Candyman is a work held together by thoughtful choices, and it has a lot to say. Genre conventions are themselves like urban legends, a framework that each new generation adds to and builds upon. Candyman is just one reason we continue to believe in them.

A small epic with subtle strengths.

Victim has a neat plot, deft direction by Basil Dearden, and the sort of grum good manners one expects of the British in these trying situations. It also has a careful performance by Bogarde, and it pursues with eloquence and conviction the case against an antiquated statute.

As an actor and overall performer, Jennifer Lopez has always been charming. In Hustlers, she’s also great — as if two translucent hues spontaneously overlapped to make a new color.

Ross is a filmmaker with a taste for inherently sentimental tales…but the discipline not to play mawkishly to our sentiments. You will be moved by Seabiscuit--but not to tears.

Veronica Guerin paid with her life. This film would make her proud, for it is ultimately not depressing but -- we say without a shred of journalistic irony -- inspiring.

No matter how she got there, Gaga’s performance in House of Gucci is both tremendous fun and ultimately touching, likely despite any technique rather than because of it.

Memoria is moody and perplexing, even in the context of Weerasethakul’s others, and if you’re a neophyte, it may not be the best one to start with. But even so, its circuitous, misty trails of logic leave you feeling as if you’ve been entrusted with some kind of nebulous treasure; it’s easy to become pleasurably lost in speculation about what it all means.

If Black Widow follows the standard Marvel template in some basic ways, it deviates enough to make its own mark. It’s blissfully free of that “Avengers working together” baloney, and all the smirky-cute bickering that comes with it.

Sometimes engrossing, sometimes exasperating romance. In these scenes, Cotillard shows she doesn't need the validation of Cannes or the Academy. Her strong, subtle performance is gloriously winning on its own.

At 160 minutes, Anatomy is longer than the subject warrants, but the pace seldom slackens—thanks to the competence of Director Otto Preminger.

Boldly and gaily sustained the madcap momentum for the whole of its eighty-few minutes.

Warm Bodies is the first movie worth paying to see in theaters this year. It’s an inventive charmer that visits all the typical movie scenarios of young love amid chaos and disaster, but with a new dimension: one of the romantic leads is a zombie.

Emotionally On Golden Pond is no less valid for being something of a cliche. Anyway, the characters are so strong that the piece does not play as a cliché. Hepburn, for example may have a less chewy part than has Fonda, but the briskness of her manner, her well-justified image as a no-nonsense individualist who is nevertheless a good sport, serve her wonderfully. There is a vivifying touch of tension between an actress who was a liberated woman before the movement was born and her role as traditional wife and mother.

A rich, intricate and very gripping movie.

The Wild Bunch contains faults and mistakes, but its accomplishments are more than sufficient to confirm that Peckinpah, along with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn, belongs with the best of the newer generation of American film makers.

Whoever thought of having evil's final manifestation take the form of a 100-ft. marshmallow deserves the rational mind's eternal gratitude. But praise is due to everyone connected with Ghostbusters for thinking on a grandly comic scale and delivering the goofy goods, neatly timed and perfectly packaged.

In many ways the new film is a better film than Star Wars, visually more exciting, more artful and meticulous in detail. As a special effects wizard, Lucas fairly dazzles the eye with his optical magic.

The result is an escapist fantasy that is -- Damon's and Potente's persuasive performances aside -- as weightless and inconsequential as a musical. And at the moment every bit as welcome.

Not for everyone. The plot is full of holes, and its language is worse than it has to be. But it has some swell supporting performances and a lot of vulgar inventiveness, and best of all, it plugs into -- and electrifies -- the mostly unacknowledged grimness that lies just beneath our holiday cheer.

The Edge of Seventeen is particularly perceptive in how it deals with teenage sex—maybe even with sex in general.

Michael Clayton is not an exercise in high-tension energy; you'll never confuse its eponymous protagonist with Jason Bourne. But it does have enough of a melodramatic pulse to keep you engaged in its story and, better than that, it is full of plausible characters who are capable of surprising -- and surpassing -- your expectations.

As for Blanchett, she's simply wonderful. She has played her share of queenly figures, but her acting essence is, emotionally speaking, plain-Jane. She's a straight shooter, with an uncanny ability to find a character's spine and communicate it without fuss or feathers.

Feldstein and Dever have a kind of mad, cartoon chipmunk chemistry, playing characters who know each other so well that they finish each other’s sentences and step on each other’s lines. What their friendship really needs is a little room to breathe. Booksmart is smart about that too.

If you’ve only sort-of heard of Sparks, The Sparks Brothers is a great place to begin. If you’re already a fan, you’ll go nuts for it. And if you’re like me, you’ll never lose track of Sparks again.

Semi-Tough may or may not turn out to be the year's best comedy—there's Annie Hall to remember and Mel Brooks yet to be heard from—but it is without a doubt the year's most socially useful film.

There is not a cheap note or a careless image, not an easy judgment or a forced emotion, in the 2 hr. 43 min. of Bird. It permits a man's life its complexity. It invites us to experience the redeeming grace of his music. And with its passionate craft, it proclaims that Eastwood is a major American director.

If this sounds like an old-fashioned sex comedy, it is -- sexy, for sure, and funny, in wild spurts.