Hitler didn’t actually snub Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics, but the story is too good not to tell, so Race tells it anyway — adding the (true) detail that Owens was snubbed back home. By someone called “the White House,” because this supposedly truth-telling movie can’t bear to spell out the words Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The result is no masterpiece, but neither is it a disaster. In its steady great-books way, the film is often truthful and moving.

What's best about the film are its quick jumps from one depravity to the next as jazz rambles on the soundtrack: Youth is a candle to be burned at both ends, with (as it was once said about Bob Dylan) a blowtorch in the middle.

The Israeli feature For My Father is a rarity indeed: A sweet, sentimental movie about a suicide bomber.

Cancels itself out by being too campy to take seriously and too tragic to laugh at.

Heller’s enjoyable film is not the cringe fest you walk in expecting it to be, even if the premise will be a hairy leap for some moviegoers.

Director Zack Snyder's cerebral, scintillating follow-up to "300" seems, to even a weary filmgoer's eye, as fresh and magnificent in sound and vision as "2001" must have seemed in 1968, yet in its eagerness to argue with itself, it resembles "A Clockwork Orange."

Wants to be an epic in the mold of "Saving Private Ryan," but it's hindered by its modest budget.

A shameless heart-tugger from France, The Chorus leaves no cliché unturned.

Director Shawn Levy’s laugh-a-second movie is easily the best Marvel has delivered since 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” and provides similarly nostalgic pleasures in its whiplash-inducing number of retro cameos — none of which I’ll spoil, for fear of my own life.

The story meanders from competition to competition (up the ramps, down the ramps) and seems like it could end at any point. The characters are similarly underdeveloped.

An above-average and sometimes surprising kid movie.

Preposterous, slipshod, unfunny and emotionally null.

As portrayed by Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky weren't exactly Rhett & Scarlett.

The star is Luke Benward, a dead ringer for the young Kurt Russell.

Far from a touchdown, but you gotta give points to any movie where a character describes its climactic game as a "muddy snoozefest."

“Risky Business” it’s not, and Delevingne is no Rebecca De Mornay.

A flawed labor of love that's definitely worth a look.

Fake-sounding dialogue, some over-deliberate performances and five amazingly trite linked stories.

The movie isn't bad, only scattered and incomplete.

There are affecting scenes, and not all of Cacoyannis' additions to the Chekhov text detract from the effect of its moving brilliance.

It's the addition of Depp's corrupt CIA agent, Sands, that really makes this violent, over-the-top action film, with its maze-like plot, sing.

Hocus Pocus 2 is also awful to the core, but charmless and too low stakes to keep our interest.

The subject is touchy, but Gund handles it with taste and compassion.

The clichéd, heavy-handed script lets them down.

In my favorite scene, Hobbs leads his tween daughter’s soccer team in a haka (Maori war dance) to intimidate their rivals. Can’t wait for “Fast and Furious 11: No Boys Allowed.”

"Trainspotting" redux.

All the tedium of an endless trans-Atlantic flight gets packed into the 105 minutes of Non-Stop.

Nunez gets nice performances from his cast, but his narrative is cluttered.

Well-intentioned, if ultimately underwhelming, ode to the ongoing fight for a cure.

Less enjoyable than making a baby but more enjoyable than raising one, the animated feature Storks delivers a bouncing bundle of blah.

A taut suspense flick for grown-ups.

Douchebag belies its abrasive title with a soft touch for two wobbly souls.

Harks back to a 1960s idea of what a horror film should be.

Ethan Coen’s road-trip comedy “Drive-Away Dolls” does not have that cinematic new-car smell. No, the stale scent is closer to months-old, unfinished McDonald’s Happy Meals and inexplicably maroon stains. The creaky vehicle has racked up so many miles, it barely starts. So tired and unappetizing, this dreadful film is.

Basically a PG-13 version of “After Hours,” with more than a bit of “The Out-of-Towners” thrown in.

The mild British wackiness is more droll than funny, but the movie is a pleasant cup of tea.

Slightly radical in portraying high schoolers as human beings of normal niceness and intelligence. That means this winsome comedy is a little low in the stakes department, not to mention predictable, but it gets an “A” for charm.

