A soul-stirring, foot-stomping and inspirational step beyond most in that its final showdown is only the beginning of a path towards a brighter future for the participants.

Whenever the movie reaches for poetry it lands somewhere in a chain drugstore's greeting card aisle, trying to choose between one that shows an adorable child laughing in a Photoshopped field of sunlit daisies, one that tries for gallows humor but isn't really that funny, and a third with a quote about mortality and wisdom only seems thoughtful because it's written in cursive.

A melodrama with an interesting trick in its tail, but I don’t think that director Garcia pulls the trick off as well as she might have. The movie is sumptuously shot by Christophe Beaucarne; every frame is robustly picturesque. But the story could have used a little less “Under the Tuscan Sun” and a little more “All That Heaven Allows.”

Penn’s own humanitarian work is well-documented, including raising millions of dollars for Haitian relief efforts. Clearly, his intentions here are genuine. But his execution is laughably pretentious.

Not even Hunter, who eventually wears out her welcome, can keep Strange Weather from going off the cliff.

Various characters populate Person to Person, but they rarely register as actual people. And while some of their storylines intersect throughout the course of a day in New York, they rarely connect in ways that have actual meaning.

You don’t have to be a Green Day fan to find this movie interesting, but you’ll definitely be more inherently invested in it if you are.

It shines through just enough to warrant a look but not quite enough to elevate this into the memorable experience it could have been.

The best An Inconvenient Sequel can offer is the formidable image of Gore, nearly 70, refusing to stand down. It's inspiring, but even the filmmakers have to know it's not enough. I was moved by the movie, and then I stepped outside and looked at my phone.

In 1966, film critic Pauline Kael reviewed "Funny Girl," announcing: "Barbra Streisand arrives on the screen, in 'Funny Girl', when the movies are in desperate need of her." She could have been talking about Jessica Williams.

Here is a film dedicated to recognizing our most common obstacles, its quiet storytelling largely accompanied by those feelings at the bottom of anyone’s gut: guilt, shame, defeat. Menashe is a gorgeous ode to everyone's inner screw-up.

Detroit was directed, written, produced, shot, and edited by white creatives who do not understand the weight of the images they hone in on with an unflinching gaze.

A work so completely devoid of wit, style, intelligence or basic entertainment value that it makes that movie based on the Angry Birds app seem like a pure artistic statement by comparison.

Without Charlize Theron, the spy adventure Atomic Blonde would only be clever. She makes it insightful. The actress gives emotional depth to the highly mannered behavior of the film’s heroine.

It’s a low-key trippy sci-fi movie about booty calls with an unwieldy space squid, but I wish I could say it was much more than that.

None of this is particularly difficult to watch; the cinematic competence, the sincerity with which the clichés get served up, and so on, make a relatively smooth viewing experience. But they also render what would have been an at times harrowing real-life story into something safe and bland.

The Midwife eventually devolves into a blandly sentimental register in its second half, which prominently features two mediocre subplots: the cute, but dull romance featuring Olivier Gourmet (“The Son”) and a half-hearted critique of techno-capitalism in the medical field.

The main distinguishing feature of this film is its almost-novel nesting-doll plot structure, and passing thematic interest in its narrative's formulaic nature.

The movie goes down byways you might not have expected: Taboo from Black Eyed Peas makes an appearance, and heavy metal shows up via both guitarist Steve Salas (one of the movie’s executive producers) and drummer Randy Castillo, who played with Ozzy. Their stories are among the movie’s most moving.

A forlornly funny and emotionally bruising dramedy that rarely misses an opportunity to reveal humans as the flawed and occasionally awful beings that they are.

It is reported that this movie’s scenario was inspired by the life of Schroeder’s own mother, and the film has a personal tone that is not always detectable in his other movies. It enhances a film that’s one of the most thoughtful in his body of work.

Kuso may often feel unproductively loud, and monotonous, but it is a head-scratcher worth contending with.

Laudenbach's style is haunting. Some of his artwork stops you in your tracks.

Girls Trip is the ladies-on-the-loose comedy that everyone needs right now, even if they don’t know it yet.

A documentary that had this reviewer wondering if it was a real or faux doc until the very end. Turns out it’s real, but the suspicion that it might be otherwise is a tribute both to the debuting filmmakers’ skills in shaping their story and that story’s innate dramatic power.

It's a film filled with humor, charm, excitement and so many memorable images that many viewers will find themselves struggling to keep from blinking so as not to miss any of the eye-popping delights crammed into each overstuffed frame.

This is a movie of vision and integrity made on an epic scale, a series of propositions dramatized with machinery, bodies, seawater and fire. It deserves to be seen and argued about. They don't make them like this anymore. Never did, really.

One of the things that Tamarkin does very well is present the historical context for the present political reality.