The imaginatively titled Book Club, about four women in their late 60s whose love lives are rekindled by reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, sounds like an extended advertisement for the books, but it really isn't. It's just the catalyst...

What distinguishes Deadpool from most other superheroes is that he swears, kills people, and breaks the fourth wall. That is also, of course, what distinguished the first Deadpool film from its dozens of siblings way back in 2016. Deadpool...

This week's "good enough, I guess, if you're not too picky" home-invasion thriller is Breaking In,"which offers the innovative twist of the bad guys getting inside and holding the kids captive while the mom is locked outside and has to "break...

You'll think you've seen Life of the Party before, or at least something very much like it: A dowdy, newly divorced mom goes back to college to finish her degree -- and it's the same college her daughter is attending! Collision course with...

The rape-revenge sub-genre has many entries, and everything about Revenge (including the title) sounds derivative until you get to the credits. How many movies on this topic were written and directed by women? This one, a cool, synth-scored...

There are two premises in Bad Samaritan, one that drives the plot and one that explains the villain's motives. They are middling premises, better than some you've heard, less creative than others. They're executed with average skill by director...

Diablo Cody's screenwriting career started with a pregnant teenager named Juno. She returns to the subject of maternity with Tully, but there's a crucial difference this time: Cody has three kids of her own now, an experience that informs her...

Any remake of the 1987 Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell "romantic" "comedy" Overboard would have to reverse the genders. A single father of three rowdy boys tricking a rich, mean amnesiac woman into believing she's his wife -- that is to say, cook,...

Some movies provide so much vivid detail about a character that you could practically write a biography. Lynne Ramsay's mesmerizing You Were Never Really Here (based on Jonathan Ames' novel) is a different sort of experience, immersing us in...

There are no literal hauntings in Ismael's Ghosts, a wry, lyrical, but often plodding drama from director Arnaud Desplechin (A Christmas Tale), only metaphorical ones. Freewheeling French filmmaker Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric), who shares...

You can go crazy trying to understand the thinking of people who make and sell Hollywood blockbusters, but what they've done with Avengers: Infinity War is fascinating. It was filmed concurrently with its own sequel (due 52 weeks from now), and...

You can tell Traffik is a serious movie about scary things because it's spelled with a "k." "Traffic," who cares? But "traffik"?? Watch out! Written and directed by Deon Taylor (Meet the Blacks), this lurid, clumsy thriller is 30 minutes old...

Experience has taught us not to get our hopes up about long-awaited sequels, especially sequels to films whose charms were obscure or quirky to begin with. (It's hard enough to catch regular lightning twice, let alone cult-favorite lightning.)...

There are some good ideas and thoughtful insights buried in the very messy I Feel Pretty, a comedy about female self-image that is unsure of its own identity. Directed by screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, the duo behind such...

Few actors are better suited to play a diplomat than Jon Hamm, and the erstwhile Don Draper brings his gregarious A-game to Beirut, a compelling espionage flick directed by Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9) and written by Tony Gilroy...