Katie Rife

Hugh Grant’s face is perpetually locked in a concerned grimace as Bayfield, whose mind always seems to be elsewhere when he’s not doting on his wife.

From its opening title card proclaiming “This film should be played loud,” the telekinetic body-horror film The Mind’s Eye is punk as f--k.

He can afford the best treatments and technologies and — by the end — even to extend his life, because he’s a well-off former NFL player. Most patients don’t have these luxuries.

Overall Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is as shallow as a puddle of Dom Pérignon spilled on the bow of a luxury yacht. That’s the joke, you see.

Suffice to say, masks are a big deal in the world of Mexican professional wrestling, known colloquially as lucha libre. Why are they such a big deal? Even after watching the movie, it’s hard to explain.

As it progresses, The Secret Life Of Pets starts to overreach dramatically, and loses some of its charm in the process.

Keating keeps the story tight, giving the audience enough twists and turns to keep the ride fun.

The Fundamentals Of Caring is about as generic as indie dramedies come. (It even has ukulele on the soundtrack.) That doesn’t make it a bad movie—the cast all turn in convincing performances, and the dialogue is occasionally quite clever—but it doesn’t make it a memorable one either.

When The Conjuring 2 focuses its efforts on scaring the audience, it succeeds, wildly. And why wouldn’t it? Wan’s got his horror technique locked down at this point. It’s the parts where it wanders away from the basics of creating and releasing tension that prevent it from outdoing its predecessor.

Pop-culture references, witty banter, broad slapstick, and sentimental speeches all fall equally flat.

Dough makes smoking pot seem about as edgy as falling asleep in front of the TV.

This is the very definition of the kind of movie people complain that “they” don’t make anymore: a modestly budgeted, character-driven drama for adults that doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence or lean on shock value.

Like a family dinner with an eccentric uncle, Holidays’ quirkiness is fitfully entertaining, but ultimately exhausting.

On a purely technical level, the film is fine, if overly reliant on indie-movie clichés. It features some good performances from proven actors, and touches on some interesting philosophical questions.

Kusama expertly manipulates the tone throughout, ratcheting up tension and releasing it in quick bursts of nervous laughter, only to build it up again.

Darling is light on plot and long on style, meaning that horror fans who criticized "The Witch" as “boring” may have a similar reaction here as well.

Anyone deep enough into the genre to watch a movie like Baskin may find it, for all its bizarre and beautiful surrealistic imagery, oddly uninspiring.

If you enjoy strippers delivering monologues on Bugs Bunny — something that actually happens in this movie — then Too Late will scratch that same adolescent itch that leads young film buffs to dress in black suits and Ray-Bans after seeing "Reservoir Dogs" for the first time.

Despite some compelling performances, this R-rated but genial dramedy is a lot like its protagonist: unconventional, yet playing it safe.

Starring Kingsman: The Secret Service’s Taron Egerton jutting out his chin and sporting oversized glasses in a concerted attempt to appear less handsome, Eddie The Eagle wears its quirkiness on its puffed sleeve.

You might say that How To Be Single suffers from the influence of its older, more put-together sister Sex And The City, right down to the sappy montage and voice-over it needs to tie everything together at the end.

Tacking the weakest segments onto the end of the film may leave some viewers exiting the theater with a shrug, but the interesting bits are original enough to stick.

When Wayans allows himself to deviate from his formula there are a few effective moments of un-self-conscious slapstick.

At least, maybe The Boy can lead some novices to better, more original horror movies.

Yes, this is a movie for children. But using that as a justification for lazy work, as if kids are inherently too dumb to know the difference, isn’t just condescending. In a post-Pixar world, where audiences have become accustomed to quality animated family films, it’s a waste of money.

Fey and Poehler are clearly the center of the film, and watching their lively games of verbal ping-pong is always an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes or so.

Jolie and Pitt are both, without a doubt, very good actors, and in the film’s rare moments of vulnerability, their fights and reconciliations contain a seed of devastating emotional truth that speaks to the pair’s talent and real-life bond. But those moments are suffocated under long, dreadfully dull sequences where everyone poses artfully and says very little.

On the plus side, the film is high energy and moves quickly. And some of the zombie gore effects are fun, reaching nearly Raimi-esque heights of splatter during the climactic battle. None of it is really scary, though, especially since it’s so predictable.