Phillips kind of stumbles when he tries for a pat wrap-up of a still-horrific problem. But when he digs into the muck of the rot at the heart of it, he comes up with some unforgettable moments.

It’s an inviting, approachable world that Murdoch creates for us — still a total fantasy, of course, but one with a veneer of plausibility. Get on its wavelength, and you’ll be utterly charmed. Don’t, and you’ll run screaming from the theater.

For all the wizardry on display, Hugo often feels like a film about magic instead of a magical film.

Where the film really shines is in reuniting Bridget with her faithful friend group (Shirley Henderson, Sally Phillips, and James Callis), her withering gynecologist (Emma Thompson), and, of course, with Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), the red flag-laden lothario who represents everything Bridget knew she shouldn’t be attracted to.

There are a couple of hundred instances in which Johnson or her actors could take condescending short cuts and slip into white-trash stereotypes, but I didn't see any - only gifted performers vanishing into their characters, refusing to pass judgment.

The weirder its treatment of the treat becomes, the better the movie is, cutting through the script’s more potentially sentimental tendencies. It never reaches the singularly compelling strangeness of the source material, but it lands somewhere close enough to be mostly satisfying.

In political terms, True Crime is a far cry from "Dirty Harry" -- it actually stands up for due process of law. In Hollywood, I believe this is known as mellowing.

So deliriously chockablock with high-flying, color-coordinated fight scenes that non-aficionados may find it all a bit bewildering--a gorgeous abstraction. It sure is gorgeous, though, and it has a dream cast

It all works on the level of a sprightly sitcom: lesbianism for the Lucy-and-Ethel crowd.

It’s not a seamless combination, though that’s not the fault of McDormand, who, with her wary eyes and careworn expression, slots in easily alongside actual travelers like the nature-loving Swankie and the savvy Linda May. Fern is just more obviously a creation, her utility evident when she’s stringing together episodic encounters with strangers or enabling someone to make a point that didn’t need to be spoken aloud.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is baggier than the original, not as funny, and it drags in parts and is on the whole less memorable. But dammit, it’s still fun, and that’s ultimately what matters.

I was blissed out during much of To Rome With Love, but I have to acknowledge its creepy side.

Every generation has to discover the same clichés that were drummed into previous generations, and kids could do worse than to learn them from this film.

It turns out to be absolutely delightful.

Why did Villeneuve and the screenwriter, Eric Heisserer, let the grade-B military melodrama run away with the story?

At its best, it’s effervescent. Leads Taylor-Joy (an inevitable future star) and Flynn (perfectly sad-eyed) are lovable and surrounded by some very funny supporting performances from Mia Goth as Emma’s friend and underling, Harriet, Miranda Hart as the garrulous Miss Bates, and Bill Nighy as Emma’s adoring dad.

[A] compelling film touching on the perils of being young - that's it, merely young - in a culture without justice.

Eastwood's earnestness has its own stoic charm. There's something nutty but also heroic in how he plays this macho-man-with-the-heart-of-a-woman premise with a straight face.

On its own terms, Bernie is smoothly made and reasonably entertaining, Linklater doing his Austin-based best not to condescend to the locals - at least the East Carthage locals.

Ai clearly wants to take a macro view of an impossible problem, to find some clarity in abstraction. But whenever he just talks to the refugees face to face, we learn more than any drone shot could tell us.

It would be misleading to call My Friend Dahmer “entertaining,” but I got off on its fuzzy sense of dread, its poker-faced ghoulishness.

Anyone who sees the suffering faces of the victims in "Casualties" and "Redacted" knows that De Palma not only despairs over what he’s showing us but implicates his own medium--his own male gaze--in the crimes against nature.

The best reason to see Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation is Rebecca Ferguson, a Swedish-born actress passing easily as a British spy named Ilsa.

I, Tonya is not by any means a weeper. It’s a black comedy, and parts of it are too broad, like a second-rate Coen brothers movie.

Green has a talent for depicting the way women constantly recalibrate their behavior when moving through male spaces, trying to figure out how to attract enough attention but not too much, to come across as pleasant without inviting unwanted intimacies.

Yes, this farrago of fairy tale and sci-fi conspiracy flick is, on one level, howlingly obvious. But there are howls of derision and howls of amazement, and mine were of the latter kind, mostly.

Stillman's comeback comedy Damsels in Distress is wobbly and borderline twee, but it deepens as it goes along and becomes rich.

It won’t fix the studio comedy, but it’s a welcome, watchable outlier for now.