Skinamarink isn’t scary because of what it depicts. It’s scary because it already knows that our imagination will do half of the work.

Breaking is a family affair, a film that works because every person in its cast, even those playing the “villains,” gives you a character whose flawed humanity is worth believing.

For some, the chance to hear the divine sound of that voice and see that smiling mug once again will be worth it. For others, it will simply feel like song half sung.

Dahan's impressionistic heartbreaker of a movie gets it all in. And Marion Cotillard, lip-syncing Piaf's songs and digging into her soul with gale-force urgency, gives a performance for the ages.

But, oh, that dragon. I'd endure another slog through Middle-Earth just to spend more time with Smaug.

Another Earth offers imagination and provocation to spare.

Near the end, Hill boxes himself into a sentimental corner that takes a little off the film’s edge. But before that, Mid90s bristles with fun, feeling and the exhilaration that comes with risking life’s hairpin turns.

Webb never loses touch with the film's emotional through line. And he allows time and space for Garfield and Stone, both stellar, to turn a high-flying adventure into something impassioned and moving. A Spider-Man that touches the heart. Now that really is amazing.

It's gripping psychodrama -- just don't confuse Nixon with history. The revelation that comes with unbiased research remains a Stone's throw away.

Premium Rush features fearless stunt work that shames most computer trickery. Too bad I didn't believe a minute of it.

If this is Ferrara hashing through his issues, may his troubled soul never be totally purged.

Played as a child by Abigail Chu and as an adult by Delphine Chanéac, Dren morphs into a special-effects miracle, sexy and scary in equal doses.

Mamet -- crafts tangy, well-seasoned dialogue that a good cast can feast on. And this cast is prime.

Good-natured fun when it isn't stale, which is most of the time, this talky comedy set in a Chicago barber shop is a sitcom pilot disguised as a movie.

Delivers frisky fun for bruised romantics regardless of age, sex or nationality.

Ferrell makes the damn thing work. Even though he can't get naked or use naughty words, there's a devil of comedy in Ferrell, and he lets it out to play. Director Jon Favreau has the good sense to just stand out of his way.

The director, 66, brings his passion for precision to every frame of the film, refusing to hype or Hollywoodize the detailed richness of the story.

While this mix of thrills, chills and eyeroll-inducing WTFs is an inauspicious way to start a moviegoing year, it’s the type of viewing lark that works best through the haze of a long day’s journey into last night’s hangover. It isn’t bad. It should be better.

Working from a deft script by Delia Ephron, director Ken Kwapis labors hard so that guys won't cringe (too much) as four teen girls, of different body types, pass along the same pair of lucky jeans during a summer of love and loss.

If you survive that wrenching plot curve (some won't), you're in for an emotional workout. Knowing you've never seen anything like this, Moss and Duplass let it rip. You've been warned.

It’s a big role, written with dimensions of sainthood that might defeat a lesser actor. But Erivo is up to every challenge, never losing Harriet’s compassionate humanity even as the film moves to the Civil War and pumps up the action at the expense of characterization.

There will be fresh heroes to cheer, fresh villains to hiss at, fresh metaphors about power and corruption and history repeating itself to scratch your chin over. Yet a curious sense of staleness starts to set in even before the first act of director Wes Ball’s entry pits ape against ape.

Shelton's strong, stinging film — one of the year's best — wants to get at something ingrained in the American character: the irrational desire to make saints of sports heroes.

The real stars here are the beasts, supposedly ugly, weird and dangerous, but paragons of FX creativity in service of genuine ideas.

It’s Pixar’s E.T., played out in reverse.

Forgive the airhead plot that hinges on a spaceship crash-landing in the swimming pool of a Valley-girl manicurist, played by Geena Davis. The fun comes from Temple's protean visual wit and the irresistible charm of Davis, who just won an Oscar for her role in The Accidental Tourist. The agreeably tacky Earth Girls earns points for warmth, color and high spirits.

Imagine a feature-length episode of Succession that treated the final season’s villain, GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson, as its main character and then multiplied him by four, and you’d have something like Mountainhead, Jesse Armstrong‘s caustic, corrosive satire of Silicon Valley mega-royalty run amuck.

Bury the nostalgia. Like the rap twist Kayne West puts into the film's classic theme, this movie is best when it stirs it up.

The love story, beautifully acted by Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, makes for a ravishing romance. And British-born Jon Amiel (Queen of Hearts, TV’s Singing Detective) directs with admirable restraint.

The overall tone is one of melancholy rather than sci-fi wonder, and the film's cynicism is hard to shake.

As [Murphy] proved in Oppenheimer, his silences can speak volumes, and some of Steve‘s best moments simply involve you watching him think.

The film wants to make a case for Parker as the first modern woman. It gets the look and the attitude right, but it can't find her heart.

Deadpool 2 throws everything it has at you until you throw your arms up in happy surrender.

