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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...

The hardest films to pull off aren't works that are completely original, but those that take familiar scenarios and archetypes and make us feel wholly invested in an outcome. Edgar Wright has crafted just such a movie. It's not family-friendly...

Definitely not for kids, writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is imaginative filmmaking of the highest order, marred only slightly by a one-dimensional villain who spouts distorted religious ideas to justify his sadism. 4.5 out...

Overlong and overblown, this sequel to 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service is louder and more aggressive than its predecessor, with little charm. Even so, the finale offers a few poignant moments, showing what might have been had the creative team...

What happened to Alexander Payne? The director behind meaningful dramedies like About Schmidt and The Descendants tries for a heavy-handed message movie that doesn't work as romantic comedy, science fiction or preachy tract. Downsizing is...

"Decades from now, people will remember your dignity," a journalist tells Jackie Kennedy just days after the death of President John F. Kennedy. History has borne that out, and we now have a film that also will be remembered for many years as the...

Battle of the Sexes is about more than a 1973 tennis match between rising female tennis star Billie Jean King and a past-his-prime, buffoonish Bobby Riggs. In portraying one of America’s early public figures to live openly as a homosexual, the...

Zombie buffs are more likely to get a charge out of this one than Jane Austen devotees. The film does offer interesting performances and an occasional inspired riff on the original novel, but it's hard to envision anyone leaving on an emotional...