An intermittently powerful and meticulously crafted drama that falls short of its full potential due to considerable over-length and some shopworn, simplistic notions at its center.

Cast is first-rate all around, unafraid to play up the annoying, insensitive or self-pitying aspects of their nonetheless likeable characters.

Bob Fosse's remarkable film version of Julian Barry's legit play, Lenny, stars Dustin Hoffman in an outstanding performance.

These guileless airheads with the outrageous vocabulary are obviously a beloved creation, and filmmakers might have gotten more mileage if they'd rooted their adventure a bit more in reality.

Impressively, the rookie scribe-helmers' sense of equilibrium is unerring and also surprisingly subtle.

Evil is not, as the title would suggest, a horror film, at least not a conventional one. Based on the autobiographical novel by Jan Guillou and set in the mid-1950s, the film relates the experiences of a troubled young man who's enrolled into a hidebound private school.

How illuminating or challenging Caniba proves for viewers will depend on their amenability to Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s amoral stance and literally up-in-your-face technique. Those who aren’t provoked by its ambiguous psychological inquiry, however, may wish for a bigger human picture from this relentlessly close-up exercise.

It’s all been seen before, but Eastwood serves it up with authority, fine craftsmanship and a frequent sense of fun. This film is graced not only by an excellent visual look and confident storytelling, but by a few fine performances, led by Eastwood’s own.

A straightforward actioner that delivers the goods with no unnecessary frills or digressions.

Hugh Jackman proves an inspired candidate to embody Hart, downplaying his brawny movie-star persona, while still conveying the twinkle-eyed sex appeal that was not only Hart’s undoing, but one of the qualities that would have made the photogenic and well-spoken senator from Colorado a logical choice to follow the country’s first movie-star president.

As a struggling rocker making a last-ditch attempt to gain shared custody of his daughter, Paul Dano delivers a beautifully wrought performance in a different key from any of his previous roles.

The film presents itself as lavishly somber and important and includes several not-so-veiled references to the rise of intolerance, and the need to maintain international standards of justice, in the world today. But Nuremberg, competent and watchable as it is, isn’t big on psychological tension or insight.

A crackerjack serial-killer chiller in "Seven" mold, Tell Me Something cleverly disguises its thoroughly generic content and leaps of logic with highly honed technique and an involving approach to narrative.

While his static backgrounds and stuttering character movement aren't likely to win over traditional animation fans, Hair High reps the high end of this "Sick 'n' Twisted"-type toonery.

Pitch-perfect central perf (by scribe and co-producer Damian Lahey), total lack of dramatic artifice and surreally situational humor make for a minor-key vignette of unmistakable, if unstable, authenticity.

A beautifully atmospheric vessel that will seem infinitely deep to some and chafingly dry to others.

Though the issue of illegal immigration is nothing new in French cinema, Welcome makes auds care deeply for its absorbing characters.

This directing debut by helmer-scribe Shim Sung-bo echoes Bong’s trademark cynical vision of human nature, but the characters lack dimensionality and psychological depth.

Mighty Joe Young is fun to laugh at and with, loaded with incredible corn, plenty of humor, and a robot gorilla who becomes a genuine hero.

When its many secrets spill out in the finale, “The Housemaid” has to cheat a little to pull off a humdinger of a twist, but it’s enormously satisfying anyway, if only for bringing the core historical conflict back to the fore.

M-G-M's reproduction of Goodbye, Mr. Chips as a big-budget musical [music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse] with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark is a sumptuous near-miss that trips on its own overproduction.

The film, a debut feature from director Matt Vesely and screenwriter Lucy Campbell, falls sway to the clickbait tropes it intends to send up: red herrings, a tone of suffocating gloom and a desperation to keep the audience on the hook.

For all the utter phoniness of Fighting -- the cockeyed, faux-verite shooting, the lurches in storytelling, the lack of character development, a contrived crisis between Shawn and his would-be girlfriend Zulay and Tatum's dopey-charming thing--Fighting's not so bad.

The improvisational zeal with which Cusack approaches his role (absent from his miscast villainous turn in “The Paperboy”) is particularly fun to watch.

