Scott Tobias

A dog cycles through several canine lifetimes while teaching a series of owners to live, laugh and love. Critic Scott Tobias found the film's repeated, mawkish depictions of doggy death "wearying."

Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson deliver strong performances, but director Vincent Perez's staid historical drama swathes its subjects' radical actions in too much art-house-reverence.

A couple takes pride in rejecting the trappings of a conventional married life — but the form their rejection takes is so marked by cliché that the film fails to sustain interest.

Janelle Monae, Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer star in this drama about the brilliant African-American women whose mathematical skills NASA eagerly exploited ... without publicly acknowledging.

An ad exec (Will Smith) mourning the death of his daughter meets actors portraying abstract concepts in this absurd, disingenuous film which lays bare Hollywood's inability to grapple with grief.

This sprawling, chaotic comedy about a sprawling, chaotic holiday party expects its improv-tested cast to make up for its skimpy script. Some performers do; most don't.

Director Pablo Larraín narrows the focus of his Jackie Kennedy biopic to a handful of days around the JFK assassination, and keeps his camera trained on Natalie Portman's expressive face.

The original Bad Santa has long delighted holiday misanthropes, but an "irredeemably squishy center," says critic Scott Tobias, means its sequel won't give them what they crave.

A by-the-numbers holiday film in which a soulful performance from Danny Glover fails to buoy the proceedings above familiar family squabbles that get dutifully, and too-tidily, resolved.

Have Cloak, Will Astral-Travel: Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts in a film that's visually stunning but doggedly familiar in structure.

Director Antonio Campos presents the story of Christine Chubbuck, a young TV reporter in Sarasota, Fla., who stunned viewers with her on-air suicide in 1974.

In adapting Paula Hawkins' hugely popular novel, filmmakers never manage to make its twisty story register as anything more than an exercise in convoluted plot machinations.

Director Peter Berg's movie about the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico ratchets up the cinematic tension, but quickly devolves into rote disaster-movie cliches.

A Disney film about a Ugandan girl who becomes a chess champion hits familiar beats but evinces a nuanced understanding of extreme poverty and the societal forces that reinforce it.

A strong performance by Édgar Ramírez as the Panamanian boxer can't save a film that suffers from a lack of focus and thin characterization.

The latest animated film from Laika Studios owes more to the emotional impressionism of Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki than the comparatively rigid and familiar story structure of Disney/Pixar.

David Lowery's remake of a minor 1977 Disney feature improves on the original by dialing down the slapstick and dialing up the humanity — and the tears.

Dianne Wiest and David Oyewolo work through grief and resentment in a plodding film our critic calls "an agonizing dirge."

The plot's overstuffed, but whenever Ellen Page and Allison Janney share the screen, Tallulah finds its palpably human center.

For Absolutely Fabulous to return as a movie 20 years after its sitcom phenom phase might seem absurd, but it's in line with the show's commitment to Patsy and Eddy's timeless lack of cachet.