Mike Scott

It's all good, goofy fun.

Visually stunning.

It's easy to forget that you're watching a sci-fi film at all. That's because it's just a shade or two from not even being a sci-fi film.

It’s early yet, but “Challengers” is already among the best films of the year so far.

The result is a simple film -- one that doesn’t try to do too much from a story standpoint, perhaps to its detriment -- but one that has a definite sense of time and place. Every step of the way, it feels honest and genuine. In this case, that makes all the difference.

Beautifully shot, but terribly dull.

The problem is that the film must re-establish a great deal of mythology, much of which is already familiar to most moviegoers. Unfortunately, Webb's film never quite makes usshake the feeling that we've done all this before.

A very human story and a very well-told one -- which, in the end, makes it very hard to forget.

Is Premium Rush a two-wheeled "French Connection"? No, not by a long shot. (Although it does include a racing-beneath-the-el-train homage.) But when it comes to lightweight, synapse-free action fare, Premium Rush delivers.

A surprisingly embraceable courtroom drama.

Part "The Great Escape" and part "Lawrence of Arabia, " Weir's epic The Way Back is ambitious in scope, grand in vision and rich with examples of the resilience of the human spirit.

What sets Deadpool apart is its overall genre-busting tone, which blends a wealth of meta humor, the wisecracking Reynolds' significant skills with a one-liner, and a genuinely funny script that isn't afraid to offend anyone.

The music, of course, is the engine that makes the whole exercise go, tapping into a genre-spanning collection of tunes, but every bit as important to the film's success is its unexpected humor, which flirts with raunchy but stops juuuust short of crossing any lines that would have earned it an R rating.

Mary Poppins is Mary Poppins; magic is what she does best. And magic is precisely what she delivers in a film that is -- since we're borrowing so much from the 1964 original -- nothing short of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Billed as a dramatic comedy, and it lives up to that billing, even if it tends more toward chuckles than guffaws. In other words, one thing it's not is "It's Complicated," Streep's previous -- and often riotous -- relationship dramedy.

As she tells that story, Asante gets a little lost in the weeds here and there in the political machinations, which don't always make for a riveting narrative and tends to slow the film's forward momentum. Even as it does, the love story between Seretse and Ruth serves nicely as the film's foundation.

Unfortunately, Franklin isn't quite as successful at capturing the depth of the traditions for which Anaya's source material is so well known.

Making it even more intriguing is the fact that the whole thing is, extraordinarily, inspired by a true story.

There are some nice surprises in store, as well, but the longer Madden's story goes on, the more manufactured things tend to feel.

Mr. Malcolm’s List, like “Bridgerton,” is a highly enjoyable, low-calorie bit of cinematic frippery.

It's in the film's Africa-set scenes -- at the film's start and again in its closing 25 minutes or so -- when The Good Lie is at its best. This is where the story is at its most moving and rewarding.

For a movie about the value of memories, it won’t go down as particularly memorable. Ten or 15 years ago, its visual effects might have been something approaching stunning. Today, they — like the dialogue, the pacing and pretty much every other element of the film — are only just good enough to allow audiences to suspend their disbelief.

The result is a film that feels breezy at times, but also grounded in a sense of emotional honesty.

Parnassus is a cold film that delights in dancing along that fine line separating "fantastical" and "nonsensical." Then, when a movie is supposed to hit things home -- in that all-important third act -- it lands with a thud on the wrong side.

For her part, Stewart has Jett down pat: her strut, her slouch, her sexiness. This is a performance that goes far beyond Jett's shag haircut.

Along the way, Krokidas' story becomes a touch schizophrenic, at times a coming-of-age story, a love story, a crime drama and a literary drama. It's hard to say which it functions as best, as none are given too much time to germinate before Krokidas moves on to the next.

What Noyce and company don't seem to realize is that there's a huge difference between a superspy and a superhuman.

It's fun, and it's funny, and -- the best part -- it comes carrying a "yeehaw"-inducing sense of a treasure found.