While it suffers from a rocky beginning with burdensome amounts of kook and quirk, the unfolding spell it subtly casts holds profundity and wisdom.

3 Men and a Baby is about as slight a feature comedy as is made - while at the same time it's hard to resist Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg shamelessly going goo-goo over caring for an infant baby girl all swaddled in pink.

Maridueña, playing Hollywood’s first Latino superhero, proves an appealing star. And the novelty of casting a comic-book blockbuster with a mostly unknown crew of vibrant Latino actors finds its emotional grounding in Jaime’s family.

There’s bravery in Bateman’s willingness to explore this state of mind, to put so much of herself on the table, but she rolls credits just as things were getting interesting: when Violet blocks out the voices and finally starts listening to herself.

Although it exists primarily to send an audience into a bloodthirsty frenzy and has major credibility problems in the bargain, "Unlawful Entry" is still a very effective victimization thriller. Strongly following the "Fatal Attraction" pattern--to the point of having a very similar climax--well-crafted concoction trades in the sorts of elemental concerns and fears that get people mightily worked up. This, combined with controversy pic may engender based on its prominent plot element of excessive police violence, gives it the potential to become a summer sleeper hit.

Gorgeously shot for the big screen by multihyphenate Gilles de Maistre, it thoughtfully explores what makes the globe-trotting chef-businessman tick.

Better Broadway musicals than Bells Are Ringing have come to Hollywood, but few have been translated to the screen so effectively.

The Persian Version is a bit madcap and self-indulgent, not unlike its protagonist, before it settles into a groove that foregrounds Shirin.

A definitive document for anyone who’s ever hoisted the devil-horn fingers in metalhead solidarity.

Offers a fast, efficient and richly satisfying look at an iconoclastic artist and his groundbreaking work.

Too often caught between trying to be a sweeping period drama and intimate love story at the same time, with a script that's never fully satisfying on either count.

Superior family entertainment.

Adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1997 novel takes a surprising number of liberties with the text, given the author's stature, but his name on the credits as associate producer would suggest his stamp of approval.

Israeli filmmaker Loevy questions in voiceover whether one can ever really see the other's side, and the strain of this divide is felt in over-dramatic attempts to highlight individual victims.

Faithful in substantial degree not only to the letter but also the spirit of the 1933 classic for RKO, this $22 million-plus version neatly balances superb special effects with solid dramatic credibility.

The real battle in Roman Polanski's brisk, fitfully amusing adaptation of Yasmina Reza's popular play is a more formal clash between stage minimalism and screen naturalism, as this acid-drenched four-hander never shakes off a mannered, hermetic feel that consistently betrays its theatrical origins.

At one point in The New Age, the terminally stylish post-yuppie couple played by Peter Weller and Judy Davis put on their fanciest threads in order to commit double suicide, but can't go through with it. Like them, Michael Tolkin's film gets all dressed up but doesn't quite know where to go.

A trippy variation on the dream-within-a-dream movie, Boyle’s return-to-form crimer constantly challenges what audiences think they know, but neglects to establish why they should care.

Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.

Big, loud and full of testosterone-fueled car fantasies, Michael Bay's actioner hits a new peak for CGI work, showcasing spectacular chases and animated transformation sequences seamlessly blended into live-action surroundings.

Piles the pathos high as if to see how many hard-luck cliches its pugilist hero can fend off without succumbing to schmaltz. Given John Leguizamo's knockout perf, sentimentality never dares raise its head, and the improbably stacked deck from which his character is dealt gives the pic's would-be "neo-realist" premise a peculiar edge.

Manages to be at once historically elucidating and personally compelling.

Tyro helmer Sara Lamm satisfyingly stitches together the family soap opera into a comfortable crazy quilt without sacrificing its unique, oddly topical edge.

If movies were subject to sanity tests, Oka! would be a crazy old man with a three-day beard and a sock full of kruggerrands under his mattress.

The tender story, with its frank and unashamed assault on the emotions, still has its effective moments at times when the sentiment doesn’t grow a little too thick.

