Kim Hughes

If you are someone inclined to head to the theatre specifically to see the new Jennifer Lopez rom-com, you will get exactly the movie you hope for. And you will be happy.

In the end, all the sorrow and horror and anger and angst just seem pointless despite Corbet’s stated intention to juxtapose the meaningless against the tragic.

Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth offer rich, committed performances and highly passable accents. There’s also a certain thrill in being transported to another very real-feeling world: inside elaborate stone mansions lit only by candles and furnished with stiff but fancy furniture. The costumes, jewelry and makeup, too, are fabulous. But a hard-to-pinpoint pall hangs over Mary Queen of Scots.

You will not see a more perfect and imperfect rock and roll biopic than Bohemian Rhapsody, which does many things extremely well, other things sort of average, and one thing flawlessly: capturing the immense charisma and panache of Queen singer Freddie Mercury. Jamie Foxx’s full-body inhabitation of Ray Charles just got some competition at the top.

McCarthy’s talent is towering and yet so few roles (excluding SNL appearances which feature dozens) really leverage her versatility. Can You Ever Forgive Me? gives platform to it all — funny but nihilistic, bleak, sardonic, knowing — with McCarthy disappearing and something else rising in her place.

There is absolutely nothing in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween that you haven’t seen before, and seen done far, far better.

You’ve probably heard punchier dialog at dinner parties.

It’s hard to describe exactly how fun it is to watch the performances and archival footage generously offered in Bad Reputation. Suffice to say rock fans with a bellyful of beer will have a ball.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed Radner’s performances in their lifetime not finding much to love about Love, Gilda… even as our hearts break a little at what might have been had she lived longer.

Feig has done a superb job of building a compelling story from angular bits that shouldn’t fit together but do while making pointed commentary on everything from gender roles to social media.

Here’s the thing: it’s hard to care about anyone presented on screen. Sorry but… they’re just not very nice. Nor are they fascinating criminal masterminds pulling off complex, game-changing capers.

Credit the towering talents of Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci with redeeming The Children Act, a film oddly thin on story despite coming from the marvelous Ian McEwan, who adapted his own novel for the screen but somehow failed to capture the surge of the source material.

It’s awful by any metric you apply.

For a film where every single scene is rigidly contained within a screen — framed by an iPhone FaceTime chat, a laptop exchange, TV image, home movie or security camera surveillance — Searching has a surprising sense of momentum.

Crucially, Macdonald (see also The Last King of Scotland, Marley, State of Play) doesn’t stint on the train-wreck aspects of her career: the infamous Diane Sawyer interview, disastrous, flabby late-career performances, and yes, those tabloid images of a gaunt, wild-eyed, and clearly tripping Houston. Whether audiences feel greater insight into her dreams and demons as a result is somewhat less certain.