Not as incisive as Minnelli's film, but still a heady Mankiewicz brew of Hollywood trash and wit.

A fresh twist on a familiar fog-of-war story.

This is a smart, meaningful first film, with nods all over the place to classics like The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby, as well as more recent obvious touch points like Get Out. It’s not all subtle, but then neither is prejudice.

The sound-track bops along nicely with jazz-tinged standards.

There’s pleasure to be had in seeing Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens expertly used as a backdrop for bougie romantic frustrations. If you miss the JakeWalk, here’s your opportunity to see the bar revived as the perfect place for neurotic conversations; if you ever ambled down Smith Street in your own mess of emotions, you may be feeling this one.

Whether this talent symbolizes racist aggression or mournful shock is left unsettlingly unclear, however, and while Oskar is a sphinxlike contradiction, Schlöndorff has a tendency to sketch the rest of the cast as simple grotesques or symbols of decadence that are unconvincingly humanized in the final third.

Like so many Doors chroniclers, DiCillo can’t help but fall under the singer’s spell; it’s understandable, but frustrating.

Marvin is consistently brilliant, but the film is patchy.

Anyone curious about the man behind the lens may find this doc, like its subject, frustratingly opaque and out of reach. Those interested in witnessing a true NYC eccentric document everyday-people city life one outfit at a time, however, will feel like this has been tailor-made.

Beach Rats could have explored that ethical quandary with more depth; instead it settles for something blocked, oblique and fascinating.

Blank's special brand of ethnographic film documentary finds a curiously appropriate subject in that weirdest of all capsule cultures: the on-location film crew.

Although the quips aren’t always sharp enough and the sleight of hand a little lacking, it takes a hard heart not to cheer as a few young victims of a broken system carve out their own little bit of magic.

It’s a light diversion rather than a symphonic masterpiece, but it’s still pleasantly in-tune entertainment.

Cage is not quite Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo in the Big Easy. But his performance hits all the right mythopoetic beats, rising above the thin script and late-night-cable aesthetic.

The doc dutifully allows for these varying viewpoints, but in a mode that’s not especially captivating, despite a guitar score by Brokeback Mountain’s Gustavo Santaolalla.

Forget Jones' rustic English (Kentucky? Australian?) and the melodramatic clichés (boots trampling posies): the haunting, dreamlike consistency recalls that other fairy story of innocence and menace, The Night of the Hunter.

Typically mild-mannered Disney live-action frolic. [04 Aug 2004]

One of These Days doesn’t quite nail the provoking social commentary you sense that it sets out to provide. Nevertheless, there are enough intriguing ideas at work – from the crafty camera work to the unexpected twist near the end – to make it inventive as well as hard-hitting.

A film about the unknowability of grief ends up feeling a little too unknowable itself.

Though play with fire she might, couldn't screenwriter Jonas Frykberg have played with a little button called DELETE? There's no reason why a two-hour movie should feel like three, nor require quite so much fidelity to Larsson's plot curlicues.

If it lacks the originality and sheer muscle of the best horror fare, this does offer an astute take on fragile thirtysomething machismo, and Spall treads a convincingly anguished path towards potential redemption.

Think of it as if it’s an adaptation of good Austen fan fiction. It might not have the quality of the real deal, but it has plenty of the same charms.

The sincerity that Eurovision fans might fall for is exactly what stops the comedy from taking off.

There's too much coyness about the implicit romance across the table; several other tensions concerning female independence go mostly unexplored. But the film's quiet focus on a woman's anxiety is not unwelcome.

The movie misses the Hughes sensitive-raunch sweet spot, though a game supporting cast hits bull's-eyes on lesser targets.

If you’re on the hunt for a diverting slice of prestige espionage hokum that comes with a side helping of real history, Operation Mincemeat is a satisfying night at the pictures.

McAvoy gets good performances from his cast, with Ross a boyish yet broken presence as the spiralling Bain, but ultimately the journey is more satisfying than the destination.

