Moira Macdonald

The time-travel element gets awfully twisty, perhaps a little too much so. But there’s great pleasure to be had in the performances, particularly Green’s deliciously avian Miss Peregrine.

It’s a film that effectively combines two distinct — and very different — pleasures.

The filmmakers have described Band of Robbers as fan fiction, and that feels about right: They don’t quite hit the mark, but it’s fun to watch them trying.

The Fall Guy isn’t a perfect movie; it’s longer and a bit more self-aware than it needs to be, and not every joke lands. But it has that rare quality in a big-studio film: a sense of fun.

The film’s strength is its cast, and each of them finds moments of truth.

The Intervention feels confident and accomplished: The cast immediately seems to bond as a group, with each playing a distinctive, recognizable character. And as the camera becomes a discreet ninth guest, you quickly find that you care about these people.

The cast is a likable bunch, and I can see how Tag might go down nicely with a couple of beers beforehand; it’s definitely funny in spots, in a we’re-making-this-up-as-we-go-along sort of way.

Filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton (“Short Term 12”) can’t quite find that magical balance that Walls hits, and tilts the story too far toward sentiment.

You wish Perkins would have shown up with his red pencil during the screenwriting stage, when he might have done some good.

The film is an absolute triumph for Adams, who attacks her role like — yes, sorry — a dog with a bone.

The movie zips along quickly, full of popcorn-worthy moments.

French Exit isn’t without its pleasures; but you watch it dreaming of the movie it might have been.

Though I’d have preferred Fast X to have a little more driving and a little less fighting, and was disappointed to realize that the film’s climactic moment is pretty much in the trailer, this movie is good, silly popcorn fun — with a couple of scenes at the end (stay put during the first half of the credits) indicating even better times ahead.

It’s predictable — throughout the film, I kept thinking that I’d seen it before — and a bit sentimental, yet thoroughly pleasant.

While the perpetually charming Lawrence isn’t the worst habit a filmmaker can develop, she’s valiantly miscast here in a story that never quite hits its mark.

The movie murmurs, when it — and others — should be shouting.

This Wuthering Heights is a mess, but an occasionally irresistible one.

Unfortunately, Money Monster, though perfectly competent, is one of those movies that promises more than it delivers.

The night after I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once I had a dream, in which I took a journey that was chaotic and messy and strangely beautiful. I suspect that dream was heavily flavored by the movie I had just seen, which also fit that description. The dream quickly faded, as dreams do, but the movie is staying with me, turning over and over in my head like stones in a kaleidoscope, ever-shifting.

Megalopolis is a misfire from the start.

Sky, despite its Hitchcockian beginning, is no thriller; instead, it’s a character study of a woman seeking a second act, and of a landscape that gradually transforms from foreign to welcoming.

As a movie, The Good Liar is just so-so, but as a master class in performance and star quality, it’s a pleasure.

Cézanne et Moi sounds more fascinating than it actually is; essentially, it’s just under two hours of exquisitely art-directed conversation, little of which is especially compelling.

The plot’s a mess, the run time is overlong and ultimately the movie feels like a slew of good actors trapped in a gorgeous place, wearing beautiful clothes and gazing at the impossibly blue water.

Despite the twee being occasionally laid on too thick, Goodbye Christopher Robin is ultimately a pleasant enough wallow in British childhood.

While Eddie the Eagle feels formulaic and overstuffed with weirdly random scenes...it’s still a charmer.

Fackham Hall is a pleasantly silly diversion for “Downton Abbey” fans with a tolerance for raunchy sight gags and bad puns.

The Boys in the Boat is ultimately a tribute to a time long gone, to the power of teamwork, and to the grace with which an oar dips into the water on a sun-dappled lake.

Greta is a disappointment from Jordan, who’s made far better movies (“The Crying Game,” “The End of the Affair” and, more recently, the elegant vampire film “Byzantium”), but Huppert seizes hold of the film and chills it, in a way that’s both shiver-inducing and bracing.

Colman, on whose face the film frequently rests (does anyone in cinema have a more open, guileless smile?), quietly holds the drama in her hands. Her Hilary is fragile, yet touchingly determined to will herself toward the light.

The Dead Don’t Die isn’t just deadpan — it’s dead.

Its message is of a young woman’s empowerment, and of how love can save a family — and if the special effects sometimes overwhelm that message (such as a glorious field of flowers that takes flight in a colorful frenzy), it rings through loud and clear by the end.

A film is a different experience from a book, and the movie “It Ends With Us” doesn’t really bring us inside Lily’s head; it simply leaves us puzzled and horrified.

Book Club is very silly and feather-light, but let me say this: Spending time with this quartet is way more fun than reading “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

It’s a promising but uneven debut, not quite worthy of its star.

