Investigates the nature of our need for a partner (who else will apply that pain-relief cream to the small of your back?), how we cling to superficial similarities to justify our matches, and our denial, at our peril, of our animal nature.

One can easily understand why this story swiftly became Coast Guard legend...but its dim wall-of-grey visuals and narrative longueurs make much of the two hours a challenge to the attention span for viewers of any age.

Even though 'Anger is not always the answer,' sometimes it has to be, or there’s no movie, and here’s where The Angry Birds Movie will divide audiences.

Osmond doesn't belabor style in any way, opting to shape the story simply and directly through the new interviews, available archive materials, and efficient montage.

Can repeat its formula by rote, but develops no breakthrough theory of its own.

Moore finds a galvanizing climax by rallying around the notion that idealism trumps, if you’ll pardon the word, defeatism.

A delightfully humane comedy...doesn’t insist upon the meddling as a 'premise' but as an important part of the film’s psychological reality.

One man’s last grasp at humanity amidst the dehumanizing horrors of Auschwitz...dramatizes those extraordinary circumstances under which even the meanings of life and death become foreign and in desperate need of rediscovery.

Tastes awfully stale...those with a high tolerance for 'nice' movies will happily roll with this Dough. But know that it is proudly unsophisticated in its storytelling.

A story of great power and great delusion, of the absurdities of politics and the strange effects and arguably undue reach of celebrity. These potentially heady themes are really beside the point of a movie that’s a hoot and knows it.

Though at times precious, Bennett’s sly script masks that deeply sentimental core with comic edge and a writer’s willful, mercenary remove.

Not everyone will agree with how Cheadle answers the key questions, but only a fool would say his take lacks creativity, heart, energy, and a gutsy willingness to take risks (as Davis says in the film, 'Be wrong strong').

The hero of the new dramedy Demolition at one point muses, 'For some reason, everything’s becoming a metaphor.' Boy, you can say that again.

An arthouse Animal House.

It’s all so dully realized that we grow starving for idiosyncratic detail, desperately latching on to Williams’ love of ketchup or his drunkenly being tickled pink by his new garage-door opener.

[A] general absence of something to say...Recycles the filmmaker’s own work: the leaner if no meaner dog-eat-dog plotting of Reservoir Dogs...and a roster of no-longer-shocking offenses...

Had a lot going for it: a strong creative vision from authorial forces who would go on to take Hollywood, a talented cast that would essentially do the same, and that premise.

[SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:] This is not a drill, comic-book geeks.

There's nothing to take this show over the top, and in a crowded marketplace of quality TV storytelling, that's a troubing knock, but the show does a good job of wedding weekly genre thrills to creeping plot and character developments.

If the franchise continues to feel a bit dull—heavy on the drama and light on the excitement, with pageantry long in the rear-view—there’s a respectable purity in the films’ political cynicism and populist fervor.

For all its thrumming profundity...has just as much sleepwalking self-parody: all of the actors’ pacing and arm-flapping and gazing off into the distance suggests, as much as an art film, the world’s longest prescription drug commercial.

Unlikely as it may be, the relationship begins to seem as plausible to us as to the willfully optimistic Doris, which is a testament to the performers transcending the script’s default mode of condescension.

Essentially the picture is one tease after another, misdirecting as fast as it can and amounting to the 'Emperor’s New Clothes' vacuousness of mid-period M. Night Shyamalan.

This feminist war dramedy...is a vanity project done right.

For two hours, Larson and Tremblay make their struggles our struggles, Ma and Jack’s perceptions challenging our own...the most potent pairing on screen this year.

Offers different angles on the Amazon, its people, and white interlopers...the subtle shift of focus from the white explorers to the native guide allows both a welcome political correctness and a depth of sadness that, for once, isn’t once removed.

Set the standard for cinematic paranoid thrillers and stands as the quintessential John Frankenheimer film.

Sweet in that canned-with-heavy-syrup way: kids will dig it, but it’s not exactly a delicacy.

Kaleidoscopic in its opening up of brilliant color and of the troubling interaction between corporate “people” and flesh-and-bone people, between the environment and civilization.

Near-total lack of narrative tension...Competent acting and direction handily stave off artistic disaster, but Risen has been constructed not so much to inspire as to renew the already faithful.

A goofy gag machine that will raise smiles for some and make others just plain gag.

In attempting to 'pull back the curtain' on a man, reveals behind its own theatrical curtain nothing much worth paying attention to...

May not be wildly fresh, but it does wriggle against its genre straightjacket, and if it doesn’t quite escape, it puts on a great show in the process.

Tailor-made for the great Lily Tomlin...Yeah, the circumstances are contrived, but easy enough to accept as long as they’re forcing interesting dynamics into seriocomic confrontation.

Clearly, the breadth of Huston's Army Signal Corps films show a Blakian passage from innocence to experience, unquestioning jingoism to a recognition of war horrors.

The cheap-looking production lacks visual flair and lines up undistinguished performances on the way to a clumsy, half-hearted resolution...And yet, to film historians and Curtiz fanatics, The Undesirable is a gift horse not to look in the mouth.

Steven Spielberg goes into Stanley Kramer mode for Bridge of Spies, a socially conscious tale of touch-and-go diplomacy at home, at the office, and on the global stage.

The 88th Academy Awards® ceremony airs on Sunday, February 28, 2016…now you have another way to get ready.

Though the [film]...cannot pretend to be free of its own leanings, Vanderbilt allows a reading of Mapes’ tragic errors amidst its melancholy diagnosing of TV-news’ slow, painful death march from the public trust into modern corporate product.

Classic-literature-adaptation demureness...but it's impeccably cast and mostly quite faithful.

A strong thematic undercurrent pits bourgeois social conventions against authentic self-definition and ultimate freedom to live without shame or undue social limitations.

When Lee cooks up a stew this heady, one best recognize...the right film at the right time, Lee’s most creatively fertile and socially immediate narrative feature in years.

A Hou film and, therefore an aesthete's delight...The Assassin breathes more than it talks, patiently taking in its landscapes and its silk-curtained interiors.

All the blithe sexism and tin-eared comedy of a Michael Bay movie and none of the budget excess...gives new meaning to 'lazy.'

Yet another midlife-crisis white guy on the big screen...but it’s undeniably an artful rendering of the post-millennial man adrift, in search of any port than the one he’s made for himself.

A certain breed of film geeks will snap fingers in approval, but most viewers—having been pummeled into acknowledging the film's muscular 'greatness'—will feel little more than dazed, and ready more for a nap than a conversation.

Though everything around this resilient central figure is wan sitcom, 'Joy the Doer' provides a rooting interest potent enough to justify the film.

Elucidate[s] the fiscal rigamarole leading up to the bursting of the housing and credit bubble circa 2008, while also whipping up a palatable froth of cynicism and absurdity.

[SPOILER-FREE] Can be dimwittedly obvious and self-plagiarizing, with little of real-world consequence and less that’s new to say [but it's still] a fun-filled adventure at the movies...

For a long two hours, Sorrentino flatters old white men, devalues women, and annoys with his lush coffee-table-book photography as he plays his own 'Simple Songs' of frustrated old age and tantalizing youth...