Can a 30-second scene right at the tail-end of a motion picture derail what had been up to that point 90 minutes of solidly creepy, emotionally authentic old-school haunted house fun? The Banishing sure made me ponder that exact question.

Dench is the Six Minutes to Midnight’s not-so-secret weapon.

Something of an interstellar Lord of the Flies, after a somewhat rushed and lumpy start Neil Burger’s science fiction thriller Voyagers rights the ship and ends up traveling to an emotionally satisfying place.

The Courier feels authentic, and that’s what matters, Wynne’s everyman journey into the unimaginable the trip of a lifetime.

Promising Young Woman received five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing. I think it deserves every single one of them.

There is a touching human dimension to The Vigil that brought tears to my eyes, the ghosts of past regrets and a refusal to allow grief-stricken wounds the time they need to heal the real villain hungering to feast on damaged souls crying out in continuous pain.

Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown has only gotten better with age, and I’m starting to think if it might actually be one of the writer-director stronger motion pictures.

I Care a Lot might be the most amoral pitch-black comedy-thriller I’ve seen this side of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading.

There is something to be said about the hopeful altitude to which Land attempts to ascend, battling an assortment of melodramatic platitudes and genre clichés as it does so.