Saving Mr. Banks, set in 1961, is smart, delightful.

To the extent that this mostly sunny excursion succeeds, it's due to the irrepressible Hawkins.

An elaborate origins story with more datelines than an issue of Condé Nast Traveler (Oxford! Miami! Argentina! Poland!), X-Men: First Class has some fun trying to explain how Professor X, Magneto, and all those mopey mutants came to be.

The Confirmation is a powerful directorial debut from 59-year-old writer Bob Nelson, who received an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, Nebraska.

As a director, Poitier hasn't come up with any startingly new twists on the old Western cliches. [11 May 1972, p.14]

Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on.

Long and lugubrious.

Works the basics with style and intelligence.

The movie pivots from what I expected it to be: a family drama about an outsider, as the opening conversation suggests. Instead, it becomes an eerie mood piece about secrets buried deep in a family's fabric.

Thornton swills the Matthau role with the unslakable thirst of W.C. Fields and idiosyncratic sexuality of Johnny Depp. So this is what Bad Santa does during the off-season.

High-Rise feels like a throwback to a time when this kind of social commentary, in literature and film, seemed shocking and true. Not sure whether it's progress to say that in 2016, High-Rise doesn't shock at all.

Gimmicky artifice.

Air Doll covers some of the same ground as that other postmodern Pinocchio story, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, while avoiding its facile sentimentality.

Exhilarating and, ultimately, filled with a sense of existential dread.

Almost reflexively, the filmmakers skirt Dan's messier conflicts. But it is the moments when they don't dance around the awkward issue of a brother falling for his brother's girl that Dan is the most poignant.

Great? No. Great fun? Oh, yes. Like Sergio and Aldous, this movie messes with your mind, then tickles it.

Half enjoyable goof, half an uncomfortable panorama of urban terrorism that just doesn't sit well after Sept. 11.

A first film with a deft comedic touch and a trio of charming stars, Saving Face isn't deep - but it doesn't profess to be.

Brody plays Chess as a slightly crooked but well-meaning musical cheerleader without fully emerging as a character.

While Smith gets into Ali's head and under his skin, the movie around him has more footwork than punch.

Illuminating and unsettling.

While these individually diverting factors add up to a good time, they don't add up to a good movie.

The result is visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.

Maybe it's just the subtitles, but it would seem that Fontaine has a keener eye for the elements that made Chanel's style than she has an ear for dialogue. But she gets a splendid performance from Tautou.

Made in a forthright, unfancy style and utilizing a cast of born naturals, Washington Heights deftly draws parallels between father and son's complicated relationship and the tensions that pulse through this predominantly Dominican American community.

An old-style mob movie based on a real court case and a real character - a colorful character - Find Me Guilty is about loyalty, family, and a bunch of good fellas.

No walk in the park, Tyrannosaur is a character study steeped in the British (and Irish) tradition of social realism, and the experience of watching this skillfully made film is, well, exhausting.