Despite some real virtues, Brian Banks as a whole, is only a break-even experience.

Late Night is a fairly agreeable experience, and every time Thompson is on screen, there’s a reason to keep watching.

“Hobbs & Shaw” is witty and mischievous, full of surprise and invention, and a total blast.

A brilliantly realized, Hollywood-sleek documentary produced by Cameron Crowe, A-list director and onetime boy wonder Rolling Stone reporter who not only conducts the film’s current interviews, but is also shown at age 16 in 1974 doing his first interview with Crosby.

What a talent Waad is. For Sama is a film made with the instincts of a journalist, the passion of a revolutionary and the beating heart of a mother.

Throughout the film, Pitt exudes charm and a philosophical nature, but also the possibility of explosiveness. He doesn’t show you everything. What do you say about a performance like this? Scene by scene, Pitt seems to know what to do, all the time — and he never makes it look like work.

If Zabeil didn’t want to deliver a formula picture, he needed to come up with something better than the formula.

At its best, The Great Hack will alarm you, infuriate you, and — hopefully — activate you.

This utterly tasteless crime film about Tokyo’s top madam, a drug dealer and a serial killer is one of the worst films of the year.

The Farewell has a special feeling about it. It’s full of truth and emotion, and lacking in sentimentality. It has an eye for absurdity and for the telling detail, and it marks Lulu Wang as a director with the rare but essential ability to make you care about what she cares about. It will go down as one of the standout movies of 2019.

The main pleasure of Sword of Trust is in watching an ensemble of expert comic actors play off of each other. The movie was improvised, based on a tightly constructed story, and every scene has some comic jewel in it, some unexpected touch or moment.

The upshot is a film that is stunning to look at, even inspiring at times, but dramatically bizarre. Obviously, this technology has its place, but it makes too strong a statement to be casually used in remakes.

A fascinating and unsettling look at the ramifications of marital infidelity when shone through that specific geopolitical prism.

Leonard & Marianne suggests that these were two immensely intelligent and talented people who never found happiness. The total love each person sought over the decades may have been right there all along. Or at least, it was there, in decades past, on Hydra.

Written and directed by Riley Stearns, The Art of Self-Defense brings out a particularly skillful performance from Eisenberg, whose job is to harmonize the film’s odd shifts in tone and make something real and heartfelt of the central character’s journey.

This film is like cynicism transformed into celluloid, a movie made without love and with no vision, except of dollar signs.

Shot almost entirely within a hotel, the film operates as a low-budget answer to “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded film that also centers on the life of a domestic worker.

Ultimately Maiden is very much a feel-good movie, a tale of underdogs finding their strength, combined with a character study and a sprinkling of social history. After the Maiden, women in sailing had to be taken seriously.

Don’t be misled by the middling rating attached to this review. Midsommar is anything but mediocre. It’s horrible and brilliant, a crashing failure but one with many good moments. What do you say about a movie that’s both a disgusting, tiresome and predictable endurance test and an irrefutable demonstration of real directorial talent? Perhaps, this: Ari Aster is definitely someone who should be making movies. But maybe not this movie.

It’s mostly delightful; a fun movie that successfully hits the reset button for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Diamantino is one of those movies that looks super fun to make but is mind-numbing to actually watch.

Buckley’s naturalism, combined with her abundant charisma and wonderfully warm-toned, slightly gritty singing voice, make her irresistible here.

One thing Yesterday does is rather miraculous. It forces us to hear these Beatles songs as if for the first time.

A smart, controlled film, made with considerable integrity. It doesn’t try to scare you with loud noises or threaten you with the imminent certainty of seeing something disgusting. Instead, it throws a handful of characters into a simple, yet harrowing, situation and then explores that situation in depth.

While the format as such doesn’t allow for a critical push-and-pull, that’s not a debit. This is about time well spent on a life well lived. A series of pieces adding up to much more than the whole.

A banquet for Stones aficionados, an insider’s scrapbook of memories and glimpses of an illustrious history that Wyman, without his vast collection, would be little more than a footnote to.

Asako’s only appeal seems to be that she’s very pretty. Her depth of character she apparently keeps to herself.

Lakin’s screenplay veers so wildly between sitcom antics, pitch black comedy and heartwarming family drama that it leaves you feeling whiplashed. The film never quite merges its divergent tones, leaving Being Frank a frustrating mix of promising elements and appealing performances shackled to an unwieldy central premise that dispenses with joy the way a black hole dispenses with light.