Director Susan Kucera and the film’s guiding spirit, Jeff Bridges, have created a wonkish lovefest, incorporating the diverse ideas of (predominantly white) scientists and academics, philosophers and authors, activists and politicians into a plea for equable reflection and sustained action.

The Hate U Give takes time to focus on the nuances of Starr’s life, on the effort of code-switching, on the layers of self that Starr must sort through in everyday interactions.

Double-stuffed with kill squads, killer ’80s couture and mood-killing howlers, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s Loving Pablo is more a greatest hits than a story, the kind of radically compressed life-of-a-legend movie where everything happens in a giddy, ridiculous gush — except for when it slows down to dwell on horrors.

Knuckleball mostly fills up its running time by being a twisted, even more ridiculous Home Alone.

Despite valiant effort from the performers — especially Usher, who's onscreen for nearly every scene — this three-hander is no joyride.

Jenkins (director of The Savages and Slums of Beverly Hills) is always more interested in emotional truth than she is in laughs. Throughout Private Life’s tense 124 minutes, she continually achieves both.

To fall in love with Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is to embrace its paradoxes and, to quote a song Lady Gaga sings in the film, go “off the deep end” and submerge oneself “far from the shallow.” My advice? Submit. Suspend yourself in the charms and romance of this melodrama.

Call Her Ganda works best when it’s focused on Laude and the case of her murder, an overwhelming showcase of empathy and persistence in the face of American racism and transmisogyny.

Rather than a tragic inevitability or a comic detachment, the final scenes have about them the whiff of resignation, possibly meaningful or possibly not.

Monsters and Men seems as if it was made for the world that existed a few years ago. I honestly can’t tell if my dissatisfaction is with the movie or the era into which it is released.

There’s something oddly fascinating (and — dare I say it! — watchable) about a movie being this defiantly dumb. I never thought I’d say this, but this guy could give Tommy Wiseau a run for his money in the best worst filmmaker department.

With Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., Loveridge celebrates the mashup aesthetic that enabled the artist to find a voice, and reveals that reconciling contradictions — like an outrageous sense of humor and earnest political activism — is key to both Arulpragasam’s music and the life she’s constructed with audacity and wit.

To watch Honnold think through each ledge of his climbs can stop the heart; to watch him navigate human emotion might melt it.

Bad Reputation comes off more as a fanboy’s declaration of reverence to the queen rather than an interrogation of one of the most iconic women in music.

Winstead is wildly funny (and spot-on) doing the impressions in Nina’s act (especially of Björk ordering a smoothie) but also proves uninhibited and candid when Nina doesn’t have jokes to hide behind.

As her marriage opens up, and Colette begins to take lovers of her own, Knightley summons up a moving sense of both relief and recklessness. This Colette is thrilled suddenly to have new options, but she’s committed to pushing for more.

While sometimes messy, this material is emotionally resonant and cinematically alive.

The Crash-meets–Collateral Beauty false-gravitas joke of the year.

The problem with Fahrenheit 11/9 is that it’s Trump’s Fahrenheit 9/11 rather than Trump’s Roger & Me.

Since the movie is in such a hurry, we’re not given much chance to soak in this strangeness. Making up for it: Black is paired with Blanchett, who plays a neighboring witch in smashing violet skirt ensembles; the two rat-a-tat insults at each other like a vaudevillian comedy duo.

Guadagnino adeptly captures not just the physicality of a burning love but also the emotional and intellectual components, and the film is all the more salient for that careful, realistic interpretation.

With Mudbound, Rees proves the truest rule of all: That talent and vision make all lesser rules negotiable. This absorbing, incredibly accomplished film should win awards and be taught in history classes all over America.

I'm thankful No Greater Love is around to make people realize how much war heroes need our love, help and support once they come back home. Just telling them "thank you for your service" ain't gonna cut it.

At times, Morgan's script inspires laughs; but at others, the witticisms seem forced

The temptation for an easy score is one of a handful of shopworn plot elements in Anthony Onah’s debut feature The Price, yet the interaction of t

These people accept the consequences of living like there's no tomorrow. They stand awaiting their fate in a rain of fire. And now we can feel a little bit of that, too.

For a movie that literally says it's full of "a bunch of degenerate maniacs," humdrum Black Site Delta bombs.

A manifesto in the form of an enormously budgeted quasi-sci-fi epic, Cloud Atlas is evidently personal, defiantly sincere, totally lacking in self-awareness, and borderline offensive in its gleeful endorsement of revenge violence against anyone who gets in the way of a good person's self-actualization. The rest of the time, it's just insipid, TV-esque in its limited visual imagination, and dramatically incoherent.