Barbarian doesn’t feel the need to signal that it’s better than genre clichés by constantly winking at them, nor does it deploy them with the punishing determination of David Gordon Green’s Halloween movies. But Cregger has thought about why they work, and he keeps paying them off in unexpected ways.

Anderson must have needed that bonkers third-hour climax because there was nowhere to go short of spontaneous combustion.

Bronstein expertly infuses the audience with Linda’s negative emotions, as if we were the ones hooked up to a feeding tube. But as I wrote just last week in a review of Benny Safdie’s first solo-directed feature The Smashing Machine, I’m not sure that simply being drawn into a troubled protagonist’s frenetic mental state constitutes the highest aim of cinema.

Del Toro has made a version of the story that’s indelible, but not definitive.

A conspicuously dumb joke nearly ruins a scene, a couple of storylines don’t go anywhere, and the ending simply feels like the film running out of steam. But Sorry to Bother You is so smart and so potent for so long—and so inventive yet thoughtfully measured in its use of the absurd—that the flaws simply give way. You don’t remember the endings of dreams, after all—just the parts that left you in a pool of your own sweat.

1917 doesn’t solve the problem that was posed 100 years ago by the historical convergence of modern warfare and modern image-making technology. No movie can provide a final answer to the question of what it means to film a war. But Mendes’ stunningly crafted entry in the genre will now become a part of a long history of imperfect representations of that unrepresentable conflict.

After two hours and 20 minutes of flamboyantly repulsive variations on this well-worn theme, even the strongest-stomached and most feminist of viewers could be excused for muttering, We get it already.

The director's beautiful detachment suggests a kind of cowardice.

Shows the dying tremors of a generation, and you might feel as if you can see every molecule, every atom give up the ghost.

Though Logan Lucky’s funny and committed cast (also including Dwight Yoakam, an underused Katherine Waterston, and a barely there Hilary Swank) provides a steady supply of good-sized laughs, this film struck me as underachieving on several fronts.

At times, the picture evokes such stylized musicals as "The Band Wagon"; at others, it seems to whirr every kung-fu movie ever made into the most luscious action smoothie you'll ever imbibe.

Part road movie, part coming-of-age story, and part noir police procedural, the quietly confident Fancy Dance marks the feature debut of Erica Tremblay, a documentary filmmaker who also wrote and directed episodes of the FX series Reservation Dogs.

But Cate Blanchett ... ahhhh. She doesn't impersonate Katharine Hepburn, she channels her.

It’s such an original and idiosyncratic expression of its creator’s vision that sometimes the movie seems not to have yet made it all the way out of his head and onto the screen.

What it lacks in originality and narrative momentum — even more than Nemo, Finding Dory is in essence a loosely connected series of comic-suspenseful chases, bookended by heart-tugging moments of family separation and reunion — this new movie makes up for in psychological acuity and sensitivity.

It's hard to think of another American film with this range of moods: satirical, sometimes hilarious, yet suffused with a sense of loss and riddled with the kind of violence that makes you recoil and lean forward simultaneously.

Much of the film’s power comes thanks to Moss, who after stealing Listen Up Philip unleashes the most vigorous, visceral performance of her career.

Paddington is a wonder: warm, gentle, well-acted, funny without being stupid.

I don't know what Pollock is supposed to be about, but as it stands—by default—it's the most blood-freezing Jewish-mother nightmare ever filmed. Pollock would give Woody Allen the willies.

It's not hard to forgive this series its lack of innovation, because it manages, for long stretches at least, to be something few serial-killer dramas ever are: really, really good.

There are a lot of stale -- and nefarious -- clichés in 8 Mile, but most of the time they're overwhelmed by the pulsing, grinding, hopped-up camerawork and the soulful star turn of Eminem.

The Ghost Writer is a triumph: elegant, accomplished, and (this is the hardest part to admit) occasionally even wise.

This is a movie that traffics in deep hindbrain emotions: fear and rage and lust and, above all, the pure animal drive to go on living.

On American screens, at least, there is an almost shocking dearth of honest stories about European colonialism, one of the greatest forces to reshape the globe in the last half-millennium, and Kent’s humanist revisions of the rape-revenge and Western genres represents a visionary attempt to rectify this. It may not always be easy to sit through, but we’re nonetheless lucky to witness it.

It’s well worth seeing, both for its merciless anatomization of the country’s post-Ceausescu social order and for Gheorghiu’s stupendous central performance as a mother so monstrous she makes Medea look like a pushover.

The film isn’t about abortion, or even really about Sage. It’s about grief and the importance of moving on. When Sage forces Elle to ask others for help, Elle has to let down her defenses and allow her loved ones to see that her misanthropy is mostly an act.

The tone is tongue-in-cheek, with teeth gritted so hard you can taste just a hint of blood.

Nunez's movies go places, but with no acceleration.