Mick LaSalle

As Ella, Mackey shows that she can carry a movie and remain sympathetic, despite a script that sometimes works against her.

It all becomes silly, monotonous and boring. Maybe not as monotonous as being cast out into void, but boring enough to put you to sleep.

Despite moments of unintentional humor, “The Ritual” has an appealing gravity about it, which probably derives from its adherence to the historical record.

There’s no way to call Havoc a good movie, but as bad movies go, this is a good one. Depending on your mood, its variety of craziness could be what you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, the thin story feels terribly stretched and often doesn’t make sense.

The emotion the Zucheros are trying to express and illustrate here is a deep, fathomless, infinite loneliness, and here and there, but more than once or twice, they hit their target.

You’d have to be passionately interested in the details of an Irish small town not to find “Small Things Like These” something of a slog.

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

From moment to moment, Rumours is almost entertaining. But for it to work, you pretty much have to root for it. The movie invites you not to enjoy it so much as to appreciate the effort.

It’s a pretty good movie that automatically goes up one full notch because of a single great scene, which is one more than most movies have.

What we’re left with is a movie that has good moments for all the actors, but which, through a series of tonal imprecisions, ends up seeming sour and pointless.

They can’t make “The Union” better than a genre movie, but they can make it better than a decent genre movie. Also, considering the fact that Berry is one of the most misused and underused major stars of the last two decades, any role that shows her screen personality to good advantage is probably worth a look.

It’s a line that all horror movies must walk. The characters must be stupid enough to get themselves into trouble, but not so stupid that we don’t start thinking of them in Darwinian terms. Somehow, “Cuckoo” stays on the right side of that line, but barely.

The new movie splits the difference between the horrible and the hilarious, with predictably lukewarm results. Still, the story is delicious enough to survive an earnest treatment.

Genre movies like “The Fabulous Four” can only be so good, but it’s pleasing enough to do its job.

It’s definitely not for everybody, but even a non-fan stumbling into the theater accidentally will find whole sections here to enjoy.

The last 15 minutes of “Twisters” are so much fun that they might easily convince viewers that they’ve seen a good movie. So this leaves you with a choice: Is it worth suffering through a boring hour and a so-so half hour, just to see an entertaining opening and a genuinely exciting finish? I know what I’d say (nope), but this is one you’ll have to decide for yourself.

Going into this movie, there was a question whether “Bad Boys” might just feel like entertainment from an earlier time, but instead it feels like a cozy return — at least as cozy as possible, given that the movie is extremely violent.

Ezra is an opportunity for Bobby Cannavale to show his abilities as a dramatic actor, but his performance is hampered by one thing: He plays an idiot.

The script is hopeless in both senses of the word, offering no hope and lacking in quality. But I enjoyed the two victims, at least until they started screaming, and appreciate the way director Renny Harlin creates a sense of menace by his choice of lenses and his placement of the camera.

It’s hard to know what Maiwenn was trying to accomplish here, besides giving herself a juicy and an entirely sympathetic historically-based role. She achieves that, and she’s good in the film — Maiwenn always is — but the “what’s the point of all this” question takes “Jeanne du Barry” down just a notch.

In the end, this is not really a World War II movie. It’s just a pretty good action film that borrows the plot from about three or four “Fast and Furious” movies, while stealing riffs from Tarantino.

Jones has many good moments, and “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is a decent remake of a decent movie.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

Most of the enjoyment of “American Dreamer” comes in watching Dinklage react to indignities and awkward moments.

If there’s one thing interesting about “Spaceman,” it’s how it demonstrates how a great actress’ essence — just the essence, not even the performance — can elevate a nothing part.

It’s true that “Dune 2” is as depressing as watching the news, but that doesn’t make it relevant, because it isn’t the news. It’s more like unnecessary self-torture, like watching a depressing newscast from another planet.

Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie.