Gary Thompson

Having unleashed Phoenix, Phillips doesn’t seem to know how to contain or couch the performance. At some point he seems to have surrendered, and when the movie is over you realize Arthur is its only substantial character.

The shared energy created by audience and performer that is so restorative to Garland is where the movie finds life.

The idea of knowing your place may be offensive, but the idea of having a place is appealing.

There is honest sentiment in the arc of this story, aided by the chemistry between Gottsagen and LaBeouf, and by the warm mood of the film.

The movie sometimes seems (like its title character) to drag its feet. It’s messy, but with the untidiness of real life.

Your fear that the movie will never end is the most palpable fear offered by Chapter Two, which substitutes spectacle for the creeping, escalating dread the story is meant to have, and that the first movie had in modest amounts.

Part of its appeal lies in the truth and specificity behind the clunky presentation.

Linklater is a naturally empathetic filmmaker, and you can feel him trying to find something he can latch onto in the Desperate Housewives cat-fighting that dominates the movie in the early going. He’s helped ultimately by the story, and by the performances of Blanchett and Wiig, who are given room to embellish their characters and relationships.

Like many a good documentary, Honeyland takes us to a faraway land and culture in a way that reveals what is distinctive and what is universal about people.

Its purpose is to make the lives of the oppressed seem real by making their suffering real.

There is mismatch of tone and content throughout The Kitchen, which is never sure how to pair its lurid turns of plot with its intersectional feminist ambitions.

Despite the movie’s emphasis on physical action, it’s this chemistry that keeps the movie going.

There is a lot to like here, a few things to love. Like the fact that someone in Hollywood can still assemble a cast this large and impressive — someone who does not work for Marvel.

The new King is competent, reasonably entertaining, faithful to the original, wholesome, sometimes even enjoyable.

Stuber and Shaft are the kind of movies Hollywood made every month back in the ’80s and ’90s, until audiences — after a half dozen or so Lethal Weapons — grew tired of them. Stuber serves to remind us of why we liked them, and also that they wore out their welcome.

The script is shrewd about the problems that money can and can’t solve. Wild Rose also threads the needle between the genre expectations and its own brand of realism, grounded in the very palpable heartache Rose feels as she tries to survive in the space between her family obligations and her artistic ambitions.

A movie as atmospheric as Hereditary, narratively more satisfying, but much, much longer.

The value and uses of spectacle become part of the story in Far From Home, which can be read as a bit of playful in-house MCU criticism of CGI fatigue.

The movie simply has the best use of music (Talbot is also a musician) that I’ve seen this year, starting with a gorgeous score by Daniel Herskedal , and embellished with the smart, eclectic use of songs that speak to the city’s cultural history.

A funny, freaky, often profound animated adventure that is certainly the best movie ever made about a spork.

In Framing John DeLorean, Philadelphia-based documentarians Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce (The Art of the Steal) mix fact, drama, and speculation to draw an ambitious portrait of the fabled automaker, but within the frame, key questions remain unanswered.

Jarmusch, in his droll way, both celebrates and subverts the familiar elements of the genre.

The movie mainly rides on the chemistry and charm of its two leads, and writer Kaling has given Thompson a substantial character to play.

The plot particulars are flimsy and laughable by design — this Shaft has been put together by folks with an instinct for comedy.

Developments give Erskine a chance to play hurt and wounded, and she handles this as beautifully as she does the light comedy. She’s the plus in Plus One.

No neuralizers needed for Men In Black: International — you’ll forget you’ve seen it not long after walking out.

Dark Phoenix has a cast of lame-duck actors wearing expressions that say, “Check, please,” and the movie has the kind of knotty, suspenseless plotting that makes the veins in your head throb.

In some ways the movie’s crazy fictions suit today’s modern mash-up sensibilities, and its cast reflects the patterns of modern migration that are creating a whole new world.