Clearly inspired by cases like that of Shamima Begum, the London teen who traveled in secret to Syria to become an ISIS bride, Nadia Fall‘s debut feature seems on the surface like a hot-button provocation, but it’s surprisingly humane and good-humored in its attempt to understand the individual lives behind a sensational headline issue.

Though the storyline is dirt simple and not particularly meaningful or involving, the action in this character-driven film is scintillatingly sexy.

Overlong and ultra-slow, this meditation on the sad state of things will tax the patience of even dedicated Wenders fans.

What Zeros and Ones does do — deliberately, calculatedly, in the kind of messy intuitive manner that’s been the director’s signature of late — is reproduce the general state of unease and insecurity that’s plagued most of us during lockdown.

Okoro has bent over backwards not to make the poverty-row version of a glib crime thriller, but he shouldn’t have bent so far.

While occasionally wearisome in its fragmented structure ... Webber’s film navigates the vast notion of grief gently and with seriousness.

This is quick, nippy entertainment that raises plenty of sociopolitical talking points without digging too deep into any of them.

Tapping into late-1980s nostalgia — including the launch of the handheld Game Boy console — the movie doubles as a nifty history lesson, reminding audiences of just how tense things were between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world.

Overall, this smooth, glossy, enjoyable film showcases an impressive new authorial voice.

Neither the beguiling romance of Venice nor the undraped bodies of Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett can disguise the hollowness of The Comfort of Strangers.

A sense of tangible intellect looms just beneath its surface — not only Rob’s supposed genius, but the movie’s own identity as political cinema. But it never quite unearths this, even though “Rob Peace” establishes Ejiofor as a director with a knack for dramatic storytelling, in a way his previous film could not.

In her capacity as a film critic — and the sort of populist who was allergic to snobs like Morf — Pauline Kael famously quipped, “Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.” Gilroy doesn’t even aspire to making great art, but he’s getting better at delivering the latter.

The pic reveals itself as a horror-action-comedy a la "Evil Dead," with amusing twists of fate and over-the-top gore.

Handsome tribute is paid to the eponymous experimental filmmaker in Notes on Marie Menken, the fourth feature by Austrian docu helmer Martina Kudlacek, who previously made "In the Mirror of Maya Deren."

A colossally overproduced white elephant of a movie that obfuscates both its own protagonist and his important message with layer upon layer of unnecessary “style.”

This watchable but middling drama tackles a worthy, relatable subject without quite figuring out what to say about it.

The rather modest 1813 Johann Wyss tale has been blown up to prodigious proportions. The essence and the spirit of the simple, intriguing story of a marvelously industrious family is all but snuffed out, only spasmodically flickering through the ponderous approach.

To When You’re Finished Saving the World, being good is exhausting and miserable, and aspiring to be good is even worse. Joy exists only to be taken away.

An artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement.

Scream VI, while it goes on for too long, is a pretty good thriller. It’s a homicidal shell game that‘s clever in all the right ways, staged and shot more forcefully than the previous film, eager to take advantage of its more sprawling but enclosed cosmopolitan setting.

An honorable but failed attempt to dramatize the dynamics that propel a basically good man to become a suicide bomber, The War Within contains provocative points inside a dull package.

Subbing character actor Jeremy Renner into a franchise that requires Matt Damon-caliber magnetism, series scribe Tony Gilroy takes over the helming duties with an overlong sequel that features too little action and an unnecessarily complicated plot.

Even working within a more conventional framework, Blomkamp again proves to be a superb storyteller. He has a master’s sense of pacing, slowly immersing us into his future world rather than assailing us with nonstop action, and envisioning that world with an architect’s eye for the smallest details.

Briskly paced humor and/or pathos flow organically from situation and characters.

If all that Ian Inaba's latest Guerilla News Network missive, American Blackout, wants to do is get left Democrats worked up into a lather of righteous anger at crafty Republicans, it does so at the expense of speaking to any other group of Americans. As such, docu is extremely limited and almost without purpose except as an organizing tool for party foot soldiers.

Warmly affectionate yet curiously hollow, The Universe of Keith Haring is a straightforward biodoc about the Gotham-based artist and style-setter.

