Christy Lemire

There’s trash, and then there’s good trash. Unforgettable falls into the latter category. Slick, glossy and radiating juicy villainy, it knows exactly what kind of movie it is and goes for it with giddy abandon.

In Richard Gere’s deft, veteran hands, Norman Oppenheimer is consistently, completely fascinating. You may not be able to root for him, but you can’t help but feel for him.

The comedy is bigger, the supporting players are wackier and the antics move to the bouncy beat of an incessantly perky soundtrack.

Johnson keeps it all moving at a decent clip, though, with the help of Michael Penn’s score. And she photographs Powley and her mesmerizing blue eyes so lovingly that it’s hard not to find her adorable—even when she’s being awful.

If you long for the gritty charms of mid-‘90s indie cinema in general and “Trainspotting” specifically, T2 Trainspotting gives you exactly that. And by “exactly,” we really do mean “exactly.”

Not to sound derisive, but there’s definitely a target audience here. What they’ll get will be mildly satisfying: a film that’s well-acted but tastefully restrained to a fault, with gentle humor about aging and a central mystery that isn’t all that engaging.

It may not sound like it on the surface, but Raw is absolutely a celebration of female power — of realizing who you are, what you want and how to go after it, albeit with brutally bloody results.

At only 24, Joris-Peyrafitte shows confidence and talent beyond his years, with an artful eye for imagery and a truthful ear for dialogue.

XX feels unusually frustrating in its inconsistency, given its inspired premise.

For a movie about two people who loved each other so deeply, they risked losing everything to be together—their families, homes, even their countries — A United Kingdom plays it frustratingly safe.

The whole thing ultimately collapses in a heap of unintentionally hilarious melodrama.

Split is more lean and taut in its narrative and pace than we’ve seen from Shyamalan lately.

It isn’t creepy, but it isn’t terribly plausible, either. It’s just another movie in which a 30ish white dude finds purpose and learns how to live life again through the love and support of a younger woman who’s more of a concept than a real person.

With I, Daniel Blake, Loach is using the medium for one of its most crucial purposes: to shine a light on injustices he sees all around him, as well as on our capacity for human decency.

It goes soft and nice and wants us to care about these characters who barely resemble human beings. After all, it’s Christmas. But everyone involved here should have asked Santa for a stronger script.

Fair warning: If a romance about beautiful, miserable people is your least favorite indie subgenre, this may not be your cup of tea.

Moana would have been enormously entertaining regardless of when it came out, but its arrival at this particular moment in history gives it an added sense of significance—as well as inspiration.

The Edge of Seventeen is a strong successor to Hughes’ legacy with its mix of biting humor and bittersweet heart.

A mixture of misplaced gallows humor, wildly over-the-top caricatures and a gimmicky use of animation combine to make My Dead Boyfriend one of the year’s more uncomfortable movie-going experiences.

The resulting feeling of outrage will spur viewers into action.

The multiple twists, double-crosses and leaps in logic are more likely to prompt giggles than gasps, despite the impressive production values and the earnest efforts of an A-list cast.

A movie based on a toy should be a whole lot more fun than this.

Braga has created a formidable force of nature in Clara.

It’s just a flat and suspense-free tale of pretty people in peril.

Because even though I’d just seen the exact same movie my son had, I wasn’t sure I completely understood it, either.

Zippy and zany, cute and cuddly, Storks manages to balance wild humor with winning heart—for the most part.

Seeing how freakishly gifted he is and watching his ascendance is a thrill, and Cantor keeps the pacing moving crisply.

You’ve seen this movie before. You’ve seen it in the past month, actually: It was called “The Hollars,” directed by and starring John Krasinski. But while that film hit every clichéd note you’d expect, despite its good intentions and great ensemble cast, Other People breathes new life into the formulaic, dark comedy about death.

A twisty, Hitchcockian thriller mixed with trippy moments of magical realism. And if that doesn’t sound on paper like it would work, well, it does. And it doesn’t.

The performances are really strong, though. That’s what’s so frustrating; you just know there’s a better movie in here waiting to burst free.

One of the most impressive elements of Kubo and the Two Strings — besides its dazzling stop-motion animation, its powerful performances and its transporting score — is the amount of credit it gives its audience, particularly its younger viewers.

For better and for worse, Joshy believably creates the sensation of a low-key weekend hang with a bunch of bros. You probably wouldn’t want to spend that much time with these people yourself, but at least they’re never boring.

For the film to be about more than just wildly outrageous behavior (although those moments are the one that provoke the biggest and well-earned laughs), these have to feel like real people and we have to care about them too. And we do, thanks to a strong cast of comic actresses who have an easy chemistry with each other.

Confuses repetitive raunchiness with daring humor. It hammers us over the head with the same handful of jokes in the hopes of beating us into submission. And it strains the screen appeal of a group of actors who normally are enormously likable.

