Pine is the secret sauce that keeps this thing buoyant and fleet-footed, even when the plot turns start piling up. He’s the guy at the center of this ensemble who’s shining but not eclipsing everybody. More than the VFX and the grand-gesture spectacle, he’s the one making this movie fun. Like vintage summer-blockbuster kind of fun.

It may not be Larraín’s best film (we’d nominate No). But it’s unquestionably the movie he was, in so many ways, born to make.

Gangs of New York is something better than perfect: It's thrillingly alive.

Scores a solid hit.

Sadly, Howard blands out in the final third, using old-age makeup and tear-jerking to turn a tough true story into something easily digestible. Until then, you'll be riveted.

James approaches A Compassionate Spy with a compassionate touch; this is more a profile of a man and a 52-year marriage than a History Channel-style march through events. And it is certainly not an indictment.

The documentary rightly keeps coming back to the music and the band's delight in making it. Good move. It truly is a joy forever.

Relationships are killers, and this tough, tender, deeply satisfying romantic comedy from writer-director Lynn Shelton is also bruisingly funny.

Ari Aster is a bold new voice in psychological horror, the kind that messes ruthlessly with your head. He proved that last year with "Hereditary," featuring Toni Colette in one of cinema’s most memorable meltdowns. And now, with the hypnotic and haunting Midsommar, he ventures into fresh territory without losing his grasp of what nightmares are made of.

It's Bacon who overcomes all obstacles.

Even those who think Die My Love courts indulgence and incoherence to its own detriment — there are times when the movie itself threatens to fall apart and blow up the devices projecting it as collateral damage — will gape in awe at how Lawrence makes them feel this person coming apart at the seams. This mother makes what the star did in the equally provocative Mother seem like child’s play. She’s completely unhinged and loving it.

Alex is neither an excuse for Arnett to crack jokes at will nor part of a tradition of funny people bending themselves into Bikram Yoga positions to be taken seriously. It’s merely a portrait of a guy trying to find his way back, one confessional free-form monologue at a time, to who he is after being adrift in a sea of existential ennui.

Michael Fassbender delivers a bold and brilliantly immersive performance as a sex addict in Shame. He is so raw and riveting you won't be able to take your eyes off him.

"Sensational" is the word for Joseph Gordon-Levitt (equally striking in Mysterious Skin), who stars as Brendan, the teen outsider who becomes a budding Bogart.

What Robert Downey, Jr. is to "Iron Man" and Ryan Reynolds is to "Deadpool" – that's what Benedict Cumberbatch is to Doctor Strange. By that I mean, he's everything.

Polanski, working from a fluid script by Dorfman and Rafael Yglesias ("Fearless"), gives the story its due. He creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic tension to rival his "Knife in the Water" and "Repulsion".

The movie is too much, too long, but not lacking in its glories. To find them, follow Harley. She’s leading the way.

It sounds sappy, and sometimes it is, but director Koepp and co-writer John Kamps stay alert to the humor and pathos of Bertram's isolation.

It's the work of a filmmaker with a stunning future.

Cage, who gives a blazing, imposive performance, uses his haunted eyes to reveal the emotional scars that Frank can't heal.

Documentarian Alexandra Lipsitz believes that air-guitar competitions are worth a whole feature-length movie. She's wrong, of course. But the fun lasts longer than you might think.

Auteuil and Depardieu spar hilariously, and writer-director Francis Veber, following "The Dinner Game," offers another delicious treat.

Witherspoon has nailed it before, notably in "Election," but her portrayal of June is astounding in its vitality and richness.

What felt appropriately metaphorical and ruminative on stage becomes somewhat muddled and inane onscreen. The real attraction here is the controlled, charismatic performance by the man formerly known as the Fresh Prince.

It's the whooshing terror that fries your nerves to a frazzle. Antal's control never falters.

Woody Allen's best movie in years means to trip us up: Sexual sizzle. London instead of Manhattan. Brit actors. Dark humor with a sting that leaves welts. You bet it's a change. And it looks good on the Woodman.

Moore shows us acting at its best, alive with ferocity and feeling and committed to truth.

Writer and first-time director Anthony Minghella lays on the whimsy a bit thick at times, but his wryly funny and heartfelt observations on sorrow go down much easier than the Hollywood brand of lump-in-the-throat histrionics.

That's what Blanchett is doing here. She adds a human element. She can turn anything into art. Even artistic navel-gazing.

Luhrmann is a director with the style and snap to have these tired routines on their feet and kicking like a line of Rockettes.

The best surfing documentary ever made. And that includes 1966's "The Endless Summer" and its terrific 1994 sequel -- both from Bruce Brown, Dana's father.

The film shines at capturing the watercolor delicacy of China's past.

