Gripping and ultimately poignant thriller.

Gets its punch from simple scenes and conversations.

The first measure of Arteta's shrewdness as a storyteller is in the no-fuss way he reveals the nature of the father's business.

The movie is pleasant. It's reasonably funny. But the one who gets the real laughs here, the hard laughs, is Carrey, who plays the kind of role he should be playing - a complete lunatic.

Boys State is the most depressing film about boys since “Lord of the Flies.” If anything, it’s even more bleak, because it’s not fiction and it’s not allegory. No, this is a documentary about actual boys.

Last Night in Soho is full of color and darkness, and its melange of past and present evokes one of the world’s great cities. It never lets up.

Some scenes ramble and go on too long, dialogue occasionally turns awkward and adolescent, and the film threatens to collapse from its own unchecked anger.

When Travolta plays, everybody has a good time.

Murphy is the key here. It would be a pleasant surprise to our time-traveling moviegoer from 1984 to find Murphy looking so much like his old self and in possession of his old gifts. His comic timing remains impeccable, and laughing with him here is both fresh and familiar, an ideal combination.

Renders the juicy bits of the artist's life in two hours of pulsing highlights that suggest a man who never really had any emotional or psychic downtime.

The film is at its best in the bedroom, not shying away from the sexual relationship, but not being graphic about it, either. There is great sex, clumsy sex, tender sex - and it's all crucial to the story. Such genuine intimacy, whether gay or straight, is virtually nonexistent in American cinema. It's enthralling to see it here.

This deeply moving and disturbing film derives power from being based on the true story of a black South African who does everything possible, no matter how degrading, to get by within an immoral system, but becomes radicalized almost despite himself.

Rough around the edges, but once you get used to the laconic pace, the plot grooves along nicely.

It is described as about a guy who came back to life, and clearly one of Dumont's aims in The Life of Jesus is to express a spirit of charity for flawed humanity amid the rhythms of ordinary life.

Something kicks in about two thirds in, and Far and Away becomes exhilarating. [22 May 1992]

Bolt tries mightily to make this weighty subject digestible to the average civilian, with some fancy, intricate animated sequences to show us how CRISPR and DNA manipulation work, and while I can’t say I came away from this film being able to coherently explain it, Human Nature works as a glimpse into possible futures and a moral dilemma that doesn’t have easy answers.

Radical follows a predictable formula, and Derbez, a major star in Mexico whose last American projects were the Hulu film “The Valet” and the Apple TV+ series “Acapulco,” lifts the material with his typical vibrant energy.

The latest in a year filled with Armageddon movies such as "Terminator Salvation" and "2012," and it won't be the last, but it's the most chilling so far.

The film doesn't always work, but it captures the buzz of moviemaking, and that's infectious.

What distinguishes Pattinson in the role is the sense he conveys of someone roiling and churning beneath a surface that is almost, but not quite, calm.

Though the movie isn't wildly original, its time-tested, artistic mantra of "just go out there and do it" is hard to resist.

Emily Watson, who always brings a special grace to the screen, gives a multilayered performance to the role of Margaret Humphreys.

Lévy gets expectedly strong work from the veteran Devos and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

A movie for teenagers, and, as these things go, very entertaining.

Savagely lyrical, Vazante offers a harsh, impressionistic take on slavery in 19th century Brazil. And though the storytelling leans toward the opaque, the film has a sense of authenticity and power that keep it interesting.

Doesn't add up to much, but it's fast and funny and lets a bunch of top-drawer actors exercise their comic muscles.

Domingo, who began his career as a stage actor in San Francisco, brings velocity to all the scenes involving the march. He seems unbound, possessed by an understanding that he’s doing something bigger than himself.

A movie can’t just be crazy, lest it go off a cliff and never land. It also needs a human core, and Diesel and Rodriguez are it.

It's the portrait of an artist who had neither time nor respect for literary niceties -- he was, in the words of publisher John Martin, a "man of the street writing for the man of the street."

