Film Reviews

99 Homes is a relatively small, tough-minded drama about pitiless people doing unprincipled things. And it turns out to be one of the most interesting, elegantly crafted and improbably entertaining films to come along in quite a while.

Johnny Depp creates a seethingly evil portrait of James "Whitey" Bulger, one of the pre-eminent -- and pre-eminently violent -- criminals of recent times.

Just back from the Telluride Film Festival, Joe Morgenstern introduces us to a couple of stand-outs.

In Z for Zachariah the post-apocalyptic thriller gets a renovation, if not re-invention -- as a love triangle in a valley that has somehow been spared from whatever it was that brought an end to civilization.

Top Spin starts ultra-slowly, then picks up speed. The subject of this documentary is table tennis  -- or ping pong, for those of us who play it just for fun.

Straight Outta Compton is notable for its omissions as well as its strengths, but that shouldn't be surprising.

One of the many gifts conferred by the new movie The Gift is the pleasure of feeling like putty in the hands of a first-rate storyteller.

Best of Enemies is a must-view film for our media-besotted age, a serious film about a serious failure to communicate ideas.

Southpaw stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a boxer in desperate need of redemption.

American comedy doesn't get much better than Trainwreck at its best. Amy Schumer is a fearless artist without borders.

Minions are mischievous sidekicks who keep getting into trouble of their own making.

Amy Winehouse was unlucky and unwise in life, but her story fell into the right hands after she died.

Seth MacFarlane's raunch-rich comedy is a sequel to his 2012 hit about an amiable guy from Boston and the foul-mouthed womanizer of a teddy bear who's been his best friend since childhood.

Actors use their faces, voices and bodies to convey what their characters are feeling, but the new Pixar film Inside Out takes a more direct approach.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a fresh take on contemporary adolescence as a journey from ironic detachment to open-hearted feeling.