Peter Hartlaub

It’s smart and funny and makes great effort to capture not just a time and place, but the specific feelings of being on the verge of adulthood and thinking the world is against you.

Crown Heights is a challenging film with long treks between uplifting moments. And there’s no question the film earns every moment of grace.

Leap! is the kind of movie where if you see someone holding a stack of dishes, they will certainly break in the name of a lazy comedic moment.

The result is an unconventional and layered portrait of a complicated talent.

The Nut Job 2 isn’t maddening like “Smurfs 2,” where you continue to hate yourself years later for spending the money. It’s an adequate babysitter that completely fails to inspire.

The more an audience member sees the beauty left in the Buddhist leader’s wake, the more it becomes clear that his influence has the power to continue generations beyond his passing.

A movie for science fiction fans who wish every minute of “Star Wars” was the cantina scene.

This isn’t close to being a great movie. But if you don’t overthink it, there is some fun to be had in the grisly consequences.

Byrne is the furthest thing from being a manipulative filmmaker. But Raising Bertie is moving nonetheless.

It’s summer, weed is legal in California now and laughs are a scarce resource. You could do worse than Rough Night.

Like George Bailey, and the Cartwright family from “Bonanza” and other fictitious families, the real-life story of the Sungs is one of loyalty and adhering to their code, even as they face losing everything.

Captain Underpants is a very popular book series that doesn’t seamlessly translate to the big screen, and the filmmakers can’t solve this problem. The result is a cinematic wedgie: a little too dark, a little too nihilistic, a little too empty.

The “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series has been, at its core, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” without the rodents.

Whatever the numbers and whatever the broader entertainment trends, The Wall proves it’s good when big directors have the flexibility to make small projects.

The Chuck Wepner story is a compelling one — and the performances ensure its place as a sports movie contender.

Chasing Trane celebrates its subject with great passion, but it often feels like walking in late into a good party.

A charming and thoughtful movie, about people making a charming and thoughtful movie.

Like its lead characters, Going in Style just grooves along nicely, until the credits roll and you realize it was time well spent.

Smurfs: The Lost Village has the look of a film that was rushed, and made on a tight budget. At best, it’s an adequate cinematic babysitter.

It doesn’t help that there are strong similarities with Sony’s equally disorganized yet superior 2016 film “Storks.” Both films work off the same premise — that humans don’t bear live young.

We get a lot of hapless victims in an expensive endeavor that is surprisingly lifeless.

The Shack is unshakable in its religious message, and that’s admirable in a cynical world. But viewed objectively as cinema, it’s just not a very good film.

Logan takes its indestructible metal claws to comic book movie norms and destroys them, and it’s a wonderful thing.

Too lackluster to be praised highly, yet too benign to be excoriated, “Rock Dog” is the perfect family film for a rainy day with no other options. It does not deserve mention in any animation history book; and yet it’s completely satisfactory in the moment.

The film is a plodding 2 ½ hours long, with an abundance of livestock gore, endless dental trauma and a violent sex scene.

The Lego Batman Movie is less awesome than its predecessor, but it’s a clever, well-paced, self-aware and completely satisfying kind of less awesome.

A Dog’s Purpose is peril porn; the animal grows old or faces tragedy and expires over and over, reincarnating into a new dog with the same brain.