The line between suspense and manipulation can be mighty fine. But The Deepest Breath walks it well. The filmmakers know they have a good story on their hands, and they shape it with sensitivity to the star-crossed divers and to the viewer. In the end it is well worth the plunge.

Driver's tough core of honesty and wit is bewitching. So's the movie.

Though The Drop covers familiar ground, it simmers with charged emotion. The image that lingers belongs to Gandolfini.

Wells is a wonder with actors - Cooper and Jones earn top honors - and a filmmaker with an instinct for the emotions that bleed between the lines. This haunting movie hits you hard and right where you live.

In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies -- the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous.

Woods delivers one of his all-time great performances and Stone demonstrates the sheer ambition, both thematic and filmic, that would become a career theme.

Scott Pilgrim is a breathless rush of a movie that jumps off the screen, spins your head around and then stealthily works its way into your heart.

Director-writer Martin Hynes shapes his first movie into something emotionally truthful, painfully funny and vibrantly alive. It's a near-perfect road movie, since you don't want the ride to end.

This gut punch of a documentary will knock you for a loop. File it under "no good deed goes unpunished."

One of Moore’s best and most incisively funny films — right up there with "Roger & Me" (1989), "Bowling for Columbine" (2002) and "Sicko" (2007) — his latest goes way past taking potshots at the Donald, though it does that with piercing intelligence and wounding wit.

It’s not a knockout, but the actors frequently are. The rest is an exercise in not overdoing it. It’s here, it’s queer, it’s not much else — and that’s OK.

The Outfit is a crime thriller made to order, and one that takes pride in how it looks, how things fit on it, the shape it cuts when it moves.

For those who don't believe that truth trumps fiction for whacked-out depravity, mark this shockingly fierce and funny spellbinder as Exhibit A.

What makes this film unmissable, however, is the fact that we get Marianne’s story more or less in full as well. It’s a fleshing out of someone who was more than just a muse, more than just an object of affection for a notorious ladies’ man, a famous singer and an infamous bastard.

Jolly good show.

There’s no doubting its power. This film will take a piece out of you.

It isn't the sex that shocks here, it's the chilling core of loneliness. Intimacy dares to cut deep, and its daring gets to you.

What these guys do for revenge during one hellish day in the Big Apple makes the panic room look like Barney's toy box. The film itself goes off the deep end way before the end credits.

The Harder They Fall is a good piece of wish-fulfillment pop. It knows what it is. It’s accomplished enough not to be mistaken for what it isn’t trying to be.

Craig Zobel's potent and provocative Compliance is torture to sit through. It's also indispensable filmmaking. How is that possible? Check it out.

The film's most pleasing surprise is the beautifully nuanced portrait of Capote's confidante, "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee, by Sandra Bullock. You heard me. Bullock gives the film what it otherwise lacks: the ring of truth.

Despite the futuristic tilt in the title, Star Trek Beyond works best when it boldly goes retro.

Any similarities between Josey and Lois Jenson, the real woman who made Eveleth Mines pay for their sins in a landmark 1988 class-action suit, are purely coincidental. Instead, we get a TV-movie fantasy of female empowerment glazed with soap-opera theatrics.

Jones is a marvel. Sundance couldn't get enough of her. You won't, either. Her performance grabs hold and won't let go.

To the credit of this scrappy, admirably femcentric film, crisply directed by Meera Menon from a tightly wound script by Amy Fox (with Reiner and Thomas also doing double-duty as producers), Equity refuses to paint a rosy picture of women at the top.

My advice is to keep your eyes on Lawrence, who turns the movie into a victory by presenting a heroine propelled by principle instead of hooking up with the cutest boy.

Subversive and diabolically funny.

Rey deserves credit for comic observations that sting.

It's a revamped Cinderella story with power as the aphrodisiac, and Douglas and Bening play it to the classy hilt. The courtship scenes in the film's lighter, more deft first half have the bounce of a moonstruck fable.

What makes Crazy Stupid Love a cut above is actors who let pain seep into the laughs. Here's a comedy you really can take to heart.

Berg does a tremendous job of throwing us into the action with the help of dizzying handheld camerawork from Enrique Chediak.

Limbo is vital personal filmmaking from a world-class practitioner of the art.

What felt like an unusual metaphor for how parenting taps into an inherent need to nurture suddenly swerves into Grimms’ fairy-tale territory. It’s the sweetest, most touching waking nightmare you’ve ever experienced.

The movie even plays like a wrestling match. It’s Underdog Cinema 101.

End of Watch gives you the savage whoosh of being on a job that can get you killed. Sins of cop clichés can be forgiven when a movie pays honest tribute to police on the line.

Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty.

