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.