As the man who would inspire the character of Scrooge — first spied at night in a cemetery attending a threadbare burial for his business partner, while uttering, “Bah, humbug!” — Christopher Plummer is well chosen.

It provides a sturdy, often exhilarating bridge between the present and a past that not only isn’t distant, but isn’t even really past.

A movie of enormous humanity and heart.

An absorbing and entertaining portrait, of both the science evangelist and the guy behind him.

One of the great strengths of Roman J. Israel, Esq. is that no one is any one thing.

As usual in Hui’s films, the personal and the political are stitched tightly together.

Swift, stylish, tough-minded and sharp-tongued, this engaging fact-based drama, about a young woman who at one point ran the richest poker game in the world, is worth recommending if only to see its star, Jessica Chastain, at the top of her nerviest, most icily self-controlled game.

If the family dynamics feel perfunctory and too-neatly resolved by the end of Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Blanchett’s nuanced portrayal of stymied creativity, exacting taste and sensibilities too bold and well-judged for an uncaring world manages to be funny and uncompromising in equal measure.

All the Money in the World may not have that many surprises up its sleeve, especially if you already know how this story ends. You will, however, get your money’s worth, one way or another: whether it’s from the crime thriller or the thought-provoking sermon on filthy lucre that it throws in, at no extra charge.

In the end, “Nutcracker” is a delightfully old-school diversion. The plot may not always hum with the clockwork precision of one of Drosselmeyer’s mechanical toys, but like a music box, it nevertheless plays a sweet tune.

Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as the secret MI6 superagent James Bond is also a fittingly complicated and ultimately perversely satisfying send-off for the actor, whose character as the film gets underway isn’t even Agent 007 any more, but a retiree (as Craig is about to become, from this franchise).

Visually, it’s spectacular. Conceptually, it’s jaw-dropping to simply considering the effort that went into this. The story, however, doesn’t always hold its own.

Human Flow asks us, implicitly, why we seem to care so much about certain living creatures and not others.

While Iannucci whips up a fever-pitch frenzy, his film, based on a 2017 graphic novel, is not a farce, but a tragicomedy. The dark elements are too corrosive to be tempered by laughter.

With his hard-bitten squint and studied air of scowling detachment, Bale seems to be channeling Clint Eastwood at his most enigmatic and reserved; like Eastwood and his characters, Bale allows both the camera and his fellow characters to come to him, rather than proving his bona fides through more obvious and eager means.

Chinese director Guo Ke takes a quiet, deliberate approach. That must be partly out of respect for the women and their suffering. It’s also because this meditative film functions as a memorial to the remaining survivors: 22 of them when filming began, and even fewer today.

Accompanied, appropriately enough, by Bach piano pieces, The Children Act is an unmitigated pleasure to watch and listen to, primarily as a showcase for Thompson’s incomparable gifts as an actress.

Taking its cues from the religious severity of the community in which it’s set — and the London weather — Lelio’s latest film is austere, deliberate and rather chilly.

The performances remain subtly powerful, especially Karam’s. Tony is a man whose unpredictable rage can be sparked by one wrong move, but Karam infuses the character with pathos through the subtlest gestures and facial expressions. El Basha, who is also moving in his role, was the first Palestinian to win best actor at the Venice Film Festival.

At the center of this oddly riveting little picaresque is a performance of such quiet power by Plummer — as an antihero both rash and precociously resourceful — that it’s easy to overlook the film’s flaws.

On Chesil Beach can feel like observing a deli worker slice a small piece of rancid cured meat, in increasingly transparent slivers of prosciutto-like thinness, and then holding them up to the light for inspection.

If Bowers’s present-day life has slowed down considerably, his memories haven’t, and the subject of Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood exerts his luridly voyeuristic pull, as he shares name after name of his most shocking exploits.

The film’s young slashers are irredeemably smug and obnoxious, and their bloodthirsty craving for social media likes, represented by heart icons that float out of their cellphones after each murder that they document — without implicating themselves — fuels a vicious satire.

There is just enough story here to give the brutality shape and purpose, and to keep that numbness from turning to boredom. “Parabellum” — the name comes from a Latin phrase meaning “If you want peace, prepare for war” — picks up precisely where “John Wick: Chapter 2” left off: with John on the run.

While the young cast does its best to sell the gleeful music, its delirious premise eventually loses steam, as do the songs, which are stronger in the first part of the film. Yet despite this doomsday setting, Anna and the Apocalypse ultimately delivers an uplifting message.

The film’s themes mature from adolescent pettiness to adult regret, with several epilogues set well after the main events of the story.

It is a beautiful, moving tale, a love story even, sad without being schmaltzy, full of funny, knee-slapping moments and sufficiently thrill-packed without the usual padding of cheap thrills. Despite the dramatic imbalance, and the need for some fine-tuning in an otherwise sensitive script, Heroes, directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan, remains a stunning film. [04 Nov 1977, p.11]

Roman Polanski's Frantic is taut, intelligent filmmaking, and highly accomplished in a way that doesn't substitute flash for coherence or the pleasures of a well-told story. In other words, it's everything that Lethal Weapon and a half dozen other recent Hollywood thrillers weren't. [26 Feb 1988, p.B1]