The film contains a surprising amount of understated humor. It is not a grim portrayal of a harsh upbringing, but an affectionate portrait of parents who will be able to change the world before they will be able to change their daughter.

One of the many surprising delights in the bright and brassy and wonderfully funny Thor: Ragnarok is the recasting of the God of Thunder as a perpetual underdog.

This is one of the best and most important movies of the year.

Impressive moviemaking, showing Scorsese as a master of a traditional Hollywood genre.

We might quarrel with the crucial decision at the end of Tully, but we have to honor it because we know it comes from a good place. So does the whole movie.

I laughed. I did not always feel proud of myself while I was laughing, however.

A tough, smart, ingenious movie that leads its characters into situations where everything depends on their (and our) understanding of human nature.

Gradually the full arc of Toni Collette's performance reveals itself, and we see that the end was there even in the beginning. This is that rare sort of film that is not about what happens, but about what happens then.

Director Lance Oppenheim (who at 24 is a good half-century younger than his subjects) employs a straightforward, deadpan style that suits the material well, avoiding condescension or cutesy gimmicks as he introduces us to a number of residents of the Villages.

What makes Roxanne so wonderful is not this fairly straightforward comedy, however, but the way the movie creates a certain ineffable spirit.

Jones and Murray are wonderful together; many of the best scenes in On the Rocks are when it’s just the two of them, verbally fencing.

The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else.

You know all those sports documentaries about fallen heroes who had enormous talent but squandered it away through a combination of bad breaks and bad decisions, injuries and/or snorting enough cocaine to fill a first-base line? “Facing Nolan” is the antithesis of those cautionary tales, in that Ryan was a straight shooter on and off the field.

Spellbinding.

A creepy documentary with all the elements of a horror film about a demented serial killer, and an extra ingredient: This one is real.

The film may provide an introduction for some audience members to the Hitchcockian definition of suspense: It's the anticipation, not the happening, that's the fun.

All four of the actors playing the brothers are standouts, with Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White leading the way with some of the finest work of their respective careers. “The Iron Claw” isn’t an easy watch, but it’s one of the best films of the year.

In its quiet and murderous way, it is like the delayed final act of an old movie about drugs, guns and revenge.

It has some of the simplicity and starkness of classical tragedy, but what made me impatient was its fascination with the macho bloodlust of the two families.

Director Garret Price was right. This is no period-piece dark comedy. On many levels, it’s a horror film.

The acting is world-class in Eye in the Sky, a timely and tense but sometimes heavy-handed drama set in the modern world of drone warfare.

Angelou's first-time direction stays out of its own way; she doesn't call attention to herself with unnecessary visual touches, but focuses on the business at hand.

Despite his health problems and a career that carried as many setbacks as triumphs, Kilmer comes across as a self-deprecating, thoughtful, likable and almost jovial figure with a wicked sense of humor and a deep appreciation of artists, writers, poets, actors, thinkers.

So enigmatic, oblique and meandering that it's like coded religious texts that requires monks to decipher.

The film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity.

Like Father, Like Son is always wise about the quandary faced by the two fathers and the two mothers.

A well-assembled chase movie--a thriller, with a few existential notes left over from Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers the novel the movie's based on.

This is a lurid, cynical, nasty, rough piece of work, and I mean that in the best possible way.