The results aren’t exactly magical...Heck, I’d even take a low-rent theme-park version if it spared me this film’s descent into the uncanny valley.

An elegiac valediction for Shakespeare’s genius...a celebration of the centuries of scholarship that got us here...[and] an ode to parental love, complicated as it is by ego.

With Reynolds cracking wise and a number of frantic action sequences, this looks like an effective enough franchise launcher. But...it all feels a little too much like work.

Diverting enough for date night...good enough for government work.

Marvel tourists may surprise themselves how much they care...while fanatics will have a geekgasm of heretofore undiscovered proportions at what amounts to the biggest series finale ever. To put it more politely, they’ll love it “times 3000.&rd

Serves mostly as a vehicle for star Elle Fanning, who provides her own vocals in the film’s multiple vocal-performance sequences and, more importantly, provides the film its soul of quietly defiant determination.

[Leigh] bustles his audience into a time machine and transplants them to a time and place--1819 England--for full immersion into the physical and social landscape where a politically charged tragedy played out.

DC’s answer to Marvel's Ant-Man: a family-friendly, comical comic-book adventure that never crosses the line into camp.

Dumbo has morphed into a fable of modernized entertainment business models and the handling and packaging of IP...strange thematic material for a PG Disney movie aimed at families...and it gets stranger.

Peele’s messy stew of allusive ingredients and jokey allusions...can taste overwhelming, but it gives us a helluva lot more to chew on than a Halloween reboot.

I’ll be damned if I can detect a pulse...Proves deliberately withholding, as if to punish us, along with its unlikeable characters, for expecting too much.

To watch another obscure hero beget a franchise-building smash-hit movie means marveling at Marvel once again.

The little franchise that could is all grown up and ready to leave the nest, so wipe that tear away, and say your goodbyes, kids...For now...

Silly but...big dumb fun.

While Penna shoots and edits the material well enough, its familiar paces probably wouldn’t be tolerable were it not for Mikkelsen, whose grim visage crucially gives the film a racing mind and a beating heart.

While adults will probably find somewhat diminishing returns in The Second Part, its cheeky variations on all the constructions that worked so well the first time also work pretty darn well, and to a good end.

Labors a bit to create drama from what’s essentially a gentle, wistful story of two artists together eking out a last hurrah, but there’s a refreshing warmth to a family-friendly show business tale, one not about backbiting but about love...

A sweet romance this isn’t, but Pawlikowski (Ida) balances the flatfooted realities of maddeningly thwarted love with swoony moments: smoky jazz clubs and songbird reveries.

Memorable moments come from its series of penetrating philosophical conversations... Dafoe expertly plays the keenness of Van Gogh's intellect and creativity against his searing drive, his raw emotions, and the haunting that was his depression.

In Jenkins’ sure hands, Baldwin’s novel becomes an exquisite, impeccable, indelible piece of cinema of the ages.

As strikingly original in form as Oliver Stone’s JFK...infotaining Hollywood history that’s equal parts funny and horrifying in its high-stakes political gamesmanship...

Roberts’ role as an intense mama bear cleverly corrupts her famous smile to an “everything’s okay” mask. Ultimately, Ben is Back is about the lies addicts tell their loved ones, and those their loved ones tell th

McCarthy clearly feels a connection to Israel’s outsider artistry, her utter commitment to become someone else for a few stolen moments, and her pride in a job well done...

Though breezily entertaining, this cinematic vehicle also lurches into and out of the usual racial potholes, making its song of the South--and North--catch in the throat.

Productively acknowledges real-life dangers, with stellar animation and designs shoring up the storytelling of Johnston and Pamela Ribon's witty script...a useful all-ages fable for our time.

Humor is subjective, of course, but the film offers this litmus test: do you laugh when a sane adult finally slaps Ellie ('You listen to me, you crazy woman!') and when another slaps cuffs on Pete? Or do you cheer?

On the side of truth, social justice, and human dignity...despite all that, Boy Erased never quite coalesces into the deeply moving and insightful film its pedigree seems to promise.

First-time director Dano, who co-scripted with partner Zoe Kazan, has a knack for capturing quotidian daily struggles as well as moments of discovery that hearten or, more often, horrify.

Makes a good case for itself as the addiction movie America needs right now...[offers] a primal 'you are not alone' catharsis for sufferers under the powerful grip of addiction or with a front-row seat to it.

Takes a cogent look at the issues, making comprehensible the complex history of American higher education, the government's shifting role in supporting it, and the increasingly corporate exploitation of the American-Dreaming underclass.

Because Green loves the material enough to have some good, old-fashioned fun in this playground, he’s able to bring the audience along with him.

By focusing on Armstrong’s human perspective, First Man gives us a new window into the costs and benefits of taking 'one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.'

Unabashed melodrama...the film’s strongest moments are acoustic, not plugged-in...intimate, truth-telling exchanges between lovers who want the best for each other. 

Bland... something of a thinker, even a subversive one, but it’s dubious that kids will pick up on the provocation between the pratfalls and the pop songs.

[A] dire accounting of the corruption of the Republican Party, the sell-out centrism of the Democratic Party, and the victimization of working-class Americans...[and] an urgent call to action.

Informs and entertains in equal measure...not only proves thoroughly family friendly, but it’s that rare moviegoing option likely to please everyone in any group.

A functional spy thriller and, more importantly, an intriguing character study of two men shaped by hatred.

Twisty thrills also result in a climactic pileup, a resolution that strains credibility...with a dynamic leading performance by Cho, Chaganty manages an engaging popcorn suspense picture that also speaks to technology enabling and frustrating...

The ultimate secret of the Castlemans’ marriage isn’t entirely convincing in Joan’s every rationale, but Close’s sheer force of acting makes it possible to believe in the character, at minimum in the emotional broad strokes.

By the film’s climax, a $40 million wedding, conspicuous consumerism has been glamorized beyond the point of no return, and the difference between romance and showmanship becomes, at least momentarily, irrelevant.

Can be overtly funny in its absurdity. For the most part, however, BlacKkKlansman isn’t a comedy at all, but an earnest, vintage Spike Lee joint recounting history and projecting it onto our present.

With Fisher’s endearingly open face projecting every insecurity along the way, Kayla’s journey of baby-steps self-empowerment resonates.

Fallout proves deliberately dizzying, not just with its oft-vertiginous action, but in its outrageous plotting, its deliriously absurd entanglements of double agents, double crosses, and just plain doubles...

Suggests intriguing questions about the moral and ethical imperatives of justice...answers these questions with an Old Testament zeal: evil must be smitten by self-appointed good men.

This is the kind of lackluster animated movie at which you’ll lose count of how many times the characters randomly break into dance--and that’s in addition to the...not one but two dance parties incorporated into the plot.

A good time at the movies... If the first film felt more carefully laid out, the sequel succeeds in stoking some Pixar-style emotion in its family dynamics...

A straight procedural, consumed by its plot at the expense of thematic nuance. Nevertheless...a darkly compelling reminder of the multifaceted folly of our War on Drugs.

In what starts to feel like a 'meta' running joke (or admission of creative exhaustion), the characters keep stumbling upon the leftovers of the earlier films...

Plays it safe...another issue of the Incredibles comic book, another big-scale adventure with full-throttle action sequences, a bit of mystery, and career complications testing the structural integrity of this nuclear family of superheroes.

Ross brings a reasonably sure hand and plenty of eye candy to this slick, glitzy fantasy, which is no more or less than an amiable, star-powered trifle.