Shot on the streets of New York and offering vistas of the city before all the glass and steel skyscrapers, The Naked City, which won Oscars for cinematography and editing, boasts an impressive pedigree. [04 Jan 2004]

Starts slowly, builds slowly, resolves slowly and ends slowly, if indeed it can be said to end at all.

Benefits enormously from Aiello's down-to-earth magnificence.

The movie has the wisecracking quality of a Sturges screenplay, but it's warm and heartfelt, too. [13 Nov 2016, p.Q16]

A Hungarian film -- an existential thriller, one might call it -- about an intelligent man who happens to have this lowly nuisance of a job.

It provides unvarnished behind-the-scenes access to a presidential campaign, showing aspects of the process that we would never see otherwise.

It works as an intriguingly offbeat character study while offering Nicolas Cage a chance to show why he used to be considered one of the top actors of his generation.

That Hossein Amini, in his first outing as a director, kept all three of these well-known actors in perfect balance suggests a filmmaker who knows how to steer a performance.

The Post is on safe ground when it focuses on Streep as Graham — tentative, slightly affected, but growing by the day — and with Graham’s relationship with her gruff, hotshot editor, Ben Bradlee, played by Tom Hanks, against type but winningly. The movie’s challenge is the journalism story, which is not as clear-cut as Watergate and is therefore harder to dramatize.

There is history as it's remembered, and then there's history as it happened. This documentary gives us the latter, and it's a true education.

Landscape With Invisible Hand is a bizarre, off-kilter experience that shows us how we are destroying ourselves, no aliens necessary.

Seducing Charlie Barker is a movie made by people who haven't been making movies, but should be. As in, often. As in, from now on.

A showcase for Wang's greatest strengths as a film maker: a chance to explore friendships, connections and random serendipities.

Capone is about as demented a movie as you can see right now, and that’s apart from the fact that it’s about a demented person. If Al Capone were ever put in an insane asylum (he wasn’t), this movie could have been made by the guy in the next room.

While False Positive has lapses in logic and could have a quicker pace in the second half, it fully embraces a bizarre sense of the macabre that is irresistible.

Perfect Blue manages, through animation, to take the thriller, media fascination, psychological insight and pop culture and stand them all on their heads.

It’s a good sci-fi action movie, too. Far be it from me to give this movie the kiss of death by making it seem too serious for its core audience. Chappie is everything it has to be — but it’s everything it should be, too.

Never becomes the thoroughly satisfying psychological drama that it promises to be. There's also a problem with the central metaphor of ice -- a literary device that turns repetitive and obvious.

Le Samourai is beautifully assured and has a strong consistency of visual style and tone, but I can't say I had a great time watching it.

In traditional stories, it's saints, madmen and children who befriend wild animals. Mark Bittner, who pals around with feral creatures in the amiable documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, is just as much an outsider, though of a different sort.

van der Groen, described as "Belgium's national treasure," is especially terrific as Pauline.

A stirring and sometimes funny film.

It's that compelling sense of mystery, of the endless search and its undercurrent of loneliness, that sets this great filmmaker apart.

O has one advantage over "Othello" -- since it's a new movie, not a classic, it has the power to surprise.

The Current War is even better than it has to be. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung give the film a swooping elegance, so that shots that start as close-ups gracefully glide into medium shots, and medium shots give way to vistas. The camera is always moving in a way that suggests grace and flow.

A narrative documentary thriller that effectively employs many elements of a John le Carré spy novel: international intrigue, arresting twists and turns, and characters with complicated motivations.

Devlin tells his story without bias but with shards of gallows humor.

All of which is to say that, when it’s Hanks steering the ship and fighting the Nazis, it means something extra. It’s not just happening to him, or them, but to us. And so, we can better imagine what it cost those guys, who had to make that back-and-forth ocean voyage in the awful months before their leaders figured out how to sink the U-boats.

What stays with the viewer is a sense of a man unraveling from his own mistakes and weaknesses.

The movie’s length is, at times, a challenge, but Dune is so original and contains so many strong scenes that the length mostly isn’t a problem.

John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy directed this fine adaptation of the stage hit, a comedy-drama about a first officer on a cargo ship (Henry Fonda) who wants to be reassigned to combat duty. [05 Jul 1998]

It's surefire entertainment: loopy and predictable, but tremendously likable.

