An unwatchable sci-fi creep-out by eccentric French director Claire Denis, it stars Robert Pattinson, who devotes himself these days to art films in an effort to live down his reputation as a sexy television vampire.

It is humane, beautifully shot in 65 mm and glorious black and white, full of keen observations, intimate details and nuanced performances. I was hypnotized and drawn in by the skill and heart of everyone involved.

The magical chemistry between Redford and Spacek cannot be overestimated.

The humans in the film are blandly generic. But the yetis, while individually distinct, all share a much larger, troubling problem: they don’t have noses.

In most of his broadsides, the director is right. But like most of his incendiary docs, he fails to fully investigate both sides of the issues, overlooking or fudging the facts to cry “Hypocrisy!” whenever it suits him. That being said, I still applaud his courage and wit while he does it.

Unrehearsed, spontaneous and off-the-cuff, they don’t hold back, their fearless charm is relaxed and effortless, and the relentless candor is enchanting. The result is 83 minutes of bliss spent with four Dames who know the difference between truth and illusion, and generously give a great deal of both. In Tea with the Dames, boredom is not an option.

The best and most lavishly appointed, gorgeously photographed period movie in years.

Mostly it’s a misguided mess.

There is a cool detachment to the presentation of the story that, while perhaps fitting for a movie about a crime so carefully calculated it defies imagination, nonetheless serves to undercut the film’s high stakes.

A single idea stretched out for nearly two hours, it’s an odd but strangely compelling film, but so ponderously paced that it doesn’t always convince.

It leaves you feeling desperately in need of a hot bath to wash off the dirt that rubs off just from watching it. This mess is so bad that even the title is disgusting.

Seriously, nothing in this movie makes sense. Characters are introduced and then never appear again; the plot summation given near the end actually counters what we saw come before; the jarring editing doesn’t so much give you whiplash as it leaves you feeling like Jack Nicholson at the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest."

A tale of trauma and survival, Where Hands Touch is grim, compelling stuff, but the tireless humanism of the two leading characters makes it undeniably moving, aided by the careful and empathetic guidance of British writer-director Amma Asante (Belle, A United Kingdom).

Along with Dickey’s equally feral and vulnerable performance, what stands out most in Blaze is just how fully formed and realized Hawke’s vision is as a filmmaker.

Rich in atmosphere but bereft of new ideas about how to scare an audience, The Nun is like being stuck inside a club with cool decor where the DJ keeps playing the same song over and over again.

Phil is the only puppet character that registers at all, which is one of the countless ways that the movies falls short of the legacy it is meant to expand and subvert.

Soars above the ordinary with a timely narrative and a magnetic performance by Glenn Close that is nothing short of miraculous.

Some characters are introduced and never fully explored. Others disappear without a trace, leaving the impression that key elements have been left on the cutting room floor. For Timothée Chalamet, one hopes for better luck next time.

The intelligent script provides rare insight into character development and the meticulously layered performance by Macdonald give the film a credence and balance that touches the heart.

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

Call this embarrassing dog’s dinner Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again or just call 911. Either way, it is nearly two hours of relentless, plotless, artless junk.

Everything is tenuous, including a performance by Keanu Reeves that borders on catatonia. Just because he stopped shaving doesn’t mean he can suddenly act.

The film has beautiful cinematography and occasional peaks of high drama, but lacks the kind of significant tempo necessary to sustain enough interest for nearly two hours to keep a viewer focused.

Powerful, devastating, depressing and deeply unsettling, the documentary Path of Blood by British filmmaker Jonathan Hacker gives new meaning to the word terror.

This bold new film not only shatters comedy’s cold streak, but also serves as a powerful reminder of the vitality of the genre as both social commentary and shared experience.

Strongly acted, beautifully shot and sincerely aimed at clearing up some of the misconceptions about the Old West that have been passed off as history by Hollywood movies.

A first-rate cast enriches the otherwise dismal Boundaries, a misguided combination road movie and domestic comedy-drama that otherwise qualifies as a box office also-ran.

The result is a juicy true story told blandly, but The Catcher Was a Spy is still a movie worth seeing.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the latest installment, has more dinosaurs, more screams, and more general chaos, but doesn’t make a single move to explore a fresh idea or add a new slant on a tired old formula. As brainless summer-escapism movies go, this one can’t go fast enough.

The film is extraordinarily well directed by Alexandre Moors, realistically written, and uniformly well played by an excellent supporting cast that includes Jennifer Aniston, Toni Collette, Jason Patric, and Jack Huston. As “war is hell” movies go, this one is better than usual.

