Sam Garbarski's use of slow-motion shots is pretentious, and he paces the film too slowly. But he captures the seedy side of London, giving you a feel for Soho during the day when sunshine exposes a cheap gaudiness.

Neither resting on formula nor audience goodwill, the “X-Men” series is going deeper and getting better as it goes along.

I'm not quite sure what David Cronenberg is trying to say in Crash, but whatever it is, he deserves a lot of credit for having the nerve to put it on screen and face the consequences.

It’s a good sign for the intelligence of your science fiction movie, when it’s easy to imagine the story working as a stage play with just two actors.

Call it Buñuel meets Blumhouse, a film that is flawed but so full of ideas that it doesn’t matter.

Continuing to explore themes of looking past stereotypes to find our shared, ahem, humanity, Zootopia 2 ventures into new territory without losing its emotional footing. It shows us how trust and cooperation often hinge on small, brave choices made over and over again.

The Skeleton Twins suffers from a glaring deficit. Suicide is ever present throughout the film, yet Johnson never seriously examines it.

The pace of Master Gardener is measured, but there’s nothing relaxing about it.

The result is a deeply moving experience, alternately funny and sad.

Nomadland is too singular a film to dismiss on technicalities. It’s very much its own thing, very much an original experience, and must be counted as some odd kind of good movie.

The Shape of Water is brilliant, but sick — or maybe it’s sick, but brilliant. In any case, it’s something to see.

Absolutely the best single moment, beautifully presented, comes when the orphaned Harry looks in a mirror and sees his parents there. It is brilliant in its simplicity and very moving.

It's one of the least scary films that he's made - but still entertaining, and very, very gory.

Surprisingly lighthearted, thanks to Israeli director Eytan Fox's deft touch with comedy and old- fashioned romance.

The film pays off eventually with a lovely story of friendship between two lonely men.

It's rare that we have a screen character as well-rounded, as recognizably human or as brilliantly played as Sonny Dewey.

Spitzer was undone by his zipper, but as Client 9 makes clear, he was also undone by his refusal - or inability - to make nice with some of the state's most powerful characters.

The documentary takes Tower through his much publicized recent stint as the chef at New York’s Tavern on the Green, a rather hopeless assignment for a perfectionist.

The film is far from perfect but has enough going on to compensate for its excessive length and some sentimentality.

It would really help to get into the right frame of mind before seeing The Time Traveler's Wife, because viewed from some angles - maybe most angles - the movie is ridiculous.

If you want to know years in advance what old-age nostalgia is going to look like for Baby Boomers, look no further than Pirate Radio, in which the sun always shines, the music is great and the sex is available, guilt-free and glorious.

Presenting Princess Shaw looks and feels like a DIY project, which is fine because the documentary is really a hymn to self-reliance — although bolstered with a modest amount of plain old luck.

Because Living is all about unexpressed emotion — and an unexpressed life — there are times when we’ll feel impatient with the characters; we’ll want them to throw off their restraints and say everything they’re thinking. Just don’t be in a hurry. Living gets where it needs to go, and gets its characters where they need to be, in its own good time.

Hamm perfectly plays Walter as a sort of suave, GQ version of HAL 9000, and Davis and Robbins have their most satisfying feature film roles in years. Along with the pitch-perfect Smith, they provide the humanity to Almereyda’s vision of a species in danger of slipping into the void of selective memory and loss.

Calaizzo’s script is sharp, funny and honest, and nicely avoids movie cliches about obesity. Bell’s performance is very good, both physically — the actress herself lost 40 pounds for the role — and emotionally.

It is a spellbinding hour and 45 minutes of pure music, Latin jazz to be specific.

It's not much of a comedy - even Steve Carell, as the therapist, plays it straight here. But it's very effective as a cautionary tale.

Blake Edwards' moody suspense thriller captures San Francisco from unexpected perspectives, starting with a dark drive with a perfect noirish Henry Mancini score across the Bay Bridge, and ending with then-new Candlestick Park. [08 Feb 2015, p.D6]