Carell's genius for loading a comic line with mirth and malice is on joyous display.

What is certain is that Mossfegh’s exploration of secrets, lies and liberation plays well on the page, but works even better on the screen. Good luck in getting this movie out from under your skin.

The Shrouds is, for all of its hallucinatory imagery and airport-read twists and turns, a blatantly personal film — arguably Cronenberg’s most personal since 1986’s The Fly.

Cage and Caruso strike sparks in this riveting piece of pulp fiction, but it’s that first Kiss you’ll remember.

The Invisible Man is a chilling mind-bender that strikes at our deepest fears — the ones we can’t see.

At its best, The Batman is a helluva tough-guy yarn — an entertaining pulp-fiction epic under the guise of sure-thing blockbuster. At its worst, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a mixtape.

This emotional climax of the film, with its warring glints of despair and hope, typifies the stunning achievement of The Ice Storm and confirms Lee as a director of the first rank.

What takes Arctic to the next level is Mikkelsen’s stirringly expressive face. Known for playing villains — the dead-eyed 007 nemesis Le Chiffre in "Casino Royale" and the title killer in the TV series "Hannibal" (2013-2015) — Mikkelsen invests Overgård with a bracing humanity that you root for every step of the way.

It will hook you good and keep you riveted.

Fed Up has a fire in its belly to change things. Naïve? Maybe. So what. I say, Godspeed. Here is something rare at the multiplex: a movie that matters.

Don't forget Winstead when making a list of the year's Best Actress contenders. Yes, she's that good.

Shot in the West Bank, the film radiates authenticity. Even when he plays the action like a thriller, Abu-Assad is in search of a deeper truth.

Tyrel appears to be an ensemble project, but this is Jason Mitchell’s showcase.

The Boy Who Lived lacks the complexity and frisson that might have set it apart in an increasingly crowded documentary field, or pushed it beyond its feel-good parameters.

It’s moments of blunt, borderline-brutal honesty coming directly from the source that make this whole endeavor such a necessary counterpoint to all of the mythology that’s sprung up around Love ... [But t]here are a number of questionable choices that the doc makes in terms of aesthetics.

If Untouchable does nothing else, it demonstrates how patterns of intimidation and the power to destroy lives flourish in systems that allow for the turning of blind eyes. It was just the cost of doing business with Harvey, until thankfully, it wasn’t.

It's been a long time since intellectual sparring created such excitement onscreen. I've heard a few critics dismiss this mind-bender as hopelessly old-hat. Ha! If so, long live retro. ​

No narrator, no talking heads feeding you insights, just the lady letting it rip on stage and off. What Volf, a French photographer now working on his third book about the acclaimed soprano, misses in perspective he gains in intimacy. His film fawns shamelessly and fumbles a few salient points, but it’s indisputably up close and personal.

Tadpole may be small, but it's something special -- a cheeky comedy knockout.

The Raid 2 lets its warriors rip for two and a half thrilling hours. With the precision of dance and the punch of a KO champion, Evans keeps the action coming like nobody's business. The wow factor is off the charts.

The promise of Shang-Chi, which is as much martial-arts movie as it is standard superhero origin fare, is that a lot of people will get their asses kicked: sometimes gracefully, even beautifully, and other times with the battering-ram power you can expect of a movie advertising 10 rings at play.

The mixture of the fantastic and the sublime that’s constitutes the Ghibli house tone is very much what Casarosa & co. aiming for, though the many, many bits of business onscreen suggests a homecooked meal of Disney/Pixar leftovers.

Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg’s addition to the Predatorverse, isn’t just an intriguing expansion of the series or a cool intellectual-property detour; it’s something close to a B-movie masterpiece, a survivalist thriller-slash-proto-Western-slash-final-girl horror flick that, like both its iconic alien and its indigenous Ripley 2.0 heroine, is extremely good at what it sets out to do.

It's a revolutionary movie in more ways than one.

Searching is a technical marvel with a beating heart at its core, which makes all the difference.

A movie that starts off as a scalpel-sharp satire, casually slides into becoming a skin-of-your-teeth horror film and ends as a flamebroiled screed in more ways than one, director Mark Mylod’s Grand Guignol take on the master-and-servant relationship of hospitality industries will not suit everyone’s palettes.

Altman clarifies a convoluted plot with a magician's ease, creates an atmosphere that brims with the pleasures of the unexpected and explores character nuances.

Sean Astin is a winner as Rudy Ruettiger, who earns the grades, a place on the scout team and, in 1975, a chance to play... There’s little Rocky-like rah-rah. It’s Ruettiger’s persistence that his teammates and the film celebrate. For that, Rudy earns a rousing cheer.

The Big Lebowski is the best movie ever set mostly in a bowling alley.