Streets ahead of the average blaxploitation effort, yet is still something of a disappointment. Partly the fault lies with the script, and partly with a certain commercial gloss; one or two of the characters nevertheless do come over with some distinctiveness, thanks to OK performances.

If the overall effect of Nebraska’s father-son bonding and attention-must-be-paid pathos doesn’t quite have the zing of the filmmaker’s best work, he’s certainly got an ace in the hole.

Us is too confidently made, too expert in its scene-to-scene command, to call it an example of sophomore slump. Still, after the film reveals itself to be the home-invasion thriller it is (and then the lesser Invasion of the Body Snatchers it becomes), you feel a slight letdown.

It’s a CGI-heavy fantasia that will pop your eyeballs, but giddy as it is, it never quite sells its characters or gets much purchase on your emotions.

The movie strays too far into fantasy - Abe suffers mightily - but Solondz still has an ear and an eye for a specific hell in the real world.

A slightly misbegotten musical, but with many pleasures and Louis Armstrong, growing into sweet avuncularity.

This new version features the voice of Pharrell Williams as the narrator, dipping in and out of Dr. Seuss’s warming rhymes. That binds to the film to its authentic source, but the gaps between the spoken verse still remind us that this is a slender story s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d into a feature.

It has a certain compulsiveness, but as with Dead End (also based on a play by Sidney Kingsley), the main interest lies in the admirable set.

Still, if any modern strip is worthy of an extended, Hobbes-style tongue bath, it’s this one.

A perennial innocent himself, Howard responds to the blunt professionalism of the hack pack with as much enthusiasm as Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks before him - but spoils it by insisting that somehow the tabloids have integrity. He likes his sincerity straight.

A movie of one billion cigarettes, Hannah Arendt is about moral reason, not personality. It could do worse than lead you straight to the woman’s books.

Credit the actors for making what might have been nothing but a well-intentioned message movie (which includes real archival testimony of rape victims) into an affecting drama.

A brooding, muscular FBI procedural that occasionally explodes into Point Break-y action, Aussie director Justin Kurzel’s (Snowtown) true-life thriller delves, pungently and topically, into the inner workings of white nationalism in America before deciding that squealing tyres and shootouts are a lot more fun.

It works better as an idyllic travelogue through northern Spain than as a familial drama; despite the real-life relationship between filmmaker and star.

Holy Motors is aggressively "wild," a puzzle that tweaks the mind but doesn't nourish.

Kabakov’s life story reads like a Pasternak novel, from his hardscrabble upbringing in Stalinist Russia to his double life as a government-sanctioned “official” artist and an underground cultural revolutionary.

A completely unnecessary sequel, plays a lot like "The Godfather, Part III"-lush, self-parodic and cut adrift from urgency.

Still, you can’t help but be swept up by the sincerity here — that and the sight of a hard man softening to a sympathetic nuzzle. (This is some excellent equine acting.) The Mustang is leagues beneath the recent "The Rider" or "Lean on Pete," both superior in terms of articulating silent human-animal relationships that fulfill larger psychological needs.

Barkin and Henriksen perform with relish, Whitaker and Freeman are pleasantly understated. Rourke tries harder than ever to minimise, nay obscure, his good looks, a process which merely serves to emphasise them.

Meek's Cutoff has found its passionate defenders, those who admire it almost because of its meandering, heavily politicized nature. Yet you might try it-and try it again-and still only grab a handful of dust.

This is welcome summer fare; if we’re going to have space operas, let them sing in the strangest accents possible.

For what it's worth (very little), probably the best in the series.

There’s no real pleasure in any of the musical performances. And when married to the scenes exploring Hendrix’s tumultuous personal life—particularly his semi-abusive relationship with long-term girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell)—you’re left with a monotonously grim portrait that’s more rewarding in theory than execution.

Sinister has so much going for it - adult psychology, a great bitchfest of a marital meltdown - that you wince when it finally makes some rather dull choices involving the supernatural.

The doc’s breakout star is Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, a former model whose plain appearance (the end result of a horrible car accident) and frumpy clothing belie her genius for fashion. She counters her boss every chance she can get and provides the film with a much-needed emotional center.

