Joe Neumaier

This is a terrific time capsule with a resonant message.

Talk about lost in space. The whacked-out outer-space melodrama Jupiter Ascending has embedded in its genes the DNA of “Barbarella” and “Flash Gordon,” some dust from “Dune” and even a bit of Michael Jackson’s Disneyland short “Captain Eo.”

Director Sergei Bodrov’s movie is based on a kids’ book in which Tom was a 12-year-old, and the actors wisely pitch their performances to a young crowd.

All the men's wives are shrews, prigs or doormats; all the conquests doe-eyed blonds with sucked-in cheeks. All the dialogue is as witty as this exchange: "You're a sick f---!" "No, you're a sick f---!" They're all sick f---s, frankly, and the actors are dreadful while playing them.

A racial melodrama that, until it stumbles into obvious and maudlin territory, is a thoughtful work thanks to Octavia Spencer, Anthony Mackie and especially Kevin Costner.

Every generation gets the time travel it deserves. Project Almanac isn’t “Time After Time” (1979) or “Back to the Future” (1985) or “12 Monkeys” (1996), but the new release does turn out to be a surprisingly jaunty trip for jaded Gen-Y kids.

It’s Fatal Attraction 101.

Aniston is fine, and sometimes good even, in director Daniel Barnz’s maudlin and overly obvious drama. She has layered moments of sympathy as a woman afflicted with chronic pain. And unlike in the bad rom-coms she does too often, Aniston absolutely shows some serious chops.

The manic energy of Kevin Hart is, surprisingly, toned down in The Wedding Ringer. Which may account for almost the entire first half of this wannabe-raucous buddy movie being laugh-free.

Colangelo shows a mature levelheadedness in depicting how close-knit communities fall and rise together.

Unfortunately, Mann’s newest film, Blackhat, fails to connect.

Even Liam Neeson seems bored by the imbecilic, repetitive “Taken 3,” an action movie no one was clamoring for and no one will enjoy.

As an exercise in atmosphere, this claustrophobic creeper does a lot with a little, even if the movie winds up providing just superficial shivers.

Predestination may have the trippiest, weirdest take yet on the time-travel concept.

Chandor (“All is Lost”) has made a movie that quietly but ferociously immerses us in a time and place, with atmosphere done in minimal yet evocative strokes.

The battle it documents is both a cornerstone of the past and a reflection of ongoing struggles. DuVernay infuses Selma with that dichotomy, never forgetting how Selma, the place, was a pledge to march ahead.

When you get through it, though, you can’t help but feel uplifted by this tough-skinned movie that can stand with the best muscular wartime dramas in the American movie canon.

There are big special effects, of course, but refreshingly, this third (and final?) movie in the franchise is like a pleasant stroll through familiar halls.

Real-life geopolitical blunders aside, The Interview generally hits its marks. And every time it does skid into juvenile idiocy — with too much scatological humor, for instance, and an overuse of “you-go-bro!” attitude — it follows it with a stride or two toward uproarious meta-satire.

There’s far too many moments of sabre-rattling, and too much confusion about who is aligned with whom, and why. Those who know and love Tolkien’s texts will have a vested interest. Everyone else may grow restless.

Franco himself is ponderous playing Williams, which tends to overwhelm everything. A cool concept, and A for effort.

Most tales come from the inimitable mouth of the man himself, who could make ordering dinner sound like Shakespeare. He had a life to match. Workman covers all of his subject’s years, even if very few of them truly belonged to Welles.

It’s one of the most vibrant, sly romantic comedies this year.

This eye-rollingly bad movie is silly, sluggish and miscast.

Liv Ullmann’s screen version of August Strindberg’s 19th-century drama is an austere, pared-down take that does one thing extremely well: It allows actors Jessica Chastain, Samantha Morton and especially Colin Farrell to shine. But this emotionally brutal work is anything but cinematically engaging.

This is a perfect example of the kind of indie movie J.K. Simmons will hopefully never have to do again if he wins an Oscar for “Whiplash.”

So the big surprise of Horrible Bosses 2 is how far it gets on the hopped-up jabberjaw alliance of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. In the 2011 “Bosses,” they were swamped by the conceit: White-collar pals try to kill awful employers. Now, freed up to free-associate, they’re totally winning.

There is a serious lack of action here, which might be overlooked if the script were as smart as in the previous films. What passes for parable here is merely overplotting.