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.

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

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.

Jump scares are the film’s most-used horror device, but it does feel like Øvredal and del Toro are pushing the envelope of the film’s PG-13 rating with how creepy some of the stories get.

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.

Rosamund Pike is adorable, if a little too ethereal and flighty.

The story is simple, illogical, mysterious, strange, and, of course, very, very sparse.

I’m Not Your Negro is an unforgettable work. Baldwin’s words – eloquently spoken by Samuel Jackson – will haunt you.

A mildly charming, if singularly unoriginal, comedy.

At its satirical best, Things to Come takes aim at some of the sacred cows of French academia, showing how the posturing of today’s radical kids seems to repeat the attitudes their parents had in the '60s.

An immensely rich, deeply felt exploration of human relationships that draws you in and holds you fast for nearly three hours.

Gold never settles on a coherent point of view. Is the film supposed to be a critique of capitalism or is it a Horatio Alger story about a self-made man preyed upon by wall street?

I should put in for worker’s comp for the extensive injuries I sustained watching the insulting, abysmal 3-D action thriller xXx: Return of Xander Cage, which left me deeply traumatized and suffering from injuries to my eardrums, my eyes, my mind, my soul, my aesthetic sensibility, and my sense of decency.