The movie doesn’t need higher stakes, really, or more conflict; what’s there is fine, but the flights of deadpan insanity only fly so high.

Carrera's style is hard-hitting, lucid and technically superior (if unimaginative). El Crimen del Padre Amaro eventually moves and stirs you, even if it often resembles those steamy Mexican TV dramas/soap operas called telenovelas.

The movie is slick, predictable and, thanks mainly to Washington's canny underplaying, fairly diverting.

The script isn't really good enough to worry about whether it's being over-directed; in fact, E. Elias Merhige's over-direction is one of the best things about this movie--along with Ben Kingsley's grimly unstoppable killer-of-killers, Benjamin O'Ryan.

Both script and performance, however, waver between black comedy and more routine international-thriller concerns.

Teen Wolf is a clever and inventive film, a soft and contemporary retelling of the familiar werewolf tale.

The biggest distinction between the first “Twister” and the new “Twisters” is one of conscience: This time, Kate, Javi and Tyler wrestle to varying degrees with how much of their time should be spent on their own pursuits versus helping tornado victims clean up after the latest round of misery.

In some ways it's not a film that surprises us much. But it's a notable directorial debut anyway -- smartly written, very well cast and skillfully done.

Nice. The film itself is more nice than good, but nice isn't the worst trait.

The movie is shot and edited like a two-hour trailer for itself. As such, it's not hard to take, but you do tend to wonder when the film itself is going to start.

One funny movie - for at least half the time.

There are better holocaust dramas than Grey Zone -- "Schindler's List" for one, and due later this year, Roman Polanski's magnificent "The Pianist." But few will disturb you like The Grey Zone -- mostly because it won't try for tears.

A point is being made about how a criminal creates his own myth, but the ways Read twists and embellishes the truth become progressively less interesting.

Although the film presents plenty of compelling material, it suffers from the same weakness of "Fahrenheit 9/11": an utter lack of dot connection.

Is the central hook in “Old” enough? For many, I suspect, the answer will be not quite. The film, well-crafted when the characters quit reiterating the previous what’s-going-on-here? reiteration, could use a little more nerve and a little less plot machinery, designed to provide audiences with a happier ending than the graphic novel’s, and a lot of scientific folderol.

Animals make for good screenwriting devices, as characters can speak their inner feelings to them, but that doesn't make for the most subtle or efficient screenwriting.

Atits gooey center, I Do ... Until I Don't is like vanilla cake. It is sweet, but generally there's nothing that memorable about it.

The actors make up for the relative thinness of the material. Smith navigates the emotional terrain with great skill. The script is often funny but just as often cutesy.

Hardwicke is a talented director who brings an addictive verve and visual dynamism to this bombastic take, and Rodriguez has a charm so appealing it could be weaponized.

Another of many recent Hollywood plotless wonders.

The new “John Wick” spinoff Ballerina is recommendable, -ish, primarily for the way Anjelica Huston, as the Russian mob boss, makes a meal out of a single-syllable word near the end, delivered after a pause so unerringly timed it’s almost too good for this world.

I never saw the earlier version. This one remains a bit of a mess but a pretty interesting one, as well as one of the few films this year deserving (in both admirable and dissatisfying ways) of the adjective “instructive.”

Nice to look at but too calculated and clichéd to resonate beyond its surface slickness.

Moderately funny though immoderately derivative.

The movie isn't quite spry, warm or hip enough to carry out its very ambitious serio-comic agenda. Even for an ace like Levinson, Belfast is a long way from Baltimore.

As wide and deep as the directors fish for anecdotes, it's surprising that there isn't more focus, more context.

First-rate actors bail out second-rate directors all the time, and Freedomland serves as the latest example.

While the movie is never dull, its romantic fodder doesn't do justice to any period at all.