The Drop reminded me of "Killing Them Softly," based on a novel by another Boston crime master, George V. Higgins.

Has its heart someplace worthy. But its head -- not so much.

Sometimes the best way to relate history is to tinker with it and make it feel like a living thing.

Provides adventure and humor in sufficient spoonfuls to make its pro-environment medicine go down smoothly for the target audience of grade-schoolers.

What we've got is a mixed though certainly entertaining bag.

A distancing cynicism has been slathered over the story's maudlin core, with the hope perhaps that between these two conventional extremes resides a genuine emotional truth. That may be the case, but "Wilbur" doesn't quite get to it.

Wright and company do a splendid job of distilling it down to a fresh and entertaining joyride of a film.

it feels as if it is going extra innings, due partly to a present day prologue and epilogue. But the banter stays lively, humor never slumps.

Kazan has a gift for letting you see her think, even when she's perfectly still; the film's title refers to the ferocious trauma happening between Ivy's ears and her silent struggle to keep it in check.

If you're inclined toward women of the smart/sly variety, you'll leave with a massive crush on Hall. You might remember her as Christian Bale's long-suffering wife in "The Prestige." Here, she comes off as a sort of college-aged, raven-tressed, human rights-obsessed Emma Thompson, only cooler.

Director Kim Ji-woon creates a funny, fast-moving pastiche of Spielberg, Woo, Leone and George Miller, but it's really a must-see for its three big action set pieces -- which go on for a million years each and become almost hallucinatory.

The performances are solid, and Juuso has a particular charisma. The actors do a commendable job of revealing unimagined layers to their initially one-note roles.

Engrossing and unusual.

Deeply strange, oddly shimmery movie.

Warmhearted lesson in tolerance.

It's not an art film. The movie is as mainstream as it gets -- which is just fine; the picture is both great fun and gently satirical.

It’s a timely and lively film that reminds us that such phenomena as reality TV, YouTube celebrity and living one’s life 24/7 on Facebook and Twitter aren’t necessarily brand new.

It's neither grounded enough to be genuinely horrifying nor over the top enough to be nastily fun.

Zobel isn't a sadist about all of this as, say, Roman Polanski or David Lynch or Todd Solondz might have been. There's a humanity here, even for the restaurant manager. But that still doesn't make Compliance easy to ingest.

A garish and fascinating little movie that comes bouncing in the wake of Bennett Miller's "Capote" like a yipping puppy trying to keep up with an elegant show dog.

Caro stumbles in a couple ways. By flashing forward throughout the film to scenes of the climactic courtroom showdown, she blunts the story's dramatic impact.

Despite the film's inevitably downbeat tone and occasional repetitiveness, there is that heavenly music to remember -- or to encounter for the first time. You will leave the theater singing, if with a touch of melancholy.

Characters in Bullhead act out of stupidity, greed, anger and vanity; their world is filmed in a washed-out haze; the miserable fortune that devastated young Jacky haunts him ceaselessly still. The film's final notes hint at a state of grace, perhaps, or at least of release. But there's a tautological determinism throughout that suggest otherwise.

There's plenty of freshness and skill here, both in front of the camera and behind it.

The fascinating tale of master forger Mark Landis is especially bizarre, mostly because it doesn't involve the commission of a crime.

You can imagine a better adaptation of The Hunger Games, but you can much more easily imagine a far worse one, and all in all that's not a bad outcome.

A masterfully varied set of images, paces and moods.

With the grounded performances, a pleasant look and feel and the brains to refrain from anything more than a quiet portrait of life, The Housekeeper makes for the sort of well-seasoned meal that's so refreshing in the summertime.