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

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

One of the most creditable true-crime films ever made.

McKellen dazzles...Mr. Holmes spins a tale about the falsely drawn lines between stories and our perceptions of real life, between celebrity image and genuine persona, and between upper and lower classes.

Like a cross between Wreck-It Ralph and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, Inside Out dazzles while taking care to send positive messages about the roles of feelings and the value of recognizing and embracing them...

Its prismatic philosophical and cultural observation...offers plenty of angles on the true value of the subjective fictions and supposedly objective non-fictions some create and others consume.

Depicts the teenage slacker ethic of avoiding responsibility whenever possible and clinging to youthful good times while they last. The show did the same, taking eight years (and 200 episodes) to depict [three].

Begin by imagining that a single story is being told in multiple ways throughout the film: a story of naive hopes, heartbreak, jealousy...Erotic, fear-ridden, and beautiful, Lynch's primal imagery has the abhorrent and alluring pull of death itself.

The well-nigh-irresistible 1964 film version of My Fair Lady...comedically softens Shaw's ending but nevertheless nearly single-handedly transcends the material's sexist leaning through the sheer humanism of Hepburn's deeply felt performance.

Resembles its own remarks about predictable patterns in the circuitry of arcade games: here is a series of crass caricatures, obvious setups and payoffs (not to mention a woman problem...), further suffocated by overweening commercialism...

The film's conspicuously irreverent style suggests that, blithe offenses aside, writer-directors Ron Clements and John Musker...have their heart in the right place: firmly situated in the anarchic comic tradition of Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes.

A lavish, classy affair...But while long on beauty, Branagh's film falls short on whimsy...[and] the film's most affecting emotional moments...stand apart from the story's central conflict.

Moonrise Kingdom’s heartfelt search and rescue of a feel-good result provides a perfect, even musical counterpoint to its regimented summer camp.

Honorable...deeply moving...takes a considered approach to Wilson, sound in dramatic and editorial construction and insightful in its psychological subtexts.

Cotillard's heartbreakingly raw work carries the day, as she fleshes out both Sandra's suffering and emotional endurance on a journey of discovery that the latter, not the former, defines her.

At times suffers from dull, dunderheaded, or dead-end plotlines [but]...There's enough here to keep hope alive that Gotham could grow into more of a weekly treat than a fanboy obligation.

A week-in, weak-out study in same-y procedural storytelling and mythology stalling that's powered by the usual salacious crime exploitation and the unusual lead performance of James Spader.

A film every single American and, indeed, every world citizen should see and contemplate.

Pure mid-period Allen, a muscle-stretching ensemble comedy with dramatic undertones and playful philosophical musings...Allen's characters ponder the permeable divide between lust and love, and the meanings of sexual intercourse...

Another solid entry in the DCU line, Justice League: Gods and Monsters works best as an entrée into what should be a fascinating and highly entertaining series of its own.

Does a lot of its work with its tongue-in-cheek title, a meta commentary on the not-so-broad spectrum of liar, actor, fiction writer, filmmaker and journalist.

'Do what you have to do.'...Netflix's flagship series addresses this dictum to many characters grappling with tough choices, but the core subject of [Season Three]...is the marriage of Frank and Claire Underwood.

Shows little strain in maintaining its cute factor, thanks to the drily winning personalities of the likes of Smith, Dench, Nighy, and the comic ebullience of Patel.

That it is Hitler doing the exploiting has little relevance to the overriding theme of tragic history humanity remains doomed to repeat: sending naive young men—and, at some times and places, boys—to their ends.

In Criterion's Blu-ray and DVD boxsets titled André Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films, we can ponder the full cinematic depth (and much of the theatrical depth) of the collaboration between two complementary creative souls.

I fervently hoped that some particularly annoyed soul would create a 'Slapheads Yell "Chappie"!' supercut...to refine the movie to its purest form of annoyance. As of this writing, internet, you disappoint me.

Like Tarantino's films, Wild Tales will rub some the wrong way by taking glee in the violence that comes from our worst selves, but the catharses have a positive social function...there's no doubt Szifron intends cautionary Tales.

Wiig plays her role with total commitment, fearlessness, and lack of vanity...the movie we deserve in the age of social media and cable television, a satiric child of Paddy Chayevsky's Network in its autopsy of "vox populi" viral video...

Workman has done a service in making a broadly accessible history of Welles that stands a chance of drawing younger generations of film buffs, like moths, to 'the master''s flame.

Our American addiction...bloodsucking from humanity in order to maintain the lifestyle to which we are accustomed. By the time Hess wearily muses, "I'm tired of this existence," it's more or less clear he means a spiritually empty capitalist existence...