Richard Roeper

Unlocked has the DNA of many a 21st century late summer release: It’s a well-made but terribly uneven film that’s been sitting on a shelf for two years, despite the credentials of the veteran director and a star-studded cast.

What could have been a great B-movie winds up being merely solid.

Overall it’s a lovely and refreshingly breezy adventure with an adorably plucky lead, an infectious soundtrack and arresting visuals.

Marjorie Prime sounds like the title of a British miniseries, but is in fact one of the strangest, most disturbing and most thought-provoking films of 2017.

Aubrey Plaza is a sensation as Ingrid, who is alternately charming and sad and pathetic and absolutely insane. Plaza has a unique and magnetic screen presence that creates great empathy, even when she’s portraying a mostly off-putting character.

Good Time is a hallucinatory and often gripping one-night stand of mishaps, mayhem and madness. Ultimately, though, the sometimes clever story runs out of steam and limps across the finish line, and the in-your-face characters and camerawork, not to mention the in-your-ears score, left me not all that involved and a bit exhausted.

There’s nothing and no one to like in The Hitman’s Bodyguard. This is one loud, generic, forgettable late summer action flick.

Logan Lucky is great fun and one of the most purely entertaining movies of the year.

Macdonald is an absolute force as the twentysomething Patricia Dombrowski, who wakes up every morning determined and upbeat, even though her life path already looks to be a series of dead ends.

It’s a well-made film with strong performances, and it by no means shies away from some of the more shocking and tragic episodes from Jeannette’s upbringing. But when “The Glass Castle” reaches for late-movie moments of closure and self-revelations and forgiveness...it rings sour and false.

This is about the residents of Ferguson, who reacted to the killing of Michael Brown by galvanizing a movement on the streets of their town and via social media. They knew the whole world was watching, and they had seized the opportunity to tell their stories.

Writer-director Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River is a stark and beautiful and haunting 21st century Western thriller, filled with memorable visuals and poetic dialogue — and scenes of sudden, shocking, brutal violence.

Holland does fine work as the novice, but it’s Bernthal who owns the screen as The Mute, who will protect the relic and his brothers at all costs. It’s fiercely effective work.

"Brigsby” wins the day thanks in large part to the sharp and original screenplay, and the uniformly fine work from one of the more interesting casts of the year.

Directed in disjointed and sometimes unfocused fashion by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is nonetheless worth a viewing, if only for the continued, irrefutable, scientifically sound reminders that humankind continues to harm the planet in shocking and sobering ways.

As Karla turns into Super Mom, brushing off multiple car accidents and more than one attempt on her life, Kidnap provides some easy applause-getting moments but grows increasingly over-the-top.

The cinematography has a washed-out, dull tone. The special effects are mediocre. With a few exceptions, the dialogue is stilted and filled with expository passages so obviously intended to explain things to us, I half-expected characters to turn to the camera and say, “Here’s what you need to know so you can understand what’s happening.”

Score is a straightforward film told in relatively broad strokes.

Landline is a very funny film about people dealing with very serious situations.

This is an astonishingly uninvolving and at times almost laughably melodramatic effort, marred by overwrought voice-over narration from Theron, a relentless barrage of scenes depicting horrific human suffering and a love story featuring one-dimensional characters we don’t particularly care about.

Punch kick stab shoot. Borrow from “Bourne” and Bond. Rinse and repeat. This is the recipe for the quite ridiculous, ultra-violent and deliriously entertaining Atomic Blonde.

Arriving in theaters almost exactly 50 years since the Detroit riots of late July 1967, Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is a searing, pulse-pounding, shocking and deeply effective dramatic interpretation of events in and around the Algiers Motel.

The blood-soaked potboiler First Kill is Generous Pour through and through, from Bruce Willis playing a cop for the umpteenth time in his career to the old switcheroo we can see coming a mile away to the pounding and overwrought score to some genuinely effective detours and subplots.

The characters in Girls Trip aren’t always three-dimensional and their actions aren’t always completely believable — but even in their worst moments, their humanity shines through and they are consistently likable.

Sure, the pricey special effects are impressive to behold (though, as usually the case, the 3D is nothing to text home about). And yes, at times “Valerian” creates a strange and beautiful universe. Which ultimately means nothing, because the plot is paper-thin.

Nolan has crafted a tight, gripping, deeply involving and unforgettable film that ranks about the best war movies of the decade.

Baldwin and Moore generate genuine heat and chemistry together, even in some ridiculous moments.

True, The Little Hours is essentially a one-joke comedy — but most of the jokes under the umbrellas of that one joke are pretty damn, I mean darn, funny.

Roughly 60 percent of A Ghost Story is disturbingly beautiful and spiritually challenging and stuck to me like a memory magnet. About 40 percent of A Ghost Story is maddeningly still and achingly self-conscious and just a little too pleased with itself.

Serkis is brilliant and memorable and sometimes absolutely heartbreaking as Caesar. The supporting players excel, with each getting a moment or two in the sun.

