Neil Genzlinger

We’re left once again feeling we’ve had only a glimmer of illumination on a vexingly complex problem.

The film, directed by Michael Mailer, wanted to be a steamy romance, but it ended up leaden and occasionally laughable.

The cast is surely capable of sharper comedy, but Will Raee, who directed, doesn’t get everyone on the same page. Ms. Cardellini and Ms. Schaal offer cardboard caricatures, while Mr. Ulrich, among others, plays it mostly straight.

The fifth Transformers movie, The Last Knight, is far from the worst in this continuing experiment in noisy nonsense based on Hasbro toys. That is thanks largely to two words: Anthony Hopkins.

Certainly the journey of Rachel Flowers, a blind musician and composer, is impressive, but Hearing Is Believing, a documentary about her, doesn’t put enough effort into giving her tale depth and context.

The movie tries for propulsive Tarantino grit but ends up being just another annoying example of Hollywood’s addiction to stories in which graying white men bed beautiful young women and beat up men much more youthful and fit than they are.

It’s hard to root for a protagonist who is focused only on his own narrow needs and seems indifferent to the broader issues his tale raises.

If the conclusion doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, you’re way too cynical.

If Mr. Martin’s take on grief is facile, the movie overall is a pleasant trip, and Dean’s doodles — by Mr. Martin himself — are a treat.

The best animated movies for children are sublime. This one generally settles for noisy, though it throws in a positive message at the end.

You may find this sparse film maddeningly elusive, but chances are you’ll come out of it with your head spinning, in a good way.

With a pair of irresistible leads and a straightforward love-overcomes-adversity story, Everything, Everything scores a direct hit on the teenage-girl market. Others might find it pretty enjoyable as well.

Unfortunately, the fresh blood has been saddled with a tired story, the family road trip that goes outlandishly awry, and the result is another forgettable film.

It’s not an easy movie to embrace, but it lingers.

Things meander along to the inevitable blowup scene and a too-easy ending in which all is forgiven and personal growth has occurred, though not for the viewing audience.

If Urban Hymn starts with that familiar dynamic, it stays surprisingly fresh thanks to three fine performances and a willingness to be uncompromising.

Cars could easily have been the stars of Lowriders, but the film makes them supporting players in a family drama that’s a mix of strong scenes and shopworn ones punctuated by clichés.

Ray is courageous just for making the decision to change sexes. The film — which, by the way, includes a surprising amount of droll humor — would be better if it trusted the audience to recognize this, rather than piling ordeals worthy of the Labors of Hercules onto its protagonist.

Parts of it work, but the overall package is never really suspenseful enough to have you on edge or overtly funny enough to be a lark.

It meanders from start to finish, searching for a tone that it never quite finds.

It’s a study of courageous innovation against an entrenched medical orthodoxy.

Mr. Bezmozgis creates a disturbing portrait of a girl turned calculating and nihilistic by her upbringing, and there is no coyness here.

Here, both the director (Denise Di Novi) and the writer (Christina Hodson) are women, yet that doesn’t translate into a reimagining of the tired formula.

The narrative, read by John Krasinski, is kid-friendly in a cloying sort of way, and unpleasant realities like China’s pollution are not mentioned. So as an introduction for children to exotic creatures in picturesque landscapes, the movie is harmless enough.

It avoids the big confrontation or grand statement; doing so allows it to be an effective, if somewhat uneventful, study of the Brooklyn bubble effect.

Over all, the movie, directed by Dan Harris and featuring name actors like Kal Penn and Janeane Garofalo in small roles, has a focus problem that leaves its humorous moments obscured and its intentions hazy.

It’s strictly comfort food, 99 percent predictable, though the 1 percent that isn’t — you’ll know it when you see it — is deftly executed.

The animated feature The Boss Baby has some hilarious moments. If, that is, you’re a grown-up.

The story stays intriguing for much of the way, but eventually things cease to make sense.

When it’s not being overly promotional, it can be interesting.

The Ottoman Lieutenant is an overwrought nurse romance merged with a history lesson, a combination that is hard to take as seriously as the film wants to be taken.

Enjoyable performances keep the tale from becoming too heavy-handed.

A bit more editing to remove some of the airiness would have made for a better film.

The actors do nice work before things derail.

The title character of Rock Dog isn’t likely to end up on anyone’s Top 5 list of animated heroes, but the film does have a thoroughly enjoyable rocker in it. And an appealingly nasty wolf, too.