Both sides of the political fence will feel royally skewered. All that's lacking is a warning from the Surgeon General: This film will make you laugh till it hurts.

To say that this horror movie hits all of the marks it needs to hit would be just south of blasphemous. The manner in which Grant both grounds the material and lobs it into over-the-top territory, however, is simply divine.

Thanks to Lowery's humanizing magic, Pete's Dragon is that rare family film you really can take to heart.

It’s best to look at All That Heaven Allowed less as a Rock doc and more as a chronicle of Hollywood’s system of subterfuge and suggestion, all built around protecting and/or punishing those who preferred the company of their own sex.

There are times when The Good Girl is so low-key it damn near flatlines. Luckily, White creates compelling characters with a few deft brush strokes. The actors fill in the rest.

Near the end of this smart, speedy romantic farce, the comic engine hits a wall and sputters. Until then, this Coen brothers film -- easily their silliest -- is fueled by a screwball fizz that keeps the laughs popping.

A knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.

No Way Home is a perfectly fine superhero movie.

It’s here that directors Phil Johnston and Rich Moore, armed with a screenplay cowritten by Johnston and Pamela Ribon, find a common ground between family-friendly entertainment and sharp social satire.

The film is rich in period flavor and refreshingly unhip.

War Game concentrates a lot on the “how to” part. But it also says a lot about how eerily easy and how horrifyingly relatable the “why” of it all is.

The gripping, seat- clutching suspense in this baby will pin you to your seat.

What’s dredged up by every bit of the film’s fabric and style is a sense of isolation.

Disney's spirited re-telling of Rapunzel in 3D animation turns out to be a dazzler.

Liman keeps the action and surprises coming nonstop. OK, the end is a head-scratcher. Until then, Cruise and Blunt make dying a hugely entertaining game of chance.

Modestly made and modestly charming.

A film of extraordinary details that adds up to less than the sum of its parts. But, oh, it gives a lovely light.

Thanks to some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, Gibson once again shows his staggering gifts as a filmmaker, able to juxtapose savagery with aching tenderness.

Hanks works like a sketch artist feeling his way before attempting a large canvas. His material is slight, but his writing and directing have an unforced humor and an unhurried grace that suggest he may be a natural.

A well-researched and richly observant documentary from Alexis Bloom about the climate of lies and systemic abuse that nurtured Ailes and allowed his behavior to flourish.

Yes, it’s grim and gloomy — and like Lil Peep’s music, there’s also a sense of catharsis in all of this. More than anything, Jones and Silyan seem to be fashioning a postmortem that plays like his greatest hits, in which wounded wooziness somehow gives way to exhilaration and a warped sense of uplift.

Towne defines Pre not by the freak car accident that killed him but by his willful need to keep on pushing. It’s Pre’s defiant spirit that makes Without Limits something worth cheering.

Thanks to this team of merry pranksters, 22 Jump Street hurts so good.

You enter this unlikely, but undeniably extraordinary take on a video game ready to be spooked. You exit it with the sensation that you’ve just witnessed a waking nightmare perfect for Tokyo commuters and Brooklyn sad dads alike.

Erupcja knows what’s it’s working with, and how to tap into something bigger than itself.

In this tale of stunted development, Theron is a comic force of nature, giving her character considerable density and humanity despite her monstrous aspects.

It may feel insubstantial at times, but somewhere out there, there's a twin of this film that lays on the L.A. Self-Owns Itself mojo in thick clumps. Gemini is the good-sibling version. It's worth a whirl.

Thanks to Stiller's prodigious gifts at blending comedy and drama, it's hard not to see ourselves in Brad's besieged humanity. That's the thing with Stiller and White – they make you laugh till it hurts.

In crafting a fierce, fragmented, downbeat film about a character who makes the wrong decision as a man by being right as a cop, Penn flies in the face of what sells in Hollywood. Godspeed.

Christopher Plummer steals the show without resorting to camp as Nicholas' wounded and wounding Uncle Ralph. It's a great performance and a reminder of Dickens' grandeur. This Cliff's Notes of a film, though lively fun, only hints at that.

Shocking and indispensable viewing.

There's more suspense in watching Brando, who has trouble with physical exertion, get on and off a bar stool than the robbery itself. Still, Brando -- his eyes alive with mischief --is the life of the movie.

The director finds poetry in the face of his lead actress, whose performance is as luminous and moving as the film itself.

Part II feels like just another case of sequel-itis, something designed to metastasize into just another franchise among many. Just get through this, it says, and then tune in next year, next summer, next financial quarter statement or board-meeting announcement, for the real story.

Listening to the kids talk is a treat in itself, but watching them strut their stuff in the final competition is enough to make you stand up and cheer.

This movie and Hardy's electrifying performance will knock you for a loop.