at the right moment we are likely to fall in love with the first person our eyes light upon.

For a time, “Moana 2” seems more fixated with creating memorably weird imagery than telling a story, but it regains its footing in a third act filled with genuine emotion and a spiritually rousing finale.

What she hasn't done is make a terrifically entertaining film. Although this version dumps many of the novel's passages, particularly from the later chapters, it's dreary and slow-paced, heavy on atmosphere, introverted. I suppose life on an isolated moor was like that at the time, but do we need this much atmosphere?

Tells this story in a straightforward, calm way that works ideally as the chronicle of a man's life but perhaps less ideally as drama.

Either you stand back and resist it, or you plunge in. There was something about its innocence and spunk that got to me, and I caved in.

Levy now takes his quadruple-threat skill set to feature-length film by directing, writing, producing and starring in the warm and lovely albeit formulaic weeper “Good Grief,” which is not the story of the adult Charlie Brown (rats!) but the tale of a man who turns to his best friends for solace in his time of great need.

Cate Blanchett plays Guerin in a way that fascinated me for reasons the movie probably did not intend.

If you like him on TV, you'll like him here, too, because it's more of the same stuff, only outdoors and with animals and shooting stars and the kinds of balloons people can go up in.

Steve Martin is good at that aspect of the Bilko persona, and good, too, at suggesting that there's not a mean bone in the sergeant's body.

The pairing of Law and Coon as a married couple doing an extended love/hate dance in The Nest results in an absolute master class in acting.

The Piersons went, they showed movies, they returned. Taveuni is more or less the same. But by living and coping together for a year, the family is probably stronger and richer.

Passionada assembles the elements for a soap opera, and turns them into a bubble bath.

Trekkies talk at length about how the world would be a saner and more peaceful place if the "Star Trek" philosophy ruled our lives. No doubt it would be a lot more entertaining, too, especially during root canals.

Jeremy Renner doesn’t put much movie-star mustard on his performance as a newspaper reporter in Kill the Messenger, and that’s one of the reasons the work is so strong.

Falling Down does a good job of representing a real feeling in our society today. It would be a shame if it is seen only on a superficial level.

The masterstroke is the use of Bryan Adams, who seems like a joke when he first appears (the movie knows this), but is used by Konchalovsky in such a way that eventually be becomes the embodiment of the ability to imagine and dream--an ability, the movie implies, that's the only thing keeping these crazy people sane.

It's fun to watch 2 Days in the Valley” in the moment, and then fun afterward to think about the way the story was put together, and all of those lives connected.

Becky is a deeply fractured fairy tale that leaves logic at the door and revels in elaborate set pieces that usually wind up with someone maimed or dead.

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon plays like a graphic novel come to life. Everything has a heightened sense of color, and the soundtrack pulses with banger tunes and wall-rattling EDM.

The filmmakers (working from a script by Kaluuya and Joe Murtagh) deftly blend some stunning action sequences with moments of quiet beauty, as when a large contingent from The Kitchen gathers at Life After Life for a memorial service for one of their own.