Cornball? Maybe. But it helps that O’Connor dexterously avoids the usual lump-in-the-throat tearjerking. And it helps even more that the star radiates a soul-deep belief that it’s the small steps that matter more than a rah-rah victory. He makes us root for Jack — just us The Way Back makes us root for Affleck, no matter how long the road ahead.

See the movie for the performances and the concept — and watch it closely for the potential it contains, but doesn’t entirely exploit.

Sadly, Furman keeps shoving the movie into the box of clichés he thinks the audience wants. We don't, and you can tell that Cranston doesn't want it either.

Kendrick is terrific, taking a role that could have slid by on snide and building it into something uniquely funny and touching.

When Blunt and Miranda cut through the film’s glucose overload and take off into the wild blue of their own unique and extraordinary talents, Mary Poppins Returns shows it has the power to leave you deliriously happy.

Despite the mix of succession-focused handwringing and a lot people busily running around, extremely little actually happens in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale — certainly not enough to justify a third feature.

The surprise is how effective Wingard is at keeping the atmosphere jumpy and tense. And you can't help rooting for Erin, who could win Survivor if she went on the show. Vinson's take-charge performance is the life of this badass party. When you're ducking in your seat, it's nice to have someone to root for.

Hope Springs knows happy endings are provisional. What this exuberant gift of a movie offers Kay and Arnold is a renewed appetite for life. And that never gets old.

There's more killer suspense and shocking intimacy in this one-of-a-kind documentary than you'll find in a dozen thrillers. You'll laugh hard and cry too.

Trouble enters only when the script overcomplicates things in the end. Until then, especially in a growling dogfight, director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) keeps you squirming.

Jarmusch makes it a feast that plays like a haunting concept album.

If you wanted to get the scoop on the when, where and how the Bishop Sycamore scandal happened, BS High is a good primer.

Most movies stress the agony of art (think of Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh in "Lust for Life"). Schnabel's exceptional film honors his friend by showing the act of creation as a natural high.

With the smashing Jones giving us a female warrior to rank with the great ones and a cast that knows how to keep it real even in a sci-fi fantasy, Rogue One proves itself a Star Wars story worth telling.

François Ozon’s Summer of ‘85 — which adapts the YA novel Dance on My Grave, by Aidan Chambers — is moving but contained affair, aflush with overwhelming feeling but also distant from that feeling, probing but not always revealing, sensuous and charismatic but not always easy to like.

It's a tender love story that never goes soft on its provocations. It's a defiant cry from the heart.

The temptation is to wish that Wright had simply made a horror movie set in the Sixties, that he’d streamlined things a tad more and simply kept his revisionist look at the Carnaby-and-cocktails glamorous life in that bygone moment. But he’s after something a little bigger, and if Last Night in Soho comes across as being stuck in a tonal interzone, you have to admire how Wright is so intent on drawing a line between then and now.

What Shelton fails to provide is a coherent structure; the film is wearyingly repetitive. The boys do the same hustle and hurl the same racial epithets as our goodwill dribbles away.

Ninety minutes of being buried alive with Ryan Reynolds: Didn't we all suffer that in "The Proposal"?

Is there anything less shocking than a movie that thinks it's shocking? See White Girl and discuss — and you should see it, if only for the all-stops-out performance of Morgan Saylor.

Simplicity -- four-square, not sappy -- is rare in film. James C. Strouse had it in his script for Lonesome Jim. As writer and first-time director, he gives Grace Is Gonethe quiet power to sneak up and floor you.

It would be unfair to fully explain Tigertail‘s last act, though you may be able to figure out where this gentle, heartfelt tale is going to wind up. All you need to know, really, is that it ties everything you’ve seen together, the title takes on new meaning and the film exits on what is, for my money, one of the single greatest last shots in recent memory.

The new Body Snatchers is the most graphic of all, featuring more overt violence and decomposing flesh than the other two films combined. But it sorely lacks the focus and resonance of its predecessors.

Paddington in Peru sticks to its franchise’s overarching script, delivering exactly the kind of affection, silliness and gentle heartstring-plucking you now expect from the series.

It's watching Cecil open his eyes, in Whitaker's reflective, powerfully understated performance, that fills this flawed film with potency and purpose. Striving really does bring its own glory.

Is the movie any good? At the dawn of the twenty-first century, when art is defined by commerce, this question is beside the point.

Mike Nichols' haunting, hypnotic Closer vibrates with eroticism, bruising laughs and dynamite performances from four attractive actors doing decidedly unattractive things.

The haunting, heart-piercing Elah isn't perfect. It's something better: essential.

Chastain (a nifty match-up with Mirren) is a live wire, and her scenes with Csokas and Worthington have a spark the later scenes lack. No matter. The Debt holds you in its grip.

The lack of`cheeseball overload is refreshing. I could tell the good lie and say the movie is perfect. It's not. It's often earnest to a fault and fearful of its deeper, darker implications. Still, you won't leave The Good Lie unmoved. Its heart really is in the right place.

Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (Sunshine) overplays his hand and traps Bening in a role that's all emoting, no emotion.

It's all true – but so what? American Made may be fact-based but that doesn't stop it from feeling monumentally generic, like you've seen it all before (Blow, Sicario, The Infiltrator, War Dogs, TV's Narcos ... the list goes on).

His (Chase) ardent, acutely observed debut makes him, at 67, a filmmaker to watch.

A hack would have turned Frank and Sam into overnight sensations. Instead, the writer-director recognizes the compromises that reality forces on dreams – and this soft breeze of a movie emerges as a scrappy surprise that's hard to shrug off.

What an astounding actress Annette Bening is. And she’s at her very best in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool playing Gloria Grahame.

The compensation comes in watching these three marvelous actors have a go at it, which they do with piercing humor and heart.

What makes The Conjuring 2 play deeper and darker than a warmed-over version of The Exorcist is director James Wan (Saw, Insidious, Furious 7). This Malaysian-born filmmaker can make his camera do terrifying tricks that are almost supernatural.

The plot only slows a film that works best as a feast of sight and sound.

Vengeance exercises [Novak's] knack for making unappetizing social qualities watchable, maybe because he’s playing a character whose self-confidence you don’t really believe in, or maybe because you already know that the movie will make him the butt of some of its rudest jokes.

Haden Church gives the movie the joyous kick it needs. His flirty thrust-and-parry with Collette is beautifully played.

You'll have major fun at this movie. But what makes it something special is the way Kasdan laces the laughs with a sting.

An otherwise mild-mannered diversion from the American indie hinterland, Swan Song is the rare film to give this cult actor the center-stage spotlight, and a mirrorball-refracted spotlight at that. The fact that he’s in every scene of Todd Stephens’ sentimental queer comedy is, it turns out, the boldest decision in a film that doesn’t always honor its professed credo to live life out loud.

Whether audiences are pleased or vexed, very vexed, by A.I., any movie buff worth his salt will want to sift through this fascinating wreck of a movie.

Despite a shaky framework, the magic works. It's a chance to see Ledger one last time in the act of doing what he loved. Take it.

Caught Stealing is a decent wild ride through the past, filled with enough memory-bank fodder and hairpin turns to keep anyone engaged.

Say what you will about the Runaways – they never played it safe. The movie does.

The film offers few answers about Fischer's descent into derangement. But you watch Maguire and slowly, with pity and terror, you understand.

The luminous Michelle Williams goes bone-deep here. Monroe's beauty was one of a kind. No one, not even Williams, can act it. What Williams does, with fierce artistry and feeling, is illuminate Monroe's insights and insecurities about herself at the height of her fame.

Sex, lies, betrayal and murder set among the gods of the Beat Generation. That's Kill Your Darlings, a dark beauty of a film that gets inside your head and stays there.

Audiences looking for emotional resonance in Indy 4 are doomed to the temple of disappointment. Spielberg and Lucas aren't upping their creative game -- they're taking care of business.

Primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, "WTF!" Go with the illogic or you'll miss the fun.

The good news is that Mockingjay – Part 2, the big finale, has quit the ass-dragging in favor of what made the book a page-turner. There's the visual fireworks, for sure. But there's also the darkness of the theme.

It's one crazy love story, but Carrey and McGregor make it work by making us buy the romance as the real thing. There's something about these Marys that pulls you in.

Ferrell delivers a performance of implosive intensity that rings true in every detail.

Think "Sex and the City" with men, only in Italian and with lots more hollering and hand gestures.

A tasty swig of holiday cheer.

Sally Hawkins is just plain irresistible in this funny, touching and vital salute to women in the work force.

It looks the same, moves the same and sounds the same (those Alan Menken songs!) as the original. But some of the magic has gone M.I.A.

What saves director Ted Demme's comic talkfest from sitcom slickness is a quirky script by Scott Rosenberg and an appealing cast.

In this cheerfully perverse origin tale of Magneto, Professor X and their mutant team, Vaughn delivers a fireworks display of action, smarts and fun, plus a touch of class from actors who can really act.

Even the stalwart Nolte drowns in the laughable idiocy of the Wingo-Lowenstein love affair, which lifts Tides to the fiasco class.

It's true that the film is covering old ground – the shocking originality of the first Alien is a one-time thing. No worries. I'd rank Alien: Covenant with the best of the series, right after the first two chapters. Fans are going to freak out. Join in.

If Sunset doesn’t hit with nearly the impact that "Son of Saul" does — and it doesn’t — his look back at the chaos before the storm solidly establishes Nemes as a major world-cinema voice.

The reason you need to see Bull, however, and we do not use that verb lightly, is Morgan. The calm, concentrated, understated manner in which he presents this man, who’d rather have a battered body than a bruised pride, is something to behold.

It's all infectious fun, despite the lack of originality. In the art of tickling funny bones, Crystal and Goodman earn straight A's.