If Civil War wasn’t so utterly horrifying, it could be a superhero movie, with journalists wearing the capes.

Both inviting and confrontational, Blindspotting shakes viewers in their seats and announces Diggs as a star-in-the-making leading man.

Pike shows us both the strength and the quietly growing fear, as Marie becomes a jittery shadow, her voice getting thicker, more desperate.

There is fragility in the beauty we see. The picture drives home the need to safeguard it. It is, after all, our home.

It’s disarmingly spirited, especially when its teen star, Markees Christmas, is sharing the screen with Craig Robinson.

For vast swaths of this movie, despite excellent, unsettlingly comic performances from Brie and Franco, all I could see was the Big Idea, rather than two people on a horrifying journey. But the more gruesome the story gets . . . the stronger it is, as the over-the-top ick kept my brain present.

Who emerges as the winner of this “Civil War”? The audience. The picture delivers in a big, big way.

It’s hard to watch young Whitney, knowing what lies ahead, but it seems important to do as the film does: take a moment, and just listen to her sing.

Zandvliet is a relatively young and inexperienced director, but his spare use of music and widescreen images is assured and even inspired.

Thoroughbreds often feels like a very, very expensive B-movie, but it’s all reasonably watchable, thanks to the elegant cinematography and Cooke’s amusing way of playing teenage amorality.

It’s not overtly radical, but the way it showcases how weird each member of the family can be — from Tina’s pseudosexual love of zombies to Gene’s obsession with performing bad music in terrible costumes — and how the rest love them anyway is quietly revolutionary.

It’s a remarkable personal-is-political drama, set in barely postcolonial Senegal and France.

You sense that a lot of the funniest stuff is flying by too quickly to land.

Dear ol' auntie is not what she seems, and "House" turns into a horror-fantasy comedy that grows increasingly absurd as the body-count rises, provoking more laughs than fear with over-the-top scenes involving severed limbs, a ravenous piano, attacking mattresses and a cat with telekinetic powers. [27 Nov 2009, p.E16]

The laughs are sometimes bigger than expected, and so are the emotions stirred by the bittersweet finale.

This Emily is indeed unworldly, uncomfortable around strangers, struggling to comply with what society expects of her. And yet the artist bubbles up inside her, emerging at moments both inconvenient (there’s a harrowing sequence at a party in which Emily dons a mask and takes on a ghostly persona) and poetic.

Bjorkman emphasizes the connection between Ingrid’s private and public lives, most movingly in her last film for theaters, “Autumn Sonata,” in which she and Ullmann played mother and daughter.

There’s plenty here to enjoy.

Definitely not a documentary. Still, just try not to get a little choked up when Custer, leaving to his death, tells his wife, "Walking through life with you ma'am has been a very gracious thing." [19 Apr 2005, p.E1]

Luca Guadagnino’s moody drama A Bigger Splash is, unexpectedly, a study in charisma, with two wildly different performances at its center.

It’s a sweet-natured, gentle film that might remind more than a few watchers of a special date in their own life, long ago.

Parts of that story may be hard to watch, but, anchored by Venter’s extraordinary performance, it’s not hard to enjoy.

Catherine Called Birdy is Dunham’s best writing and directing work yet; it’s an easy breezy, emotional good time, and an instant teen classic.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower isn’t quite a masterpiece.... But it’s a joy to look at: a visual adventure, and a continuation of a remarkable legacy

It’s a small film that touches on large issues: the world of work, and how it defines us. You leave it feeling you’ve met someone, and wishing him well.

Canadian filmmaker Megan Park’s comedy is a touching charmer about growing up, and about that gradual, heartbreaking realization that everything has a last time. If all this sounds a little gooey, let’s remember that this movie features Aubrey Plaza, a wonderfully sardonic performer apparently incapable of goo.

The Hunchback marks a return to the Gothic stories Walt Disney used to tell in his most vivid early features, and for the most part it's a welcome one. [21 June 1996, p.F5]

It’s remarkable.