Terry George remains a director I admire, and as movies go, the integrity and importance of The Promise are irrevocable.

The Vow is not exactly a woman's picture. It's more about how a man falls in love, loses his love and gives up everything in life to focus on regaining his love. Maybe it's a woman's picture from a male point of view. However you slice it, it's a welcome loaf-far from perfect, but as filling as a home-cooked meal.

It has a seedy underbelly that will appeal to hard-core Mickle fans; it’s more deranged than it initially seems.

It may not be one of the best, most inspired and fully realized classics in the master director’s oeuvre, but it towers above almost everything else in the junk pile of 2017 year-end releases.

Some of the on-camera bitchery between Mr. Ford and Ms. Keaton is laugh-out-loud witty. For the most part, Morning Glory is a delicious movie that will make you jump for joy.

There is plenty of excitement and pulse in Hereafter, as well as a reluctance to provide easy answers to life's great mysteries. I'm happy to see a great director take on the challenge of new and different material with his customary grace and impressive two-fisted technique intact.

Informative, fascinating and surprisingly funny documentary.

Despite the cynicism that permeates any film about family values, Dog Gone takes great pains to avoid sentimentality. It’s a tearjerker with mature intentions.

The latest entry in the overcrowded genre is a sobering, well-made drama that is well worth seeing, titled Truth & Treason, about the youngest person ever executed by the Third Reich for his dedication to criticizing Adolf Hitler.

Grim and hopelessly despondent, but superbly acted and strangely effective as crime on the screen goes.

Filled with nuance, intricate emotion and a refreshing absence of melodramatics, Conviction is a moving exploration of light and love shining through the darkness of despair. Its impact cannot easily be shaken.

It’s in the music that I Saw the Light best demonstrates how a tormented man named Hank Williams revolutionized the essence of country songs into a joy embraced by millions.

The movie piles on one damned thing after another, often turning a truly original life story into a Rabelaisian soap opera replete with powdered wigs and violin concertos.

Some subjects grow weightier and more substantial with time, and this one has never been more relevant.

It all combines to make for quite the adventure, enjoyably uncanny if overly broad.

Her recent film Sharp Stick was classic Dunham, with a focus on sex and drama in a way that didn’t connect with all viewers. This one, intended for a family-friendly audience, connects far more broadly. It welcomes everyone, even those unfamiliar with the novel, into its delightful, funny world.

Words and Pictures doesn’t possess the tender grace of "Enough Said," Nicole Holofcener’s wonderful film about middle-aged love. Nor does it have the kinetic energy of a high school movie like "The History Boys", adapted from Alan Bennett’s play. But it’s a winning effort from a director whose varied oeuvre has consistently charmed viewers.

As much as there is to wonder at in Belle, the film is weighed down by its convoluted narrative.

A Quiet Place: Day One is a surprisingly tender and moving film that uses the franchise’s alien apocalypse to tell its own, very different story.

Richard Gere gives his most uncompromising three-dimensional performance in 20 years.

It’s beautifully photographed and entertaining, with charming performances by Will Smith and newcomer Margot Robbie that tease and tantalize. You won’t be bored.

Writer-director Nicholas Tomnay knows how to make maximum use of plot twists that keep an audience on its toes, and Nick Stahl is a skillful master of how to move the gore with exactly the right pace to exude charm in spite of his character’s ongoing toxicity.

The welcome surprise is that it’s quite thoughtful and sensitive, thanks to a captivating performance by Will Brittain that dispels any preconceived notions of cavemen as the hairy, misshapen, grunting brutes depicted in Hal Roach’s One Million B.C.

It’s a riveting film and I understood every word.

As docs go, it’s not as informatively or entertainingly good as it should have been and not as shamefully self-serving as it could have been, but as wistful as it made me feel about the New York I once loved that will never come again, it put a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

An all-star cast of #MeToo celebrants are now determined to prove how empowered women can make the same smart, entertaining heist movies as men.

