As far as 'Classic Disney,' Beauty and the Beast pretty much has it all. Y'know, for kids (of all ages).

Samberg’s jittery-nerdy energy comes through, and Stoller applies a level of taste and restraint to the film’s use of source music and amusingly awkward pauses.

Part slow-burn mother-daughter drama, part slow-burn suspense thriller, and part slow-burn romance, with a few twists for good measure as the town begins to come apart at the seams.

A direct sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier...a crazy-cool superhero team-up/smackdown movie to make Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice look like a tea party, and a franchise-launching introduction to the new Spider-Man...

As artless as it can be—and as thuddingly predictable about the baby’s parentage and whom Bridget will end up with—even grumps will admit to scattered amusing bits...and the likeability of Zellweger and Firth.

The significant visual appeal and magnetic turns by the leading players make this four-hander a diverting dip into human nature: specifically, jealousy and the folly of opting for interiority over communication.

Why is Marguerite so funny to us, and why is her public humiliation allowed to continue for so long? The answers plumb both the best and worst instincts of human nature, and give Giannoli’s film a strong heartbeat.

The story, the effective acting, and the period-specific recreations of Kabuki would be enough for most films, but this one has Mizoguchi behind the camera, applying his rigorous formalism.

The so-called 'untold story' is essentially nonsense...The struggle is real for screenwriter Todd Komarnicki...

Double-crosses and disguises, captures and escapes make up the momentum of Reed's nicely pacy adventure.

A story that succeeds in the telling: in the work of Hiddleston, Laurie, and Colman and the steady hand of their director: notable feature-film helmer Susanne Bier.

Not only can the center not hold, but there is no center to begin with...The story mostly speeds along at an obnoxious rate and pitch, the better to misdirect from the next dumb abracadabra plot twist, but good luck hanging in for over two hours of it.

A dreamy fable of just-so proportion and asethetics...this literate and richly strange film has layers of meaning available to the viewer.

An abundance of fun, with high-spirited action (including dazzling space battles and impressive lightsaber duels), dry wit, and dramatic contributions to the Star Wars mythology. 

Favreau and Marks have obviously put some thought into the film’s visual approach and the messages...: the animal kingdom’s unexpected threats and opportunities...the work Mowgli puts in to come of age...his casual kindheartedness...

Too closely resembles the narcotic world it depicts. Without ever doing anything conspicuously wrong, Equals plays like one big miscalculation...

I'll say this for Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. It's a film that takes a big roll of the dice. Is it wrenching? Is it wacky? Well, it's definitely weird.

It's difficult to imagine how Ash vs Evil Dead could be any more fan-pleasing than it is...packed with all sorts of looney fun that conjures back up the "splatstick" style Raimi and friends popularized.

Old-school bank robbery meets the new economy—and the New West—in Hell or High Water, a lean tale of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and customers and bankers.

Captures something of runaway modern greed, played out as a bro movie from bro stars and a bro filmmaker...[but] might have been a fresh classic of political satire instead of a crime comedy that plays as sub-Scorsesean riff.

Pushed the culture-shock of kitchen-sink drama further with its female protagonist and depictions and discussions of interracial coupling, teen pregnancy, the possibility of abortion, and homosexuality.

Bergman's effortlessly poetic diary and letters provide more evidence, though patently unnecessary, of her artistic temperament, her lyrical view of experience.

It's comforting to know Once Upon a Time is there as an entertainment families can rally around, and one that will challenge them thematically as much as it panders by playing in the Disney sandbox.

While Anthropoid tends to the sober and dour, it also breaks into the brutal, the intense, and the emotionally devastating, all the right 'moves' for a war story of moral heft compromised by Pyrrhic victory.

A legitimately fascinating central character...Not surprisingly, Streep expertly shades every eccentricity, embodying Jenkins in her musical waywardness...

Season Three of The Blacklist upped the show's game with slightly more adventurous writing that made the show a more consistent bet from week to week.

A movie so far up its own posterior that it includes the threatening exchange 'They made a womb float for Mother’s Day?' 'I can’t wait to see what they do for Father’s Day!' Well, I can.

A novel but muddled supervillain action movie...Some comic-book fans will lap it up, but Suicide Squad is all sauce and no meat.

When this thriller has to turn the screws of its climax, its fundamental stupidity surfaces.

Terrified to do anything different (which, believe it or not, would be entirely possible)...it only takes a moment of awareness to step outside the movie and see how poorly written, insultingly recycled, and anti-creative Jason Bourne is.

What works (marginally) in this instantly forgettable entry: a few diverting character moments...fan-serving fairy dust...action, action, action.

The mammoths and their mammalian buddies...take direction from [a] lunatic weasel...to SAVE THE WORLD by DIVERTING THE PATH OF AN ASTEROID (emphasis mine).

The film’s saving graces are the uniformly strong performances...and its intriguing subject matter...[but it] develops third-act problems as it devolves into calculated contrivances, didacticism, and sentiment.

Moves at a rhythm akin to the gently lapping waves...yet somehow swiftly establishes the personalities of the three sisters, a contradiction that speaks to the resonance of the performers and Koreeda’s skill at eliciting emotional truth.

Should you see Sony’s new Ghostbusters remake? Yes. Yes, you should. Will you be entertained? Yes. Yes, you will. Will you also be a little annoyed? Well, yeah, probably...it’s all a bit too self-consciously self-conscious...

Needlessly starting out on such a false, bombastic note emblematizes the film's mistake of blowing up the character past what made her recognizable, and thereby funny, in the first place.

Has more genuinely funny moments than most so-called comedies at the multiplex, abetted by Waititi’s now-practiced comic sensibility, his stylized snap of performance and editing.

From the evidence of Thorsten Schütte’s found-footage documentary...Zappa saw the interview as sometime endurance test, sometime amusement, and all-the-time chess match he could never lose, played as it was against lesser lights.

For Zeus's sake...as warm and fuzzy and comforting (or not) as a Disney Channel show marketed more to parents than to their kids.

Even if the material's not always up to the title's ironic reference to wit, the cast and their director carry the day with a good stock of laughs.

If the plotting at first feels overly familiar (and, in many ways, is), its elegance becomes apparent in the reinvigorating final movements, which also confirm Finding Dory's ultimate theme of building self-confidence through self-discovery.

If Zootopia only reluctantly comes around to its crime-solving story, that’s understandable: the good stuff resides in the characterizations and the morality play around them, decrying fear of the other.

When there’s somefin strange...in your neighbor’ood...’oo you gonna call?

As adapted by screenwriter John Niven from his own novel, Kill Your Friends has a decidedly been-there, killed-that feel to it.

In a way, the amusing, preposterous Hail, Caesar!, for all its arch postmodernism, becomes what it pastiches, resembling the kind of '50s film we can now watch and admire for a kind of cultural reflection without exactly considering it a success.

A dark crime drama the rough-and-tumble Samuel Fuller no doubt would have loved.

The sort of film to starkly divide audiences: hard cases will wince at the clichés and Clarke’s performance; starry-eyed weepie fans will get what they came for.

For all its failings, including the crime of not being exhilarating, X-Men: Apocalypse remains a competent sci-fi actioner.

A not-unpleasant 98 minutes that’s nevertheless understocked with comic zest and thematic incisiveness.

Enjoy The Witch for what it is: a refreshingly baroque respite from the jump-scares that typify today's horror.