The third act departs from Chekhov and is original with Miller; it not only makes a nicely ironic point, but, because he takes his time with it, allows for a meditation on the distance between art and life.

The popular singer-songwriter Camila Cabello makes her acting debut as the titular character, and she’s a revelation, as the camera loves her and she displays not only the expected vocal chops but a real knack for comedy, as this version of Cinderella is particularly charming when she’s floundering about and getting into embarrassing situations of her own making.

Dolls isn't a film for everybody, especially the impatient, but Kitano does succeed, I think, in drawing us into his tempo and his world, and slowing us down into the sadness of his characters.

Bully is a sincere documentary but not a great one. We feel sympathy for the victims, and their parents or friends, but the film helplessly seems to treat bullying as a problem without a solution.

The greatly gifted and consistently eccentric writer-director Bong Joon Ho’s Okja is an uneven but never complacent mix of fantastic fairy tale; social satire; heavy-handed commentary on corporate greed and our consumer-crazed culture, and bizarro action film.

Writer-director Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale,” “Marriage Story”) delivers an effectively unsettling, carefully crafted, at times brilliant but uneven adaptation of Don DeLillo’s postmodern dystopian classic from 1985, with Baumbach regulars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig leading an outstanding cast in a three-pronged social satire.

In fact the sequel is a better film than the original, as if writer-producer Luc Besson had a clearer idea of what he wanted to do (and didn't want to do).

A story like Five Senses sounds like a gimmick, but Podeswa has a light touch when dealing with the senses and a sure one when telling his stories.

By casting attractive stars in the leads, by finding the right visual look, by underlining the action with brooding, ominously sad music, a good director can create the illusion of meaning even when nothing's there.

What lends Rapt its fascination is that it represents such a dramatic fall from grace for its hero.

Though a bit bloated and overstuffed with explosion-laden, standard-issue action sequences we’ve seen in dozens of superhero movies, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is also an exhilarating, consistently funny, big-hearted adventure that packs a surprising emotional wallop.

Choppy at times and indulging in familiar dog-movie scenarios on a steady basis, “Dog” isn’t going to enter any annual conversations about the best canine films of all time, but Lulu is basically a good girl and Briggs is basically a good guy, and we’re glad they were given the high-concept road trip adventure they deserve.

It’s a tribute to the script by Stuart Blumberg and Matt Winston, the directorial aplomb of Blumberg and the genuine performances of the cast that most of the time, we care about these people, we believe their problems are real and we want them to get the help they so desperately need.

Audacious, technically masterful, challenging, sometimes moving, ceaselessly watchable. What holds it back from greatness is a failure to really engage the ideas that it introduces.

If Cameron wants to be a pioneer instead of a retro hobbyist, he should obviously use Maxivision 48, which provides a picture of such startling clarity that it appears to be 3-D in the sense that the screen seems to open a transparent window on reality. Ghosts of the Abyss would have been incomparably more powerful in the process.

Now why did I like this movie? It was just plain dumb fun, is why. It is absurd and preposterous, and proud of it.

The actors are attractive, the city is magnificent, the love scenes don't get all sweaty, and everybody finishes the summer a little wiser and with a lifetime of memories. What more could you ask?

Brian De Palma’s Sisters was made more or less consciously as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock, but it has a life of its own and it’s a neat little mystery picture.

It is a good story, a natural, and it grabs us. But just as there is almost no way to screw it up, so there's hardly any way to bring it above a certain level of inspiration.

This is the kind of movie where you laugh occasionally and have a silly grin most of the rest of the time.

Based on true events, filled with stunning visuals and featuring more than a half-dozen of our best actors delivering solid performances, Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest is a high-altitude roller coaster ride that will leave you drained.

The movie overcomes its lack or originality in the setup by making good use of its central idea, that a pair of sneakers could make a kid into an NBA star. This is a message a lot of kids have been waiting to hear.

The situations are more or less standard (fights over sleeping arrangements, emergencies that have to be solved, moments of truth and confession), but the dialogue and the acting bring the material up to another level.

Lady in White tells a classic ghost story in such an everyday way that the ghost is almost believable, and the story is actually scarier than it might have been with a more gruesome approach.

I liked a lot of it myself, and with me, a few broadswords and leather jerkins go a long way.

A family implodes with a biting commentary on patriarchy.

The film is told almost entirely without dialogue, but is alive to sound; we spend observant, introspective hours in a Hungarian hamlet where nothing much seems to happen -- oh, except that there's a suspicious death.

If everyone behaved the way the characters in Wild Tales behave, civilization would crumble. But the real take-away lesson here is how easy it might be for any of us, swept up in a moment of bloodlust, to consider pure raging hostility a fair trade.