Both witty and poignant.

Under the direction of Allan Moyle ("Pump up the Volume"), Nairn, McCarthy and Balaban give confident, believable performances but overacting plagues the rest of the cast.

A promising film that is dragged down by the weight of its gray morbidity.

Goodman doesn't preach or point fingers. She lets the three recruits have their say, and allows viewers to make up their own minds on the issues her film raises.

Ultimately “Mad About the Boy” is much like Bridget herself: endearing, silly, messy, wacky, kind. I like it… just as it is.

Priceless provides lightweight, predictable entertainment that will make you yearn for the Tatou of yesteryear.

Brad Anderson's Transsiberian is a genuine sleeper that jump-starts an almost extinct genre.

There's little new in Armadillo.

It's a hushed work of restrained emotions, elliptical storytelling and spare dialogue, peopled with smart, authentic characters who have drawn you into their lives before you know it.

Those with a high tolerance for the ultimate four-letter word, and a love for eccentrics, will be entertained by both White and his art.

While the movie could be a notch scarier, the unsettling imagery and slow build to chaos make me want another movie by this director stat.

The movie still seems fresh in the way it respects both the art in ballet and the discipline it demands - even in childhood.

Honor Among Thieves is a useful reminder of something that’s been forgotten in the age of dense film universes and ultra-violent action films: Light-hearted adventure movies like “The Princess Bride” remain the perfect vehicle for humor, romance, fights and special effects. When done properly, as Dungeons & Dragons is, they give audiences a full-bodied experience that’s hard not to like.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

Best remembered as the most flamboyant of TV's original "Hollywood Squares" - which is really saying something on a panel that included Paul Lynde.

Charming to the max.

Though never dull and often visually beautiful, this work of operatic sweep doesn't fulfill its own ambitions.

Qualifies as perfect family entertainment.

But given the potentially gripping subject matter, the film is fatally underedited: Every scene feels too long.

Bittersweet and often funny but overlong.

For all its virtues, this is not a film to see on less than a good night's sleep.

Schmaltzy and endless.

Gripping, smart and moving, without falling prey to sentimentality, it shows what can be achieved when mainstream filmmakers like Howard and Goldsman are genuinely inspired and determined to be honest.

Slow West certainly lives up to its title: It’s one poky Western, plodding and perambulating and moseying across the 1870 frontier on a grim march to a pointless ending.

Pablo Larraín and Alfredo Castro - the director and star, respectively, of the acclaimed Chilean black comedy "Tony Manero" (2008) - reunite in the chilling Post Mortem.

This extremely well-acted dramatic farce of grief and betrayal actually has a resonance beyond its target demographic.

Midsommar is no slouch on chills, but they creep up slowly, like a bad trip from one of the Swedes’ festive glasses of hallucinogenic tea, and are leavened with an occasional dash of humor.

The sleepy horror movie is an onslaught of spooky images that, while well-done, are watered down by sheer abundance. We stop being scared after the first 15 minutes because there is nothing new to see.

One of the year's best.

Two dull people have a dull love affair in Summertime, a French drama that drags on like an August afternoon.

A little humor would have helped leaven a movie that is frankly often very difficult to watch.

So warm and well-meaning that you may find yourself wanting to like it more than you really do.

Sexploitation and art blend uneasily in Crazy Horse.

It's Gordon-Levitt's pitch-perfect work that makes Brick a hardboiled treat.

With a mischievous, metaphysical flourish, Doctor Strange administers some much-needed CPR to the flagging superhero genre. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel — a power-hungry villain (Mads Mikkelsen) tries to unleash hell on Earth, blah blah blah — but it’s a heck of a lot more fun than I’ve had at a Marvel movie lately.

Unlike Zack Snyder’s Justice League, there is nothing serious about The Suicide Squad. That’s a good thing.

The twists are executed superbly, right up to a climax that fits the David Mamet definition of what makes for a perfect ending: It is both surprising and inevitable.

The film has no ready answers, although it becomes abundantly clear that both those for and against charter schools are more concerned with covering their own asses than with helping students get a quality education.

That rare commodity: a film with only good things to say about public schools.

Whether Tiny Furniture is a mumblecore movie is an open question. It has many of the tell-tale signs of that ill-defined genre; although improvised dialogue, a mumblecore staple, is minimal.

Downbeat and at times strangely slow-moving despite all its beautifully shot high-speed ambulance rides.

Takes you on a fascinating and picturesque journey into a relatively unfamiliar culture.

Hilarious French farce.

The plot is thin as consomme, and the thudding score is distracting, but the heartfelt storytelling and Michael Bertl's disarming cinematography make this a food film to savor.

Walk the Line superbly combines music and two of the year's most riveting performances to tell one of the screen's great love stories.

Subtle, sometimes really sad and honest about the struggles of adolescence, Marnie is a worthy last entry from Ghibli before the studio reportedly goes on hiatus.

[Refn] mixes jittery hand-held camerawork, improvised dialogue and available light to create a nightmarish world of sex, drugs and horrific brutality that will turn off many viewers while delighting others.

Kontroll calls itself a thriller, and you will agree if you are excited by scenes of bored inspectors arguing with sullen straphangers.

The film's attempt at a sort of beautiful anguish works best in its middle section. It takes far too long to get going, and it doesn't have much of an ending.

Swift and often compelling, it’s also blessedly unbiased.

Its many pleasures derive from the way this drama unfolds unexpectedly from the characters rather than imposing itself on them.

You won’t see a better performance by an actress on film this year than Julianne Moore as a linguistics professor struggling to hold onto her personality after a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s in the unforgettable drama Still Alice.

