Joe Dziemianowicz

In the end, it's all about McDormand, who’s great at playing ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances.

As summer popcorn-style entertainment, The Nice Guys gets the job done.

A gross-out comedy motored by girl power that’s funnier than hell. Raunchier, too.

Director David Yates, who helmed the last four "Harry Potter" films, is in his element with this mix of wand-waving and rollicking adventure. He keeps the overstuffed story zipping along for the most part. And he's thrown in all the eye-popping wonders that $180 million can buy.

The Bronze isn’t a brilliant game-changer, just a funny and filthy diversion.

Ana de Armas makes a lasting impression as Felicidad, the angelic girl (her hair is braided, like a halo) who’s the love of Duran’s life. Too bad their relationship is underexplored and left to a quickie montage of baby-making and deliveries. That’s one of the reasons the film’s not a knockout.

Like the play by Jordan Harrison it’s based on, writer-director Michael Almereyda’s film is small in scale, but pulls us in close with its provocative setup.

Danielle Macdonald is irresistible as Patti Cake$, a dreamer with ambition and talent and visions so glorious, liberating and uplifting that they make her walk on air. The final moments were euphoric enough to make me float out of the theater.

The pacing is slow and deliberate. Director Joseph Kosinski (“Oblivion”) knows that it takes time to build real relationships and feelings.

It’s gripping, eye-opening and when it comes to heroics, thought-provoking. But it also suffers from grisliness, sentiment and self-indulgence.

Antonina is often seen and cradling animals — a lion, a monkey, a rabbit. Fitting, since Chastain elevates and handily carries The Zookeeper’s Wife.

The film’s second act packs a bittersweet punch, along with the fact that the failed show is now much-respected. But all of that could have been tied up in a quicker epilogue. The chorus, so to speak, lacks a hook. Too bad, considering that, to quote a Sondheim song from the show, they “had a good thing going.”

Kids may not notice or care, but the movie, which advocates kindness, comes with an irony. It’s a film about embracing differences and seeing beyond appearances, but it rarely bucks convention or gets more than skin deep.

Jack and Sam share a wonderful scene when performance and real life blur, which is the whole point of the movie.

It’s smart, funny and bursting with ideas about the joys and rigors of motherhood and reckoning with the past and the future. It’s too bad, then, that the final head-scratching stretch sinks what’s preceded.

The film belongs to Clarke. Her warm and winning star turn lifts this checklist chick flick.

The film gets predictable and loses its firm grip a third of the way in. Too bad, since the film directed and co-written by Gary Ross (“The Hunger Games,” “Seabiscuit”) gets off to a bang-up beginning.

Tallulah is a sensitive and stirring look at motherhood.

Diane Kruger’s raw, real-as-it-gets performance as a grieving woman bent on vengeance in the German thriller In the Fade grabs from the get-go and never lets loose its grip.

The rom-dram is wistful and wisecracking, boasts a polished ensemble and is such a period looker you wish you could time-travel to the Jazz Era.

The movie rises thanks to an ace in the hole: Bryan Cranston, whose stirring star turn hooks us completely.

As it speeds along, the film delivers its share of popcorn-style entertainment, curves and thrills. But it stalls due to plot holes and murky storytelling, willful inaccuracies (like an invented Upper East side train station), wasted talent and conductor’s cap tips to better railway-based movies like “Strangers on a Train,” “The Fugitive” and “Unstoppable.”

Fun and likable, occasionally even delightful.

At its best, the movie turns gender roles on their heads. While the girls party very hard, bride-to-be Jess’s fiance Peter (Paul W. Downs) spends his stag party tasting wine with his buds. Moreover, people can surprise themselves — and do things they don’t expect.

In the end, The Man Who Invented Christmas is an enjoyable enough diversion. It’s no humbug. Just pleasantly ho-hum.

Among the lessons learned: marriages need tending and distance can make people closer. Not earth-shaking, but harmless. Like this sequel.

The wannabe thriller set in the near future packs gritty style and ambiance, but that’s no match when the story has no stakes and doesn’t add up.

Whether or not the movie turns you into X-philes, Yoshiki is hard to shake.