The vivid recollections of the attack by survivors, including Mr. Hughes, take over the film midway through, and the friendship story line never quite re-establishes itself.

The writer, Joe Johnson, and directors, Damien Macé and Alexis Wajsbrot, have a few surprises, but not enough to make this anything other than a formulaic story of teenagers behaving badly and getting what’s coming to them.

The journey could be a bit more eventful, but the payoff is charming.

This film doesn’t find any fresh ways to make you jump out of your seat. Ms. Lutz is appealing, though, and fans of the franchise will probably be pleased with the elaboration. Too many horror sequels are content merely to recycle what worked the first time.

The movie has a roughly equal number of clumsy moments and sweet ones.

The story may not stay with you, but don’t be surprised if you come away with a strong desire to visit Florence.

You don’t need an animal-rights group’s boycott to give you permission to avoid A Dog’s Purpose. You can skip it just because it’s clumsily manipulative dreck.

The threads may not all be original, but they’re kept nicely distinct. Rather than awkwardly intertwining, they merely brush up against one another.

Mr. Brook and Ms. Wells are in a sense not documenting a controversy at all; they are capturing an endemic, heartbreaking defeatism.

If you prefer to view dying as a natural part of life, a step in a cycle, this film will feel discordant and perhaps counterproductive. But visually it will certainly stick with you, and your children.

The film, by Justin Bare and Matthew Miele, would be better if it spent less time gushing about how great Mr. Benson is and more time confronting some of the questions his approach raises.

Mr. Rains, Ms. Leo and Mr. Franco are all so interesting that you wish they had more to bite into. But the film has a transfixing quality nonetheless.

Getting retro right is harder than it seems.

Sometimes the movie, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, is too obviously just a framework for its stars to deploy goofy schtick, but the overall package is naughty, inappropriate fun.

Ms. Smith does not fit easily into any box, and neither does this thought-provoking film.

The film, directed by Gregg Bishop and released by the Chiller Films horror factory, has a few good special effects, but it’s too noisy and scattershot to be suspenseful.

An assured and thoughtful debut.

Underappreciated occupations deserve better than the cliché-clogged, utterly predictable Life on the Line, a terrible movie about the workers who keep the electrical grid functioning.

The movie sweeps you along with a brisk pace and even dashes of humor.

The film may be one-sided, but if nothing else, it is a reminder that the “coal equals jobs” equation is a serious oversimplification.

The film, directed by Mario Van Peebles, brays the story in broad strokes and clichés as if the horror of it didn’t speak for itself, which it most certainly does.

It’s a smart, understated sex comedy, a description that suggests a certain maturity. You’d never suspect it was the first feature from its director, Robert Schwartzman.

At this point no documentarian can possibly have a fresh take on climate change, right? Wrong. The Anthropologist, a stealthily insightful film by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger, improbably mixes that topic with a mother-daughter story to produce a distinctive study of change and human adaptability.

My Dead Boyfriend desperately tries to look and sound like a quirky indie hit, but that’s not an achievable goal when you have an unlikable lead character indifferently rendered by a name star.

Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but the script, by Sheldon Cohn and Gary Wolfson, is tepid stuff, and Michael Manasseri, the director, doesn’t find a way to enliven it.

Some of the frights work reasonably well; and Ms. Ferland is convincing. But there aren’t enough surprises or innovations to make this one stand out in the sea of horror fare that comes along this time of year.

It’s a net broadly cast and woven of implications rather than of indisputable evidence, but — especially given the tobacco industry’s credibility problems — you’ll probably be inclined to think there’s some truth to the film’s allegations.

Cristin Milioti (“How I Met Your Mother”) is so quirkily endearing in the lead role that she makes it easy to just go with the airy tale.

The film wants to spur individual changes in behavior, but there’s a fair amount in it that might discourage you from even trying.

The director, Mike Flanagan, who with Jeff Howard also wrote the script, demonstrates rare patience for horror fare as he builds toward the macabre.

Mr. Moore has basically made an earnest but not very entertaining pro-Clinton campaign film, occasionally funny, momentarily heartfelt when he takes up the subject of universal health care and the lives lost for lack of it. Against the rest of his work (“Bowling for Columbine,” “Roger & Me”) it’s fairly tepid stuff.

The movie isn’t interested in fully developed characters, just carnage.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day is usually pretty appealing when he dabbles in acting, and he’s appealing again in Ordinary World. But after a promising start the script lets him down, and the film turns into a predictable midlife-crisis yarn.