Music video director Director X, making his feature debut, presents it all in a compelling and often intoxicating manner. There is something narcotic and languid about his pacing and camera work that feels purposeful and stylistic when the script is focused but comes off as stumbling and haphazard when the story looses momentum, which is often.

This is the rare sequel that packs constant surprises while still delivering on expectations.

These days actors not only appear in bad movies, they are forced to produce their own flops themselves. Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne co-executive produced Hereditary. They deserve what they get, in spades.

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.

Moronic drivel that truly qualifies as the worst movie of the year, it sinks amateurish moviemaking aimed at audiences with no taste to an alarming new low.

It’s not the predictable plot that holds interest, but the unusual smart-aleck script by British writer-director Bart Layton that blends elements of the true story with an almost journalistic approach.

It’s a true story, basically a two-hander about a pair of courageous lovers lost at sea, as crushingly hard to imagine as it is to watch, but every element is so perfect that it left me shaking and devastated.

So Breath is not without its pleasures, but it takes longer for the boys to grow up than it does to master Big Smokey. It needs a push, an edge, a reason to care about what happens next.

The result is respectable, but dull and tedious. Only half a loaf is not a three-course meal.

What saves the movie from tedium is a cast that is easy to watch, from understated veterans such as Belushi.

You watch the movie like you read a book, which leads to eventual tedium. You can’t put a bookmark in a movie, come back later, and pick up where you left off.

I admire Carrey for taking on a grim and sobering project made in Krakow, Poland, that requires a range he would never be asked to show in any American sitcom, but Dark Crimes is so lurid, irrelevant and unwatchable it makes you wonder if he ever read the script.

It’s such a pleasure to see four mature women, more beautiful, glamorous, desirable and pulled together than most of the ladies today who are half their age, share the screen in all their glory that it’s easy to forget how disappointing the movie is.

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.

Only masochists try to make movies out of Chekhov. They keep trying, and they never get it right.

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.

A turgid, pretentious, and incomprehensible existential joke. What a star on the rise is doing in it is a question mark for the archives.

A well-directed thriller with knuckle-chewing suspense. A cast of unknowns give some first-rate performances, doing everything right to milk the throb of panic and anxiety from “what would I do?” situations. Terror builds from start to finish.

No matter how you regard its limited commercial possibility for success, there is nothing funny about Tully. Having forewarned you, I must add that suffering through her never-ending agony is less daunting than it has to be when it is Theron who is doing it for you.

There are so many ideas rattling around in Backstabbing for Beginners that are never resolved, and so many duplicitous characters that are never satisfactorily explained, that the end result is a muddle of confusion and violence that could end the future of tourism in Baghdad forever.

The film, poorly edited and weakly unfocused by Turkish writer-director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, is a real mess.

It’s not much of a movie, but it feels good and leaves you with life-affirming optimism.

It’s a good story, but too slow-moving for its own good. The cast works diligently, and Keener is scrappy but calm throughout, with a convincing naturalism as a woman with tremendous strength and a powerful belief in civil rights—at a time when most women were reluctant to speak out against political corruption.

Well-considered and sincerely acted, Kodachrome is a character-driven drama that has been wrongly labeled a comedy by some so-called critics. There is nothing funny about it.

A thriller with no thrills.

Several aspects of this sad, grim story remain a mystery, but I am pleased to report that for the most part, Chappaquiddick catalogues the facts and eschews the sensationalism. The result is a film of integrity and disclosure, a controversial chapter in American history that substitutes clinical accuracy for Hollywood embellishment, with an impressive attention to detail and an admirable respect for suspenseful narrative.

Unusual and invigorating.

The result is an old-fashioned play turned into an old-fashioned movie that looks like an old-fashioned play. Nothing happens and everybody talks incessantly.

A fresh and valiant attempt to breathe some fresh air into the #MeToo movement, Submission is stimulating and intelligently rendered until the final act, when predictability sets in.

There’s nothing else to watch or care about in the entire film anyway. Once again, a great actress is on her own.

Movies about coming of age and out of the closet are nothing new, but Love, Simon is so honest, funny and real it never fails to capture your imagination and lift your spirit.

It’s an espionage cartoon sideshow that is inarguably pointless, with occasionally entertaining moments. Color it preposterous.

The latest in this ossified cornball genre is The Cured, which at least tries for a soupçon of freshness.

A well-meaning, expertly acted film, it unfortunately drowns in its own sorrow.