Julia Ormond, the British beauty from "Legends of the Fall," has enough class and intelligence to carry it off. She's not a terrific actress, but her cool, patrician looks and her gorgeous voice -- more similar to Grace Kelly's than Hepburn's -- are well matched to the part of a gawky tomboy-turned-Cinderella.

Curtis makes an all-in return to the Strode character, and the filmmaking team builds a solid framework around her, in the propulsive and entertaining new Halloween.

Winner of both the Camera d’Or and an audience award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Hasan Hadi’s feature debut is both beguiling and unforgiving, culturally specific yet universal, funny and heartbreaking.

The film’s best moments show the characters bonding as teens, “Breakfast Club”-style, within their new bodies.

Both women are excellent, and they, as much as the movie's whodunit elements, hold the viewer until the finish.

The saving grace of this French film is that it's anything but a sentimental story.

It's an achingly beautiful movie and a triumph of location scouting, with more cosmopolitan spectacle than the past three Indiana Jones and James Bond movies combined.

Fiennes thrives under his own direction, but such is his sense of balance that everyone else thrives, too.

Like a young director with serious aims, there is an earnest tone here that makes Noi Albinoi a success.

No matter where you stand, there's no denying "Capitalism" is flat-out polemic wizardry.

Sad, funny and painfully honest.

This film is even better if you come in with no spoilers and low expectations.

Half a good romantic comedy. Luke Wilson is the good half...The weak half is Natasha Henstridge.

A droll, deadpan film, deliberately paced and told.

Nobody is better than McCarthy at over-the-top comic hostility.

A surprisingly layered portrait.

There's something heartening about a film that aspires to do nothing but entertain -- and does.

The Power of the Dog is a beautifully composed work by a filmmaker at the height of her powers. It deserves our attention.

The World's Fastest Indian might be the world's worst title for a charming, slice-of-life biopic.

Much of the honest dialogue has the same feel as John Hughes' and Cameron Crowe's movies during their best years, while there's a half-serious hipness that recalls the first eight episodes of "The O.C."

For a movie that takes place mostly in the bowels of a sewer, Flushed Away has some surprisingly charming moments.

For all its depiction of a descent into drug addiction, Candy is filled with surprisingly sweet moments and goes down more easily than seems possible given the subject matter.

Bridge to Terabithia is a good movie, but it could become truly great with a director's cut that leaves the fantastic elements a little more vague.

This eager-to-please documentary is short on story, but long on charm. That’s because the seven profile subjects embrace their age and celebrate their style as creative self-expression.

Miss Sloane is one of the year’s handful of great actress vehicles, and Chastain takes this role by the throat, smashes it against the wall about ten times and then devours it while it’s still quivering. You want to see star acting on a grand scale? Miss Sloane is the movie to see.

It's a funny, mostly harmless and entertaining film with a bad case of dry mouth.

Adapted from a French play but never seems stage- bound.

Sound City is Grohl's first effort at filmmaking, and if it doesn't break any ground as a documentary, it's a heartfelt testament to a place he considers among the most hallowed halls of rock.

Big Miracle is not the most sophisticated adventure film, but compared with most family movies, it's practically something out of Noel Coward.

Drawn with the big-headed, big- eyed appeal that has made the TV show hot among the diaper crowd, the film has a satirical edge that won't be lost on adults but retains a sense of innocence and a joyful toddler's outlook.

The Duplass brothers keep making miniatures that contain universes. They seem to be casual, but they're dead serious. They seem to be stumbling around finding stories by accident, but their movies are thematically rigorous. They seem to be presenting matters of little consequence, but the stakes are always huge and life-changing.

An idiosyncratic document of sexual obsession and guilt, it alienates as easily as it mesmerizes.

As of today, this is the most delightful movie out there.

The rare David Spade movie that won't make you hate yourself in the morning.

There’s the sense here that living in a tiny community can either make you bigger or smaller, and in 23 Blast we see both types, from the petty to the stoic and self-reliant.

A rare spectacle on the big screen.

Truly a winter's tale.