Mark Feeney

Most of the movie feels like an interlude. Pacing, velocity, and flow don’t interest Lowery. He knows the effects he wants and, skilled as he is, knows how to get them. But are they worth getting? A film that’s consciously laborious is still laborious. In a world where nothing is more real than magic, its absence is sorely felt.

A remarkable subject, the Kraffts cry out for a remarkable filmmaker.

The Children Act isn’t all that interesting a movie, despite the many talented people involved and the generally high level of work they do. The most interesting thing about it is how it presents a case study in the very different way style can determine what works on the screen vs. what works on the page.

It’s a strange thing when a movie is at its most dynamic when it’s at its most didactic. But that’s the case with Da 5 Bloods. Lee is consciously juggling a lot of balls: not just fact and fiction, past and present, but also humor, action, family drama, and tragedy. The balls don’t stay in the air. The movie has the bumpety-bump pacing of a mini-series forced into a single overlong episode.

The Forger wants to be many things: gritty crime thriller, heist picture, domestic drama. Family bonds get “forged,” too, right? Director Philip Martin, who’s mainly done British TV work, is best known for “Prime Suspect 7.” Martin keeps things moving a little too briskly, perhaps. Scenes generally feel underdeveloped, and transitions abrupt.

Reviewing a Tyler Perry movie is a bit like reviewing the weather report. People who want to watch it are going to do so, regardless of what anyone says about it. And that's not even factoring in Charlie Sheen.

Ad Astra is moody, meditative, and slow (though not the knife fight or rover demolition derby).

The biggest problem with the documentary, besides the overexposure of its namesake, is length.

Perhaps Flynn, who did the adaptation, has been a little too faithful to her novel. The faux-punchiness of her dialogue doesn’t help matters. The characters sound like people trying to sound like people in the movies and not quite pulling it off.

Chazz Palminteri's the best thing in the movie. He now has the look of a slightly beefier Steve Buscemi. But where Buscemi is all nerves on edge and something bad waiting to happen, Palminteri has a winning ease.

The situation provides a framework for the writer-director, Kogonada (“Columbus,” 2017), to dwell on the workings of memory and the various meanings of mortality and family. This is rich and challenging material. “After Yang,” while pleasant enough and certainly distinctive, isn’t altogether up to the challenge.

The constant sense of low-grade menace that helps make the first quarter of The Card Counter intriguing and effective gets put on hold, in a good way, whenever Haddish is on screen.

The film’s episodic nature, which serves to underscore the moments of grim drama, adds to the problem. One can only salute the filmmakers’ ambition and seriousness of purpose, but it’s hard to see who The Breadwinner audience is.

Beverly Dollarhide, Nicholas's mother, says of the period after her son's disappearance, "My main goal in life at that time was not to think." Apparently, the filmmakers have taken a cue from her. At least her unwillingness to think makes sense.

Both Pryce and Hopkins are fine. But on the basis of the rest of the movie they shouldn’t have a prayer.

Titane is deeply unpleasant, and its narrative borders on the inexplicable — not just the sex and pregnancy — but Ducournau knows what’s she’s doing, even if the audience doesn’t know why she’s doing it.

It’s McKellen’s and Mirren’s. Their back-and-forth provides a satisfaction akin to watching two masters volley at Wimbledon. Unfortunately, the ball these masters are playing with manages the perplexing trick of being worn and waterlogged while also far too bouncy: stodginess and over-plotting is not a good combination.

High-seas adventure meets message movie. The adventures are good. So’s the message. The problem is that they’re sailing in different directions.

Everything is leaden, solemn, portentous. When the writing’s not wooden, it’s clumsily demotic.

Everyone in the documentary agrees that the undertaking was truly terrible and misconceived. The extensive footage here does nothing to contradict such a view.

Bride Flight is pretty predictable once the basic situation gets established.

Under a different set of circumstances - in a different society - the development might have flourished. But The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary, not fantasy.

The biggest problem with Where’s My Roy Cohn? is the documentary’s attitude toward its subject: not that it’s critical (an uncritical approach to Cohn would be about as interesting as a daytime visit to Studio 54), but that it so thoroughly accepts his view of himself.

What's most vexing about Portrait of Wally is its lack of nuance.

A date movie “Monkey Man” is not.

What a waste of a superb actress. Buckley almost makes Men worth sitting through. Almost.

As directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Old Guard is assured and textureless: competence doing the work of inspiration. The movie is like an extended trailer for itself.

So it’s no small tribute to Feldstein — who really is something — to say that she’s the very best thing in How to Build a Girl despite being so wildly miscast. Her performance is a tour de force, even if it’s too forceful for either its own good or that of the movie.