Annihilation is a demented science-fiction comic book of a movie that makes less sense than a butterfly mating with a buffalo.

All I know is it’s excruciatingly dull. It pains me to see industrious people wasting time, chasing their tails and turning into butter when they could be taking a nap — which is what I did at regular intervals during The Female Brain.

Despite good intentions, the movie never lives up to the breathless excitement the real-life story promises.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Francisco Reyes a particularly likable beam of strength and light as the unfortunate Orlando, but the film’s great triumph is Daniela Vega, a transgender actress and singer, who makes an indelible impression in the leading role.

This lumbering trilogy of trash based on the books by E. L. James has so run out of blood and oxygen that it has varicose veins.

Though the film has minor charms (the highly regarded actress can sing, and co-stars Tyne Daly and Scott Bakula are seasoned Broadway musical veterans) Basmati Blues is the kind of easily forgiven early career move that is best released on home video and forgotten.

If "Mother" is still the worst abomination ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting and undeserving public, Mom and Dad is at least the perfect companion piece.

Movies about dying with dignity are always a box-office challenge, but this one doesn’t even qualify as a sad reflection on life’s bittersweet third act. It’s a soggy lump.

It’s a long haul, but Please Stand By, meticulously directed by Ben Lewin (The Sessions), chronicles the pitfalls, terrors and triumphs of the trip with heart-wrenching realism.

The results are a mixed bag of charm and calamity, marking the feature-length directorial debut of Trudie Styler who, in real life, is the wife of singing star Sting. She’s a talent worth watching.

As impeccably made and beautiful to look at as it is, Phantom Thread, under close scrutiny, is a disappointment, as elusive as its meaningless title.

The whole thing has a certain “been there already” deja vu that dilutes the movie’s intended wow factor. Everything else in The Commuter is a yawn.

Fortunately, this is a filmmaker as talented as he is brave and stubborn. Hostiles breathes fresh oxygen into a genre as old as a Confederate cough.

Ridley Scott does a meticulous job of unraveling myriad gruesome facts in the case, and although it’s no surprise how it all turns out, the way a complex crime is played to the final throw of the dice by opposing forces is both admirable and focused.

After seven and a half years in the making, it’s a dumb, dull, lackluster letdown. Hugh Jackman still does everything right. It’s the film that gets it all wrong.

The more I try to find some kind of justifiable meaning and relevance, the more I find The Shape of Water a loopy, lunkheaded load of drivel. Not as stupid and pointless as that other critically overrated piece of junk "Get Out," but determined to go down trying. I call this one "Maudie Meets the Creature From the Black Lagoon."

This remarkable movie — factual and funny, always surprising and unconventionally written, directed and acted — sets the record straight with an adrenalin rush that overwhelms the senses.

Vile.

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.

A pretentious load of swill made in Portugal that should have been buried in a locked vault without a key.

Even though it does so through a dull and talky haze of cigar smoke, it is always Gary Oldman’s phenomenal performance that keeps the film airborne.

So skillfully directed, photographed and acted that it sucks you into its powerful emotional storyline from the start and holds interest to the finish. Despite its length and intricacy, you can’t call this one boring.

Call Me By Your Name is a masterpiece of subtle emotions, intense sensuality and breathtaking beauty.

A mixed bag of dumb jokes and unspeakable violence that is a big improvement over his (McDonagh) other work (it towers over Seven Psychopaths, which was one of the worst movies ever made) but not good enough to write home about at today’s inflated postal rates.

The new, inferior and totally unnecessary 2017 re-make is a sorry disappointment in which nothing measures up to the Sidney Lumet movie, including the train.

The best thing about Last Flag Flying is that Ethan Hawke is not in it. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, and the business is excruciating to get through.

Woody Harrelson in the title role has enough spice to keep the viewer alert and attentive. That’s more than I can say about most of the junk that greets the year-end 2017 holiday season.

It’s not for the squeamish, but required viewing for anyone with a conscience and the need for justice.

Lady Bird is that rare movie in which everything astonishes and leaves you charmed, breathless, and anxious for more.

Part social melodrama, part violent crime drama and part send-up of family values gone haywire, it’s a curiosity that stubbornly fails to come alive until it’s almost over, and then it’s too late.

You learn things from it that should be required viewing for the screening room at the Pentagon.

You can call Novitiate divinely inspired and mean it.

A benign thriller that fails to thrill is like a wet match that fails to light: frustrating and pointless.

It’s so sincere and admirable that it seems churlish to voice objections, but the fact remains that it isn’t very good.