Moore lets us see, through her quietly shining performance, that Gloria believes in love, in the way an old song can make you feel a little younger, and in the power of dressing up and hitting a dance floor by yourself, moving as if in a trance, letting the music take you to a better place.

Using a rich trove of archival footage and interviews with Cernan, members of his family, other former astronauts and key Apollo mission figures, director Mark Craig charts the flight path of Cernan’s life.

Shot in artful, quiet light (many of the frames look like elegant paintings), The Innocents is beautifully performed by its nearly all-female cast; each nun, even those unnamed, is given her own personality and story.

With all of Shults’ dark-night-of-the-soul mood manipulations, the film promises more than it delivers. Its buildups are impressive, but in the end its frights are mild.

Andrew Bergman's The Freshman is a charmed comedy, the kind of seemingly effortless movie in which everything falls neatly into place, as if ordained by nature.

Directed once again by Chad Stahelski, the one-time stunt man who has become a first-rate visual stylist and master of pacing over the years of directing “Wicks,” “Chapter 4” is dazzling.

The redemption here — if there may, please, please, be some — is in the celebration of his life, and in the fact that all the love for him clearly cannot do anything but continue on.

In fact it’s really writer-director Schrader who is Isaac’s true co-star in “The Card Counter.” A product of a strict Calvinist upbringing in Michigan, the filmmaker’s trademarks — guilt, redemption, a soul in torment — are all here.

It’s the trio that gives this story liftoff, thanks to spectacular performances from Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez as friends who have seen each other through their best and worst moments.

James Foley's screen adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1955 novel has its flaws - it's a little too mannered for its own good - but Patric is close to perfection. [24 Aug 1990, p.22]

Whichever side you come down on, Johns’ and Squires’ low-key performances are impressive (Johns won Best Actor at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival), and the technological/red-tape hurdles their characters face feel stingingly accurate.

Hunnam speaks in low tones, practically murmuring his lines in many scenes, which seem at odds with the underlying fierceness of Fawcett’s resolve. His manner is almost diffident, yet he’s steadfast in his purposefulness.

Oh yes indeed. Avengers: Endgame brought it...This film had an insanely difficult job to do — to gracefully and tidily wrap up a 22-movie Marvel Comics cycle with a cast list bigger than the Hulk, and to do so with both poignancy and hold-your-breath action — and it delivers.

The searing documentary Hooligan Sparrow is a portrait of courage.

Adapting a prizewinning novel by Canadian writer Patrick deWitt, Audiard has made an atmospheric Western in which the four lead actors portray their characters with remarkable subtlety.

Like Lee's last film, "Mo' Better Blues," this one seems to disintegrate before your eyes. Both movies lack the drive and assurance of his masterpiece, "Do the Right Thing." Yet so much of the first half of Jungle Fever is first-rate that you wish Lee could go back, rewrite and reshoot the rest.

Linklater really nails the atmosphere here; watching Blue Moon feels like sitting with smart people in a retro bar, covered in a gentle blanket of cocktail piano. And Hawke, often surrounded by wafting symphonies of cigar smoke, gives a beautifully shaded performance, of equal parts bravado and vulnerability.

Zootopia delights, in ways big and small.

The interracial love affair in Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala doesn't burn up the screen the way it did in Spike Lee's overheated "Jungle Fever." But the movie itself is ultimately more satisfying, generating much more light than sizzle. [14 Feb 1992, p.23]

A civilized summer entertainment that never quite transcends its genre. [7 Aug 1992, p.24]

Barbarian is skillfully directed, smartly cast and superbly acted.

It’s an impressive performance by Byrne, who embodies Linda with unhinged pathos; however, it just as often felt like watching a spiral for spiral’s sake. But, perhaps, viewers with kids of their own may find comfort in the moments Linda vulnerably faces her sense of ineptness as a mother and wrestles with her responsibility for her child’s illness.

This Frankenstein has no shortage of horrors, but it also finds notes of forgiveness and kindness; it’s a monster movie with a soul.

It works fine as an outrageous comedy, but the perceptive commentary will likely give it staying power. This is the fearless satire that America desperately needs right now.

While occasionally the film wanders a bit too far into sentimentality (a scene involving a baby feels like it crosses a plausibility line), watching 1917 is an emotional and moving experience. You think of these two young men as one minuscule piece of an enormous tragedy, filled with individual stories.

What’s most memorable about Kedi are the individual, self-contained moments.

Filmmaker Ivan Sen is a quadruple threat as writer, director, composer and cinematographer of this wily Australian thriller.

Soderbergh keeps the action light and playful, and lets the cast members find their own silliness within it.