Heading toward his destination as a decent man facing ruin by doing the right thing, Mr. Hardy does a great job acting out the phases of anxiety frustration, confusion, exasperation and ultimate resolve — while working overtime to save a movie that takes place entirely on a cell phone from getting boring.

The result is a film that won’t make a dent in cinema history but, with an ebullient gusto, it is impossible to resist.

To me, the sex in Ammonite is nothing short of a yawn. The movie is also ponderously slow — the cinematic equivalent of liquid valium. But the two accomplished actresses at the helm balance two sides of a difficult equation exquisitely, exact and admirably immersed in total dedication to their roles, and supported by a fine peripheral cast.

The film is a deeply heartfelt experience that addresses the struggles of everyday people in a strange land most of us know nothing about. You will not go away unmoved. See it, and learn something.

You go away slack-jawed with shock and sated with the chilling bedtime-story elements of a great unsolved mystery novel you can't put down.

A charming, beautifully photographed modern fairy tale about love and gardening, This Beautiful Fantastic is worth seeing in spite of its dumb deterrent of a title.

With Nope, Peele aims to make viewers afraid of the sky the way Jaws made us scared of the ocean. Horror thrives when it twists the everyday into something ominous, and Nope may have you scanning the skies for suspiciously still clouds.

Wonderful, honest and low-key performances inform and enhance The Yellow Handkerchief, an otherwise unexceptional little drama.

It’s a metaphorical stretch for a simple movie title, but never mind. Closer to the Moon still manages to be a strange blend of history, black humor and art.

The memories are vivid, but there’s no plot to connect them, and the film is rendered almost totally incomprehensible by accents as thick as congealed week-old mutton stew.

As the focus of Mayor Pete, a fascinating chronicle of his 2019-2020 campaign, he’s living proof that decency, integrity, and liberty and justice for all still work in American politics. His story is like a good book you just can’t put down for fear that you might miss something.

It is a difficult and painful subject to consider, talk about, and confront both in life and in the movies. But Kormákur’s quiet little film reminds us that when we do—and however we do it—the process can remind us what it is like to be human.

Bond is back, and so is high-octane entertainment.

All of it combines into not only a profoundly romantic experience, but also an exploration of a number of different kinds of love and connection.

It’s far superior to what usually comes out of the British slums in the genre of gangland thrillers.

Ms. Bening does a touching, masterful job of conveying real emotional pain.

I cannot count the number of reservations I had about Anything, an idea with every possibility of being a cheap publicity gimmick aimed at selling the sensational and luring the lurid. What a shock, then, to discover that Anything is anything but.

Well-crafted, potently written and beautifully acted.

For sure, it’s another example of style over substance — a richly deserved accusation that is always leveled at this kindergarten cop of a director, but I confess it’s a lot of scattered and disjointed fun.

Regardless of your tolerance for Restoration jabberwocky, you will be forced to admit the performance by Olivia Colman as England’s dim-witted Queen Anne is a masterpiece of madness.

Rønning unfurls the journey with tension and then triumph, even if some of the storytelling leans towards the formulaic.

A tender showcase for a different kind of Jerry Lewis that utilizes the strengths and frailties of a 90-year-old show business survivor as few films have ever done.

The truth is, this flawed but still entertaining film’s chief asset is its representation of a young woman who has spent her life following orders but is now finally crafting an identity of her own in a shifting moral landscape.

It’s a routine story, worth seeing for the galvanizing (pulverizing?) star performance by a smashing Liev Schreiber in the title role.

There are and have been countless Hollywood actresses for whom this role would be particularly resonant, but for this moment, there’s no better person to tell this story than Sydney Sweeney. And, thankfully, she gets to tell it on her own terms.

For the most part, To Catch a Killer is a thriller that thrills more than other similar films do, and Shailene Woodley adds another laurel to her already impressive resume.

Sleep Tight is a creepy - but highly effective and superbly made - horror movie from Spain in which the monster is spine-tinglingly human.

