Joe McGovern

Despite the silly and sentimental nature of his dialogue, Bridges, in this wondrous emeritus phase of his career, sells every single line. Well, almost every.

Too much of the plot is spun with vanilla, especially tacked-on scenes of Walls’ starched careerist life in New York City with her Banker Boyfriend (Max Greenfield), presumably to engineer more screen time for the lead actress.

It’s stronger as a collection of Ferguson voices and figures, such as rapper Tef Poe, who quiets a crowd in one scene by warning, “You ain’t gonna outshoot [the police].” In moments like those, Whose Streets? is a tragic yet essential portrait of a community under siege.

Lieberher delivered such a nuanced performance in Midnight Special (ditto Tremblay, in Room) that The Book of Henry can (we hope) just be chalked up to a case of early-career hiccups.

Years from now, when the orbital politics of the film have dissolved, what will resonate about Beatriz at Dinner will be the sight of Hayek — leaps and bounds more enchanting a screen presence than the performers surrounding her — as a poignant object of neglect.

Schreiber buoys the film with his characteristic blend of nuance and smirking humor, exuding likability though never lionizing the self-described “selfish prick” that he’s portraying.

Director Gaby Dellal (On a Clear Day) admirably avoids the trap in which transgender characters are portrayed as victims, but she way overcranks the “movie” neuroses of her three characters, muffling any human spark.

In terms of content and meaningfulness, Terrence Malick’s Song to Song is the cinematic equivalent of a Trump press conference. Incoherent, disconnected, self-interrupting, obsessed with pointless minutiae and crammed full of odd, limp stabs at profundity from a closed-off man in his 70s who apparently has no ability to edit or accept constructive criticism.

Shirley MacLaine’s well-deserved reputation as a salty, snappy grand dame — forged from later-career work like "Terms of Endearment," "Steel Magnolias," "Postcards from the Edge," "Bernie", etc. — unfortunately precedes her in this sloppy, saccharine drama costarring Amanda Seyfried.

Land of Mine is essentially bomb porn.

By the film’s shattering end, you’ll feel the spirit of Arthur Miller, one of the great dramatists of the 20th century, reaching across the transom to touch one of the great dramatists of the 21st.

Lavish with stunning imagery, the experience will ripple into your dreams.

Patriots Day benefits from a robust, concentrated timeline and sheer bat-out-of-hell pacing.

The directorial debut of actress Katie Holmes, starring herself as Rita, a drunk single mother living out of her car, is the latest well-intentioned yet lousy-with-clichés treatment in the hard-luck-woman subgenre.

The weirdest and rarest misfire in Lee’s illustrious career.

Two key aspects elevate the whole experience above its modest trappings. First, the dark, beautiful musical score by composer Jeff Grace works excellently as a lush, hummable homage to Ennio Morricone, while still feeling very true to West’s horror movie roots. And second, in the film’s best performance, John Travolta appears as the frustrated father of Ransome’s bad boy.

13th is a titanic statement by a major American voice. Viewing — right now — should be mandatory.

Schnetzer, whose stock is sure to soon rise, is a shape-shifter — you’d never look at this gay Irish 1980s activist in Pride and conclude that it was the same person — but in only a few roles so far, he’s shown an extraordinary ability to portray both vulnerability and the mask screwed on to hide it.

The movie’s premise has trouble sustaining a feature-length running time, getting mired in repetitive jokes and a third-act swing into harder-core suspense that never really connects.

The pace of the drama is riveting, as it jumps back through the decades to place the accident in the context of the nuclear arms race.

Portman’s evocation of this world has a strange, captivating pull. Assisted by the great Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Gattaca, Black Hawk Down, The Double Life of Veronique), she has created a visual landscape filled with nightmares.

British director Sean Ellis has a knack for staging the film’s early plotting-the-scheme scenes in dimly lit, monochrome interiors, but the storytelling is disappointingly square.

This arena, unfortunately, is no Thunderdome. The chariot race is sloppily framed, choppily edited, and droopily choreographed, with special effects that look like they needed another few passes through the CGI machine.

The dean was more of a cartoon in Roth’s book, but Letts lends him a slippery wit that, much like the movie, is surprisingly potent.

The shaggy, semi-focused but assuredly offbeat debut film from Zachary Treitz (co-written with House of Cards actress Kate Lyn Sheil) blends the Civil War with Mumblecore for one of the year’s most authentic trips in the way-back machine.

Despite fine intentions and four lovely performances from the female leads, Our Little Sister is simply too light to be felt. It floats away in the wind—and the memory — like a paper umbrella.

The Suskinds’ humongous hearts are obviously in the right place and their openness is to be admired and encouraged — even if a book, more than a movie, remains the better venue to fairly and honestly tell Owen’s extraordinary story.

Ross wants to shake up the format­—notably with a few scenes set 85 years after the war—but like so many directors who have tackled ­historical social issues before him, he confuses noble, cornball sermonizing for art.