A train station finale is textbook tearjerker territory, but it still teems with exquisite sorrow.

Carell and Wiig make a splendid vocal pair — Nick and Nora Charles with ice guns and lipstick Tasers.

Knuckleheaded though this faculty-member-turned-MMA-fighter comedy is, there's no denying the plot's lefty credentials, snuck in like Raisinets among the popcorn.

As long-winded and bloated with biblical allegory as the original. That said, it's a film of great performances, atmospheric photography, and a sure sense of period and place (the California farmlands at the time of World War I).

The film thrives on two performances: Barbaro is terrific as Baez, hypnotic on stage and fiercely charismatic off. And Chalamet inhabits Dylan without ever feeling like a Stars In Your Eyes contestant. From the voice to the charm to the earthiness to the self-centredness (‘You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,’ Baez tells him), Chalamet nails it all. It’s a shame Mangold’s safe flick doesn’t ask just that little bit more of him.

The result is neither blind idolatry nor a definitive portrait; just a major missed opportunity content to loiter in the middle of the road.

Depending on your POV, it's either the ne plus ultra of Hollywood calculation or a comedy simply intent on pushing its crassness to the point of surrealism.

The intention outweighs the execution, though there are still pleasures to be had.

Entertainingly, the klezmer-scored Deli Man charts the history of urban eateries, nowhere near as prominent as they were during the early 20th century but still a vital link to Yiddish-accented comforts.

For all his brilliance with choreography, Woo is flummoxed by the thousands of actual human extras, though there’s no denying his commitment to the finer points of battle tactics (yawn).

Packs a forceful punch.

If you have a weakness for exotic scenery (filmed in Canada, Scotland, Kenya), and some curiosity about the everyday life of prehistoric humankind, you will probably take some mild pleasure in this saga of the Ulam tribe's search for a way to light their fire.

Though its blanketed voiceover narration can be too on-the-nose—it’s a metaphor, we get it—the film packs a psychic punch, thanks to Gedeck’s spectrally wearied face.

Director George Clooney raids a leftover script by the Coen brothers that lacks the snap of their more vicious crime comedies.

An efficient, entertaining time-waster, but Snipes deserved better for his first solo starring role.

The feverish intensity of enthusiastic birdwatchers may seem better suited for a Christopher Guest movie, but director Jeffrey Kimball's lush cinematography makes Central Park's beauty no laughing matter.

Amazing, though, what a competent director, cameraman and cast can do to help out a soggy plot. Tolerably watchable by comparison with the average Halloween rip-off.

The doc makes a hairpin turn into sentiment, as the realities of immigration law impose themselves on Randi’s private relationship with his Venezuelan lover of 25 years. We already know that professional charlatans run from their pasts. Where they head to, though, is the better question: For a while, An Honest Liar brings a captivating crusader into view.

The overall hipness is a little too forced--it’s damn funny when it could’ve been poignant.

There's no Deep Throat this time, but Tom Wilkinson does his best Ben Bradlee as a hawkish legal mentor, while Kevin Kline coos menacingly as Lincoln's Nixonian war secretary, Edwin Stanton, a man seeking to hang prisoners out of political expediency. It all seems a little forced.

There’s a fine line between modesty and inconsequence, and this low-key, primarily improvised feature from mumblecore staple Joe Swanberg mostly blurs the divide.

But for every Thelma & Louise–like golden-hour drive into the sunset (there are several too many), you wish the movie also had the sophistication to cram from that classic script’s complex sense of injustice, one that had room for a subplot involving a sympathetic lawman. Believe in Matsoukas, though; she’s the real deal and she’ll get better material.

You know the money-over-morality argument will eventually tilt toward righteousness, yet the film's turn toward charcoal-sketch notions of good and evil only fuels a simplistic view of historical tragedy in the worst sort of way.

Though the vertiginously absurdist logic of the book is hopelessly fractured, some of it does filter through (the mostly superb performances are a great help). Nichols unfortunately grafts on a Meaningful Statement by way of a ponderous Fellini-ish sequence in which Yossarian, on leave in Rome, finds himself wandering the seventh circle of hell.

