A deliciously nasty, dark comedy.

Simultaneously funny and touching with elements of pathos to go along with the raunchiness. However, The King of Staten Island runs too long and, as result, it loses steam while chugging toward the ending.

The movie is fresh, fun, and breezy.

The film revels in blood and gore, but this is not just a run-of-the-mill splatter film. There's a lot of intelligence in both the script and in Alexandre Aja's direction.

Not mainstream fare, but neither is it as willfully obtuse as "Melancholia."

Denzel Washington plays Denzel Washington, good cop. This isn't a great performance, but Washington wasn't brought in to show off his acting chops.

Lightweight, although it exhibits enough heft for us to develop an emotional connection with the main character. I have always appreciated a smartly written motion picture, and, whatever flaws Igby Goes Down may possess, it is undeniably that.

As a date movie or for a solo night out, Blast from the Past offers more than standard romantic comedy fare.

The Last Jedi is a film of moments. There are perhaps a half-dozen of them: goose-pimple inducing, fist-pump encouraging, heart-racing bursts of cinematic satisfaction. The problem is that the narrative threads connecting them are lazily knitted and sometimes tangled or broken.

Life of Pi is a curious juxtaposition of the mundane and the majestic; a film that strives for something grander than what it perhaps achieves.

The best pure thriller of 2003 to-date.

Whether this is an accurate depiction of how things are in real life, I cannot say, but it's almost always how they are in the movies.

Send Help makes for an interesting counterpoint to Swept Away; the similarities are too frequent to be coincidental. Yet, where the Wertmüller film openly courted controversy for its misogynistic elements, Send Help is a more straightforward, crowd-pleasing endeavor.

Director Zhang Yimou's ambitious attempt to blend martial arts action with Shakespearean melodrama. It's not a perfect marriage but it offers two hours of solidly over-the-top entertainment featuring incredible visuals and powerful performances by international icons Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat.

Even considering some of its late-innings flaws, this is an engaging movie that doesn't mistake histrionics and bile for solid family reunion drama.

The film's success or failure depends almost entirely on a viewer's ability to relate to and become involved in the lives of the characters. We are with them for less than a week and, during that short time, we come to understand the lifetime of hurt and misunderstanding that stands between them.

It has been argued that for characters to be three-dimensional, they must have a past, a present, and a future, not to mention an arc. The Merry Gentleman offers a counter-argument for those who would dispute this.

As horror movies go, Boarding School is worth seeing simply because it’s different. Not weird, off-the-wall different like mother! or Hereditary, but different in a good way.

To date, no motion picture has adequately captured the soaring highs and devastating lows associated with a long distance relationship, but Going the Distance comes as close as any movie has.

The absence of a strong narrative is the film’s weakest aspect. The Coens are so absorbed by their mimicry that they don’t invest a lot of effort in the connective tissue.

The bottom line is that viewers who enjoyed Deadpool will almost certainly enjoy Deadpool 2, although perhaps not quite as much.

Aside from the likable performers, Forces of Nature's greatest strength is that it flouts several established conventions of the genre.

Paddington 2 is a charming early-year offering and, although the main character is better known in the U.K. than the U.S., no cultural leap is required to fall in love with the bear and enjoy his adventures.

A drama about isolation and communication, The Band's Visit is characterized both by strongly delineated characters and low-key comedy. The movie is not lightweight but it is at times lighthearted.

With its offbeat blend of warped humor, dramatic and horror elements, social commentary, and Talking Heads, Dream Scenario may not always be comfortable but it is undeniably provocative.

Vincere is Ida's story, but it says as much about fascist Italy and its ruler as it does about the central character.

Costner, who has never been the most emotive of actors, is perfect for this role.

This brash, glitzy, energetic entertainment has the power to hold an audience enraptured, but, at the same time, there's a sense that what we're experiencing is just candy for the eyes and ears.