Kyle Smith

If the makers of Trolls must keep going, I won’t be present for the next entry unless it’s “Trolls Meet Smurfs.” With chainsaws. In the Thunderdome.

War was both cruel and magnificent, as Churchill once put it. To Gibson, it still is.

The film is never gripping, but at least it moves. Director Ron Howard does his best to spark excitement with cheesy horror-movie editing — brief shots of the damnation in store if the virus is unleashed — and there are a couple of twists to keep things lively. Nothing is what it seems, unless it seems ridiculous, in which case it’s exactly what it seems.

Any parent who has ever scrambled desperately to find a doll to appease a wailing child as though it were a life-and-death situation will appreciate the wit of this multilayered, dread-soaked chamber piece.

Lacking either the narrative shiftiness or the trashy thrills of “Gone Girl,” this one is the kind of flick few will watch twice: It has about as many twists and turns as an L. The third act of a movie shouldn’t make you feel as though the first two acts were a waste of time.

Both broader and deeper than the relentless and monotonous “12 Years a Slave,” it’s one of the few important movies to hit cinemas this year.

Burton may give us a bland hero, a tepid love story and a muddled plot but, hey, at least he’s got a skeleton army doing battle with giant tentacle monsters at an amusement park.

It’s told in a woefully pedestrian way, with talking-head footage forming the bulk of this slow-to-develop film. Still, it’s a creepily fascinating tale.

"The Titanic" is now the second-biggest disaster Kate Winslet has ever been associated with. Her new one, The Dressmaker, is like some hellborn alloy of film noir, campy melodrama, “High Plains Drifter” and the Darwin Awards for people who die in moronic accidents.

Less enjoyable than making a baby but more enjoyable than raising one, the animated feature Storks delivers a bouncing bundle of blah.

Running and screaming may be essential to a lot of horror movies, but as Blair Witch shows, they’re not scary in themselves. For that, you need the stuff between the running and screaming.

A cute, spunky found-footage thriller undone by a lumpy plot and a weak ending, Operation Avalanche revisits the urban legend that the moon landing was faked, with some fresh twists.

Snowden could have been a character portrait, but instead it’s like “The Bourne Identity” minus the chases and fights, which is like a ham and cheese sandwich minus the ham and cheese. As a consequence, I suspect, this film will make no bread.

Deeply personal screenwriting and a superlative performance by Molly Shannon as a dying mom lift Other People above the level of many similar tragedy-inflected indie comedies.

This movie is resolute about being as homey and obvious as it can possibly be. Somewhere, Norman Rockwell is thinking, “Sheesh, even I was edgier than this.”

A dopey psychological thriller that combines elements of “The Sixth Sense” with an overbearing sentimentality, The 9th Life of Louis Drax flat-lines from beginning to end.

Beautifully photographed and acted, with a somberly affecting tone, the film, by Derek Cianfrance, is nevertheless marred by severely contrived elements.

A dull, listless, derivative chunk of celluloid lacking any spark or even basic storytelling ability.

A pleasingly low-key effort pitched at fans of the first couple.

A gooey morass of indie-movie clichés, the wacky-family dramedy The Hollars marks yet another egregiously cutesy attempt to rekindle that “Garden State” magic.

Apart from its thin characters and occasional trite moments, as well as a silly attempt to set up a sequel, Don’t Breathe is just about perfect. It’s as lean and relentless as the best John Carpenter films.

Trite and vulgar boxing flick.

It’s a small movie, but in his third feature, indie writer-director Chad Hartigan proves he is a major talent, imbuing the interactions with wit and warmth and charm.

After an hour or so, when the would-be comedy War Dogs finally gets around to a point to focus on, it’s stale ammunition that’s been sitting in a dusty Albanian warehouse for 40 years. I assume the movie got its jokes from the same place.

A desperado drama wrapped around a Bernie Sanders campaign speech, Hell or High Water overcomes its vapid political leanings with loads of West Texas atmosphere, smart dialogue and acutely observed relationships.

A cinematic enchantment, a low-key 1970s-style kids’ movie brimming with sincerity and heart. It’s one of the best films of the year.

Borrowing a few tricks from Martin Scorsese, the film isn’t a slavish imitation but an engrossing and grounded drama. It’s a pity, then, that director Federico Castelluccio, best known as Furio of “The Sopranos,” can’t deliver a powerful conclusion.

Like a Pixar movie shorn of the cutesy and manipulative aspects that marred “Inside Out,” the animated remake of The Little Prince, hitting theaters and Netflix, is as fragile and beautiful as the beloved rose guarded by the wee fellow of the title.