This is, first of all, an electrifying and poignant love story....And it is also one hell of a thriller.

The first-rate Italian comedy Reality — which fakes Pope Benedict appearing in St. Peter’s Square — likens consecration to elevating an “everyman” to pop celebrity.

All of this grows tiresome. We're given no particular reason at the outset of The Loneliest Planet to care about these people, our interest doesn't grow along the way, the landscape grows repetitive, the director's approach is aggressively minimalist, and if you ask me, this romance was not made in heaven.

Nil by Mouth is not an unrelieved shriek of pain. There is humor in it, and tender insight.

The Secret of Nimh is an artistic success. It looks good, moves well, and delights our eyes. It is not quite such a success on the emotional level, however, because it has so many characters and involves them in so many different problems that there's nobody for the kids in the audience to strongly identify with. I guess you could say that the Disney tradition lives, but that the Disney magic still remains elusive.

Coppola intended the third film to be an epilogue that serves to sum up and bring closure to the original saga, and this recut to breathe new life into the picture. He has achieved just that.

Some 15 years after Will Smith gave one of his most authentic and enduring performances playing the real-life homeless salesman Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness, he delivers nomination-worthy work as another type of real-life salesman in King Richard.

Songwriter is one of those movies that grows on you. It doesn't have a big point to prove, and it isn't all locked into the requirements of its plot. It's about spending some time with some country musicians who are not much crazier than most country musicians, and are probably nicer than some. It also has a lot of good music.

Stolakis skillfully interweaves present-day interviews with archival footage of these prominent figures in the movement — all of whom have renounced their roles and are now living as out gays or bisexuals.

The uniquely talented director Josephine Decker (“Madeline’s Madeline”) and the screenwriter Sarah Gubbins (adapting a 2014 novel by Susan Scarf Merrell) have teamed up with a two-generational quartet of fine actors to create one of the most visually arresting and intellectually provocative films of the year.

The action and the scale of the acting are often more befitting an elaborate stage play than a film.

If anybody ever wrote a Field Guide to Alcoholics, with descriptions of their appearance, sexual behavior and habitats, there would be a full-color portrait on the cover of Tommy, the hero of Trees Lounge.

What We Do in the Shadows is a bracing reminder of how the right burst of energy and style breathes fresh ideas into a genre threatened with creative exhaustion.

To the degree that you will want to see this movie, it will be because of the surprise, and so I will say no more, except to say that the "solution," when it comes, solves little - unless there is really little to solve, which is also a possibility.

This is a terrific movie that will keep audiences gripping their seats from start to finish, and a great deal of that is due to the magnificent acting jobs by Goodman, Winstead and co-star John Gallagher Jr.

Using a dialogue-heavy approach that's unusual for Cronenberg, his film is skilled at the way it weaves theory with the inner lives of its characters. We are learning, yet never feel we're being taught.

Brooks, who co-wrote (with Monica Johnson) and directed as well as stars, is much too smart to settle for the obvious gags and payoffs. All of his films depend on closely observed behavior and language, on the ways language can refuse to let us communicate, no matter how obsessively we try to nail things down. In his scenes with Reynolds, they are told quietly, conversationally; they're not pounding out punch lines, and that's why the dialogue is so funny.

The ghost of anime can be seen here trying to dive into the shell of the movie mainstream. But this particular film is too complex and murky to reach a large audience, I suspect; it's not until the second hour that the story begins to reveal its meaning. But I enjoyed its visuals, its evocative soundtrack (including a suite for percussion and heavy breathing), and its ideas.

Entertaining and surprisingly amusing, under the circumstances. The film is in a better state of mind than its characters. Its humor comes, as the best humor does, from an acute observation of human nature.

If Scott Fitzgerald were to return to life, he would feel at home in a Whit Stillman movie. Stillman listens to how people talk, and knows what it reveals about them.

It’s exciting to revisit the battles, starting with a blowout of a tough Greece team, a victory over the talented Argentina squad, and the epic final battle against Spain.

The Last of the Mohicans is not as authentic and uncompromised as it claims to be -- more of a matinee fantasy than it wants to admit -- but it is probably more entertaining as a result.

This is an engrossing story, told smoothly and well, and Russell Crowe's contribution is enormous.

Exists on a knife edge between comedy and sadness. There are big laughs, and then quiet moments when we're touched.

It’s a brilliant performance by Gyllenhaal in a film that veers from dark satire to tense crime thriller before the tires come off near the end, leaving the entire vehicle just short of worth recommending.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s stirring and sprawling period-piece epic “The Woman King” is groundbreaking in that it tells the story of the legendary, real-life, all-female West African warrior unit known as the Agojie, but also quite traditional in that it follows the blueprint of blockbuster action sagas such as “Braveheart,” “Gladiator” and “Rob Roy.”

Pretty much required viewing.

There are so many Wes-ian constructs at play here, so many deliberate attempts to keep us at a distance, it’s as if we’re standing on a sidewalk in the rain, looking through a thick window at a painting hanging on a distant wall. We’re too busy thinking about what we’re seeing to feel much of anything at all.