Directed by veteran British television director Tom George, “See How They Run” won’t impress demanding viewers, but acts as an a rather agreeable placeholder until the next “Knives Out” movie arrives.

This moody film, set in muggy Memphis, exudes a dangerous veracity that's both exciting and poisonous.

In his performance, Jeremy Renner hints at something dark stirring beneath Webb’s surface, but it never quite comes out, and we’re left with something more on the order of a rough-hewn saint. Kill the Messenger tells an interesting tale, but it’s caught in an odd zone between too-Hollywood and not Hollywood enough.

Although the filmmakers apparently wanted to focus on the Beatles, the movie's strongest moments are about Freda herself.

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.

Although Jones and Pearce are interesting when onscreen alone, their chemistry is slightly off.

A frothy comedy with the most adorable buddies since "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

The car chases and other stunt work are excellent, although there could have been more action, and the downtime scenes of the characters plotting their next move or ruminating on money’s role in moral corruption are fine. But the bottom line is there’s nothing super original here.

Yes, it’s a familiar formula, though instead of buddy cops, it’s buddy cleaners. What these “Wolfs” do is shades darker than the gentleman thievery of the “Ocean’s” larks, and the character comedy comes from a deeper place.

It’s a clinical product crafted on the assembly line of the studio floor with pieces plucked liberally from better movies before it, and crammed so thoroughly with sight gags and wordplay it hopes you won’t notice that there’s no “there” there.

Polly Findlay’s adaptation of Bernard MacLaverty’s 2017 novel is a serious attempt to delve into a complex marriage, and fortunately for such heavy material it contains two winning performances from Manville (so delightful in “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”) and Hinds (“Is This Thing On?”).

To the extent that this difficult but ultimately rewarding film has a message, it's that you can't run away from who you are.

There's valuable information here and some human stories that deserve to be heard.

Kawase handles the material delicately and skillfully, and Kirin — a one-time ingenue actress whose first important film was in one of the early “Tora-san” movies — hits all the right notes.

The Kill Team serves an essential function by illustrating in agonizing detail not only how easily morality can be subjugated to hate, but how important it is for people of conscience to do the right thing. It’s deeply uncomfortable viewing at times, but it’s no less necessary a story to experience.

Juice may be disjointed and at times amateurish, but its lack of sentimentality saves it. [17 Jan 1992, p.D1]

Trumbo is breezy and pithy without ever undercutting the seriousness of the subject. A certain degree of wit is appropriate in a writer’s story, just as any Hollywood tale must at least have a whiff of absurdity, or else it can’t be true.

The result is a sprightly, entertaining film, but one in which the satire is neutralized for laughs.

The result is a frustrating, boring mess.

The director has a natural's gift for storytelling and eye for casting.

Nossiter's premise is good, and he intrigues us with stylish conceits, but he makes a crucial casting error. Alec ought to be someone we care about.

The very best thrillers -- a select group to which The Clearing clearly belongs -- exploit subconscious fears that bubble up at vulnerable moments.

If you know the world of “The Many Saints of Newark” — maybe you’re Italian American from the East Coast, and have at least a dim memory of the late 1960s — this prequel to “The Sopranos” TV series is both accurate and oddly hilarious.

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

The biggest strength of the movie is the chemistry between Cumming and Isaac Leyva, a first-time feature film actor with Down syndrome, who does as much to make these scenes work as the experienced actors he's sharing scenes with.

This is a moderately but consistently entertaining film, with but one extraordinary thing about it, which is Saoirse Ronan in the title role.

What's interesting about revisiting the film today is that the elements that engaged people most at the time - the thriller plot and the glimpse into Soviet life - maintain hardly any fascination. But the love story - what might have been regarded at the time as the obligatory "romantic interest" - stands out as something of lasting appeal. [26 Mar 2017, p.Q41]

When Bertolucci points his camera out a window, it's like putting on your glasses. Everything is lush, drenched in color and right there for you to touch.

He )Robert Zemeckis) creates a movie that is old-fashioned in every possible good way, but that in no way seems passe or cliched.

A subtly rich performance by Dillane and a fine supporting cast make this Holocaust drama worth seeing, even if you don't think you can bear another one.

The themes are also dated. There are times when Dredd 3D feels like an escapist companion piece to "The Day After." But there we go again, thinking too much. No sense in ruining such a fine piece of cheap entertainment.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.

The main thing that keeps audiences glued throughout its running time is that it's a love story, easily one of the best American love stories of the past year.