The plentiful pop-doc touches ensure that this wake-up call won't put you to sleep, even if the ratio of spoonfuls of sugar to medicine occasionally seems skewed.

In this 'movie-isation' of the justly top-rated Nickelodeon TV cartoon, the producers have left the formula intact, changing little beyond extending the running time, fleshing out the animation (unobtrusively), inserting an 'Indiana Jones' pre-movie sequence, and giving the Pickles family a new member (baby Dylan).

Malek’s twitchy brand of anti-charm makes him an unusual lead for a film like this, and his outsider energy works better as the tormented killer-to-be than the doting husband. Heller is not always easy to root for, which can make The Amateur a chilly experience.

So many blockbuster movies are impersonal, micromanaged hashes that Jack, with its bare minimum of craft and commitment, comparatively comes off like a diamond in the rough.

Don't be misled by the Berkeley credit - this is no girlie extravaganza. Rather, it's the second of those musical concoctions designed for the strident, irrepressible Rooney to dominate with Garland tagging along.

John Travolta breaks the braggadocio meter in the latest tightly wound actioner from "Taken’s" Pierre Morel.

Here's the thing: We enjoy a good mindf--- lark as much as the next filmgoer, but such fluid tomfoolery eventually has to add up to something, and The Double Hour ultimately doesn't.

A likeable but aimless musical which doesn't know what to make of its plot (designed to cash in on the pioneer spirit of Oklahoma) about the Harvey House restaurants which followed the railroad into the West, bringing demure waitresses into the domain of rowdy saloon girls.

Candy-coloured fun for greying gamers and fresh-faced wee’uns that does the basics well but not much more.

Yet it still works like gangbusters - tears will be stifled by the end of the sibling vs. sibling finale - and most of the credit should go to Hardy, Nolte and Edgerton.

This one belongs to the women: As a gold-digging mistress, Isla Fisher does half-smart expertly, while Jennifer Aniston demonstrates her underrated timing as a wealthy kidnapping victim turned confidante.

But take the puppet off his arm and he seems somehow vague and incomplete, like the Wizard of Oz without his curtain.

The traditional ingredients of homely moralising, sentimentality and raucous slapstick are used sparingly, the dialogue is fairly bright, some visual gags are neatly executed, even Knotts is bearable, and Susan Clark makes an auspicious Disney debut as the Calamity Jane-type heroine.

The result, if you can get past some of its absurdities, is a slight, enjoyable, lightweight jaunt. Just don’t expect anything more.

Still, the problem that often fells these documentaries - humorlessness - has been licked: Jack Black makes an exuberant cameo pitching recycled toilet water (his fake brand is called Porcelain Springs). Sound gross? Open wide, because it's on the menu for all of us.

A movie that knows exactly what its audience wants and dishes it out in big ectoplasmic dollops, Ghostbusters: Afterlife manages to be full of surprises and completely unsurprising all at once.

These scenes make you wish the rest of the movie had similar bite, but Gibney tends toward that dutiful doc style that mixes talking heads and archival clips into a flavorless stew—a bland complement to Fela’s zesty on- and offstage presence.

Thankfully, the 3-D is surprisingly well-used, not just for arterial spray but to accentuate the constraints of the mega-bland, housing-bubble architecture of the characters' neighborhood. That anonymity is the real horror show.

You don’t often see style this gorgeous (however empty), and that must count for something. Groovy soundtrack cues by Ennio Morricone and others do the heavy lifting.

Despite the sparkling cast and engaging, well-tuned turns from Chastain and McAvoy, the scaled-down script doesn’t carry much weight, bogged down by clunky, Hallmark dialogue.

A Euro gloss on "Pretty Woman" suddenly turns into "Occupy Gaul."

Though the movie is a testimony to one man's will to survive and a testament to a vanishing art form, Tibet in Song's greatest achievement may be the way it shows how China recast traditional songs as modern pro-Communist propaganda-an eradication of an invaded country's culture through insidious co-option.