[Parker's] made a scary movie that balances psychological shock therapy with old-fashioned fright, shadowy dread with blunt splatterfest FX, an artsy-fartsy sense of stylistics slapped on to a twisty B-movie scenario. It may open with Paramount name slapped on the beginning, but this is textbook A24 horror by any other name.

The movie comes at you in a whoosh, like a volcano of creative ideas in full eruption.

It scared the living crap out of me. Only at the movies is that a compliment.

The Meddler belongs to Sarandon, a famously no-bull actress who digs in deep, showing us how moms aren't one thing, they're all things. How else can they make you laugh from love and cry from crazy? The Meddler knows how. Listen up.

Even a nice chianti couldn't help you wash down this lump of tear-jerking twaddle.

The Homesman lacks the scope and depth of Jones' dynamite 2005 directorial debut, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." But Jones and Swank, walking the tightrope between comic and tragic, ignite combustibly.

Acting doesn't get much better than the subtly brilliant display put on by Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin.

What truly makes this a movie worth searching out is the way writer-director Bernardo Britto’s sideways take on carpe diem sets the stage for its lead to rage, and somehow never lets the high-concept premise eclipse the performance at the center of it.

The primary goal of this entry is to establish a new team of heroes. The secondary aim is to stop what’s undeniably been a downward spiral. It succeeds in that respect at the very least. Don’t call it a return to form so much as a much-needed, extremely welcome return to a winning formula.

In this muddled but marvelous blend of documentary and concert film, director Lian Lunson takes you down to a place where it's possible to look closely at the life and art of cult troubadour Leonard Cohen.

To use the film's terms: You go expecting a World Cup qualifying round. You leave having just seen a decent enough exhibition match.

You leave The East with a hunger to know more and a good idea of where to look. For Marling and Batmanglij that counts as mission accomplished. For audiences, it’s that rare thing these days – a movie that matters.

The fact that In a Violent Nature sets up a storytelling style that utilizes highbrow aesthetics while still keeping one foot firmly planted in the genre gutter is what makes this feel like a once-in-generation slasher flick.

Burton uses the summer's most explosively entertaining movie to lead us back into the liberating darkness of dreams.

The voice work is exceptional, with a special nod to Maggie Gyllenhaal as a toxic-tongued baby sitter and Jason Lee as her raunchy-to-the-point-of-depraved boyfriend. Kenan is a talent to watch, even in a flick that doesn't know when to quit.

Ice-cold. Dead eyes. Demonic laugh. His face a mask you can't read until he's up in yours. Then run. That's Johnny Depp giving everything he's got in a riveting, rattlesnake performance as South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger in Black Mass.

Jenkins shows an innate gift for lacing laughs with the pain of experience -- Slums is based on her own life.

At three hours, this Western whodunit can feel like too much of a good thing. But Tarantino writes like a flamethrower. His incendiary dialogue feels like profane poetry. And the dude thinks big.

If this pitch-black comedy seems perilously close to falling apart under the weight of its creator’s ambitions and near-camp aesthetic (a common problem with even the best of Dupieux’s work), it also comes at a type of delusional alpha dudes in the most gleefully caustic of ways.

Edward Norton is at his best here, chalking up another boundary-stretching performance this year in the wake of the unfairly overlooked "Down in the Valley."

Just know that Pulse possesses the dark art to make your pulse pound and your hair stand on end -- with no cheating.

Homeroom’s power in is allowing us — encouraging us — to hear these students out for themselves, bearing witness to political identities in the midst of their formation, still molten and moldable and all the more useful to see for that fact.

Thanks to Professor Marston and his real-life Wonder Women, something close to a death blow was dealt to the demeaning, centuries-old image of the damsel in distress. It's a hell of an origin story.

Catherine O'Hara is comic perfection as Marilyn Hack.

Explosive entertainment.

Its sincerity and solidity are never in doubt — the actor’s directorial career is certainly off to a clean-lined, competent start. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is the sort of film that fond parents wish their children would love, as opposed to a film their children actually will love.

Cheers, too, for the tangy bite Sam Rockwell brings to Jewell’s Libertarian attorney Watson Bryant, a rebel whose methods rile the status quo and sometimes his own client.

You keep rooting for the team, mostly because director Gavin O’Connor (the terrific Tumbleweeds) cast real athletes instead of actors, a canny decision that pays major dividends when the big game is re-created.

It’s sexy, suspenseful fun, and gorgeous-looking to boot.

Director Doug Liman -- the hip skipper of "Swingers" and "Go" -- makes all the familiar dirty business seem fun and almost human. In these dog days, Bourne earns what passes as high praise: It doesn't suck.

Screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski lay the foundations for a conventionally well-built haunted-house chiller. But Bruckner (a V/H/S anthology alumnus who also gave us 2017’s tight little wilderness horror The Ritual) and Hall herself occasionally deviate from the plan, forming something a little more strange and sculptural.

