The movie also runs 2 hours, 20 minutes, which is a lot of dead samurai. The violence is often numbing, and the translations — the movie is subtitled — are sometimes as deadly as the swordsmanship. On the other hand, Blade of the Immortal is flat-out gorgeous. Widescreen, lush, beautiful.

Psychologists quoted in the film have a scary-sounding term for one of the ingredients found in most exceptional athletes. It's called a "rage to master."

Wonderstruck, for all of it’s child-in-danger plotting, has a warmth that points (along with the title) to a safe and sentimental conclusion.... When it arrives, though, it lands with a curious lack of emotional impact — perhaps inevitable, given the nature of a story that seeks to connect characters who are rarely and sometimes never on screen together.

At first the flippant tone of some of these scenes seems a bit off, but the movie (full of narrative curves) eventually makes tonal sense. The movie’s epilogue sends us out on a flat note, but Kirke, and her character, make an impression.

For a movie that presents itself as formally inventive, developments in Brad’s Status are a little too easy to guess.

The movie really soars when the dragons do the same — as in previous installments, the best shots are of dragons maneuvering through the clouds.

The movie is an inventive and shrewd satire of the way social media can be used to describe and distort the lives of users.

Brisk and informative.

Aaron Sorkin’s entertaining new film is a tough, smart look at the way some Hollywood heavyweights treat women. Spoiler: not well. But it’s also more than that – it touches on broader legal and labor issues and systems that disadvantage women everywhere, in different ways.

It’s possible, even given Lee’s jaunty structure, that he could have given Girls Trip a more disciplined edit — the movie runs more than two hours, devotes generous time to less interesting characters, and makes room for the movie’s long roster of performance cameos — in addition to Hart, there’s P. Diddy, Common, Ne-Yo, Mariah Carey, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, and many others.

The movie itself is chill. The filmmakers were going for (and mostly achieve) the 1980s Amblin Entertainment feel of a movie out to have an unpretentious good time — a welcome throwback to days before comic books movies became gargantuan and grim.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, The Swan Princess is dripping with appreciation for Disney cartoons. [18 Nov 1994, p.54]

The Paper is helped a great deal by its appealing cast, and there are plenty of cleverly drawn supporting characters to help move things along - Randy Quaid stands out as the paper's gun-toting columnist. [25 March 1994, p.46]

When the creatively blocked Giacometti stares at his canvas, cursing. He is literally watching paint dry, and so are we.

There’s too much convoluted plot...and the movie at times feels big and ponderous, like Ant-Man when his malfunctioning suit does the opposite of its normal effect.... There are also too few jokes, and though Rudd and Peña work like mad to get laughs, they come up well short of optimal levels achieved in Thor: Ragnarok.

At times, Jarecki seems to be actively avoiding insight and empathy.

The actress had legendary power to charm men and women, and we suspect one of them may be Bombshell director Alexandra Dean. Early on, we hear biographers and fans tell us about something that “probably” happened, or that “may be apocryphal,” but it all becomes part of Bombshell‘s print-the-legend approach.

The movie mainly rides on the chemistry and charm of its two leads, and writer Kaling has given Thompson a substantial character to play.

Some are born great, others achieve greatness, and in the documentary Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, we meet a musician who falls squarely in the latter camp.

You almost wish the movie had jettisoned the horror elements entirely, and converted It into what it feels like it wants to be — something more like King’s Stand By Me, with a teen girl in the mix.

Mostly what lurks around the edge of the action isn’t danger, but affection.

Ali and Mortensen make the friendship feel real, using some unexpected tools from Farrelly's kit. His comedic instincts help the movie tiptoe through some dangerous cultural minefields.

Hedges is an efficient, expressive actor, and has the knack for conveying complex information with a look or a gesture, as he does here, suggesting the turmoil within his character on the night when his parents assign him to undergo therapy.

Hamm is in his sweet spot here as a former hotshot now emptied of ideals and passion. Pike plays a woman who trades on being underestimated by men, and supporting pros like Whigham and Norris obviously enjoy working with better-than-average dialogue.

I wonder if Noe is familiar with the work of Three Dog Night, and their 1970 rumination on a party gone bad, “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Its lyrics apply here: “I’ve seen so many things I ain’t never seen before. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want to see no more.”

The most engaging passages in the scattershot Fahrenheit 11/9 address the water scandal in Flint.

It’s easy enough to guess where this is going, but the movie gets the details right, and the relationships play out in a satisfying way, aided by Merchant’s consistently funny writing and light touch.

As usual, Hall is awesome. She has an effortless way of projecting ferocious female intellect, and we see why her character captivates Byrne. When Hall is on screen, the movie works.