The kind of unsophisticated family entertainment they supposedly don't make anymore.

More impressive than the sight of these acts on an eight-story screen is the excellent six-channel IMAX sound system.

This frigid and inaccessible period piece wears its glumness like a shroud.

There are no end of tear-jerking moments in Perlasca, a well-made and heart-rending Italian "Schindler's List."

Garcon Stupide features the best gay seduction scene ever filmed on a Ferris wheel. Unfortunately, you have to sit through the entire movie to get to it. Whether you want to will depend on your interest in explicit gay sex.

In addition to the magnificent music, the movie takes its rumpled charm from Fry's unfeigned fanboy manner.

Armie Hammer has given several of the worst performances in recent years — see, or rather don’t, “Mirror Mirror” and “J. Edgar.” The big surprise in The Man from U.N.C.L.E is that Henry Cavill is even worse.

The way-too-neat ending of The Brave One especially strains credulity, but it's worth watching for Foster's fiercely arresting performance.

Director McLean doesn't let up on the suspense, which builds to an electrifying climax that is greatly abetted by Will Gibson's gritty cinematography and Francois Tetaz' nerves-inducing score.

Everybody involved in 39 Pounds of Love probably had the best of intentions. But watching the filmmakers scurry about to record every last tear, I couldn't help but feel that this twisted little man was being exploited.

Farrell feels like a weak link here, never quite as masterfully manipulative or brutish as the role calls for.

By far, the highlight of Minions is hearing The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life” over the closing credits — the first time I think I’ve ever heard it used in a movie. Otherwise, the prequel to “Despicable Me” is like trying to form a rock band out of three Ringos.

Real Steel is to action what the Anthony Weiner habit was to sex: It's so virtual, so distant from the thrill, that you wonder what the point is. Do you really want to pay to watch an actor playing a kid who in turn plays what amounts to a video game?

Half dark, deliciously topical political satire and half somber portrait of a flailing counterinsurgency effort. The two don’t mesh well, and given the number of modern war movies already out there, it should have stuck with the former.

Unknown actually has enough of a sense of humor to admit what it is: hybrid corn. But it's been crossbred from Hitchcockian stock.

It examines other crises faced by JFK - Cuba, the Berlin Wall, civil war in Laos, the insurgency in Vietnam - and finds that in each case Kennedy chose talk over tanks. (Often, he went against advice of aides and generals.)

The legend of Thompson is immortal, though, and it'll fall to each generation to jam him into its own mold. Depp and Robinson's view is that Thompson was like a mullet: a party in the back but all business upfront.

Newcomer Joey King is funny and adorable as daydreaming 9-year-old Ramona Quimby.

Writer-director Jon S. Baird has devilish fun with the hilarious black-comic elements of Irvine Welsh’s novel, but the incessant bad behavior does get a wee bit monotonous, and the twist ending is disappointingly pat.

Though Binoche does very solid work, she can't sell the idea of her and Law as a couple; the chemistry isn't there. Not much else rings true in Minghella's screenplay, which is full of coincidences and speeches about race and class.

Lee's incendiary and brilliant new film.

Sheen's throwback portrayal is appealing enough, but flat characters, dull revelations and uninvolving complications make this deliberately small film feel nearly microscopic.

When an 80-year-old director turns his attention to death, you hope for some insight, or gravitas, or even whimsy or anger. Hereafter has none of that.

The film is overstuffed with comedy material, though. There’s a time-period-appropriate gag for everything — the TV is just a hole in the wall that they watch birds through — and the jokes are nonstop. The best moments of animated films are often the most serene.

A slow, self-consciously low-key, very dull film that strains for eeriness with long silences and affectless performances.

Coppola sure knows his late-'60s cinema and he's meticulous in reconstructing the style of the era.

Just Brit filmmaker Shane Meadows having some fun with the conventions of the spaghetti western.

Energetic, often very funny comedy filled with sharp, vivid performances by a terrific ensemble cast.

A tabloidy, nail-biting thriller.

Hanks is terrific giving his first flat-out comic performance in years as a wildly eccentric criminal mastermind.

