The dance sequences, in training and performance, are magnificent. Fiennes is fascinated by the athleticism of ballet, and the granular details of the flexing muscles in feet and forearms.

Morano is absolutely adept in keeping tension rising, her characters grounded and her audience intrigued, a half-step behind.

Most impressive is that DeYoung has not created a collection of connected “SNL” skits. Each part cleverly feeds to another, with echoes throughout the script.

The expressive Garner does a lot with a little. She has no big speeches, no tantrums, no floods of tears. It’s the ultimate unshowy part. If there is a word to describe Jane, it is small. Garner seems to shrink as the day goes on.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this whole sequined bell-bottomed experience is you might even find yourself getting a little emotional. But not too much, this is vacation after all.

A stylish, well-crafted piece of filmmaking that marks the auspicious arrival of twin Australian filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou.

The camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh’s chillingly effective, experiential haunted house drama “Presence.”

The final moments are unexpected, and perhaps frustrating. But the title comes back to you. This film may leave you exhausted but also somewhat dazzled. It’s best not to look away.

It’s lovingly told — and intimate.

There’s an upside to the film so eagerly jumping from anguish to slapstick, from social drama to buddy movie. Blindspotting is, like the Oakland it so dearly loves, always many things at once.

Kids movies so often bear little of the actual lived-in experience of growing up, but Yamada Naoko’s luminous anime “The Colors Within” gently reverberates with the doubts and yearnings of young life.

What to make of this glorious, intergalactic mess? There is no better answer than to swipe one of our hero’s catchphrases: “What a classic Thor adventure, Hurrah!”

Ly’s film excels in its lively verisimilitude, its terrific cast and its intensity. Les Miserables is a powder keg, always at risk of detonating.

Pugh never looks quite at ease in the ring in Fighting With My Family, but her performance is so layered with ambition and self-doubt that the film exceeds its familiar framework.

They are outcasts, weirdos, laughing stocks and whatever you call Nanaue. That makes The Suicide Squad — as ridiculous as it is to say about a movie that renders a bloody rampage with gushes of animated daisies and birdies — kind of beautiful. Plus, the shark in jams is funny.

So many films are described as love letters — to places, to time, to people, to even the idea of cinema — that the phrase has almost been rendered meaningless. But Belfast really is the quintessential cinematic love letter.

In portraits bursting with the magic and eccentricities of the same Southern literary tradition that gave us William Faulkner, Harper Lee and Tennesee Williams, Henley has created memorable and rich characters. These are real people, not Hollywood plastics.

The Two Popes might promulgate an optimistic portrait of the Catholic Church and its leaders. But in these sweetly sincere scenes, you forget Benedict and Bergoglio are pontiff and pontiff-to-be. And the moment of respite from the world’s arguments and divisions feels like a benediction.

Crazy People is the inspired work of writer Mitch Markowitz ("Good Morning, Vietnam") who started as director but was replaced by Tony Bill. Markowitz's script is bright and original, suffering only in the late portions when the plot has to be tidied up. [11 Apr 1990]

Mazursky lets it all run too long, by a half-hour at least, but he also offers a menu of rare delights. [27 Aug 1982]

Isn’t It Romantic stays pretty surface level, which makes for a fine and pleasurable viewing experience, but doesn’t exactly do anything to show that rom-coms would be better if the best friends had more of an inner life, for example. In fact, it just kind of redeems the formula in some ways.

This story is about two older white men fighting about a contract, sure, but Betts and Wright expand its scope with sensitivity and nuance. Like many good courtroom dramas before it, this case is bigger than just these two guys.

There is no doubt that these sequences are quite easily, in form and execution, a cut above what most any other action film is currently doing.

There's no law that says teen-age comedies must be totally dopey. It's a relief to find one like Class Act, which has an abundance of silliness, yet manages to generate belly laughs. That's largely due to the efforts of Kid 'N Play, who demonstrate as much skill at film comedy as they do with rap music. [08 Jun 1992]

The Royal Hotel shares a vibe with Alex Garland’s sophisticated horror film “Men” — an arty indictment of toxic masculinity that often felt like a lecture. But Green’s film doesn’t feel like that. The final scene will make you cheer, even if the ultimate message is murky.