Veteran French director Anne Fontaine approaches a spiritually and emotionally complex real-life slice of history with deftness and understated drama in The Innocents.

It’s just dull and hollow — a massive waste of time and money. The characters are flimsy, the dialogue is stilted and the amount of destruction is ridiculous.

With her debut feature, Bang Gang, Eva Husson captures the restless rhythms of adolescence—the push-pull of angst and boredom, of self-consciousness and the yearning to lose oneself completely.

I’m also hoping that the game is more emotionally engaging — or at least, you know, fun — than the movie I just saw. Because that thing was a dour mess.

A movie that’s as empty and unlikable as the characters themselves.

It’s all inspiring stuff, to be sure—and often so dramatic that it’s hard to imagine it really could have happened, even though it did.

It’s a slow burn, but even as events turn more than a tad preposterous with twists that seem not just predictable but inevitable, Farr keeps a handle on the tension and tone, which keeps us hooked.

Maggie’s Plan almost isn’t screwball enough. The characters must undergo some introspection, as well, and striking a balance between those two dynamics proves challenging.

Ultimately, the film registers less as an indictment of widespread financial corruption than as a shallow exploration of one man’s greed. But briefly, when it’s at its peak value somewhere in the middle, Money Monster is a solid bet.

Simultaneously lush and lurid, sumptuous and startling, A Bigger Splash never goes where you expect, even as its undercurrent of danger is unmistakable from the start.

If you liked “Frozen” but wish it had been angrier, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is for you.

Rio, I Love You feels like little more than an extended tourism promotion video.

It’s amusingly slick and mean for a while, but ultimately the film’s one-note nihilism grows numbing, and its stylish visuals and well-chosen soundtrack can only do so much to keep it lively.

Even by the standards of raunchy, comic spoofs, director and co-writer Deon Taylor’s film feels especially scattered.

Over and over again, this is the level of humor in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 — this is the shrill note it hits.

Bring tissues. Because whether you’re the faithful target audience for Miracles From Heaven, a non-believer or someone in the mass agnostic middle ground, you may find it hard to hold back the tears during various points in this real-life tale. And they’ll be earned.

That’s one dismayingly archaic trend throughout The Young Messiah: the fiendish characters are also wildly effeminate.

To her credit, Callies has an accessible presence and tries to provide more pathos and humanity than were supplied on the page, even as her character makes increasingly idiotic decisions in the name of parental love.

Slapstick mishaps and—ultimately—feel-good triumph of sorts ensue, with plenty of perky training montages in between.

Think of How to Be Single as a cinematic Whitman’s Sampler: There are enough pieces that work to offset the pieces that don’t.

While the 2009 book played this genre mash-up for dry, sly laughs, writer-director Burr Steers’ film amps up the thrills and gore. And that’s a problem—not necessarily as a narrative choice, but from a technical perspective.

Mostly, Fifty Shades of Black is exactly what you expect it will be. It hits all the notes of its source material, only it amps them up, and it seems to get the inherent absurdity of this premise even more than Sam Taylor-Johnson’s movie did.

It’s more rote than revelatory, and the possibility of a sequel in the final shot plays more like a threat than a promise.

Garrel judges none of these people for their bad choices, but rather acknowledges that these things happen all time. It’s a sentiment as timeless as the look of the picture, a French New Wave throwback shot on 35mm film which could take place decades ago or in the current day. C’est la vie.

Röhrig has the tricky task of carrying this story on his shoulders—and us along with him—without the benefit of being able to emote or even say much. It’s a physical performance as much as it is a quietly emotional one; he has to establish who this man is mainly through his gestures, demeanor and energy.

As in other recent female-driven raunchy comedies like “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and “Spy,” the force is strong in this one.

Boy and the World is dazzlingly colorful and alive, often resembling a more elaborate version of the kind of childlike drawings you probably have stuck to your refrigerator door right now.

If you’re not already somewhat familiar with Shakespeare’s tragedy, this incarnation isn’t about to go out of its way to provide much context or explain why certain characters matter. But in an intriguing contrast, while the scale of the battles and the scenery is enormous and awe-inspiring, some of the more famous moments and lines arrive in understated fashion in intimate spaces.

Hooper’s latest is tasteful and restrained to a fault. It is easier to admire than love.

Mustang grabs you with its own sense of haunting melancholy, as well as an increasing feeling of urgency and outrage.

The stakes are higher because this is the end—It really is this time!—but the first hour or so of returning director Francis Lawrence’s film is legitimately nap-inducing.

Bell and co-star Simon Pegg are such enjoyably unlikely rom-com leads, and they have such crackling chemistry from the word go, they more than make up for some of the film’s more predictable plot elements.