Limps to a fairly lame conclusion, but until then its remarkable candor is like spending a memorably hilarious, harrowing and unforgettable weekend with your wacky in-laws.

As transporting as its otherworldly title suggests.

Corcuera's unflinching documentary Back of the World is a real-life horror story told in three parts.

White-haired Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers -- the group was blacklisted during the McCarthy years -- is in especially fine voice.

Abduction uses interviews, vintage photos and re-creations to tell the sad story of love and hope in riveting, suspenseful style. So powerful is this film, it brought tears to my eyes.

In his later years, Smith, who was also a gifted photographer, largely abandoned films in favor of performance art - and his art apparently included deliberately contracting the AIDS that ended his life.

Though Despicable Me is a little ragged on story, it's got a lot of imagination and a heart as warm as a fluffy kitty.

Director Baran bo Odar puts all this in the service of ghastly clichés. The rape of children has long since grown nauseatingly familiar, in books, in films, in each season of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

Director William Oldroyd’s mouthwatering drama, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, misleads and misdirects all the way to the shocker ending.

The laughs flow, but Zobel isn't content to rely solely on them. To his credit, he allows Martin and Clarence - and the film - to develop consciences.

Doesn't always deliver on its twists. But it works well enough that an American remake is in the works.

The time passes quickly. This is the rare remake that does honor to the spirit of the original.

The idea of combining creature-feature invisibility with domestic-abuse gaslighting — playing with someone’s reality to make them think they’re going insane — is inspired. This middling horror film, regrettably, is not.

The Batman is the first caped crusader adventure in a while to come off as completely purposeless. Christopher Nolan’s movies reframed the comics as realistic, psychologically complex tales of an urban blight, and Affleck’s Bruce was built to fit into a wider DC universe. The Batman is here just to ensure that Marvel has box office competition.

Has enough material to supply an entire year of a soap opera - in Inner Mongolia, that is.

This indie documentary is egregiously Hollywood in spirit. That a take-charge white football coach can buck up a place like Manassas HS with some gridiron grit is a lie we want to believe.

There are lots of special effects, but sadly, no real magic.

In a move sure to infuriate “nanny state” critics, director Stephanie Soechtig names the US government and food corporations responsible for a campaign to get Americans addicted to junk food — particularly, and most dangerously, sugar — as early as possible.

There needs to be a 12-step program for movie people to stop sharing their "deeply personal" yet insight-free stories of addiction.

Propaganda is terror's best friend, but Paradise Now is clever enough to make that buddy work for our side for a change.

An earnest, if dreary little Canadian domestic drama.

There's nothing particularly startling or new in the script by Siegel and his co-writers Lisa Bazadona and Grace Woodard - except that it, refreshingly, draws its characters in real-life shades of gray.

It's a touching story that deserves to be told. Unfortunately, Slesin's presentation is conventional and uninspired (lots of boring talking heads). These heroes deserve better.

A leisurely, scene-setting start, peppered with authentic banter and winning localized humor, fleshes out the characters in Manito so well you feel as if you live alongside them.

This is a rare case of a movie that improves dramatically as it goes along.

Daunting though it may be for the aspiring pick-up entrant, this is a fun and worthwhile ode to one of New York’s greatest summer pastimes.

Brains! Brains! Why can't they make a zombie movie with brains? This is one. Romero has given us, as well as the zombies, a lot to chew on.

Inspector Bellamy leaves a sense not unlike a summary of Chabrol's entire career -- of guilty stains seeping away in every direction, of motives hidden and of endless stories that frustrate full understanding. To Chabrol, no life is ever a closed case.

Funny is not a word often used to describe von Trier's output, but "Boss" definitely is that, thanks to a breezy script and a bright cast.

This Muppet virtuoso is so visibly thrilled to work in Henson's weird and wonderful world, and so good at bringing joy to little kids, you'd have to be a true Grouch not to be moved.

Turing’s tale needs to be more widely known, and while The Imitation Game may not be a great film, it is an important one.

Wal-Mart's home office in Bentonville, Ark., can rest easy: Greenwald, as usual, is hysterically preaching to the choir.

The result — directed by Rufus Norris and setting words collected by Alecky Blythe against music by Adam Cork — is mesmerizing.

Pepe Danquart's To the Limit from Germany looks great, but it's an altogether different animal.

Don't get the wrong idea -- to Rowe's credit, this isn't just a movie about sex. It's a compassionate study of human loneliness. Whatever you do, don't confuse this with the Hollywood rom-com of the same name.

Adults will sniff out a general air of phoniness - the period detail isn't particularly convincing, and the Scottish factor is overcooked to the point where the script starts to resemble the national cuisine.

It is engrossing, even funny at times, but it is a bit too jagged in execution to properly build to its tragic climax.

If the film is meant to make us feel good about African justice, it does anything but.

Its superb performances, music, photography, dialogue, its rhythms of tone and theme all complement each perfectly.

It's the little things that resonate in this tender and sincere tale of first love.

The most delightful family movie since "Stuart Little."

Short and sweet, small and smart, Tadpole is the oasis in the desert of dopey summer blockbusters - an uproarious, sophisticated coming-of-age comedy so flawlessly written, acted and directed it seems practically miraculous.

Haneke's images are so bold and riveting and the characters' emotions are so raw that the lack of a few details doesn't matter.

A fascinating, sad, sometimes quite poetic window into a grueling way of life most of us know little about.

Those with a high tolerance for violence and gore — at one point, Rama battles assassins labeled “Baseball Bat Man’’ and “Hammer Girl’’ simultaneously — will eat up The Raid 2.

It’s fresh, it’s alive, it’s not the same old Marvel Cinematic Universe.