Nolan takes big chances with his actors, his action scenes, and his pacing -- you'll feel all 169 minutes in your backside -- and the payoffs come slowly and sometimes not at all. It's frustrating because there's so much to look at, so much money well spent in every frame, but Interstellar wears out its audience long before it ends.

An effective, low-budget horror movie is lurking at the edges of Horns but never gets a chance to reveal itself.

It's shallow, it's silly, it's pat.

A brilliantly flinty movie about writers angry at the world for failing to live up to their standards and recognize their genius.

The thrilling cinematic joyride that, among other improbable feats, puts Michael Keaton, as Thomson, smack in the middle of the Oscar race for best actor.

Because Whiplash is two characters in search of a plot, it ramps up the happenstance and improbability as it stumbles toward a final showdown between teacher and student that would be emotionally satisfying if it had the ring of truth.

Gyllenhaal is in almost every frame of writer-director Dan Gilroy's first feature, skinny and wide-eyed, running down a driveway with his camera or cutting across oncoming traffic in the Challenger. It's an intense performance, the flip side of Ryan Gosling's in "Drive," playing the angles and filling space with empty words instead of soulful silences.

Amalric plays up the ambiguity and brings it all home in a tight 75 minutes, a time that would have impressed Simenon, who wrote and revised novels in less than two weeks.

Binoche is her usual dependable self, bringing passion and fury to a familiar, but still compelling, character.

There are some attempts at a comic-bookish, film noir vibe, including a hotel where all the crooks and killers stay, forbidden by house rules from "doing business"on the premises. And everywhere Keanu turns, he bumps into a character from HBO.

At over two hours, it might test the patience of some younger viewers (and some impatient older ones as well), but for anyone willing to take the time, it's an utter treat.

The dose of reality is bracing and welcome after all the hothouse talk that preceeded it. Dear White People is a first feature, lively and intelligent and thought-provoking, by a writer-director whose best movies are yet to come.

The movie wobbles as it approaches the home stretch, but, thanks to its leading man, manages to stick the landing.

A funny and appealing film.

Talented, prolific, familiar with film, etc. Cave is a natural to push documentaries in a new direction, and 20,000 Days on Earth does it.

David Ayer's film is a gory, muddy, downbeat tale of war's hellishness and the fraternal bond between those stuck in the middle of it. It's also, like "Ryan," full of tense, grippingly staged action scenes that capture moments of pure adrenaline, and it's the tension between those two impulses that makes "Fury" fascinating and ultimately flawed.

There's potential here, as well as in Junn's touching relationship with a fellow resident at the home, for real intensity, but Khaou insists on sticking with a glacial pace and lip-trembling emotional repression when a little bit of melodrama might have gone a long way.

Pride should leave audiences smiling and inspired. But it would have been a much more groundbreaking film if it had been released 30 years ago.

If this Dracula can kill hundreds of enemies by himself — and he can, and does, in several dull and protracted battle scenes — then where's the suspense? If he's become a monster for noble reasons, then where's the dark conflict?

Thornton restrains himself (especially compared to Downey and Duvall) until his cross-examination of Duvall, when he throws off that "Fargo" menacing restraint and throws it down. You go, Billy Bob!

A pleasant entertainment, the term Graham Greene used for his thrillers, but slips away from memory as quickly as a summer evening.

Director John Curran is an American who has spent much of his career in Australia. I admired his movie "The Painted Veil" and think he captured the essence of Davidson's journey of discovery in Tracks.

Twisty pulp entertainment at its highest level.

The lunacy to which The Equalizer descends is especially disappointing because the movie starts out with some promise.

Wiig, following the big-screen breakthrough of "Bridesmaids," has dipped her toes into dramatic waters, but for Hader, The Skeleton Twins is a revelation.

The movie is well-crafted and finely acted (including by the non-actors László and András Gyémánt as the creepy, affectless twins), but it never comes up with a new way to communicate its sadly familiar themes.

The characters aren't clever or cool enough to command attention in the visually busy world the Laika animators have created, and the story starts abruptly and ends in a very familiar place. It's hard to believe so much talent went into making The Boxtrolls without a better script to support it.

Tusk is a step backward into an insular world. True, it will probably play well to gore fans, and that dedicated audience who already cheer everything Smith does.