Writer-director Martin does a stellar job of balancing sketch-comedy style laughs with genuinely touching moments.

As we’re enjoying the beautiful cinematography and the fine acting and the dark humor, Benjamin Dickinson is delivering a signature work announcing his arrival as a filmmaker to watch for years to come.

In the uncomfortably funny, unapologetically insensitive, cheerfully outrageous Jojo Rabbit, writer-director Waititi (“Thor: Ragnorak”) delivers a timely, anti-hate fractured fairy tale AND turns in hilarious work as Adolf Hitler, imaginary friend to a 10-year-old German boy near the end of World War II.

Involving and inspiring in the way a good movie about sports almost always is.

The movie contains violence and death, but not really very much. For most of its languorous running time, it listens to conversations between Bella and Edward, Bella and David, Edward and David, and Edward and Bella and David. This would play better if any of them were clever conversationalists, but their ideas are limited to simplistic renderings of their desires.

Die Hard With a Vengeance is basically a wind-up action toy, cleverly made, and delivered with high energy. It delivers just what it advertises, with a vengeance.

There’s little in the way of originality in Work It, but there’s a fresh, upbeat, infectious vibe to the silliness, thanks in large part to the talented and likable cast of young actors.

All the players in The Misogynists sound as if they’ve been handed talking points instead of a screenplay.

Of course, Gilliam’s quest to make his Don Quixote film mirrors the original novel, and the movie he finally made is like a funhouse mirror version — filled with wonderfully, sometimes disturbingly strange imagery as tragedy meets comedy meets romance meets the noble glory of the artist sacrificing nearly everything in the quest to make lasting art.

Alas, the sweet-natured and occasionally moving but surprisingly stiff and slight Cry Macho is most likely destined to be remembered as one of Eastwood’s lesser works.

Even though many of the segments are brief, Guevara-Flanagan does a remarkably thorough job in covering such a wide range of areas. The only complaint one might have about Body Parts is it easily could have been twice as long.

The chief delight in “Wicked Little Letters” is watching Colman and Buckley in action.

A comedy worthy of the best Woody Allen, and Adrian is not unlike Woody's persona: a sincere, intense, insecure nebbish, hopeless with women, aiming for greatness.

What is most wonderful about Man on the Moon, a very good film, is that it remains true to Kaufman's stubborn vision.

Troche's tone is so relentlessly, depressingly monotonous that the characters seem trapped in a narrow emotional range. They live out their miserable lives in one lachrymose sequence after another, and for us there is no relief.

Bounds from one gag to another like an eager puppy.

Some kind of sweet, wacky masterpiece.

Seems Like Old Times is another one of those near-misses that leaves a movie critic in a quandary. It's a funny movie, and it made me laugh out loud a lot, but in the final analysis it just didn't quite edge over the mystical line into success.

Populaire has no interest in rewriting the rules of romantic comedy, but it does run through the expected paces with admirable style.

Although I liked the first "MiB" movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. But I had fun. It has an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters, audacious cliff-hanging, and you know what? A closing scene that adds a new and sort of touching dimension to the characters of J and K.

Big Fish of course is a great-looking film, with a fantastical visual style that could be called Felliniesque if Burton had not by now earned the right to the adjective Burtonesque.

The movie is flimsy, glib, and occasionally pretty funny.

BAT*21 was shot on location in Malaysia, however, and it looks authentic and gets us involved through the energy of its performances.

Snowden works best when it’s just Edward and the three journalists in that hotel room, sweating it out, or when we see the pattern of events that led him to commit acts that exposed the shocking practices of our own government but also quite possibly created serious security breaches.

Lawless is a well-made film about ignorant and violent people. Like the recent "Killer Joe," I can only admire this film's craftsmanship and acting, and regret its failure to rise above them.

There's a lot of potential charm here, but the director, Emma-Kate Croghan, is so distracted by stylistic quirks that the characters are forever being upstaged by the shots they're in.

This becomes Tobey Maguire's film to dominate, and I've never seen these dark depths in him before. Actors possess a great gift to surprise us, if they find the right material in their hands.

Julia is the story of a fascinating woman, told from the point of view of someone who hardly knew her. That is, I realize, an unkind judgment against Lillian Hellman, whose wartime memoirs provide the inspiration for the story. But this movie's problems start with its point of view, and it never quite recovers from them.