The plot's many complications pretty much all add up, which is a rarity these days for a murder mystery. It's possible that audiences don't even care anymore if a film makes sense as long it's entertaining.

The action is swift and witty, and the 3-D effects are imaginative and not simply tacked on as with so many animated movies these days.

It gives ample play to all sides of the argument. Herzog allows us to think things through on our own.

Given the slam-bang slapstick featured in so many of her movies, I have to admit the subtlety and fullness of [McCarthy's] performance in this film did hit me as a shock to the system.

The marvel of Cage's performance is that, somehow, it's all of a piece. That's the marvel of the movie, too. This is one fever dream you'll remember whole.

It's really about the ways in which Chinese westernization clashes with the traditionalism of Confucian teachings. It's about competition versus piety.

All in all, a visual and musical feast.

This is a movie about, among other things, pain, and it's made by someone who understands its expression.

The innocence of the townspeople is weirdly uplifting. They love their Bernie so much that they seem even more blinkered than he is.

A cross between "Godzilla" and "Jaws," it manages to be both truly scary and truly funny – sometimes all at once.

By the film’s end, the main protagonists have become more philosophical, if no less ardent, about the future of Egypt. “We are not looking for a leader,” Hassan declares. “We are looking for a conscience.” He has only to look in the mirror.

What we do see, among much else that is damning, are archival NYPD videotapes of the boys being interrogated by detectives who press them to implicate one another in exchange for a leniency that never materialized.

Particle Fever doesn’t prompt us to say: “Gee, these superbrains are just like us, except for the brains.” The film allows for our awe. It also demonstrates that science is the most human of activities, with all that that implies.

The ongoing tragedy in Africa is too nefarious, too complicated, for any one film to do it justice, but We Come as Friends opens a wide window into this mansion of horrors.

It’s a rarity, and a real pleasure, to find a movie that presents without condescension rural working-class people, especially women.

His (Lindholm) steadfast, unvarying gaze has its own authenticity. He’s made a thriller that thrills while also respecting our intelligence.

Probably the most faithful to the writer's tortured spirit. It's the kind of movie that gets under your skin - and stays there.

Anderson works in animation and home movies (Lolabelle “playing” the piano is a wonder), and Anderson’s voice-over narration is closer in quality to song than to spoken word. It’s a confounding, transfixing mélange.

Bracingly perceptive about the human comedy.

If the sequels to “The Force Awakens” are as good as this film, that will probably be because they follow the same formula: heavy on the human side, more comedy, less CGI, more fresh faces, and more delightful droids. And, yes, one must pay homage to the Force.

Cumulatively, the everyday voices of those who waited in vain for help that never came, mingled with the concern of prominent national figures, presents a poignant picture of official blunders and personal loss, and provides important national lessons if another threat this size hits an American city.

The riders who appear in Buck seem almost uniformly exalted by their contact with Brannaman and his methods.

At just over two hours, Stranded is nonstop harrowing. It has cumulative power.

I wish Rowley didn’t so often dabble in standard movie-thriller-style stylistics, but his film is an exposé of practices that need – demand – exposing.

It leaves us with a question that may be unanswerable: How does one extinguish terrorism when its causes are myriad?

It's a sweet and disquieting excursion made by filmmakers whose eyes and ears and imaginations are in marvelous sync.

The remarkable thing about Smith in The Lady in the Van is that, even though the role is no longer fresh for her, the performance certainly is. She gives it everything she’s got because, you feel, she wants to honor this character. She wants Miss Shepherd to live on.

Ballard filmed across hundreds of miles of South African desert, and there are times when the whole throbbing universe seems to resound for him.