You keep waiting for the film to come together, for Rick to emerge as a character rather than a cipher, for the women to seem less interchangeable — in short, for a point to it all. By its end, I was still waiting.

How you feel about the psychological thriller Insider may depend on how you feel about spending the better part of two hours staring nonstop at Willem Dafoe.

There are pleasures to be found in Renfield, particularly a stylish black-and-white sequence early on, and in Hoult’s wistfully debonair portrayal of a well-meaning chap trapped in a job he never applied for. But even with its brief running time, the movie runs out of steam too quickly, and Awkwafina’s character in particular seems like a first draft

The movie isn’t terrible, but too often it feels Hollywood-bland; a missed opportunity, served neat.

Yes, this is a standard rom-com, in all the best of ways — both playing with the genre’s well-trodden tropes, and letting us enjoy how much fun they can be.

Much as I’d like to love a movie that encompasses ballet, spectacular hotel rooms, a Mary-Louise Parker drunk scene, and Rampling standing grimly in the snow like an unbreakable icicle, the movie’s focus on sexual violence against Lawrence’s character ultimately feels repellent.

Someday, someone will pair up Johansson and Tatum in a better movie. In the meantime, watch this one with low expectations, and dream.

Rockwell and Kendrick, both of whom can really sell this film’s brand of laid-back quirk, keep things lively.

The Lodgers is never particularly scary, or even logical, but it’s always gorgeous to look at; you can see where it’s going, but you might not mind watching it go there.

While Poirot is always witty, few of the other characters are. Michael Green’s screenplay often feels weirdly detached, like we missed some crucial early scenes that tell us why we should care about these people. All that said, it’s no great hardship to watch Death on the Nile; it looks pretty, feels pleasantly old-school and is over within shouting distance of the two-hour mark.

It’s a long sit, but a day later I find myself still thinking about Chan’s quiet, mesmerizing presence at the film’s center, and how Zhao had the confidence to let that performance speak so softly. It’s a different kind of superhero movie; not to everyone’s taste, but made for us all.

A cheerily uneven but enjoyable adaptation of Agatha Christie’s blockbuster novel.

The blend of Johnson’s laid-back hero-dudeness and Hart’s whippet-fast comic timing should have been good fun. But somebody, alas, had an idea, though not a good one: Make Johnson the comedian and Hart the straight man.

It’s all quite wistfully romantic, and mostly winningly so, despite the sometimes wise-way-beyond-their-years dialogue and not always plausible plot.

It’s odd that Guadagnino clearly wanted to make a movie that people would talk about, but doesn’t seem quite sure of what he wanted it to say.

While it’s often great fun to look at, “Crimes of Grindelwald” fails at what should be Rowling’s great strength: storytelling. Three more to go, and an infusion of magic is desperately needed.

Everything, Everything is watchable and not unpleasant, in its moony way, thanks to the chemistry of two leads, both of whom exude a genuine sweetness in the face of an absurd plotline.

The action, aside from the cloudy 3D, looks impressive (particularly the destruction of the Sydney Opera House), and X-Men: Apocalypse moves along tidily, but you watch thinking that all this used to be a lot more fun.

Even the heavenly chorus that’s working overtime on the soundtrack can’t drown out the lack of chemistry between Howard and Pratt. And the movie too often defaults to people running around screaming — which is, to be fair, the backbone of this franchise, but it gets awfully old here.

Horror comedy, alas, is a tricky balance, and making a movie dance on a unicorn’s horn is trickier still; this one clearly needed a little more unicorn dust.

Skyscraper, which lacks the lunkheaded charm of “Rampage,” isn’t the ideal vehicle — its special effects are murky (I saw it in 2D; it’s probably even muddier in 3D), and a bit of wit wouldn’t have been unwelcome. Nobody in this film has a personality; they’re just evil, stoic, mildly badass (particularly Neve Campbell, as Will’s resourceful wife) or The Rock.

It’s a haunting, heartbreaking story, told by a movie that never quite makes a case for itself to exist.

While the first “Grinch” I will always adore It’s possible that there’s still room for one more. Hearing the Who’s sing their songs to the skies — It’s still movie magic, whatever the size.

The film feels long and slow, and the subject matter familiar. We never quite get caught up in it, despite the appealing cast; a thriller directed at a snail's pace simply isn't very thrilling.

Like Bernadette, the movie’s lost; you’ll need to read the book to truly find her.

You can imagine how other filmmakers might approach this — it’s a beautifully cinematic story — but no one else would film it quite as Malick has. This quiet, meditative and very deliberate film (nearly three hours long, though not a great deal happens) is at once historical drama, love story and ode to nature.

