The film’s best scenes are a series of hilarious father-son encounters where the son wants to be loved and the dad just doesn’t get it.

It’s a fun setup with a rousing finale that broadly compensates for a baggy middle section (at two hours, the film seems a little too long).

There’s plenty of action—and laughs here and there—but when a repeated cameo from Elton John is the best thing in a movie like this, you know you’re in trouble.

It’s a weird and unusually honest film.

A film about the importance of cultural history and truth (two things deeply under siege these days), Wiseman’s epic Ex Libris might make you cry with happiness; it’s the good fight being fought. Movies aren’t usually a public benefit, much less an essential one. Here’s the exception.

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

A sweet, deeply personal portrayal of female adolescence that's more attuned to the bonds between best girlfriends than casual flings with boys, writer-director Greta Gerwig’s beautiful Lady Bird flutters with the attractively loose rhythms of youth.

Co-writers, co-directors and brothers Alex and Andrew J. Smith—who outdo The Revenant for sincerity, depth and gorgeousness—mount their tale with enough confidence to cut away from the action.

This one’s a crucible of sweaty pre-natal panic, weird knocks at the door, mind games and ultimately, a roaring, miniature apocalypse set inside a single claustrophobic living room. If that already sounds like your home, it's time to go and give it a try.

Even though our clown-busting heroes predate the sweet kids on Stranger Things, they feel more generic. No performance here captures the adolescent longing that this story—essentially a coming-of-age tale—requires; only Sophia Lillis, playing the “Molly Ringwald” in an all-boys club of self-described losers, comes close to developing a distinct psychology.

Home Again is too superficial to maintain tension as a character-driven drama, and not funny enough to overcome an aimless plot and confused tone.

Bell’s film ends up stuck between being a standard audience-pleaser and something more subversive. For a movie about marriage, you wish it would commit one way or the other.

The Shape of Water is a movie of too many ideas, including love. For that reason alone, it drinks like a bottomless glass of velvety wine.

Human Flow is rooted in specific current national and political situations, yet it offers a portrait of forced human movement and suffering that feels almost timeless.

As medium-grade satire (hardly another The Truman Show), Downsizing works fine enough. But it makes a series of wrong moves that throw off the delicate tone, raising the pretension levels to toxic.

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

Their movie is a tedious slog filled with pinging bullets, show-offy long takes ripped out of the Children of Men playbook and zero humor.

The tone balances realism and optimism with the accent on the latter; ultimately Patti Cake$ has the kind of uplifting, defiant-misfit mood that’s easy to compare with fellow Sundance hit "Little Miss Sunshine."

It’s a film that doubles and trebles in complexity as it dives inward to a place of strange intimacy, one that’s a lot like Spike Jonze’s "Her": manufactured, yes, but no less affecting for its desperation.

When the plot stops cold for a beauty-pageant performance of exquisite purity, you’ll feel like you’re watching the most American film of the year.

As exposed as the actors allow themselves to be, their mostly improvised script never takes them anywhere, and the rough edge of their banter seems to acknowledge as much. At least they get to eat.

For all its timeliness, the movie works best when it’s echoing the 15-year-old The Rules of Attraction, upping the vapidity of Ingrid’s prey.

Pattinson is great in what is surely his best post-Twilight performance to date.

The demon doll from the Conjuring movies remains creepy, even if this prequel feels occasionally wooden.

The richly built The Glass Castle—splendidly attentive to the details of the Walls's eclectic childhood home and elevated by Ella Anderson's performance as a young Jeannette—is on the overlong side, but it does right by a tough true story that begs neither contempt nor pity.

Kidnap may strain plausibility, but it's no more absurd than "Taken," and it’s a kick to watch Karla, a woman with no particular set of skills, become a capable warrior based on pure maternal ferocity.

Fogel is a little out of his depth, but he has a killer tale to tell.

Sheridan can’t quite shake a hint of Silence of the Lambs–esque familiarity, but that’s a wonderful standard to be reaching for. More to his credit, he fills his thriller with sharp observations among his Native American characters (not merely paid lip service), as well as the sudden crack of gunfire. You learn to look for tracks and clues; it’s a film that makes you a better viewer.