A minor but satisfying entry in the "what if" historical-fantasy genre.

It’s fine to walk out of this movie not quite sure what Tarantino was using his story’s proximity to this real-life tragedy to say; that’s part of the ambiguity inherent in making art. But it’s dispiriting to suspect that part of why he wanted to stage a Manson-adjacent story was because the accoutrements — the period cars and costumes and neon signs, the glowering barefoot hippie girls, the acid-laced cigarettes and glowing movie marquees — were just so cool.

Despite its impressive attention to craft—including exquisite motion-capture work by the groundbreaking digital-design studio WETA—Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes never fully establishes its reason for being.

The trouble is that the movie in which Poppy does, in fact, exist never quite rises to her level.

A sensitive adaptation full of beautifully judged performances that nonetheless fails to maintain the essential appeal of its own source material: the quietly feminist retelling of one of the most retold lives in history from the perspective of a woman who was central to that life, while figuring almost nowhere in the record of it.

McQueen clearly wants to broaden the archetype of stiff-upper-lip Englishness into something more inclusive. It’s a worthy message, but one that sometimes seems to take precedence over the characters and story rather than emerging organically from them.

No project involving Ferrell is going to be entirely unfunny, and Blades of Glory does have its moments of loopy ingenuity, even if none of them goes quite far enough.

The depiction isn’t remotely believable, but with Ronan endowing her character with both a steel spine and a fresh-faced naïveté (in a performance that makes her the film’s sole great asset), it’s fun, even inspiring.

Star Maps reveals its larger (and less interesting) social intentions with a downbeat, slap-in-the-face finale, but along the way it has some good domestic grotesquerie and a layered, ironic attitude toward sex.

A wee, breezy thing with painterly cinematography (by Jean Yves Escoffier) and with actors who are mostly fun to watch. It sails by in 103 minutes and the clunky stuff isn't painful, which makes a change from LaBute's usual grueling studies in human callousness and depravity.

The movie also has some embarrassing laugh-free stretches, but Faris holds everything together with bubbly intelligence, unexpected line readings, and a few deft pratfalls.

Even the most enthusiastic future Indy scholar would have to concede that the movie's habit of quoting from venerable Hollywood antiquities sometimes has the unfortunate effect of reminding the viewer that those movies were better.

The kind of middling-but-watchable heist thriller that, days after seeing it, already feels like something you caught half of on a plane two years ago.

It would be imprecise to say that the thrill is gone, because The Lost World recovers from its turgid opening and comes to life, or does so in spasms.

Especially if you’re watching with children, you could spend a perfectly lovely afternoon diving into Luca’s refreshing blue-green waters. But unlike the two fish-kid buddies at the movie’s center, you may not emerge from the experience transformed.

For all The Blind Side's flaws, it's impossible not to get caught up in Michael Oher's life.

There's too much miserable reality and not a lot of transcendent dance, and the director, Stephen Daldry, doesn't cover the action from enough angles.

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.

As a portrait of a subculture few non-Hasidim ever get to glimpse, it's funny, deft, and sharp. The movie's first half goes to great trouble to establish the texture of life in Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn; the second half is a rushed and unfocused tour of the Amsterdam rave scene.

Mamma Mia! is in essence celebrity karaoke night.

A ferocious yet lyrical piece of filmmaking--an enchanted bloodbath.

A slick, not-too-thoughtful love story.

Even if you find the satire in Josie and the Pussycats self-serving, you might still love the movie, buy the soundtrack, and surrender to the hype. That's what happened to me.

For a movie whose story hinges almost entirely on sex, The Other Boleyn Girl is disappointingly demure.

Levinson must think he's on safe ground morally by keeping Bandits bloodless, as if the absence of carnage somehow makes kidnapping and armed robbery wholesome.

Fallen Kingdom understands that, as much as Jurassic Park has the shape of an action movie, its roots are in horror, and Bayona takes evident glee in drawing out his scares.

Benny Safdie’s first solo film, to its credit, explores different psychological territory. Rather than entrapping us in Mark’s roiling brain, he seems to be purposely walling us off from both the character’s and the actor’s interiority.

It doesn't entirely gel, but few directors could explore the collision of the ego and the outside world with such sympathy or purpose. It's possible that the NC-17 has never been used to such PG-13 ends.