Slow going...But Silence also represents consummate filmmaking.

'Terror bad. Boston strong.'

Could hardly be more historically important, culturally significant, or inspirational, and as a PG-rated film, it’s especially valuable as a STEM education boost for young girls. 

There’s a simple power to the clean lines of Ness’ story, and it’s greatly amplified by the work of the actors. 

Nothing if not formulaic, but it has its passing charms...Ultimately, the hacky plot (partly credited to Franco’s buddy Jonah Hill) is also too primal not to work...

Despite its style points, fails to resonate on a higher octave than its low hum of dark doings, leaping around, and fisticuffs.

An American classic writ large.

The serviceable movie you make about this subject. But it does offer a little bit more, peeking through with an interesting insight every quarter-hour or so.

What begins as an intriguing premise based on high-stakes “what if”s shrinks in imagination as the pair begins to face crises akin to a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode...

Chicken Poop for the Soul...

Well, why don’t you just tell me what you think Office Christmas Party is about, and I’ll tell you if you’re right. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah, you’ve got it. 

[Not] a truly thoughtful and credible treatment of the unpleasant realities of Washington lobbying...[but] a hothouse melodrama that teases an ice queen’s meltdown while actually doing the hustle.

In his screenplay and performance as Hughes, Beatty offers a canny, sharply drawn, and highly personal take on the billionaire, with strong elements of lacerating self-parody. 

I have heard the cash cow moo...the sort of movie many will feel obliged to like more than they actually want to clamor right back onto the ride.

An easy realism and an intimate domestic perspective on events that became consequential to national history...replacing histrionics with a genuine curiosity about what it must have been like to live this story from the inside.

A science-fiction masterpiece that’s largely about our perceptions of time and our struggles to communicate...unexpectedly romantic and profound in its deeper concerns, by exploring the happy-sad nature of existence itself, of being born to die.

As a documentary, it’s only marginally more credible than Nanook of the North. So have we really come a long way, baby?

A conspicuously crafty tale...Park’s erotic thriller...with its story that, not coincidentally, deals with fetishes—never feels lifelessly premeditated; rather, we realize, early and often, that we are in very sure hands.

Though Holm’s film can be plenty sentimental and emotionally manipulative, it also manages to be about sentiment and emotional manipulations, and how those aren’t necessarily bad things.

Only in a well-populated movie theater can one truly appreciate the sound of silence when Gadot’s character boasts she could crack a walnut with her vagina. And that, my friends, is the funniest joke in the picture.

The running-gag emotional expression of another of the film’s autistic characters pretty much sums it up: 'Heavy sigh.'

A mental-health exploitation picture. 

Unsettlingly, Parker’s historical film depicts a tragic uncivil war that bears comparison to our modern racial struggles, and while it’s history not to be forgotten, it’s also not to be mischaracterized.

A co-production of Disney and ESPN Films, Queen of Katwe unsurprisingly has a calculated quality to it...What’s thrilling is the story’s girl power, with Phiona described as an aggressive player of 'astonishing power.'

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.

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

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.

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...

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.