New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town. This movie proves it like none other.

Anchored by a haunting lead performance by Jessie Buckley, Men is an unsettling drama about the cultural pathology that holds women responsible for the actions of men, focused not so much on how it feels but on what it does. It’s quiet but visually verbose, mixing obvious and obscure metaphors in a way that would get tiresome if not for its modest 100 minute runtime.

Nothing in it comes close to the magic, the originality or the everlasting entertainment value of the original, which only cost $2.777 million and didn’t use a single computer-generated graphic. This says more about how much better movies were in 1939 than they are today. Still, I had enough fun to predict that history (or at least a tiny piece of it) seems destined to repeat itself. People just can’t get enough of this stuff.

The awkward results are too contrived for comfort.

Despite The Green Knight‘s opaque obscurity and scattered whims, there’s a clear beginning, middle and end structure that crescendos with a scintillating third Act.

Leonie is a rich tapestry of cross-cultural revelations, released to the public at last, and a welcome addition to an otherwise dreary movie season.

From this less than enchanting excuse for a feature-length movie comes 5 to 7, featuring delicious performances, extremely witty dialogue without the customary Hollywood television punch lines, a convincing believability quotient, and some beautiful cameos, especially by Glenn Close and Frank Langella as Mr. Yelchin’s disapproving but modern, adaptable parents.

Unflinchingly written and directed by Austin, Texas-based filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh, it’s too unnerving to recommend to the squeamish, but for anyone curious enough to find out what really happens to turn decent people into savages in the bedlam of the American prison system, this is one for the must-see list.

The real star of the film is the magnetic, forceful and charismatic Matthew Fox, who steals the entire film as easily as if he were pitching a softball.

While Berger’s film should be applauded for envisioning a way forward for the profoundly troubled and still deeply corrupt organization, by not more completely and honestly reckoning with the crimes of its past, its optimism for the future—while both deeply felt and dramatically conveyed—ultimately rings hollow.

We know about Anne Frank's diary and Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece "Black Book," but director Martin Koolhoven has shed new light on what happened in Holland with a powerful and touching film.

Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the movie is an explosion of creative weirdness that is equal parts exhilarating and overwhelming.

It does provide a welcome antidote to the usual surfeit of formulaic Hollywood junk.

Mr. Rudd imbues Ned with an easy, charming sweetness and unpatronizing wisdom that make him seem simply guileless, not stupid. Indeed, the greatest flaw of Our Idiot Brother is in making Ned too saintly - despite the title, it's clearly the sisters who are the morons.

The brilliant screenplay by Mr. Letts sets up the narrative story of the Weston clan in a carefully constructed series of episodes in which the family history is finally revealed. There’s great acting in every frame, but by the end of the ordeal, the viewer may be too exhausted to care.

Bob Trevino Likes It, the feature film debut from award-winning short film and web series director Tracie Laymon, wistfully and powerfully recaptures a more guileless era in our digital lives—which the Facebook interface and the lead character’s cracked second-gen iPhone put at around 2010.

The theme is nothing new, and the film has no shortage of clumsy biopic clichés, but sometimes we need to see the simplicity of humanity at its best. On that score, this movie delivers in spades.

Mr. Fiennes admirably humanizes the characters while exploring their contradictions and emphasizing their feelings. But his no-frills direction is a bit stodgy for my taste, and although this is not the Dickens you’d ever pay to hear read "Little Dorrit," there’s more vitality in his performance than the film itself.

I can sympathetically and intellectually appreciate just how rare it is to see a wacky comic-book movie about growing up trans and finding yourself and your people, about coping with a repressive parent who takes your gender dysphoria as a personal affront, of struggling to build a healthy relationship when so many of your peers are similarly traumatized by a society that is hostile to their very existence.

Master Gardener fits as snuggly in writer-director Paul Schrader’s legacy of films about obsessive and isolated men as do pruning shears in the calloused hand of the film’s title character.

