Joe Dziemianowicz

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

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

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.

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.”

Your mileage may vary — along with patience. Despite all the talk of the Shimmer, Annihilation sputters.

Luckily for Hello, My Name Is Doris, Sally Field is still so likable, really likable.

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 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.

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

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

Moviegoers don’t get much to chew on either, besides a decent performance by Ewan McGregor as both Jesus and a demon, plus some OMG-worthy landscapes.

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.

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.

Fun and likable, occasionally even delightful.

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

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.

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

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.

Tallulah is a sensitive and stirring look at motherhood.

If you go searching for an original idea in this tiresome thriller about a soul-sucking demon doll, you won’t find one.

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

As a full-length film this fashion industry over-the-top farce about two hot messes behaving badly — and boozily — is both too much and too little.

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

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.

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

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.”