Oktay Ege Kozak

Bateman and McAdams have some fun with the gonzo goofiness of the project, and milk a couple of comedy set-pieces—like one about a gunshot wound and a squeaky toy—but the flatness of their characters leaves no room for relatability.

Chances are that if you’re a big fan of the book series, you’ll be satisfied with this halfway competent but way overlong resolution to the saga.

[Barker's] film only tries to let us understand the constant and harsh pressures that people in such high positions of power go through daily, and that it does well enough.

Insidious: The Last Key certainly doesn’t rewrite the rules of the genre, but it’s a solid entry in a franchise I thought would have run out of steam by now, and you can certainly do a lot worse when it comes to an early January release.

Kasdan isn’t known for pulling off big budget action properties. He does his best here to create a kinetic pace, but the execution is always flat and dull.

Screenwriter Steven Rogers and director David Gillespie get an “A” for effort as far as their brave attempt to meld these wildly differing tones into a cohesive narrative, but their execution, as satisfying as it might be, too obviously reaches for a pedigree it hasn’t yet earned.

This being a Steven Spielberg joint, The Post can’t help but gradually bring heavy emotional tension to the film’s forefront, easing us moment by moment into a fairly manipulative yet exhilarating finale. None of that should come as a surprise: “Manipulative but exhilarating” might as well be the director’s calling card.

The problem with director and writer Hallie Myers-Sheyer’s film is that it just blandly presents all of the expected cliches of the genre without anything really new or unique to say.

Served Like a Girl manages to inform the audience about its important subject matter in an always engaging way while also telling an entertaining story with as many twists and turns as one might find in a fictionalized counterpart.

It’s a major step up for the filmmaker in both narrative and technical terms.

The Nut Job 2 actually contains some impressive animation, with photorealistic backgrounds and detailed fur dynamics on the characters, but that makes it an even bigger tragedy, since we know that untold hours were spent by artists in service of a product that even the least discerning child would find tired and useless.

You might have heard about ISIS using spiffy, Hollywood-style propaganda videos to attract new recruits, but City of Ghosts breaks down how nefarious and well-organized this operation is, as the members of RBSS point out the ways in which ISIS took clear production lessons from Hollywood to make their videos as attractive to impressionable youth as possible.

As much as I love to harp on Despicable Me 3’s lazy and cynical execution, this is a fairly inoffensive, zippy and colorful time-waster for the little ones.

Baywatch is a tonal mess of epic proportions.

Dead Men Tell No Tales doesn’t rewrite the rulebook for the franchise or the genre as a whole, and is wholly predictable from start to finish, but the likable characters—Thwaites and Scodelario have more natural presence and mutual chemistry than Bloom and Knightley—creative action set pieces, and Depp finally being put in his place in the franchise creates a fun ride that’s instantly forgettable. You know, like the ride itself.

Gay’s picture proves once again that one can construct a comedy out of such material, as long as one respects the subject matter and refrains from being gimmicky in order to feel edgy and cool.

All This Panic doesn’t offer any revolutionary approaches to this type of intimate documentary, and the subject matter might be too broad for some, but it makes up for its lack of originality with heart and genuine emotion.

The doc does an admirable job of giving pretty much equal screen time to hunters, conservationists, and other experts on all sides of the argument, even though it becomes pretty clear early on where the directors stand as far as their personal feelings on the subject are concerned.

Not only is Bobby Sands: 66 Days allows us to put together a great double feature with “Hunger,” it’s also an incredibly important and profoundly inspiring historical documentary that will become more and more relevant as we prepare to once again face the kinds of oppression that Sands fought against.

This isn’t merely “eating your cinematic vegetables,” as Kennebeck manages to present a well-paced and structured documentary that’s also culturally significant.

Peabody creates a briskly paced doc that cleverly uses interviews and archive footage in order to distill this complex subject into an easily digestible viewing experience.

An exceptionally well-executed and emotionally heart wrenching documentary.

Apart from assured direction and strong performances, “A Stray” succeeds because even though it’s about a specific cultural group in the United States, it manages to depict universal, relatable truths about the plight of those newly arrived in the country.

Even though it’s far from perfect, “Danny Says” is recommended to fans of punk and rock history.

If it came out in the ’90s, I.T. would have been a silly distraction. In this day and age, it’s a colossal waste of time, a 14K dial-up in the time of fiber optic.

Floyd Norman: An Animated Life is as joyful as its subject, and is heartily recommended to every artist who might have lost their way and are looking for some inspiration.

The People vs Fritz Bauer successfully uses the moral importance of its themes and the strength of its performances in order to build a riveting procedural that efficiently covers for its lack of visual pizzazz.

Even as a late night Netflix viewing for fashion aficionados who enjoy a scandalous bit of melodramatic trash, The Model doesn’t offer anything new, interesting, or engaging.