In addition to being the best of the sequels (with all the jumps, gore and quips we’ve come to expect), the new Scream is very much a movie for this moment, tapping into the vogue for legacy revisitations, and its own privileged status as an elder statesman on the horror scene, to show how the familiar can feel both comfortable and terrifying at the same time.

Deft director Kyle Patrick Alvarez concocts a subtle brew of sexuality, religion and class that goes down easily, even as the world around Samuel sometimes leaves a bitter taste.

This is Merchant-Ivory's kind of showmanship, the unflashy adult variety of movie magic that they made their hallmark.

Ultimately, the people who made “Lightyear” bet too much on the appeal of Buzz, when they really needed to be deepening him and transforming him. Buzz is no Woody, and to sustain an entire movie, he pretty much had to be.

The enjoyment one wants from GIs fighting these creatures is stunted by the film’s lack of energy and imagination.

The big problem of Good Boys is not that it’s harsh or nasty or outrageous or tasteless or shocking or appalling. The problem is that it’s none of those things, when it should have been all of those things. It’s safe and sentimental, with just a few mild laughs.

The acting, the setting and a feeling for the time period make “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” more than the usual action movie thrill ride, though it’s that too. That combination of elements makes this one of Neeson’s best movies of the past few years.

A potent drama from Yang Li, one of China's Sixth Generation filmmakers noted for the stark realism and documentary feeling of their work.

A fawning bio-pic.

It’s far from the worst movie ever produced, but it’s a one-of-a-kind disaster, and therefore interesting.

As in “The Wrestler,” Aronofsky presents us with a protagonist whose physical appearance is forbidding, and then shows us their delicacy of spirit. He films Charlie’s home with just a hint of the macabre, which serves as a counterbalance to any whiff of sentimentality in the script. The Whale doesn’t make a lunge for your emotions. It earns them.

There's one really good idea at work in Warm Bodies, which is to take "Romeo and Juliet" and mash it up with a zombie movie.

The audience is made to wait a long time for an ending that's not worth waiting for.

Even good stories are never quite like a movie, and to its credit McFarland, USA doesn’t try hard to be like a movie. It tries to be something like life.

The Neon Bible is a lovely, rewarding film, but it requires some work and some faith on the part of the viewer. Davies' rhythms and camera moves are as slow and stately as ever -- the antithesis of most Hollywood films -- and the moments of crystallized emotion he achieves are sometimes separated by dull patches and self-conscious artiness.

Bride Flight gives a panoramic sweep of lives as they're lived, as there is a lot of beauty in it.

Strange, compelling and hard to classify, it's both a romance and a character study, and it's set against a historical backdrop.

Audiences will come away feeling like they’ve really been somewhere, that they were moved by the people they met and expanded by the experience. You can’t ask more from a movie.

A sweet-natured if formulaic romantic comedy.

It's the kind of movie you may approach with a show-me attitude, only to be won over to its hip sense of fun and a gentle humanity that lets you walk away with a glow. [1 Oct 1993, p.C1]

Rhys Ifans is an engaging protagonist, playing Marks as a passive and seemingly unflappable character whose iron nerve and ability to keep cool in a crisis get him out of more than one desperate situation.

At times, State of Grace, which was written by the late playwright Dennis McIntyre and rewritten by David Rabe, is a little too writerly, a little too calculated to impress. Still the dialogue is good; the momentum builds, and some of the simplest scenes, such as a few between Penn and Wright, have real power. [05 Oct 1990, p.E1]

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

It’s charming and filled with wonderful performances, and has a nuanced story that will have adults walking out of the theater thinking about their own inner Pooh, and questioning why the hell they’re working so hard.

A first-rate action movie, slickly done and with so many imaginative bonuses that, for a time, it feels like a classic in the making. It's not, but it's still solid and entertaining [1 June 1990]

Though The Concert swerves and skids, it never goes off the road, and when the moment counts, when things really make a difference, the film comes through beautifully.

It’s a grand bogus mess passing itself off as a philosophical statement. It has its moments, but they’re few. Often, it’s a beautiful-looking film — but it’s beauty without substance.

A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.

Joins the growing mass of excellent, disturbing and achingly sad documentaries about the Iraq conflict.

Even though the movie’s engine sputters at the end, it’s beautifully shot, the actors are fun to watch, and the story is decent in fits and starts.

Don't believe the weak coming-attractions trailer. The inspired pairing of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy makes for a successful action comedy.

The directorial talent is there. Now if he can just be persuaded to let someone else write the script next time, we might have something serious to talk about.

