Make what you will of the story and its symbolism, but Mr. Antal has made a remarkable feature debut with this visionary film, chockablock with memorable images.

The movie wears thin as its style turns from light parody into affectation, and the plot, which certainly generates lots of anxiety, eventually settles for facile irony.

Ms. Moore, for her part, doesn’t need fine writing to create marvelous moments; some of her most powerful scenes are wordless ones in which Alice is looking anxious, confused or utterly haunted. When the script provides exceptional material, however, this extraordinary actress takes it to a memorably high level.

Its plot is simple and direct, albeit enlivened by well-timed surprises. The film isn’t especially funny—droll is more accurate—but its approach to Antoinette’s character adroitly balances sympathy with mockery.

As you watch Doc Paskowitz perform for Mr. Pray's camera, it's hard not to judge him harshly. His narcissism seems boundless, even when he cloaks it in self-deprecation.

It looks so stylish that thinking about its plot is strictly optional.

It tests your tolerance for ambiguity as well as your visual acuity. Yet the spell it casts justifies the intense anxiety it creates by depicting a black-and-white society in which men have worth and women don’t.

The conclusion, grim and swift, makes the meaning of what preceded it wither slightly in the rear view, but there are some cinematic seductions along the way.

What started out as something that promised to be akin to a droll, twisted Coen Brothers comedy instead wanders off into reverie. And when the movie ends, critical questions are simply left unresolved. Mr. Cronenberg may not care about closure, but a movie can benefit greatly from it.

The scariness quotient remains high to the end, the plot is sufficiently twisty, and it’s stirring to watch Cecilia prevail against monstrosity without becoming a monster herself. As to how it all works out, let’s just say that the right person gets the last slash.

The film, playing in theaters, is very long, relentlessly intense, murmured more often than spoken, and photographed, by Greig Fraser, with a glowering gorgeousness that must be seen to be felt. It’s also enthralling and tailored to our time, an extended rumination on finding one’s moral compass in a world of all-encompassing evil.

Arctic is a lesson in lessness, coolly observed and warmly felt.

One of the reasons documentaries often take so long to make is the filmmakers' need to keep their subject from giving a performance. They want something genuine, something that materializes only when the camera disappears. Nothing Mr. Courtney is says is inaccurate or, God knows, dishonest. But it isn't quite true either.

Director David Yates, who is new to the Potter franchise, moves the story along briskly, at the expense of texture and nuance.

A valuable film, provided one doesn't ask too much of it.

As in much modern horror, humor resides just under the surface of “Brooklyn 45,” except when it erupts like a punctured artery; the cast has to walk a fine line, though they do behave as people might under extraordinary and extraordinarily unnerving circumstances.

Much of what makes “The Boy Who Lived” special are the inexplicable ways people respond to the unexpected, and the randomly tragic, and whether they stick around when it would be much easier to vanish, as if by wizardry.

Acting may be a collaborative art form, but Mr. Ahmed also flies solo with considerable grace.

It’s a marvelous story about science and humanity, plus a great performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, plus first-rate filmmaking and cinematography, minus a script that muddles its source material to the point of betraying it. Those strengths make the movie worth seeing, but the writing keeps eating away at the narrative’s clarity — and integrity — until it’s impossible to separate the glib fictions from the remarkable facts.

It declines to take itself seriously, yet manages, sometimes simultaneously, to be exciting, instructive, cheerfully absurd and genuinely affecting.

Like his (David Gordon Green's) debut feature of three years ago, the exquisite "George Washington," this new one has my heart, and I think it will have yours.

There’s always a point in any Marvel extravaganza where somebody exclaims “Holy s—!” just to remind us how awe-struck we’re supposed to have been all along. When Awkwafina does it, it’s funny. She is good for Mr. Liu, who carries the action while she carries the humanity. They leave no doubt at the end of “Shang-Chi” that they will be back and they will be welcome.

As pleasing as the film is, some of it feels arbitrary, underdeveloped, possibly rushed.

Among the ironic lessons of MoviePass, MovieCrash is that the people who used the service the most helped ruin it, though it wasn’t really their fault—it was a great deal. One that seemed too good to be true. And was.

One would have to be totally tone-deaf not to notice that the director, Andrew Davis, has inflicted a broad cartoon style on adult performers who are distinctly uncomfortable with it.

Of all the funny things in Thank You for Smoking, and there are many, the most striking is Robert Duvall's absolutely mirthless laugh.

Although it is unashamedly a genre piece, Heretic is not only an expertly engineered work of suspense but also an ingeniously structured colloquy about the most deeply held belief systems.

Mr. Lowery is very good with actors, and he lets much of his film unfold at a pace that may, in these frenzied times, seem rather leisurely. I thought the pace was fine, and admired him for giving his characters time to breathe. Elliott breathes fire, and the film around him breathes humanity.