American Animals is a high-style caper that touches a deeper chord of youthful indiscretion and moral imbalance. You won't be able to stop talking about it.

The seeds of our destruction have already been planted by us; they simply need a little water and and sunlight to grow. And the more that Leave the World Behind pokes at that notion, the more you fear that this isn’t a thriller. It could be a documentary with movie stars.

Popstar mixes the hilarity with a surprising amount of heart. 4Real.

Working in Spanish for the first time, the filmmaker somehow allows the interweaving threads of his plot to get tangled into a jumble even he can’t satisfactorily unravel. It’s a damn shame.

The funny and heartbreaking Off the Map, directed with a poet's eye and a keen ear for nuance by Campbell Scott, resonates with something rare in today's movies: simplicity.

It’s a surprisingly good sports movie that wants little more than to be a surprisingly good sports movie, one that knows it’s working with creaky triumph-of-the-underdog clichés but is willing to do a full-court press to sell them.

Avengers: Infinity War leaves viewers up in the air, feeling exhilarated and cheated at the same time, aching for a closure that never comes ... at least not yet.

You can laugh with Maps to the Stars, but you can't laugh it off. Prepare to be knocked for a loop.

Come for the most impressive, lustrous car that a gajillion-dollar budget can buy. The reason to stay, however, is the driver.

John Wick is the kind of fired-up, ferocious B-movie fun some of us can't get enough of. You know who you are.

Truth to Power sprawls when it most needs to focus, diluting the power punch of the original with too much bobbing and weaving. But it's hard to argue that the crusade isn't still vital.

The Way Way Back gets it wittily, thrillingly right. It turns the familiar into something bracingly fresh and funny. It makes you laugh, then breaks your heart.

Buoyed by a Latin-flavored score and Favreau's knack for improv inspiration, Chef is the perfect antidote to Hollywood junk food. Like the best meals and movies, this irresistible concoction feels good for the soul.

What you won’t be bowled over by, however, is the storytelling, which makes Missing Link the weakest link in Laika’s chain of movies to date.

Why We Fight deserves high praise for making it that much tougher to wear blinders.

Levinson wants nothing less than to capture the hope and despair of the American dream through the saga of one family — his family. It’s a grand ambition. But the film, though exquisitely crafted, lacks the political, spiritual and sociological depth to realize it. What Avalon does offer are rich period details, abundant scenes of humor and heartbreak and outstanding performances.

That’s the power of My King. It sees that passion creates an unholy mess. Maïwenn doesn’t want to warm our heart, she wants to rip into it, and turn the concept of the Hollywood happy ending on its head.

The movie rises and, at times, even soars. This is all - and I do mean all - thanks to what human actors in league with computer technology can now achieve to bring the apes to life. No more guys squeezed into monkey suits and talking in posh accents. Performance-capture makes all the difference.

Smart, witty and alert to the buried resentments that poke through the shiny surface of affluence, Holofcener's film recognizes that money is the new sex.

Brown has such a natural wit and compelling screen presence, such an ability to shift from curious youngster to screwball comic to charismatic action hero on a dime, that it’s hard not to view Enola Holmes as a coming-out party of sorts.

A warped wonder of a movie that takes twisted to areas few have investigated.

You can’t accuse Day One of playing its safe by regurgitating the same ol’ shocks and ahhs. And while it may not fully satisfy that primal urge that drives us to summer movies in the first place, it’s still breathes fresh air into a series in danger of becoming rote and stale.

A summer firecracker. It's also a tribute to outcasts -- teens, gays, minorities, even Dixie Chicks. It's not without thought or feeling, except when its mind gets bent by the gods of box office. Then it's craven and empty.

Buscemi makes this pathetic and potentially lethal shutterbug a figure of surprising humor and compassion.

With a $15,000 budget too puny to empty a petty-cash drawer, the no-frills Paranormal Activity comes packed with thrills.

Complicated, overly talkative, a little too slow and not-infrequently rote, the movie is just the ride we’ve hitched to the Departures gate. It’s Craig we’ve come here to see — and see off. And off he goes.

In relying on narration, Redford's movie is too little show and too much tell.

Jarmusch is a true visionary; he knows his films can't bring order to the ravishing chaos around him, but he can't resist the fun of trying. In this compassionate comedy of missed connections, he makes us see the ordinary in fresh and pertinent ways. But the flickers of humanity in those taxis are soon dulled by barriers of time, sex, race, language and money. They are flickers in a vast emotional void.

It’s the actors who make this real-life legal procedural come alive.

It's a beast of a movie, an emotional roller coaster that threatens to go off the rails, and does. But Cianfrance, working from a scrappy script he wrote with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, takes you on a hell of a ride.

Page One is a vital, indispensable hell-raiser.