The film is at its best when it’s in parody mode, though it keeps that card too close to the vest for much of its two-hour length. The humor, not the monster, is what you’re left wanting more of.

This film isn’t content to be merely a “never forget” reminder; it wants to convey just how deep and lasting the pain is, from this attack and, by extension, many others.

The title character is a child, but two adult actors, Kathy Bates and Glenn Close, really give The Great Gilly Hopkins its considerable heart. This movie, though uneven, is affecting because of these two reliable stars.

To make the premise of a 30-year-old who acts like a 15-year-old work, Mr. Pollak has made everyone else in the film act like a 15-year-old, too. It doesn’t quite click.

The frosty landscapes have a subtle beauty, pale and sometimes shrouded in mist, giving the film a very different look from what often comes out of the big studios — somber, which is appropriate to the story.

The film doesn’t unearth anything that hasn’t already been voiced, and it could use more details on the scope of the phenomenon. But with more police shootings in the headlines just in the past few days, it’s nothing if not timely.

Seed: The Untold Story is one of those documentaries that get you riled up about a situation but leave you feeling that nothing significant can be done about it.

This film, directed by Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland, is a harmless enough way to occupy a youngster for an hour and a half. It’s just not especially rich in extraordinary characters or moments.

John Moore, the director, and Dan Kay and William Wisher, the screenwriters, don’t have anything new to add to that familiar dynamic.

Everybody involved with the awful comedy Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?... owes Aristophanes an apology. It’s one thing to borrow a guy’s premise; it’s quite another to transform it into something this unwatchable.

The way to watch is to ignore the image burnishing and just feel the moment.

The film effectively recreates the sense of confusion over how to try to contain the leak and what might happen if the fuel ignited.

There’s not an ounce of suspense in any of this, because you’ve seen it all before, and the director, Jon Cassar, seems uninterested in veering from the well-established formula.

Ms. Ryan’s muted approach may be what we’ve come to expect of looks back at this period — nostalgia always comes with a lot of browns and grays, and with plenty of voice-over (in this case, Marcus’s letters to Homer). But she executes the formula well.

Every new generation has to learn the lesson: Comedy success on the small screen doesn’t guarantee the same on the big screen. If anything, it guarantees the opposite.

It’s not clear whether The 9th Life of Louis Drax is deliberately inconsistent or merely an example of confused filmmaking. One thing is certain, however: It sure leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.

Skiptrace settles for a warmed-over plot, tedious fight sequences and humor that’s heavy on crotch jokes and pratfalls.

Mr. Morelli mixes live-action and animated scenes to good effect. He doesn’t have time to give his characters depth, but there’s pleasure in figuring out how they connect and pondering the movie’s modest themes.

Too much happens too quickly in The Hollars for the story to be credible, but the film has some likable qualities, among them the fun of seeing actors in unexpected roles.

Revenge is the theme and cheeky is the tone of In Order of Disappearance, a delicious Norwegian film full of icy landscapes and icier hearts.

Nate’s journey is used primarily to show us the variations in extremist groups and how they might accomplish something drastic like set off a dirty bomb; his inner turmoil takes a back seat. The movie works just fine as a straightforward thriller, though.

The effort is commendable, but the execution is rocky.

[Todd Phillips] delivers an entertaining tale, especially when one or both men have to travel from their home base in Florida to overseas hot spots to correct their ineptitude.

Mr. Matthiesen seems as if he might have been trying to make an indictment of sexism and exploitation in the fashion world, but if so he doesn’t hit the theme nearly hard enough.

Ms. Streep is a delight, hilarious when she’s singing and convincingly on edge at all times.

The film, derivative (see “The Shaggy Dog” of 2006) and devoid of wit, is about that tiredest of kid-movie clichés, the parent who is too busy for his children and must be taught a lesson.

Maris Curran had plenty of opportunities to insert a cheesy plot twist into “Five Nights in Maine,” her delicate drama about loss and its aftermath. Yet she stayed true to her intentions, and the result is a believable character study that may not draw crowds but certainly challenges its two lead actors.

The story in Tallulah sometimes strains credulity, but it’s beautifully told and acted.

Maybe expecting a horror film to have a point is expecting too much. In any case, the two actresses give committed performances on the way to a veiled ending.

The documentary Can We Take a Joke?, a one-sided look at a multisided issue, does a fine job of defending a comic’s right to perform incendiary material. It would be better if it also at least acknowledged the possibility that some jokes ought not be told.