This is the kind of clever jolt to the system we want from horror thrillers — an unexpected commentary on today’s society burrowing its way through an intense story.

Jinn holds several beautiful elements, especially in its central mother-daughter story.

An empathetic examination of the traditional lifeline of a tight-knit community, threatened to be torn apart by an inevitable wave of capitalist takeover.

Damned if it doesn’t work beautifully for nearly the entirety of its two hour-plus running time. Green Book is the kind of old-fashioned filmmaking big studios just don’t offer anymore. It’s glossy and zippy, gliding along the surface of deeply emotional, complex issues while dipping down into them just enough to give us a taste of some actual substance.

A movie with good intentions but is uneven in tone, leaving me with mixed feelings. It felt like the speech was preempting any criticism with sentimentality. The uneasiness continued in the film’s wild swings between tragedy and goofy comedy.

A big-budget, holiday-timed blockbuster about…racism, which may not exactly be the joyful, escapist entertainment families are looking for this time of year.

The women are all compelling though never too-polished storytellers. Whether they succumb to the horror of what they're describing and start to cry or remain stoic throughout becomes part of the experience of hearing the tale.

This film is a powerful love letter to the Black Church, offering a soul-shaking introduction for the unfamiliar and a grandmotherly yank of the arm for those who know—it drags you from the theater straight into the pews.

McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.

Infinite Football is as casual as a conversation with a stranger that ends up going for more than hour — the kind where just by being attentive and sporadically asking questions, you take away someone’s life story, and understand the one passion they could talk about on end.

The two couples in this film are so annoying that I did not just want them to break up with each other; I wanted to find a way to break up with the movie, or perhaps scrape it off my shoe.

One of several reasons River Runs Red is such a resentment-generating movie is that it takes a vitally serious subject and makes such a relentlessly dumb hash of it.

The film is best when it doesn't take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, for the most part it takes itself very seriously.

Although the film’s premise is based on a true story, Luis Ortega’s El Angel is not a faithful biopic. Somehow, the facts are darker than their fictional counterparts.

A thoughtfully feminist spin on “Pretty Woman,” this film is not.

I know that this type of culinary experience is in fashion nowadays, but I’m a fat guy who can’t muster much excitement for a $160 meal I can fit in my navel.

Fidell trusts the dynamic between her two main actors, and allows them a lot of leeway. The conversations have a fresh and improvisational quality. Best of all, she leaves space for the unexpected and the random.

So much time and energy put into something that, try as I might, I could only muster interest in sporadically. All of this well-meaning effort to waste on a film that never finds the right tone to connect with viewers. It takes a lot to make a movie like Outlaw King, even if it provides so little.

Realistically, Overlord is a simple mechanism to deliver squib packs and swear words, a function that the film's creators accomplish despite their otherwise unremarkable story's choppy pacing and general humorlessness.

The smaller details are the most fun, especially when the Grinch brings on an enormous, yak-looking reindeer named Fred to pull his fake Santa sleigh.

What’s most bewitching throughout “Scruggs” is its sense of detail. Its meshing of formal discipline and screwed-down content sometimes give it the sense of a work that has been carefully and elaborately embroidered rather than photographed.

The worst thing about The Girl in the Spider’s Web — the element likely to enrage most fans of the franchise — is how it betrays its central character by eradicating almost every aspect that made her so initially fascinating.

Reitman gets the superficial details of the era right: the pay phones, the big sweaters, the constant indoor smoking. But he’s missing both key insight and satirical bite in his depiction of this pivotal point in American history. Privacy is about to become a thing of the past. In The Front Runner, it dies with a whimper.

The film is a welcome tribute to vision, innovation, and knowledge as more important than technique and training, and encouraging imagination as more important for children than honing sports skills.

Wang's movie is empathetic enough not to pass negative judgment on the characters as they muddle through their experience.

Maria by Callas offers a new side to her legend, one that was also vulnerable, smart but also lonely, a fate that sometimes befalls headstrong women.

An engaging and accessible look at one of the most important figures in cinema.

The best thing about Welcome to Mercy is that its creators don't go for cheap thrills ... not many, anyway.