You’ve seen this cheery, slapdash blend of raunch, cocktails and summer dresses before.

As you have probably seen a movie or two before, you know where this is going. But Lopez’s glossy sweetness and Wilson’s dad-jokes charm blend amiably together, and Marry Me glides along smoothly, full of pop songs and earnestness and very expensive-looking hair.

Adams, six Academy Award nominations later, still sings and dances like a Technicolor dream, and this time around she gets to have some fun as not only the ultra-sweet Giselle, whose voice sounds like butterflies and sunrises, but an evil alter ego.

Its central characters never find much chemistry — Clarke’s Kate is a one-note character, which is one note more than Golding’s character gets — and I left Last Christmas with many, many questions, none of which I can share here without giving away too much. The elf costume, though? Just right.

Ultimately, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is never quite as much fun as you expect it to be, particularly when Pike isn’t on screen. Despite a character intoning that we all “need magic more than ever,” this movie didn’t have enough of it.

DaCosta whisks us through the story with plenty of wit, particularly from Kamala’s family.

Of all the stories in all the world to remake on the big screen, why “Snow White”?

It’s an agreeably generic mishmash of every old-guys-pull-one-last-heist movie you’ve ever seen.

Is After the Wedding a great movie? No, not especially. Are these two women treasures of cinema? Absolutely.

Ticket to Paradise is all about the welcome sight of a pair of movie stars who know exactly what to do with their wattage.

A character, even when he’s played by Woody Harrelson, is not a movie.

The film’s better than you’d expect from a late-summer offering, mostly due to a strong cast led by the great Oyelowo.

What we have here is mostly a straight-up, mildly raunchy rom-com, where everyone learns lessons and gets a happy ending. But Shankman gives it all an agreeable bounce, and Henson (better known for dramatic roles, in “Hidden Figures,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and TV’s “Empire”) zestfully dives into the comedy.

Except for its songs, Bohemian Rhapsody too quickly becomes forgettable; something the real-life man at its center, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1991 at the age of 45, never was. Watch the real footage; you’ll see.

Despite this rich emotional material (not to mention some gloriously shabby drawing rooms), the film feels surprisingly dull and conventional — two things its heroine most definitely was not.

Amsterdam is not entirely without small pleasures: Emmanuel Lubezki’s sepia-toned cinematography is lovely to look at, and it’s fun to play spot-the-movie-star with the talented cast, and to note with pleasure how Washington’s scratched-velvet voice sounds so much like that of his father Denzel. But ultimately it’s a big disappointment.

I enjoyed Downhill purely for Louis-Dreyfus’ performance; we don’t get to see the “Veep” star on the big screen very often, so why not revel in her talent when we get the chance? As an exhausted working mom unable to keep from micromanaging the vacation — and a wife suddenly questioning her choices — she’s funny and moving and utterly believable in every moment.

But Martin — who at age 10 came up with and pitched the idea for this movie (she’s now 14) — carries this movie on her small, resolute shoulders.

Powell’s charm, along with some fun rich-person interiors (there’s a library near the end that gives a stellar performance), does a lot to get “How to Make a Killing” to the finish line. But you may well lose interest, as I did, before the murder countdown concludes; this one feels more like a rough draft than a truly well-thought-out movie.

The Greatest Showman isn’t interested in tiny stories or character or nuance; it’s about being the biggest. In doing so, it becomes strangely small; like a magician’s rabbit, it quickly disappears.

Paris Can Wait isn’t exactly a feast, but it’s a snack worth having.

Vikander doesn’t have much to play, script-wise, but she makes a tough, appealing action star.

Girl on the Train isn’t likely to haunt its shivering viewers the way the “Gone Girl” movie did. Blunt, however, makes the ride well worth taking.

The sweet-natured rom-com I Feel Pretty has a well-meaning message, but it gets lost in the telling.

In the hands of lesser actors I shudder to think of what a slog The Mountain Between Us might be, with its endless catastrophes and near-deaths and melodramatic declarations. But Winslet — who gets her own superhero moment near the end — and Elba are so likable and charismatic together, they just about sell it.

Ultimately, Haunted Mansion feels like the ghost of a movie — just a fleeting shadow, one you can barely remember in the morning.

Ultimately, this “Fantastic Beasts” has some moments of charm and energy, but falls prey to the same problem the two previous movies did: a story that’s both too complicated and unintriguing; in short, not well told.

If Verbinski could have trimmed about an hour from the film (which weighs in at a portly 146 minutes), he might have had something.

It’s just a bad movie; a flat melodrama in which some lovely camerawork and a ferocious central performance from Winslet can’t conceal the rote tiredness of it all.