Without question or competition, the most influential movie by a black filmmaker.

Obsession has seldom looked as gaudy or thrilling as here.

Origin works as a visual summation of Wilkerson’s ideas. But it’s also a movie about a woman striving to bring her ideas to the world, even in the midst of her own personal crisis. The life we plan and hope for is rarely the life we get. Origin is an exhortation to use every heartbeat wisely.

The picture has an ungainly shape, and certain dramatic notes don’t resonate with the boldness they need: when a tragedy strikes, the characters barely react. The story keeps moving like a freight train chugging along the track, and the effect is disorienting. But even when Lee makes a flawed film, his spirit is a kind of braille, a code you can feel and see.

A thoughtful epic is both a rarity and an oxymoron. But that's what Ali is, and you can't help being drawn sympathetically into its hero's struggle for mastery of himself and his era.

[Murphy] makes Trading Places something more than a good-hearted comedy. He turns it into an event.

The comedic first part of Jacques Audiard's film doesn't achieve a seamless connection with its melodramatic second half, but you can't deny the originality of his conceit or the tart cynicism of its development.

Under the suave direction of Jonathan Frakes, who also plays the Enterprise's second-in-command, the movie glides along with purpose and style.

Binoche is especially subtle and radiant in another splendid drama from Leconte.

Shine a Light isn't the record of a unique event, so it's not on the exalted level of "The Last Waltz." But it has its own fascination. The film is less about the music than about the dedication of show-biz troupers--about doing your job, year after year, as if it's your joy.

Let Me In is not as fantastic as "Let the Right One In," which you should rent immediately. But it is undeniably powerful and made with obvious admiration and respect for the source material.

At the very least, it's awfully entertaining and for "Buffy" fans, reason to put down the boxed sets and run off to the cinema.

This is a horror movie with a soul. It’s less ambitious and aggressively complicated than, say, Ari Aster’s "Hereditary" — another movie about the sometimes-unnerving complexity of parent-child bonds — but it’s also, in the end, more thoughtful.

A smart, tough, yet curiously moving film.

It’s one of those crowd-pleasing movies that doesn’t make you feel embarrassed to be part of the crowd—you feel buoyed rather than talked down to.

With Half-Blood Prince, again we have a stalwart, satisfying visualization of the Rowling cosmos.

What really registers is how frustrating Krisha’s erratic, furtive behavior would be if she were part of your family — and how deeply sympathetic she is because, thankfully, she is not. Fairchild’s performance is key to the movie: Krisha is witty and chatty one moment, and shut down like a deserted fairground the next.

Avengers: Endgame isn’t a great movie, but there are flashes of greatness in it, and quite a few of them belong to Evans. His Captain America rewards us with a revelation and escapes with a secret. The best thing in Avengers: Endgame is everything he doesn’t say.

It’s tense and quietly thrilling, though it’s brushed with somber elegance, too. There’s an abstract, poetic quality to Greyhound; it’s less about rah-rah heroics than it is about the secret burden of heroism—because with wartime heroism, there’s always a price to pay.

Here's another warning: you may laugh yourself sick--as sick as this ruthlessly funny movie is.

Even when the movie sags and strains a bit in Act III, Clooney keeps it flying with old-fashioned movie-star allure. He's got it all: Cary Grant's looks and, inside, Bob Hope's snake-oil-salesman soul.

Glowering from beneath the bangs of her moonbeam-platinum bob, Theron’s Broughton is equal parts air, light and iron. We’re just the moths clustering around her flame.

This is a big movie served up in a surprisingly small, intimate package.

Constantine is a one-of-a-kind hybrid: a theological noir action film. And until it goes irrevocably goofy at the end, it's a smart ride--and smart-looking too.

Director Harlin's only large mistake is staging the several violent deaths too authentically. They momentarily mar the high-speed implausibility of a movie that, like his Die Hard 2, agreeably combines the edgy and the genial.

Writer-director Carl Franklin's cool, expert adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley's first novel, evokes the spirit of '40s film noir more effectively than any movie since Chinatown.

You could also say the picture lacks a coherent plot and complex characterization, but those are irrelevant to the genre. The movie is like a superior athlete who gets tongue-tied in a post-game interview but on the field is poetry in motion.

Brigsby Bear is a sweet-natured picture with an undercurrent of prickly energy.