Search

The Zookeeper's Wife extols the actions of a husband-and-wife zookeeping team who use their zoo as a way station for Jews during World War II. But as admirable as these characters are, the film assumes familiarity with the stakes of the drama...

Some furniture is sturdy, built to last. Cheap furniture is designed for the short term until something more substantial comes along. The paper-thin Table 19 is that second kind of barely-qualified placeholder in the movie calendar, with only...

This film never comes across as a lecture as it tells the story of three African-American women employed as 'human computers' by NASA during the 1960s overcoming sexism and racial prejudice. It’s instead an example of formulaic filmmaking done...

Another Liam Neeson thriller involving threatened family members, The Commuter could have been tired and shopworn. Instead, it feels, if not fresh, sometimes surprising, and it's vigorous enough to satisfy most action and mystery fans. 3.5 out of...

You've never seen Denzel Washington like this. Washington stakes his claim as a major Best Actor Oscar contender for his performance as quietly crusading lawyer Roman J. Israel. It's a pleasure to watch the unkempt, sometimes off-putting Israel...

A religious drama with elements of romantic comedy, this light-on-its-feet tale of spiritual struggle is rarely anguished, even as the story focuses on a priest's crisis of faith. That shouldn't be a problem for viewers caught up in this well...

Visually spectacular but dramatically incoherent, Valerian commits one of the worst cinematic sins: a story so convoluted that the film, filled with striking imagery, grows boring for long stretches of time. When you're not staring at the...

A crisp opening leads to a drawn-out drama about poker that grows sluggish as it tries to sustain its two-hours-and-twenty-minutes runtime. Writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball) knows how to make complex material exciting and...

"I didn't ask to be super, and I'm not a hero," says Wade Wilson, also known as Deadpool. That's an understatement coming from a revenge-driven, loathsome joker—a supposedly witty Marvel character whose nonstop irreverence grows old fast. 1.5 out...

Christian viewers might struggle with the concept of this gentle family film built around the notion that a dog can die repeatedly and be reincarnated as another dog over and over again. Whatever its charms, the film's underlying idea makes it...

The Space Between Us is an intermittently stirring look at different types of parenthood as seen through the eyes of an orphaned boy born and raised on Mars. It's also a teen romance that travels across the solar system to Earth, where it settles...

Doesn't make any pretense of sticking strictly to the synoptic Gospel narratives, but neither is it designed to throw unorthodox beliefs in the faces of its viewers. Rather, it's a gentle family drama centered around a strained father-son dynamic.

This sometimes painful, if earnest, story of church members trying to save lost souls in Las Vegas has an ending that undoes any goodwill you might be able to muster toward it. 1 out of 5.

Viewers who responded to God's Not Dead and Do You Believe? get another providential plot in A Question of Faith, which works despite somewhat awkwardly incorporating texting-and-driving and organ donation into its story of sanctification and...

Somewhere in The Snowman is a stylish crime thriller trying to emerge, but whether through a poor job of forging a screenplay from Jo Nesbo's book or poor execution of the script by director Tomas Alfredson, the film plays like a highly...

The co-director of one of the most stylishly violent action movies of recent years and the star of another contender for that honor combine for a graphic-novel adaptation that sputters badly in the story department. Relying on lots of lurid...

Old-fashioned in the best sense of the word—focusing on duty and patriotism—the film also feels contemporary in its post-Saving Private Ryan approach to war footage. Those who can endure it will find that Hacksaw Ridge pays off handsomely.

Structurally choppy and overall rather unpleasant, The Dinner takes a potent problem—how far will parents go to protect their children?—and presents it in a sometimes confusing, sometimes simply tedious way. 2 out of 5.

Harrowing but aspirational, Only the Brave shows men and women not only at their bravest but at their best. As a group of firefighters struggles with the forces of nature and the callings of family life, they find a shared purpose in protecting...

How do you make actors as charismatic as Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba seem disposable and uninteresting? Director Nikolaj Arcel and a trio of screenwriters Akiva Goldsman find a way to do just that in their adaptation of Stephen King's The...