Bob Strauss

Oslo ultimately acknowledges that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is anything but resolved, and shows why even this first, limited step toward settling it was so immensely difficult. Whether we’re in the mood to find it entertaining right now remains in dispute.

Though Butcher’s Crossing has its share of conflicts and drama, it can move as slowly as the glaciers that cut its imposing scenery.

Even with a script that doesn’t provide much behavioral variety and goes in many wrong directions, Bullock commands the screen with little more than closed lips and wary stares.

While it’s not always as sharp as it could be, the energy in Jolt never falters, and there are definitely amusing bits.

Undergirding it all is a light but ever present tension between living up to the philosophy the men were taught as teenagers and making their way through the realities and compromises of American adulthood. Tran’s not preachy about that, but the filmmaker’s killer move is showing how his heroes’ souls can be as fragile as their aging bones, yet resilient when the situation demands.

That its premise is a fundamentally corny one we’ve seen a million times before is a separate matter, but filmmaker Kuosmanen (“The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki”) and his two lead actors camouflage that well in naturalistic behavior and psychological depth.

While pacing and believability issues in The Pale Blue Eye cannot be overlooked, this finely made period mystery’s virtues should still be savored.

Those who just want to watch a cool, competent and only semi-dumb action movie, though, can thank god for small favors like that.

At the very least, it marks the arrival of a filmmaker with great potential. It also presents a metaphysical vision that’s quite peculiar and not very persuasive if you can’t get on its generous wavelength.

This new iteration may be interesting from a cultural perspective, if not particularly worthwhile on its own — unless you’re a Jack Harlow fan.

Rust isn’t so much a poor story or even badly told; there’s just too much of it, strung out along a discursive narrative trail that turns out to be unnecessarily repetitious.

Free Guy is an ode to independence, creativity and the nicer aspects of anarchy.

First Date is a very ambitious independent film with a charming, casual attitude.

The action ramps up so much toward the end that there’s really no time to care whether it makes visual or logistical sense. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches.

Overacting and silly lines sometimes distract, and the latter sound sillier in Branagh’s forced French accent (“Ah love, it is not safe”). Still, Branagh’s direction and screenwriter Michael Green, who also scripted “Orient,” add diversity and convincing emotions to the mystery mechanics.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance may not be as dirty a delight as the male stripper series’ first two movies. It has other pleasures, though, especially for fans of screwball comedy, musicals and — yikes — serious dance.

The Drop can feel like being stuck with someone who has their good qualities, in serious ways, but that you can’t stand.

There are stretches when this true story can be a clunky inspirational piece about a young man who overcomes class and racial barriers to excel at science, business and helping his community. At regular intervals, though, it shifts to darker crime drama with dire themes of injustice and manipulation. The two moods don’t always transition smoothly, but each complements the other as they unfold.

There’s nothing here to match the ingenious audacity of, say, the hospital-shootout-with-infant sequence in 1982’s “Hard Boiled,” but once Silent Night finally unwraps its gratuitous gifts, the faithful Woo fans should find them worth the wait.

The film is worth watching thanks to a flawless central performance by “Glee” alum Dianna Agron, solid elder annoyance shtick from Candice Bergen and Dustin Hoffman, and Bialik’s “Big Bang Theory” co-star Simon Helberg locating his pain and relishing every minute of it.

Standard issue and sluggish as it sometimes is, “Elevation” maintains engagement.

An atmospheric and, to a degree, challenging mashup of psychological, social and folk horror, Nanny casts a spell it doesn’t put us entirely under.

Nate Parker’s film isn’t always successful at balancing empathy with suspense or its prison reform message with character development. But there are engaging moments from start to finish, with a plot that, while not as surprising as writer-director Parker may have thought, wracks nerves multiple times.

One to One: John & Yoko combines the best aspects of Boomer nostalgia with generational overindulgence.

About Endlessness is like a bunch of Debbie Downer skits directed by Ingmar Begman, just not as entertaining.

What “The Grab” doesn’t do quite well is sell its argument or weave its many disparate, admirably reported discoveries into a graspable whole.