It’s disappointing and actually kind of cynical in its unwillingness to try anything even vaguely innovative with these beloved characters.

Individual scenes can be tense but the arc as a whole lacks momentum. I Smile Back should have been devastating. Silverman is willing to take you there. What it ends up being is frustrating.

The ending — with its revelation of what these girls were really after all along — is so frustrating, you’re likely to wonder: Is that all there is?

This a super-Sorkiny Aaron Sorkin script — full of the kind of well-timed zingers and clever turns of phrase that never occur to us in real life.

While we do indeed see the normalcy of her home life with her parents and younger brothers and the regular, teenage-girl instincts that exist alongside her courage, we never get a glimpse into her deeper feelings.

It’s a worthwhile film that could have been a powerful film if it had gone beyond the skin-deep.

Larger than its predecessor, last year’s “The Maze Runner,” in every way: in its cast, scope, set pieces and (unfortunately) length. But “more” also means more convoluted.

Nothing nearly so wacky or grotesque goes down in this romantic thriller, but you’ll wish it would.

In fact, very little here is special, despite the individual charms of Evans and co-star Alice Eve.

Headey is coolly fierce and shares some powerful moments with both Wilson and Winstone as the reporter who threatens to expose this juicy sex scandal. But these scattered pieces don’t create a complete and convincing picture.

American Ultra tries to combine a sweet, slacker romance with a slick, super-violent action flick. If that sounds jarring to you, that’s probably because it is.

Whether or not we’d like to admit it – they’re willing to say what the rest of us are thinking when they tactlessly open their mouths without a filter.

Swanberg finds a pleasingly low-key tone throughout the film, which (blissfully) is especially true during the kinds of moments that usually are played for wacky laughs in pregnancy comedies.

As Aaron’s star patient and best friend, LeBron James is kind of wonderful playing a version of himself who’s sensitive, analytical and strangely stingy. It’s an inspired casting choice.

Director Kim Farrant’s debut feature is beautifully shot and offers some powerful, well-acted moments from a strong cast, but it’s just relentlessly dreary.

Schwarzenegger has turned into your elderly uncle, dancing like a goofball at your wedding after a couple glasses of champagne. He knows he’s being silly, and he knows that you know, and that alone is supposed to be good for a laugh. But it’s not. It’s just sad. He has essentially become McBain.

There is simultaneously too much and not enough going on in writer/director/co-star Josh Lawson’s feature debut. He crams in too many people and plot lines but offers too little in the way of character development and credible emotion.

See it with someone you love, and then just try to feel smug about the security of your own relationship afterward.

Finally, a woman — Sophie Barthes — has directed and co-written a film version of Madame Bovary, but strangely, that doesn’t result in any more richness or enlightenment.

It wants to scare the hell out of you, and it does that quite effectively with several serious jumps. About a half-dozen times, I’d say, Whannell creates moments that are legitimately surprising and frightening because he uses silence so well in contrast.

As it stands now, Aloha feels like several films at once, crammed together and sped up, with results that are emotionally hollow and narratively confusing.

The wacky New York types with their lack of an internal censor and their wild ideas for what they’d do to the apartment provide a consistent source of laughs.

Whether his film is lush or rolling in the muck, it always has a tactile quality that makes it accessible, which is also true of the performances from his (mostly) well-chosen cast.

It’s meant to be a tale of uplift for faith-based audiences, but instead wears viewers down with a heavy-handed narrative, an overbearing score and voiceover that spells out everything in cringe-inducing, folksy tones.

It's all a dull, repetitive slog of talking heads saying the same thing over and over in slightly different ways, and it never picks up steam.

Think of the worst movie you’ve ever seen – a movie that didn’t make you laugh, didn’t make you cry, didn’t move you or change you in any way besides giving you the desperate urge to flee the theater. Think of a movie that was a massive waste of your time and money. Hold that title in your mind. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is worse than that.

You’re likely to laugh and learn in equal measure–and so will your little ones.

Dior and I won’t tell you much about Simons’ personal life, or his family, or where he lives, or why he does this, which ultimately makes it difficult to connect with him. (Interestingly, a little online research reveals, he started out as a furniture designer.)

Last Knights is so thoroughly mediocre, so dully empty, that it’s difficult to summon the enthusiasm to trash it.

There are traces of Woody Allen at work here as While We’re Young vividly makes fun of a specific subculture of hyper-articulate New York denizen, as well as the way its characters try to stave off the malaise of aging by clinging to characters who radiate the exotic promise of youth.

The number of important, enduring 1960s and early ‘70s songs that a group of studio musicians known as The Wrecking Crew brought to life is staggering.

The result feels strained and slapped together, crammed as it is with silly mistaken identities and misunderstandings, adolescent jealousies and slapstick jokes. It’s a sitcom in a sari.