While retaining requisite elements of blockbuster action cinema...decidedly shifts the focus to pulp fiction...The Batman feels more like a Batman story than a Batman movie, and that's an achievement in itself. 
Addictive...traces that fine line between having hustle and being a hustler, a line we watch Holmes cross after being fed the exceptional stories of Silicon Valley disruptor culture. 
What sets Operation Varsity Blues apart are its reenactments of wiretapped conversations. Using the wiretaps as scripts, actors like Modine...play out scenes that feel lifted, in their content and their staccato rhythms, right out of David Mamet. 
[SPOILER-FREE:] Laugh-out-loud funny...transcends offensiveness by holding a mirror up to the very worst of human impulses, making us laugh at crimes against humanity not because the satirists don't care but precisely because they do. 
A very sweet, very entertaining blend of whimsy and peril. 
Has the benefit of relevance to the current news cycle, but it’s about something much larger even than the famous convicted felon who threw his weight around Hollywood. 
As long as Faxon and Rash...stay in this pitch-black pocket of uncomfortable truth-telling, Downhill retains its power. But since this is an American comedy... 
Practically dares its audience to make the mistake of taking it seriously, and yet it’s a bizarrely uplifting story of credibly tough women...survivors all, supporting each other to vanquish a sneering, preening abuser whose time’s up. 
Contemplating any of this action-comedy camp in real-world terms...would be a maddening mistake. Accept Lowrey’s assessment that 'Violence is what we do,' or pick another movie. 
Attempts to thread the needle of a moving anti-war film in that narrow space between...[war as] thrill ride and the filmic wizardry that, when examined too closely, rings as hollow as a war machine rapped with a wrench. 
Aside from Gerwig's own comic and dramatic sensibilities (which never intrude on Alcott) and a stellar cast, her Little Women adopts a bold narrative approach to retelling Alcott’s two-volume story. 
[SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:] If Abrams has topped himself, it's by making a Star Wars film that's even more of a multiplex-filling Hollywood widget than his first. 
If The Next Level plays fast and loose, it also makes an effort to prompt viewers to reflect not only on the freedom of fantasy, but on the fraught but essential relationship of mind and body. 
If the film’s psychology and dialogue remain frustratingly basic...the viscerally effective audio-visual approach amplif[ies] the story’s emotional intimacy in ways the situations and mostly platitudinous dialogue sometimes fail to do. 
Knives Out cannot help but be fanciful fun, particularly for murder-mystery fans...Johnson adds ballast to what would otherwise be a lightweight tale by suggesting sociopolitical allegory. 
Pointedly setting up its own Turkey Day-teasing Truth & Reconciliation Commission about a proud nation’s not-so-proud past...Frozen II arrives just in time for Thanksgiving as an entertainment parents and kids can be thankful for. 
The Nicholas Searle novel Hatcher adapts features a shopworn story with easily anticipated plot twists, resulting in a soggy and largely pointless exercise that gets by on its consummate cast and some witty dialogue. 
In some ways, Doctor Sleep has to feel like a pop cultural footnote, but that's not fair to what's a ripping yarn in its own right. 
Wild-ride entertainment that’s by turns funny, squirmy, horrifying, and poignant, all in service of a zeitgeist-y story of working-class frustration...boiling over in ways the blithely wealthy can no longer ignore. 
Audiences can’t be blamed for turning off their brains and focusing on the aesthetic trappings...in this film featuring a flying protagonist, nothing really lands. 
The filmmaker contemplating his own creation as a man and an artist...plays as a poetic remembrance of things past, a reconciliation of self, powerfully capturing the emotional essence of keenly formative experiences and deep loves. 
Joker isn’t the film to seriously tackle the issue[s]--it's more concerned with flair than genuine inquiry--but Phoenix’s pained, raw-nerve performance is one for the ages. 
A primer...proves most valuable by gathering a number of Miles’ friends, lovers, musical collaborators, admirers, and musicologists...to share their recollections and perspectives on Davis, his musicality, and his personality. 
Forgive me for suggesting that Conservative peer Fellowes—or, as he’s sometimes known, Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL—might consider Downton the cake he’s letting us eat. 
A deeply moving story of a remarkable woman, its only real fault an arguable virtue: adhering to the old showbiz adage of leaving the audience wanting more. 
It’s a story worth shining a light on, Gun a hero deserving of a movie-star moment. And yet this docudrama struggles to give feature-length narrative shape to the story in a way that brings it to vibrant dramatic life. 
Thin characters...thinner satire...maybe best to think of Ready or Not not as trolling us but as gifting us a mosh pit for primal-scream therapy. 
The film’s darkest-before-the-dawn middle passage honors the complexity of mental-health struggles for the sufferer and those who, unsure at every step, try to steer their troubled loved one down a path to healing. 
Luce primarily concerns itself with African-American identity, plagued by withering lowdown stereotypes and polar-opposite pressures...In some ways, the film’s subtle political satire proves even more distressing. 
Because of its hurried pacing, the film doesn’t quite make us feel the potentially Shakespearean sweep of this arc, and the leading performances feel similarly hemmed in by the script’s limitations. 
The setup makes for genuinely amusing light farce, but in their patient observation, Wang and cinematographer Anna Franquesa Solano conjure a heartfelt intimacy with the family...[and] the actors always offer up finely etched emotional truths... 
Content finally joined by the movie gods to form—for at last, the moving-picture magpie has lighted on Hollywood as his setting and, in no small part, his subject. 
Unexciting action and unfunny comedy...Bautista and Nanjiani have star power, and could’ve made a buddy comedy work, but not with this script and this little help behind the camera. 
This Maiden voyage’s degrees of heroism and ugly behavior, of victory and defeat, illuminate a gripping and inspiring story that demands to be remembered. 
Marvel deserves credit for the ways it has so far managed to freshen up formula, harness genres to its purposes, and hold a mirror up to contemporary society. 
Make the mistake of considering this feature-length stunt’s many logical fumbles and obvious but ignored questions, and you’re likely to get angry... All you need is love...and a better script. 
At a moment when studios and pundits have begun again to question the efficacy of sequels, Pixar’s graceful follow-up justifies the practice, when executed with smarts and heart. 
Outside of the win for representation represented by the likeable Tessa Thompson’s leading role, there’s no creatively compelling reason to tell this story, which...drags on seventeen minutes longer than the 1997 original. 
Potent... Crawford's empathy and care for his subjects shine through, inevitably taking the audience on an emotional journey. 
The CGI creatures impress—a star is reborn in Mothra...It’s just unfortunate that the picture as a whole lumbers a lot like its forty-story star. 