What really wrecks Wolfgang Petersen's Troy is some of the worst casting in recent Hollywood history: The lackluster ensemble hired by the director is overwhelmed by the generally impressive sets and crowd scenes, by the task of playing epic heroes and by David Benioff's rambling, tone-deaf screenplay "inspired by Homer's 'Iliad.'"

An Italian romantic comedy that's irresistibly set in Mole Antonelliana, the cavernous Museum of Cinema in Turin.

Middleton deals with the various male and female perspectives in an even-handed way, concocting a slice of New York life that's frothy as meringue pie.

In-depth performances by De Niro and Gooding Jr. provide the oxygen for this extremely shipshape biopic.

Phoebe in Wonderland happens to be at least partly a Lifetime movie, but this special little film is no disease-of-the-week tear-jerker.

Don’t expect a single novel element here — everything is recycled from the junkyard.

Albert elicits good performances from her cast, but she fails to give viewers reason to care about their characters.

Beautifully shot by Michael J. Ozier, the dominating taste in Bottle Shock is Rickman's beautiful performance as a snob - a snob who is secretly open to being delightfully surprised.

Tasteful and gorgeously photographed coming-of-age story.

While there are plenty of laughs, Hunt doesn't play this for farce. Even Midler gives perhaps the most restrained, and arguably the most winning, performance of her screen career.

Zalla constructs a suspenseful movie with no intention of sugarcoating the daily hardships of New York's underclass.

Director Michelle Esrick, who followed Wavy around for 10 years, journeys from Manhattan to Woodstock to Nepal to the hills of California to tell Wavy's story. The journey is entertaining, whether you witnessed the 1960s firsthand or heard about it from your grandparents.

The tone and focus of David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn careens around so much it’s hard not to end up as irritable as its title character.

Patel has his most rewarding role since “Slumdog.’’

Where is Wright’s mastery of tone and zany-but-unnerving quick-cut style? It’s been replaced by a cacophony of assembly-line sci-fi noise in a blah “Blade Runner” that, depending on the scene, is either stupidly serious or seriously stupid.

It's suprisingly flat.

Winter hits his stride detailing how the music bigwigs hung Napster out to dry, but couldn’t do a thing about their industry’s permanently altered business model. This exercise in recent nostalgia (the original Napster went bust in 2002) might have been better if the tart cynicism of that section had shown up earlier.

An expensive demonstration that all the spectacular effects in the world aren't enough to make a great film - but it's worth seeing for that stunning half-hour alone.

May have a storyline as generic as its title, but in the explosive Pacino and the smoldering Farrell (who nearly stole "Minority Report" from Tom Cruise), it has a pair of stars who are not as easily dismissed.

A leaden retelling of the legend of Australia's Jesse James that has understandably been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years.

Beck expressed dismay that “Pimp” was taken as a glamorization of his life, and not a warning. By omitting the experiences of the women who worked for him, the filmmakers risk the same thing.

Mostly it’s up to Lawrence to wring all the drama and pathos she can out of a battle over patent rights that pushes Joy to the brink of bankruptcy. No surprise that her mettle cleans up all the messiness in Joy.

For starters, it wasn't a great idea to basically borrow the premise of "The Blues Brothers'' and turn these quintessential Jewish characters (something that's not even hinted at) into the bumbling would-be saviors of the Catholic orphanage where they were raised.

Could have been a spiky culture clash. When it tries to shock us with its alleged realism, though, it is entirely a bore.

Mostly The Matador romanticizes a brutal tradition that has no place in the 21st century.

Darlings, there's nothing quite so tragique as a boring eccentric.

It’s a swift, vivid movie, but 10 years past the scandal, not much is new.

Dreamworks Animation's clunky and wildly unimaginative Monsters vs. Aliens really doesn't have a clue what to do with the [3-D] technique.

Picks up steam when it finally arrives in Cannes just in time to wreak yet more havoc at the big film festival, but getting there is pretty tedious. A little of the wildly mugging Atkinson goes a long way.

An often compelling, tragicomic psychological analysis of Dubya, viewed through the prism of his relationship with an allegedly disapproving father.