Thankfully, someone has come to the not-hard-to-deduce realization that Clooney and Pitt are good together.

Raya is undoubtedly a visual feast. It’s also the best kind of feminist film in that it’s one that doesn’t clobber you with the message. Raya is allowed to be awesome without the script shouting about it all the time and it’s better for it.

Fair Play has been hailed for reviving the long-dormant-but-often-missed erotic thriller. While there are bits of that in Domont’s film, Fair Play is neither especially erotic nor much of a thriller. What it is, though, is often gripping battle of the sexes set in a toxic, misogynist corporate world where power and sex are inextricably linked currencies.

There’s something comforting about the fact that Jarmusch is still doing his thing, exactly how he wants to, and that so many great actors are lining up to be part of it. He’s a singular voice in a landscape that’s always in danger of flattening.

Causeway, directed by Lila Neugebauer with a straightforward honesty, sounds more manipulative and manufactured than it is. At its best, it’s a quietly affective portrait of unlikely friends hoping they can help each other make it to the shore.

Polinger’s film isn’t a comfortable watch and it’s not meant to be. It gets under the skin.

I Swear — at a perhaps overlong run time of two hours — is full of warmth and even humor, with Davidson occasionally laughing at himself and inviting us to join in.

The film often feels in many ways as an attempt to correct history, or at least the previous Dunaway-Beatty-led portrayal of a bumbling Hamer. But there are moments of beautiful stillness and nicely-filmed sequences — like a nifty car chase in dust clouds — that make the hunt enjoyable.

Miss Plowright's performance is an absolute marvel. Her transition from the acid-tongued widow to a wisely compassionate woman warms the heart. [20 July 1992]

A deeply felt film about one teetering marriage, and a work whose power sneaks up on you slowly.

Not all the jokes land but they do fly. Bottoms, a queer comedy with a chaotic beat, is here to break stuff — and that’s a very good thing.

I’m still not entirely sure what it all adds up to, but it is provocative, difficult and bleak and leaves you with a very precise feeling of despair and aloneness — just like the best of the space independents do.

While there is a case to be made for the final fight to, let’s just say, go a different way than it does, Creed III is still a knockout.

It’s a true triumph of storytelling and performance and a reminder that films don’t need to be flashy or big to be great.

Child's Play is more than just an odyssey of revenge; it is a chiller that will make you think twice about cuddling those ugly little Cabbage Patch kids or visiting Barbie's townhouse. [21 Nov 1988]

[Ronan] gives one of her finest performances in a two-hour study of addiction that is poignant, sometimes beautiful but always painful to watch — and would likely be too draining if not for the luminous presence at its core.

Gladiator II isn’t quite the prestige film the first one, a best-picture winner, was in 2001. It’s more a swaggering, sword-and-sandal epic that prizes the need to entertain above all else.

Shyamalan doesn’t pump up the violence, nor does he rely on plot twists to carry Knock at the Cabin along. Instead, the film works as a brutal, neatly distilled kind of morality play that toys with fatalism, family and climate change allegory.

An extremely pleasant, supernatural comedy. [12 Nov 1984]

No matter how you feel about the history here, it’s a visceral performance that simply demands to be seen.

The film is exactly what you need it to be: An exciting and emotionally true spectacle that required a heck of a fight to simply exist.

There are few more daring actors around right now than Moss, and “Shirley” may be her best performance yet. She’s brutally cutting but the pain of every slight ripples across her face.

It is such a rare pleasure to watch three superior actresses practicing their art that the filmgoer almost forgives "Agnes of God" for its imperfections. Almost. [7 Oct 1985]

The film has a few odd jumps and seemingly comes to a fiery conclusion — finally some warmth, good God — but it’s a false ending. A much better one awaits, one that’s unexpected and very, very satisfying. Stay to the end — as long as you’re bundled up.

Aside from verging on the one-note, that focus constricts the very linear, very self-contained Ad Astra, a taut but inflexible chamber piece in a genre given to symphony.

You may know the outlines of the soccer legend’s life, but there’s no way you won’t learn something from Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s absorbing and exhaustive new film.

It doesn’t always work, but the writing is sharp, the performers top-notch and the set designs achingly beautiful.

