Jeff Baker

This time the talk was cheap, not witty or sharp. Tarantino the writer let his gift of gab get away from him and didn't give his script a close enough edit. Tarantino the director didn't do enough with the static setting; the flashbacks don't help and the big timeshift that's meant to explain everything that's happened feels incomplete.

A highly entertaining, informative movie about how the subprime mortgage crisis led to a worldwide financial meltdown in 2007-08. The fact that such a movie is so unusual is one big reason why the meltdown occurred and why it easily could happen again.

It's duck soup for cinephiles.

It feels more like a retreat for all involved, a chance to kick back and bounce some ideas off each other and the surrounding mountains. Several of them stick and give Youth an emotional core that covers the bare spots. Caine and Keitel, old pros on the home stretch, deserve nothing less.

The subject is fascinating, the talent is undeniable, but the humanity that made Lili Elbe so memorable gets lost along the way.

A wonderful documentary.

If Abrams didn't take many chances, he didn't make many mistakes, either. First, Do No Harm became Don't Mess With Success, and it worked. Show Me the Money is sure to follow.

In the Heart of the Sea doesn't trust itself enough to be great.

All Things Must Pass is a labor of love by actor Colin Hanks, a Sacramento native who grew up on the store.

It doesn't all work. The energy and the performances by Cannon, Parris and Hudson can't carry a movie that careens from camp to tragedy to farce without taking a breath. Several scenes could have been cut, particularly a long, dumb take on sex and the Civil War that ends with a horny old goat in Stars-and-Bars skivvies.

What is special about The Good Dinosaur isn't the characters...but the backgrounds.

Legend offers two Hardys for the price of one but delivers less than a satisfying whole despite the efforts of its star(s).

Creed is no "Raging Bull" -- it's a little too long and throws in an unnecessary disease to gin up the emotional content of the third act -- but it's surprising proof that iconic franchises that started in the 1970s can be revived in all the right ways.

Stick around for the credits, when the real Trumbo talks about the effect of the blacklist on his daughter. It's the real thing.

All involved bring a warm eccentricity that lifts what in lesser hands could be a collection of cliches about the contrasts between the Old World and the New.

That "The Hunger Games" movies lost momentum is hardly a surprise: even "Star Wars" and "The Lord of the Rings" slipped after the second installment. The end feels like a relief for all concerned, and it does feel like the end.

There is nothing visually or thematically interesting about it. Nobody grows or changes. All the football coaches speak through clinched teeth, even when they're addressing 10-year-olds.

What happened in Chile really was a triumph of the human spirit, as cliched as it is to write that sentence. The miners deserved a better movie, but that's not how it works.

A snapshot of what happened at a particular time and place and doesn't try to glamorize its subjects or make any larger points about what it all means. By refusing to do so, by celebrating the process over the outcome and the work over the reward, it becomes a special experience, a movie that matters.

There's plenty of sweat but no blood or tears in Love. Without talented actors or a compelling story, it's not love. It's just sex.

With such actors at work and with locations including a first-time use of the Houses of Parliament, Suffragette should look and be a richer experience than it is.

Not bad, no need to wake Roger Moore from his mid-morning nap and bring him out of retirement, but not special.

Oddest of all is how Truth whips through this, making noble statements about journalism while brushing off the failures to get it right. Mapes was busy and stressed. (Slow down!) The document authenticators had doubts. (Listen to them.) The source said he was lying before but is telling the truth now. (Don't trust him.)

Murray blusters and hams his way through the first two acts before turning all mushy in the third.

Director Douglas Tirola threads his way through a minefield of egos and grudges in his interviews and does some interesting stuff with animation in his presentation of some of the magazine pieces.

A movie that underplays its many strengths. You don't realize how good it is until it's over.

It's exhausting, impressionistic, and ultimately hollow, extraordinarily well-acted but not nearly as relevant as "The Social Network."

Uses a deft mix of archival footage and interviews with historians and some very articulate Panther veterans.