There are heart-tugging moments in The Glass Castle, but Walls’s bestselling memoir needed to be roughed up and aired out. For it to match up to the book, the movie needed the glass to be smashed, not every shard treasured.

Colin Firth is brilliant as the patient, uncompromising and introspective Max Perkins, and the explosive performance by Jude Law as the wild, unpredictable and tragic Thomas Wolfe is one of the greatest triumphs of his career. I was spellbound.

There are some lovely and moving things here, but over the long haul it’s more like watching an hour and a half of someone’s weekend trip to Knott’s Berry Farm.

Deadpool & Wolverine is every inch a post-peak Marvel movie, a parade of crowd pleasing pops with practically no substance, guaranteeing a billion dollar return and a shelf life of about five minutes.

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.

Everything works miraculously here, making Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky one of the most bountiful experiences of the year.

A solidly fun follow-up that understands its audience. Set in 2022, Hocus Pocus 2 not only leaps across several decades, but also reimagines itself in a more contemporary way by diversifying its cast and embracing technology.

I lost count but the word “family” is mentioned upwards of 50 times, many more times than it is in, say, Lilo & Stitch. Yes, it is way too much, like everything else in this aggressively over-the-top film, but at the same time, it just feels nice to be part of the group.

The situations in Little Accidents cry out for more clarity than the script delivers, but the carefully observed performances are worth perusal, and the dark, industrialized joylessness of Rachel Morrison’s cinematography is a somber mirror to the sad dead-end life of Appalachia.

It just goes to show, no matter how burnished your backdrop or splendiferous your setting, if your script is crap, you're stuck with a total dud.

Maybe this is just a whimsical trip with quirky characters and little depth. Maybe we’re never supposed to really understand or care about anyone’s motivation or background. There are great moments and a great idea here. Without that connective substance, though, the car gets stuck in neutral.

Like "Moneyball," this is real movie making that packs a solid entertainment punch.

The movie is about how he learns to show what's in his heart even when he can't find the spoken words to express his feelings aloud. Under the careful guidance of Mr. Nunez, Mr. Becker does both, in ways that reminded me of a Hispanic James Dean.

Unknown makes no sense at all, so you not only worry about Liam Neeson's judgment in movies, but you begin to wonder if he's forgotten how to read.

Johnny Depp is dismally miscast as the alter ego of the rebellious author with the "screw you" attitude.

Michael Shannon is a convincing and resourceful actor who is now too established and viable to settle for enigmatic roles in meaningless, throwaway movies with zero possibilities for commercial success like a thing called Frank & Lola.

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.

Fast X is an outlandish movie. Literally nothing in this movie could really happen, but isn’t that why we watch films in the first place? The imagined world of the Fast & Furious saga is exciting and that’s enough. Are there too many characters now? Yes. Do you always know what’s going on? No. But you’ll laugh, you’ll cheer and you’ll feel, for a few hours, like part of a family.

Why tell the Sleeping Beauty story anew? With this half-hearted film, Mr. Stromberg, the visual effects wizard behind such big-budget blockbusters as "Oz the Great and Powerful," "Alice in Wonderland" and "Avatar," can’t provide an answer.

A dull, pretentious trifle from director David Gordon Green with Al Pacino in another of his late-career mishaps that does nothing to elevate his fading film status. How I wish he would stick to the stage.

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.

The film knocks itself unconscious trying to be whimsical and offbeat, but is so contrived that it is as embarrassing as it is unfunny.

Beautiful and challenging, Bokeh has a pristine look and chilling feel of its own that contributes enormously to the mood and tone of the whole film.

Redundant, unnecessary and a colossal waste of talent and money, you can pretty much sum up Man of Steel in the scene in which a lady police officer watches with her mouth wide open as Superman tosses aside tanks like Tinker Toys. “What are you smiling about, captain?” asks another cop. “Nothing, sir — I just think he’s hot.”

The scant narrative and unwritten characters result in a lack of empathy that doesn’t serve the thematic ideas.

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.

It’s compelling to see [Ritchie's] take on a World War II movie, despite a few narrative holes, and it’s a good reminder that not all war stories have to be so serious.

Almost three hours long, a lugubrious sludge of mud soup called Cloud Atlas deserves a limp nod for pure guts, I suppose, but what I'd really like to do is burn it.