This is a pretty good action movie that justifies bringing back the Superman franchise -- a dubious proposition to begin with -- by taking the plight of the superhero seriously. Henry Cavill is charismatic in the lead role, Amy Adams is an ideal Lois Lane and, as the villain, Michael Shannon does the best Michael Shannon impersonation you've ever seen.

This isn’t the first film to try to deal with the horrors of the Holocaust from a child’s perspective, but it’s tricky material, and this one succeeds because it is direct and forthright.

In its way, the film is more concerned with the love between friends than the sex between strangers.

If some of the animation overdoes it, a lot of it is downright gorgeous. Few images this year have followed me home like the Ghost of Christmas Past, here imagined as a bright-flamed candle with the face of a child. It flickers. It whispers. It flies.

Search for some independent inspiration, and you'll be looking for a long time.

An amusing melodrama.

Mostly unbearable.

Fennell (“Promising Young Woman,” “Saltburn”) is a skilled filmmaker who can put over her ideas. The problem is that all her ideas here are bad — self-defeating, enervating and, in several places, unintentionally hilarious.

In the end, this is not really a World War II movie. It’s just a pretty good action film that borrows the plot from about three or four “Fast and Furious” movies, while stealing riffs from Tarantino.

Almost Christmas would have been less clunky if it had focused more on the family’s loss of its matriarch, and allowed the comic elements to naturally arise as the characters struggle with the new family dynamic. Instead, we get too many slapstick set pieces and extraneous subplots that bog down the proceedings.

Its weaknesses are clumsy plotting and a less-than-satisfying ending.

Terrific.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be there - to actually be there, man - this movie gets it.

An earthy, sexy mystery.

Sizemore ("Heat") and Miller, though saddled with a lot of scientific DNA jargon, are really the only lively people in this dense, gruesome film that stubbornly refuses to break out of its contrived atmosphere.

Through it all, Tatum tries like crazy to Act. His eyes pinch. His brow scrunches. Most of all, he clenches his jaw, little creases of muscle flexing below his ears as he labors to emote.

The Eye of the Storm is performed with zest by a fine cast and offers some nicely biting moments but, in the end, falls short of its large ambitions.

This is kid stuff, but such well acted, well made stuff that inside 15 minutes you're sitting there like a teenager yourself wondering which girl Keith will wind up with. [27 Feb 1987]

The Devil All the Time is really a portrait of a place, told through the lives of several people across a span of about a dozen years, and the thing that makes it interesting — from start to finish — is that this place is so brutal and appalling and unexpected in its various cruelties that we cannot stop watching.

Emotionally, The Brothers Bloom hasn't a trace of detachment or cynicism. Even if you don't quite comprehend the ending (there seem to be 12 of them), you'll still feel the wallop of its consequences.

Despite some weaknesses, a sense gradually emerges in this film- not just an idea, but a strong feeling mixed with an idea - about the dance of good and evil over time.

Clifford the Big Red Dog brings a warm feeling every time I think of it, and I’m really glad I saw it.

Hitchcock isn't ambitious or complicated. It's simple, does what it sets out to do, and gets out before anyone even thinks about checking the time. More movies should be made in its image.

JT Leroy is on safer ground when Albert and Knoop are matching wits, mainly because it’s a pleasure to watch the perfectly cast Dern and Stewart on the screen. It’s easy to understand what attracted these fine actors to these roles, but the script allows them to only scratch the surface of this maze-of-mirrors story, where the truth remains deliciously elusive.

It's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.

The only way Bill Murray could seem less like Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson is if the movie showed him winning a marathon.

IAm Eleven is ultimately a satisfying film because the kids are so compelling. But Bailey’s motivations color the authenticity of a well-meaning “documentary” that borders on nostalgic self-indulgence and wishful thinking.

Yet as ridiculous as Hefner's life sometimes seems, he has been an exemplary citizen, as this documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman spells out.