Late August, Early September comes closer than any movie I can remember to capturing the nuances of relationships between overarticulate characters who can't figure out where they really stand with each other. [12 Jul 1999]

Directed by Paul Dektor from a disarmingly offbeat screenplay by Theodore Melfi, American Dreamer is fresh, original, unpredictable and unexpectedly funny.

It doesn’t eventually add up to much, but the acting is deeply sincere, and I was touched in unexpected places.

Every generation gets a new one, and this time, replete with computer graphics and singing mice, Kenneth Branagh has created a live-action fairy tale that pulls out every stop and spares no expense.

The question is, How big an audience is ready to relive the horror of a tragedy so close to home, especially in the light of the terrorist attacks that continue to assault our senses daily?

Agreeable, multifaceted Michael Keaton has been away from the screen for a while, but as both star and director of Knox Goes Away, his fresh and sophisticated new crime thriller, he proves he’s forgotten nothing about how to invest an offbeat film with his own unique sensibility and control it with precision and power.

The Harder They Fall may not be the second coming of the Western genre, but it is a highly entertaining film with inspired performances by Majors and Elba, and a thrilling debut from Jeymes Samuels, who makes the case for more movies like this to redefine the Western genre for a new generation.

A carefully considered mix of humor and melancholy glows in the fragile sunshine that bathes an isolated Welsh coastline in The Ballad of Wallis Island, a wan yet affecting consideration of lost love, forgotten bands and the odd ways those entities manifest themselves in our hearts and on our turntables.

It’s an impressive feat of comedic acrobatics to make a movie in this mold that creates a version of this madness that we can justify, relate to, become disgusted with, and ultimately love.

The show, however, belongs to Batman and Will Arnett. This is a movie that will be enjoyed heartily and repeatedly.

Although the going is so sluggish at times that the film often looks like it needs artificial respiration, stick it out. The end result is oddly entertaining.

Violet’s editing and texture effectively convey what the character is feeling, and while its noncommittal camera choices occasionally prevent the viewer from feeling it alongside her, Munn’s performance, and the film’s eventual narrative trajectory, are incisive enough to get around its visual shortcomings.

If Beale Street Could Talk is sad, sobering, gritty and graceful — more a reflection of the underrated James Baldwin than the overrated Barry Jenkins.

Paddington is a harmless delight that blends live action with animated technology in the manner of "Ted," but without the raunch.

A thoughtful coming-of-age story with bracing performances, solid writing and direction by John Gray and inescapable take-home values that give you a feel-good lift.

The psychological payoffs outweigh any implausibilities. And what's the harm in logging off your network for a few hours to indulge in some good old-fashioned science fiction?

The actors are superb. The nuanced writing and direction have insight. The three-dimensional portrayals of women in the rural South during the war are praiseworthy.

Walking With the Enemy is a powerful piece of filmmaking that examines history and heroism with big-screen artistry, imagination and thrills.

Seeking Justice is an intense thriller so full of shocks it keeps you wired from start to finish.

Ms. Deneuve has been directed by everyone from François Truffaut to Roman Polanski, but she has gone on the record saying she has a special rapport with Mr. Ozon (the 2002 film "8 Women" remains a classic). He brings out such a loopy delicacy in her that she shines-a charming, witty centerpiece from start to finish.

Portman’s delicate and damaged portrayal is mesmerizing.

Papi Chulo eventually turns effectively…poignant.

In my opinion, Mr. Spielberg’s life story is always slickly directed, professionally written (a collaborative effort by the director and prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner) and admirably acted by an appealing cast, but only intermittently interesting and less than what I’d call mesmerizing.

Balanced and solid, with equal measures of terror and suspense, the movie is Arcadian and I’ll be darned if it didn’t scare the daylights out of me.

Red Rocket isn’t the kind of work that condemns or implores—not explicitly, at least—but Rex lays everything on the table, from Saber’s basest desire to his most complicated self-delusions, while Baker (who also serves as the film’s editor) refuses to let punchlines have the final word.