Donohoe as the vampire seductress projects a beguiling sexuality that should suck the resistance out of all but the most cold-blooded critics. She is also hilarious, a virtue shared by everyone and everything in The Lair of the White Worm.

As fizzy as a freshly poured glass of Perrier-Jouët, though considerably less complex, writer-director Alexis Michalik’s Cyrano, My Love attempts to give the “Shakespeare in Love” treatment to the timeless French play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” with shamelessly derivative yet undeniably entertaining results.

Ringwald is engaging and credible. For the boys, there's a bright, funny performance by Anthony Michael Hall.

An intense, precision-controlled psychological mystery built around a very creepy lead performance by Christian Bale.

Biloxi Blues is an agreeable but hardly inspired film version of Neil Simon's second installment of his autobiographical trilogy, which bowed during the 1984-85 season. Even with high-powered talents Mike Nichols and Matthew Broderick aboard, World War II barracks comedy provokes just mild laughs and smiles rather than the guffaws Simon's work often elicits in the theater.

The unwillingness to let nuance communicate lends a flat quality to the drama here; after the initial crimes, suspense situations are simply lopped off prematurely, the action jumping clumsily to their aftermath.

Overall, film may feel too slow and didactic for contempo urban kids conditioned by video games. However, the script is never smarmy or complacent, and shows young people engaged in collective problem-solving and decision-making that is often, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

The emotions of the stories have been lost. We could be watching the standard ghoulish CGI effects that take place in any horror movie of the week.

The Wolverine boasts one of the best pulp-inspired scripts yet. It’s still full of corny dialogue...but there’s a genuine elegance to the way it establishes Logan’s tortured condition and slowly brings the character around to recovering his heroic potential, methodically setting up and paying off ideas as it unfolds.

"Soldado” may not be as masterful as Villeneuve’s original, but it sets up a world of possibilities for elaborating on a complex conflict far too rich to be resolved in two hours’ time.

It's a sign of that pic's dramatic durability that "Kid" manages to be as absorbing as it is, despite its nearly 2½-hour running time.

Fennell’s debut promised a fearless original voice and style. Saltburn certainly has attitude, but nothing new to say.

The briefest of the three pics, it's also the least successful, suggesting that this kind of character-driven comedy isn't the genre with which Belvaux is most comfortable. Still, there are delightful sequences and ideas and the film carries a great deal more substance and resonance when placed alongside the other two in the series.

The film’s strength really lies in its thrilling pace and robust action, elaborately choreographed and executed to involve a large ensemble of characters in a gripping way.

Within its snappy, flashy veneer is an undernourished romantic drama of a rather traditional screen school.

Given all its omissions and elisions, and the sense of coolness-cosplay that permeates this noisy but lifeless film, “Limonov” might not be a total misapprehension of the mercurial, charismatic and infuriating Eduard Limonov, but it is at least a mispronunciation.

Sincere but fairly soft piece of ennobling journalism that gives a positive spin to some of Africa's seemingly intractable problems.

Personal rather than social issues come to the fore in Mo' Better Blues, a Spike Lee personality piece dressed in jazz trappings that puffs itself up like Bird but doesn't really fly. More focused on the sexual dilemmas of its main character than on musical themes, pic might well be subtitled He's Gotta Have It.

Of particular interest to gay-rights activists and their adversaries, this "War Room"-like but extremely civil documentary seems best suited to community venues and the smallscreen.

Apart from cutting down the number of characters, Hamilton and scripter Anthony Shaffer have also had the audacity to switch things around in the inevitable denouement scene. Poirot points right away at the guilty party, while the true suspense is put into the how’s and why’s that follow.

Wayne carries out characterization realistically and gets firm support right down the line.

Hallström mostly strikes a nice balance between approachability and mystique, between the definitive and the abstract, getting a huge amount of help from his daughter Tora’s open and warm performance in her first leading role.

Not quite a fleshed-out personal study, nor fully a meditation on what Battaglia’s camera sees, this intriguing but frustrating film finally makes the case for letting the photographer’s pictures tell their story.