At the onset, it might seem insensitive to tell the story of a deadly mass shooting using rotoscope animation, but after you settle into the style of filmmaker Keith Maitland’s “Tower,” you realize how useful (and even powerful) a tool animation can be to tell a story that largely exists in fragments of witnesses’ memories.

DC Entertainment has this superhero movie business all backwards. They’ve jumped straight to the orgy without taking time to acquaint us more intimately with the individuals. It didn’t work all that well in “Batman vs. Superman,” but we held out hope that a team- up of lesser-known supervillains under the direction of David Ayer (“End of Watch,” “Fury”) could get the DC universe on track. Instead, “Suicide Squad” is a mess.

The third mission of the U.S.S Enterprise in the rebooted alternative timeline version of the original “Star Trek” goes a little less boldly than its two predecessors, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The big question heading into “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” was whether The Lonely Island trio of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer could make their brand of pop music humor work in a format that lasts longer than three minutes. Not surprisingly, it’s in different three-minute clips that “Popstar” works best.

After “Days of Future Past” bridged together the two generations of big screen X-Men into an epic time-travel blockbuster, it didn’t leave a whole lot of ceiling for future “X- Men” movies. Nevertheless, 20th Century Fox, director Bryan Singer and writer Simon Kinberg were quick to deliver “X-Men: Apocalypse,” bringing the X-Men’s biggest villain to […]

The premise of “Neighbors,” a comedy about a couple with a baby getting into a prank war with a bunch of fraternity guys, seems unlikely to yield one good film, let alone two. Well, although “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” is made mostly of recycled materials, it’s shockingly one of the better comedy sequels in recent […]

In a year when the quality of life in middle America small towns has come back into focus, “Hell or High Water” feels like an important film, perhaps more important than it might have been had it been released prior to 2016. But it’s not just timeliness that makes this a good movie. There are […]

It’s official — John Carney is the master of the modern day movie musical. The filmmaker who broke onto the scene and stole indie movie fans’ hearts with “Once” has a gift for crafting films and original music that work together seamlessly to tell emotionally compelling stories. “Sing Street” is probably his most personal effort […]

Arguably the two biggest heroes in comics have come together for “the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world,” a pretty tall order for DC Comics and Warner Bros., who have struggled to build the cache of their superhero universe over the years and watched in anguish as Marvel has become an unstoppable […]

“Zootopia” has all the best trappings of an entertaining animated family film with ample wit and heart.

In tackling Hollywood’s Golden Age, the Coen Brothers have made their glitziest film to date in “Hail, Caesar!”

Although less commercially driven, “Room” is to 2015 as “Gone Girl” was to 2014: An acclaimed film based on an acclaimed book adapted for the screen by the author that takes the viewer into deep, psychologically troubling places. Obviously, “Gone Girl” is a mystery thriller with a creepy darkness to it, while “Room” is more […]

As much as “Brooklyn” is a vibrantly realized 1950s period piece, the story itself is a throwback too; it’s a reminder of a classic storytelling technique seemingly uncommon at the movies today – draw in the audience in and charm its socks off.

Following “War Horse” and “Lincoln,” “Bridge of Spies” rounds out Steven Spielberg’s trilogy of histories in the 2010s, each film earning a Best Picture nomination for being a superb piece of craft — and having Spielberg’s name attached.

A documentary on the life of Amy Winehouse could easily have been done in a conventional manner a long the lines of A&E’s “Biography” series and still been plenty compelling. Winehouse was an enigma whose tempestuous relationships with people and drugs made for ideal tabloid fodder as well as a fascinating character study. But Asif […]