Don't miss an opportunity to see Mad Hot Ballroom, though. It will sweep you off your feet.

Has much to recommend it - high-end craftsmanship, a singular heroine, a labyrinthine mystery, an intriguing milieu - yet lacks a vital spark.

In an odd way, Predator: Badlands is a date-night movie posing as merely a sci-fi killing jamboree. All of those lovable lummoxes out there with their hyper-verbal lady friends will learn a little about cooperation.

A surfeit of spectacular images from top-of-the-line computer animation. And the love story branches out beyond a boy and his dragon into gladdening fulfillment on both sides of the species divide. That will certainly be sufficient for kids and families who’ve been waiting for the final chapter of the big-screen trilogy. Over much of the territory it covers, though, the film feels like it’s flying on empty.

Endearing, though sometimes belabored.

The performers—not just the miraculous Ms. Pugh but Ms. Cassidy; her mother, Elaine Cassidy (who plays Anna’s mother); and Tom Burke, as the journalist-love interest Will Byrne—give memorably complex portrayals in a tale where elements theological, maternal, political and pictorial are transformed alchemically into narrative gold.

What’s missing is nuance (the idea of Mr. Nighy’s performance, like others in the film, is wittier than what’s actually on screen); connective tissue (the story is semicoherent at best, a jumble of characters rushing to and fro); and depth of feeling.

Intriguing and affecting documentary.

To his latest picture, Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy, Mr. Rogowski brings his typically deep interiority—one that tends to break out into the world in unpredictable ways. The film isn’t equal to his talents, but it gets by on style, vigor and some big ideas.

The divide between Mr. Sutherland and the rest of the cast is striking: The way Friedkin shoots him, and the nature of his portrayal, are in sharp contrast to the more stage-bound performances of his co-stars; it may have been intentional, though it doesn’t really work.

Sleepwalk With Me makes the subject palatable, funny and maybe even touching.

The intricacies here are moral and ethical, and they're fascinating.

An exhilarating examination of a leading Iranian criminal enterprise--music: More than 2,000 bands are said to operate clandestinely in the capital of Tehran, risking prison to play together in basements, bedrooms and rooftops.

As wish-fulfillments go, this is a movie lover's dream.

The result is better than smart, it’s stirring.

Ms. Plaza delivers a wide-ranging, nuanced and demanding performance as a mad woman, whose attic is the cellphone.

What makes the film valuable is its focus on Justice Ginsburg as a champion of women’s rights.

If you're willing to go along with it, as I was, then being manipulated -- or at least actively misled -- becomes a pleasure.

Hugely entertaining thriller.

There’s no glory in the pugilism of The Survivor, save for the last, exquisite shot of Haft in his Marciano fight, which is alarmingly beautiful, a catharsis for Haft and a moment of aesthetic delirium for the viewer.

Though the film is somber, it certainly commands one's attention, and for a while one's respect.

No one knew Mr. Sorkin was a good director, but he is, and his filmmaking chops come topped with intelligence and curiosity. That makes it all the more remarkable, and I don’t mean good remarkable, when the film takes a last-reel turn into slushy psycho-sappiness, enlisting someone we thought we’d seen the last of to explain what the story was really about.

Training Day can be simplistic, formulaic and absurdly melodramatic -- but Mr. Washington is flat-out great.

As you watch Blinded by the Light, don’t let its earnest trappings blind you to the beauty of its core. Gurinder Chadha ’s coming-of-age drama transmutes the raw feeling of Bruce Springsteen ’s music into another kind of feeling, no less raw but leavened by giddy excitement that culminates in joy.

It's a stirring portrait of a singular artist, a gorgeously photographed album of his buildings, and, perhaps most importantly, a film that manages to demystify the way he works without diminishing it.

Black Book is its own kind of thriller. The film is filled with the genre's conventions -- suspense, betrayal, melodrama, violence, music -- and it's hugely enjoyable from start to finish.

The movie is a pleaser, for the most part, even though the attitude it takes toward its subject is often problematic.

James Marsh’s movie, which co-stars Felicity Jones as Jane Hawking, the celebrated physicist’s wife, is a biographical love story that doesn’t depend on science to shape the plot — it’s rich in emotional intelligence.