All the assembled parts here, including an especially high-quality cast (even Wendell Pierce!) work together seamlessly in a way that Marvel hasn’t in some time. Most of all, Pugh commands every bit of the movie.

It’s a little shaggy and you’ll occasionally yearn for a bit more humor along the way. But “Caught Stealing,” based on Charlie Huston’s 2004 novel, is a ride, foremost, in ‘90s nostalgia.

Concrete Cowboy, an impressive debut by writer-director Ricky Staub that overcomes formulaic dialogue and we-saw-that-coming plot twists with its sheer heart, is based on a novel, Ghetto Cowboy by Gregory Neri.

Bahrani, with Paolo Carnera’s vivid cinematography, builds a dense, incisive film that nevertheless feels uneven in structure.

A powerful, shapeshifting teenage girl and a disgraced knight-in-training suspected of killing a beloved queen are at the heart of Nimona, a vibrant and irreverent animated adventure set in a futuristic fantasy kingdom.

Despite the gripping action scenes and a mostly witty, mile-a-minute, off-color script, the movie ultimately fails to produce the emotional tug of other films about journalists in war, particularly Roland Joffe's "The Killing Fields" and Peter Weir's "The Year of Living Dangerously."The script borders on pompous silliness when Boyle launches into a diatribe on American hypocrisy, and unbelievable sentimentality when Salvadoran rebels are shown in heroic poses as Latin American folk songs ring out in the background... Nevertheless, "Salvador" still has the gritty, violent quality shared by other films by Stone: "Midnight Express" and "Scarface." None of these films is easy to watch, but each keeps you glued to the screen.

Poison Ivy was directed by Katt Shea and produced by Andy Ruben. They collaborated on a script that is tightly written, loaded with portentous events and a few surprises. Obviously, they operated on a tight budget, but they have overcome the limitations by wise casting. Drew Barrymore is a revelation. [07 May 1992]

It’s not a perfect film, it lags at times and at over two hours it is far too long, but Theron and Rogen have a natural chemistry that makes spending a couple hours with them, even in the dullish moments, a joy.

Filmmaker Raoul Peck uses George Orwell’s writings to weave together a biographical portrait of the author and a dispiriting picture of power and truth in the modern world in “Orwell: 2+2=5.”

It is deeply personal and imbued with the kind of tenderness that is extremely difficult to see or appreciate in the moment.

Generous in humor, spirit and sentimentality, Anthony and Joe Russo's Endgame is a surprisingly full feast of blockbuster-making that, through some time-traveling magic, looks back nostalgically at Marvel's decade of world domination. This is the Marvel machine working at high gear, in full control of its myth-making powers and uncovering more emotion in its fictional cosmos than ever before.

Nature provides much of the soundtrack to All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, a poised and occasionally transcendent debut from writer-director Raven Jackson.

While Radical, an audience winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is formulaic in its approach, it gets enough out of it likable cast to earn at least a passing grade.

The over-35 audience will savor this as a nostalgia trip while younger audiences may identify with the always current dilemma of impending adulthood. [03 Jan 1985]

It’s one of the freshest college movies in years, a nano-budget breakthrough of rare sensitivity that announces more than one new talent.

Velvet Buzzsaw doesn’t lead anywhere inward; it becomes just a litany of (exquisite) death scenes for art-world caricatures. Still, what caricatures they are.

Robin Williams discards his Morkisms for a credible portrait of the fated hero, and the rest of the cast is remarkably good, especially Mary Beth Hurt as his wife, Glenn Close as his mother and John Lithgow as the transsexual former tight end of the Philadelphia Eagles. [23 July 1982]

It’s both captivating and bleak, with a series of sexual encounters that can only be described as feral — “Wuthering Heights” wishes it could have hit the ravenous peaks of Fernando and Jennifer together.

As director, producer and star, Eastwood has made his most ambitious film, traveling to England and Zimbabwe and working with raging rivers and charging elephants. He has added immeasurably to his stature in all three capacities. [12 Sep 1990]

The action scenes are dynamite, layering POV camera work with great, thundering, bottle smashing stunts. It knows it’s silly, but it’s still a good time.

The transition — from hyperreal cooked crabs that glisten in a bowl in the first 30 minutes of the film to amorphous, gooey Candyland critters 30 minutes later — is jarring. The sequences on the moon grow tiresome, despite huge toads that fly and squeaky-voiced critters.

