Not every sight gag works, and there's a brief stretch in the middle where the action becomes landlocked. But once we're out to sea the movie goes swimmingly--its three protagonists fighting, flailing, and often on the verge of drowning as their tiny skiff surges toward the land of the Inuit.

The surprises are mostly in the details. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is bursting with ideas that feel like clever marginalia on an otherwise familiar setup.

Howard A. Rodman's script has a lot of juice, and the rhythms are so pregnant that the air vibrates with something, even if you're not sure what.

Our Mothers (which won the Caméra d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and is available to watch on demand beginning May 1) is the sort of movie that gets lost in the U.S. when life is normal. It’s a good one to see when you’re anxious, in pain, hypersensitized, uncertain of the ground beneath you, and thinking — maybe for the first time — that you ought to start digging.

A deeply silly midsummer lark that makes up for the fact that it’s about nothing by being incredibly entertaining.

Honestly, watching One of Them Days, you start to wonder why Palmer isn’t one of the biggest stars in the world by now, though part of the problem is that she’s a creature of comedy, and studios barely make them anymore. Even when the writing and pacing falls slack in this one, as it definitely does on occasion, she wrings laughs out of scenes with screwball physicality and surprising line readings.

Despite Chalamet’s blazing brilliance, we don’t particularly root for Marty, or feel for him, or even hate him; he feels like a plot device in his own story. And yet there’s something there. Maybe the fact that this tale of constant forward motion has little room for humanity or reflection or reason says something about Marty and his times — which of course are ultimately our own.

Like his "Wendigo," the film has a lot of mumbo jumbo about ancient spirits revived and angered by human disrespect--the old Indian-graveyard paradigm, as clunky as ever. But the context is overpoweringly eerie.

Farmageddon made me laugh quite a few times, and kids will probably love it. But it can’t quite measure up to the glories of the first Shaun the Sheep film.

Hyams's film, which may at first seem like a glorified VOD entry in a forgotten franchise starring has-been action stars, is an admirably tense sci-fi/horror adventure that somehow turns its considerable limitations into virtues.

Loveless gives us a multicourse meal of social ills, too dispersed to feel like a thesis, yet too chilly to feel like a raw, unbridled tantrum.

It’s a real crowd-pleaser, and I hope a lot of people will be inspired by its mixture of grittiness and uplift. But it also demonstrates that showbiz go-for-it stories are more alike than unalike, even when they have a vivid countercultural vibe and feature actors who don’t conform to (Hollywood white male) studio ideals.

The best thing in Gilroy's "Michael Clayton" was the final scene between George Clooney and Tilda Swinton, the one in which the vise tightened click by click on Tilda. This is another vice-tightening sequence, but scary instead of triumphant, and with a long and explosive punch line. Finally, a sequence we can follow! After this, Gilroy owns us.

Scene after scene rockets past dumb, past camp, past Kabuki, and into the Milky Way of Silly where laws can be made up and discarded as long as what happens gets laughs.

It's deftly calibrated and acted with relish: Kasdan is really good!

Outside of its open and shameless heartstring tugging, Gifted at least sets up a compelling, multisided moral dilemma.

When it works, which it does most of all in its opening and closing acts, it’s because it manages to give a surprising emotional solidity to what’s otherwise a whimsical premise.

The film is at its best when it lets Dickinson’s deceptively blank face and Hélène Louvart’s lyrically natural cinematography tell the story, which is far more informed by mood than events.

This is a film made by a wiser man who recognizes that everybody's looking for salvation in their own way. In the end, as the camera revisits the cast of broken, fallen characters, we may realize that Red Hook, as far as Spike Lee is concerned, is a state of mind.

That makes Brosnan the more interesting protagonist, Chan the wild card — and changes The Foreigner from a standard revenge melodrama into something weightier and less predictable. It’s an awkward weave, but it has gravitas.

Hideously depressing but also enraging documentary.

It’s a sweet, swift 91 minutes long, and only about 80 if you skip the credits — but it’s a surprisingly immersive affair, and the authenticity writer-star Hanks and director Aaron Schneider bring to it is a huge part of its appeal.

It's still possible to have a good time at this movie, and the primary reason is De Niro.

Like Teddy, there’s a lot of sophomoric silliness Night School feels obligated to perform. But there’s a heap of good intentions behind it, and enough big laughs to make us want to forgive it in the end.

It’s a fun little movie, more of a giddy rom-com than a splatter-y slasher.

The result is that rare Hollywood genre film that earns its intensity rather than forcing it upon you.

This entertaining but rather peculiar movie asks extraordinary questions, and I wish it were better equipped to give the answers.

Delpy may be starting to channel Woody Allen's directorial skills, but Rock has fully appropriated the Woodman's barbed comic anger.