Wong Foo is pure fantasy and sets up the cross-dressers as avenging spirits of fun, frolic and frisky style. Like samurai cleans ing a village of its criminal scum, they transform Snydersville from a drab, dusty whistle stop to a wonderland of wigs, sidewalk cafes and spontaneous dance parties.

A gentle, pleasant film about people you genuinely like.

The whole thing is monumentally gruesome and just as monumentally cynical, a riot of grisly cliches designed to titillate and amuse.

The people who made this film -- particularly the ones responsible for the story and the dialogue -- should look no further when trying to understand why In Her Shoes lands with such little impact. The characters seem authentic -- until the chick-flick template distorts them.

A charming, finely nuanced romance.

Self-satisfied -- an undisciplined brat of a film.

The real wonder becomes how British filmmaker Sandra Goldbacher was able to write and direct such an accomplished, touching and original movie her first time out.

The movie is saying something worth hearing about the place the future holds, the concept and promise of it, in human existence. It’s an attempt to wrest that vision from the narrow fantasies of doom-peddling action filmmakers. That’s an attempt worth making.

The dialogue stretches are just pauses between the action scenes, where the director gets to show her stuff. [12 July 1991, p.F1]

Clearly, this is not a film for everyone, but even though the routine gets highly repetitious, some of the heavy metal numbers are stirring.

The character isn't just shtick, though. As Billy, Talen has staged many protests in Times Square and anti-shopping "interventions" at retailers, where the managers, to say nothing of the New York police, often have failed to see the humor - he's been arrested dozens of times.

Some sections are better than others, but all of them benefit from the various ways the character and the actress illuminate each other.

There’s more to life than just stories and really, Djinn and Alithea just need to get a life.

Powerful and depressing.

But it’s also kind of a mess. Even as the animated film piles on mismatched funny animals, uninspired songs with on-the-nose lyrics and a plot-driving motivation that appears universal but is in fact hard to buy, the project feels both generic and misguidedly overstuffed.

It's a lovely film that grows along with the characters. At first, it seems like a pleasing but inconsequential comedy. But it deepens as their connection deepens and opens up into a place of poignancy and insight.

Segerstedt's anti-Nazi stand is the only reason to be interested in him, and yet half the movie is about his domestic life.

Suffice to say that McNeil plays it way too safe. Trying to have it both ways, he satisfies no one.

Some scenes are mild fun, but the mishaps that befall our hero aren't especially inventive, and although the South African setting provides a bit of interest, it's never really used incisively.

Elba's performance is commanding and physically meticulous. As he ages through the film, he takes on the stiff gracefulness of the elderly Mandela, so familiar to us from news footage.

Saw X is “Saw 1.5” chronologically, taking place between the first and second films in this granddaddy of torture porn franchises. Quality-wise, though, it is closer to a 10 than a zero, which cannot be said about most of the other nine movies in this distressingly popular series.

This breezy action comedy is a noisy affirmation that life goes on after 50, that retirement doesn't mean redundancy, and that nobody - young or old - can wear a long cream evening gown like Mirren.

Although the film’s content falls squarely within the PG rating, it provides about 20 percent more visual terror than you’re probably expecting. Plus, the presence of a scary clown should automatically trigger a special MPAA rating. (PG-C?) Take your 5-year-old knowing that he may be visiting your bed every night between now and Halloween.

Rules Don’t Apply feels unbalanced in terms of story, and it has a big sag in the middle. But the good things in it are so good that they make it a fairly worthwhile experience.

Director Shosuke Murakami efficiently packages the material, deftly weaving in the individual stories of Train Man's chat-room buddies and how his success also gives them courage.

The movie's storytelling is limp, and writer-director Neil Burger's ultimate unwillingness to commit to a point of view -- was this guy really the assassin? -- seems artistically chicken-hearted.

The film remains, clearly by design, a cold piece, mechanistic and only intermittently involving.

A melodramatic yarn that transcends some of its technical and storytelling flaws through the cheery energy and sincerity of its cast.

We're left with a metallic aftertaste.

The actors have enough appeal to keep it moving over the speed bumps.

Distressingly predictable and not a tad scary. But as a parody of the genre, it's a scream, like the "Scream'' franchise, only funnier. It's as if all the ingredients for a thriller coagulated into Silly Putty.

Some so-so movies are just easy to be around, and this is one of them.

The characters are beautifully drawn in this bittersweet melodrama written and directed by Mark Herman.