I Carry You with Me couldn’t be any more specific about the trials of an undocumented gay couple trying to carve out a place for themselves, but it’s that specificity that makes its themes and emotions all the more universal.

Through twists and turns, The Painter and the Thief depicts not just the two-way transactional relationship between artist and subject, but the shared pain and mutual rehabilitation that can inspire and surround art making.

It’s a film no one really demanded and yet is loads of fun.

Director Andrew McLaglen knows his way around an adventure movie, and he keeps the action moving and the characters larger than life but fairly plausible. [23 Apr 1980]

Watching The Trip to Greece at a time when such travel is impossible has only heightened the considerable pleasures of these movies (and made the food all the more appetizing). But mostly it’s reinforced the simple delight of sitting table-side with Coogan and Brydon. For all their trivial sparring, they are exceedingly good company.

A Kid Like Jake might not be especially cinematic, but it is profound in its simplicity and truthfulness about what real fights sound like and what real lives look like.

The solution is a bit pat and anticlimactic, but it is heartening to find a movie that concerns itself with real and present social issues. [21 Oct 1982]

Because seeing what happened to Furie and his chill stoner frog dude — spoiler alert, he became a hate symbol of the alt right — will likely make your blood run cold. It sure makes for a chillingly effective internet-era cautionary tale.

Though Liman knows how to mix action and comedy as well as anyone, “The Instigators” is better whenever there’s less going on.

Polite Society, the feature film debut of writer-director Manzoor, creator of the British sitcom “We Are Lady Parts,” is a fun and increasingly preposterous comedy. But it’s propelled by an infectious and genuine punk-rock energy. Make no mistake about it, the sisters of Polite Society are here to take down Pakistani tradition, the patriarchy and anything else you got.

Bill is a hard part to pull off, but Damon does, creating a flawed but compassionate character, made doubly hard since he outwardly reveals little emotion.

It feels strange to want a movie to be longer, but in the case of Last Breath I was both desperate for it to end, for anxiety reasons, and also wanting more.

The Vast of Night is, in a slinky way, about escaping small-town small-mindedness.

The chapters don’t cohere in a sustained rhythm, but in richly evocative imagery, The Green Knight makes its own vivid film language and pacing.

The broader history is there for those who are curious and on its own terms this is a story that will keep you engaged. Much of that has to do with Ridley.

Reminders of Him is a well-crafted, well-acted sad-happy Hoover adaptation.

It’s both a compliment and a criticism to say that “On the Record” left me wanting much more.

Toggling between Texas Hold ’Em and Iraq War nightmares makes for a head-spinning collision. But I think the incongruities of The Card Counter also give it its power. Schrader’s film is so self-evidently the impassioned work of a singularly feverish mind that its flaws add to its humanity.

Hill and “black-ish” creator Kenya Barris have written a rom-com with teeth, a film not afraid to air long-simmering cultural grievances.

Fire is in the air this summer, literally, and at the movies. Though the flames in German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Afire aren’t of the nuclear variety, the smoke from his tension-filled chamber piece about a few young adults at a vacation house near the Baltic Sea certainly gets in your eyes.

Mutant Mayhem...can’t entirely get over the feeling of trodding over well-covered turtle ground. But if we must go once more into the ooze, the film by director Jeff Rowe (co-director of “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” ) and co-written by co-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is probably the best of a not-so-stellar franchise.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie feels very easy and lived in thanks at least in part to the fact that its vocal cast has been doing this for over 200 episodes.

A Quiet Place may not have the weighty social meaning or piercing comedy of another recent high-profile horror thriller, “Get Out.” But like that movie it is smart, it moves fast, it has a hugely satisfying ending — and it deserves to attract a much broader audience than the usual horror film devotees.

Instead of exploring new territory in the animated art, the film harks back to the tried-and-true Disney formula. The result is sentimental, predictable and totally endearing. [27 July 1981]

It’s Vega’s extraordinary performance, full of grace and depth, that keeps A Fantastic Woman in check from becoming something either too campy or too sanctimonious. It’s one that has the power to make an audience really understand and internalize why it is an act of bravery to simply live life as herself, and perhaps even change some minds in the process.