Mick LaSalle

While the original was serious, Old Guard 2 is merely forlorn. Its story holds little interest and, to make matters worse, it doesn’t even end. Instead, it stops mid-story, promising a sequel that feels less like a promise than a threat.

In 1925, Charlie Chaplin released "The Gold Rush," his best film to date and one of the best he would ever make - or anyone would ever make.

Sweeney gives the movie its extra spark, its sense of occasion.

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

As suspense thrillers go, “Dangerous Animals” is as uncompromising as it gets. It doesn’t aspire to much, but it’s well-acted and well-written, looks great and full of surprises.

The movie goes to Vienna, to Egypt and to Italy and was probably more fun to make than watch.

Clown in a Cornfield will never be ranked among the classics of our time, but there are aspects of it that are worthy of admiration.

Hartnett is naturally engaging, and one can see why, with the movie plummeting to earth, the filmmakers might decide to pull the humor ripcord. But here it smells of desperation.

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.

It’s a wail of grief, an expression of love, a testament to the body. Cronenberg puts it all on the line here, and he gets his actors to put it all on the line with him. If you don’t feel its visceral charge, you’re not paying attention.

Drop is the kind of film that separates the real movie lover from the conditional movie lover. It is manipulative, fundamentally ridiculous, obvious, far-fetched, gut-level in its appeal and irresistible. As such, it embodies the true soul of movies.

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

When one performance in a movie is exceptional, you can credit the actor. But when everyone is great, it has to have at least something to do with the director. That’s the case with “Bob Trevino Like It,” which has three standout performances.

In retrospect, Levinson might secretly wonder if the bizarre casting was the right move after all. But at least he got strong performances from his lead actor, and he took a good script by Pileggi (“Goodfellas”) and made a good movie out of it. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Cleaner is a good-not-great thriller in the “Die Hard” mold that gets an extra lift from Campbell’s skillful direction and from Ridley, who is slowly but surely showing herself to be a performer of wide range and appeal.

The key to any Amy Schumer comedy is how often she gets to play self-delusion, embarrassment, fear and rage. As long as the emotions, terrors and humiliations are big, she’s funny, and her latest, “Kinda Pregnant,” gives her lots of opportunities to be funny.

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.

Back in Action is no comedy classic, but it’s a better than average excuse for getting back on the Cameron Diaz train.

Still, as Dylan biopics go, this is probably the best imaginable.

Mary is a fictionalized and heavily dramatized account of the life of the Virgin Mary, but the movie’s great and only pleasure is in watching Anthony Hopkins play King Herod as a homicidal maniac.

September 5 succeeds as a tense and involving film, at least partly because it makes the case that the tragedy, despite all its other consequences and ramifications, marked a signal moment in news broadcasting. It was the first time that a hostage drama played out on live television.

Maria, despite being occasionally slow, is a weird, good movie.

Gladiator II coasts: never good, never terrible, always a little disappointing, with speeches that fall flat and gladiator battles that are like watching the World Series when your team isn’t in it.

Either “Nightbitch” shouldn’t have been made or its premise should have been transformed and built upon.

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg has invented a new genre we can call “the Kieran Culkin movie.”

The film is a showcase for a talented ensemble of Black actors, not the least of whom is Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Doaker, an older, mellow wise man.

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.

Juror #2 is very much the work of an engaged, sensitive director — a series of tight, focused scenes informed by strong performances. There’s something classical about it, old-fashioned in the best way, like a 1974 Coupe de Ville or a 1962 Buick Electra. It’s a smooth, solid ride.