If the news is true, and Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread does indeed mark Daniel Day-Lewis' retirement from acting, it's an occasion for remorse, if also delight that the legendary performer is at least going out on a high note. (The movie is deservedly nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, and Actor.) But woven into the sadness of “No more Daniel!” is a very specific kind of regret, because man is it a shame the guy didn't make more comedies.

You wouldn't think anyone could make a feel-good entertainment about the War in Afghanistan, still raging after nearly 17 years. But blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer isn't just anyone, and so we have 12 Strong, a demolition-heavy drama about the first Special Forces team sent to Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

When the film's focus sticks to Graham's gradual transformation from kowtowed socialite to proud defender of print journalism, The Post is a smashing success. Where it's less successful, unfortunately, is in just about everything surrounding Graham's personal struggle, effective though the film frequently is.

Painful, wrenching, and, in my view, deeply empathetic toward its subject, this is one of the least funny “comedies” I've ever seen. I mean that as a compliment.

If it weren't for the presence and narration of Jessica Chastain, you might spend the first five minutes of Molly's Game – the frequently winning, sometimes frustrating true-life tale of high-stakes poker entrepreneur Molly Bloom – thinking you wandered into the wrong movie by mistake.

It's time to commend Scott's achievement not merely for what it is, but for what it is in light of its circumstances: a freakin' miracle.

Among the movies of 2017, there have certainly been more objectively fun ones than Darkest Hour, director Joe Wright's Winston Churchill bio-pic that follows the British icon through his first weeks as prime minister, ending with his order for the historic World War II evacuation memorialized in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk. But I'm not sure that any film this year has found anyone having as much fun as Gary Oldman clearly is in his role as Churchill – and blessedly, it's a performance joy equal to the considerable joy we feel while watching him.

Few film stars ever look as happy as Hugh Jackman does when crooning and hoofing on award shows, or as he did playing Curley in that recorded-for-posterity production of Oklahoma! And when he's allowed to be that same sort of explosive musical-theatre charm bomb in The Greatest Showman, Jackman's enthusiasm is so infectious, and his talent so overwhelming, that for those few minutes, you can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else on Earth. Unfortunately, though, Jenny Bicks' and Bill Condon' script remains all-too-often earthbound.

Over the decades, the Star Wars films have boasted so many unforgettable sounds – light sabers swooshing, R2-D2 beeping, Darth Vader breathing – that it's both unexpected and rather amazing to find the signature sound in Star Wars: The Last Jedi to be silence.

Friends have asked me whether you need to have seen The Room in order to enjoy The Disaster Artist. I'd say no, though it'd most certainly help. It'd help further if you haven't also read the book. But movies and books, as we all know, are vastly different things. And as a movie – with this opinion coming from an unbridled champion of The Room – The Disaster Artist is a more-than-frequent hoot.

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