There are some nice lessons about confidence and teamwork, a more-funny-than-scary villain, and impressive guest stars voicing minor characters, including Kristen Bell, James Marsden, Lil Rel Howery, and Kim Kardashian (as a pampered poodle social media star) and her children.

While far from being a classic, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” is a charming and often invigorating reimagining of key Looney Tunes characters (Daffy Duck and Porky Pig), with a look and sound that links it to past versions without feeling indebted to them.

The work by the two leads is consistently committed, not to mention oozing with old fashioned movie-star charisma.

The film will only work for you if you expect it not to make sense, and enjoy jokes that go on and on and then suddenly (and repeatedly) jack-knife off a cliff or two.

Unicorns, directed by Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd, doesn’t reinvent the romance genre. Still, it overcomes any rote storytelling by gifting viewers fully fleshed-out and realized characters who color between—and sometimes outside—the lines of their archetypes.

This version of La Llorona finds new emotional ground. It’s not just a creepy story, but a painful reflection of injustice.

The Gift uses the tricks of the thriller trade well, but why it really works is that it withholds the necessary information until almost the very end.

Loro feels like the work of a more mature artist. Sorrentino knows exactly who his Berlusconi is, and, with the help of Servillo — who delivers a characteristically impressive performance — manages to make the former Prime Minister’s total lack of introspection seem ironically revealing. Ecco Silvio: pathetic, alone, indestructible.

A documentary that serves a vital function. Ricky Gervais notwithstanding, this disease is no joke, and it’s not going to be addressed as the scourge that it is until a larger portion of the population gets that. This movie should help.

Aunt May is such a delectable force that the audience waits with baited breath to see if she’ll do what we’d expect from an auntie. And she always does; her consistency is the warmest form of comfort.

Its truncated ending, and the sense that there is far more to this story than what “Platform” includes, puts a damper on the otherwise-engaging documentary.

Some of our heroine’s choices as the film raises the stakes feel a bit unbelievable, but that can be forgiven given the single-setting, single-performer restrictions of the piece. In the end, the goal was clearly to trap us in the increasingly fractured mind of a single person who increasingly believes what is beyond believable. Mission accomplished.

As engrossing as it’s alarming, the documentary flows with a stream of consciousness about the illusion of the “Chinese Dream.”

A surprisingly effective new horror flick.

My Zoe dares to lead with its feelings, and that fearlessness provides a striking spectacle itself.

Suze invests in its characters, allowing them complexity and ambiguities. Everyone is full of surprises.

It works as a genre film; it's thrilling and suspenseful, with enough twists to keep you guessing, but the pointed commentary is impossible to ignore.

Dumont's characters' motives are consequently hard to divine, despite convincingly twitchy performances from French actors Fabrice Luchini and Juliette Binoche. So while I do recommend Slack Bay, I must warn you: this is a misanthropic comedy that features cannibalism, weird religious overtones, and a lot of goony pratfalls.

For non-French audiences (or those not well versed in world politics), many references and soundbytes can soar over the head, but “The President’s Wife” is most concerned with uplifting its lead lady in all her schemes, sarcasm, and competence, and this it does well.

François Ozon's "Peter von Kant" is an odd, chilly film, even by this director's standards.

Part of the allure of The Guardians comes from the casting: The radiant, real-life mother and daughter Baye and Smet play mother and daughter Hortense and Solange.

What is unusual about the film is that it is a frankly admiring portrait of a monarch. The king here is the tale’s hero, and the choice he makes regarding the Nazi invasion undergird a drama that is proudly and unequivocally patriotic.

It's all so rich—and so richly executed by Ellis, a total filmmaker—that one wishes it added up to more than a series of smart variations on a certain type of film.

The reason that The Monster works is because of how much Kazan’s performance captures the truth of the moment in which Kathy struggles.

An ambitious but occasionally uneven animated film.

Despite its shortcomings, there are things about this film that are hard to shake; the movie’s ultimate wisdom and overarching compassion make it very likely that you won’t want to shake them, after all.

Sometimes we just need a nice, cozy movie featuring a heartwarming true story and actors with British accents. And if Bill Nighy is one of them, well, that's just a bonus.

A Woman, a Part mixes passion and ambivalence to create a work with ambiguities that seem earned, and lived in.