As a director, Schweighöfer deftly plays around with a few genre conventions, handles action scenes capably if not distinctively, and stages a decent enough Point Break tribute.

The King of Kings gives the Jesus story an animated treatment with some whimsical Dickensian touches. It’s nothing to write scripture about, but it should provide amusing and possibly enlightening Easter entertainment for younger children.

Pitt’s all-in performance and an impressive supporting cast supply enough roughhouse wit and Brooklyn grit to hold up scenes that might have otherwise gone down for the count.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.

Knowing what Powell is capable of, it’s not unreasonable to go into this expecting a bigger payoff.

There is a great deal of movie-backlot sleight of hand that looks fine while you’re watching, but when you think about it comes off as mostly façade. In that way, at least, Rodriguez successfully links form to content.

Good looks and brutal action can’t hide the fact that the film traffics in Italian stereotypes with the same impunity as simplistic notions of good and evil.

Saw X is “Saw 1.5” chronologically, taking place between the first and second films in this granddaddy of torture porn franchises. Quality-wise, though, it is closer to a 10 than a zero, which cannot be said about most of the other nine movies in this distressingly popular series.

The real magic of “School” resides in its stars. Caruso loses Sophie’s moral direction in deliciously fun yet behaviorally alarming ways. Wylie finds Aggie’s righteousness without damaging the character’s cunning intellect; a scene involving “wish fish” has no business being as moving as Wylie makes it. Together, the young actors take this project beyond good and evil, into the realm of something real.

By the time “Missing” reaches its truly terrible ending (which makes you wonder if the movie was all just a stealth Apple promotion), the feeling is one of programmed exhaustion rather than catharsis.

The thing that may be most chilling about “Master” is how its three protagonists want and need to support one another but ultimately cannot due to internal as well as external forces.

The documentary could have used a little more excitement, but “Coastal” leaves us with a lingering notion that we’ve seen something special.

Defined only by their scars, all three lead characters feel generic, as if Werthman built them out of archetypes that ran through his case studies.

While many of the film’s action sequences are in slow motion, it’s the story’s narrative (credited to Snyder, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad) that really crawls.

The concept might have worked well on paper. But on screen, at least how Chase Palmer has directed and co-scripted it, those clashing elements exert weak gravitational pull.

It’s just not very fun or engaging.

Sadly, fun is a rare element on Pandora, as “Borderlands” trudges through its treasure hunt scenario and endless ripoffs of better franchises from “Lethal Weapon” to “Star Wars.” It makes you want to go home and blow up your Playstation.

There’s a weepy turn in the sentimental third act, and why not? Nothing else was working.

The Watchers just doesn’t connect on anything deeper than a surface level. Given material that isn’t about looking at the same boring thing over and over, Shyamalan might have been able to really make something.

First-time director Lindsey Anderson Beer and her co-adapter Jeff Buhler have some nice ideas that never quite gel.

Credit to Hart, though, for trying to make every scene, comic or sentimental, as strong as he can. He reads each line that’s supposed to be funny as if it is, locates Sonny’s emotional truth no matter how ridiculous the scene is, and never lets his signature energy sag.

The film’s broad performances, undemanding humor and not-too-frightening horror are all designed to appeal to kids (and older fans of the “Haunted House” series). Adults are advised to enjoy the living Spirit Halloween aesthetic of it all, and remember that you love your children while enduring the rest of this hollow experience.

A distasteful, overlong slog, but at least the filmmaker appears to have put everything he wanted to up on the screen.

What can you say about a comic sci-fi adventure that’s neither funny nor thrilling, but is packed with awesomely rendered visuals of dumb-looking things?

If anything keeps “Red Door” going, it’s Autumn Eakin’s exquisite cinematography. The Further looks like a shadow reflection of the real world, and she and Wilson never fail to come up with aesthetically interesting and sometimes ingenious light sources to illuminate portions of it.

The good news is you can bring the kids. When it comes time for swimming lessons next summer, there’s nothing they’ll remember from this that’ll make them afraid of the water.