Hickok is not without its corny, borderline-cheesy moments of fun — but it eventually loses steam due to the increasingly cliché-riddled story developments, not to mention the awkwardly edited shootouts that sometimes make it seem as if the combatants filmed their scenes on separate days.

The best thing about Spider-Man: Homecoming is Spidey is still more of a kid than a man. Even with his budding superpowers, he still has the impatience, the awkwardness, the passion, the uncertainty and sometimes the dangerous ambition of a teenager still trying to figure out this world.

Despite the pairing of the eminently likable and talented Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler as the leads, and about a dozen recognizable (and usually funny) supporting players, The House is a fetid, cheap-looking, depressing and occasionally even mean-spirited disaster.

It is funny and smart and wise and silly, it is romantic and sweet and just cynical enough, and it is without a doubt one of the best romantic comedies I have seen in a long time.

The 1971 version of The Beguiled was blunt and overheated and a little bit nuts. The 2017 edition is more sophisticated and nuanced — but it’s still a little bit nuts.

It all works. All of it. The music, the performances, the twists and turns in the plot, the sheer energy and life force of the movie.

The greatly gifted and consistently eccentric writer-director Bong Joon Ho’s Okja is an uneven but never complacent mix of fantastic fairy tale; social satire; heavy-handed commentary on corporate greed and our consumer-crazed culture, and bizarro action film.

The talented writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour raises the crazy stakes with a well-made, sometimes darkly funny and at times bizarrely entertaining film that eventually falls apart due to directorial self-indulgence, excessive grotesquery, a bloated running time, too many half-baked messages—and let’s not forget the distractingly campy appearances by Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey.

Maudie is one of the most beautiful and life-affirming and uplifting movies of the year, capable of moving us to tears of appreciation for getting to know the title subject.

All Eyez On Me is enthralling, exhilarating and at times maddening.

At times it’s funny as hell. At other times it’s pretty much a disaster. But it never commits the crime of being tedious.

Beatriz at Dinner is entertaining enough as farce — but over the course of a feature-length film, the characters actually become more one-dimensional and less believable.

Thanks in large part to Elliott (and Offerman and Prepon and Ritter, among others), The Hero survives some bumpy, well-worn clichés.

Rough Night doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s also “Painfully Unfunny Night,” “Contrived Night,” “Unsurprising Plot Twist Night” and also, “How Do These Dimwits Ever Make It Through Any Night”?

Cars 3 is a lovely, clever and entertaining generational tale with tons of heart, a simple and effective storyline, wonderful candy-colored visuals and winning voice work from the talented cast of returning regulars and welcome newcomers.

In this haunting, darkly funny and elegiac mood piece, Cranston once again displays a nearly unparalleled ability to make us like and care about men who are selfish and impetuous and reckless — yet still seem to have a core of decency buried deep within.

That’s when It Comes at Night is most effective — when we’re trying to figure out these characters and what exactly is creating those weird noises and jolting thumps beyond the locked doors.

The Mummy is so wall-to-wall awful, so cheesy, so ridiculous, so convoluted, so uninvolving and so, so stupid.

Kate Mara delivers one of the best performances of her career in the title role.

On the stage, it could be a powerful and moving work. As a movie, it’s a sometimes effective but more often tedious history lesson.

Writer-director Martin does a stellar job of balancing sketch-comedy style laughs with genuinely touching moments.

Director Patty Jenkins’ origin story is packed with heart and empathy, and we have Gadot’s endearing performance to thank for that — but it’s also a byproduct of the timeline.

It’s deliberately over the top, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some observers say Pitt made huge miscalculations in his acting choices with the result being the worst performance of his career — but I found it to be a brazenly effective piece of work, well-suited to the material.

The twist on top of the twist was so amateurish, so hacky, so insulting to the viewer, I’m already thinking about apologizing to you guys for just the one-star demerit.

When you make films from junk TV, more often than not you’re going to wind up with a junk movie.

"Dead Men” works well enough as a stand-alone, swashbuckling comedic spectacle, thanks to the terrific performances, some ingenious practical effects, impressive CGI and a steady diet of PG-13 dialogue peppered with not particularly sophisticated but (I have to admit) fairly funny sexual innuendo.

Virtually every single element in Everything, Everything rings false and manipulative — and that’s BEFORE we get to a Big Reveal so contrived, so insanely implausible, so monstrously tone-deaf, we can see the entire movie plunging off a cliff, landing with a sickening thud in the Land of the Worst Movies of the Year.

You might think a documentary about the obituary writers at the New York Times would be a depressing, sobering, scholarly work — but it’s anything but.

The presentation is gorgeous. The actual meal is nothing but empty calories.

At its core, “Covenant” is a glorified monster movie, with some great “gotcha!” scare moments and, yes, a number of scenes in which a number of supposedly super-smart characters do some really stupid things that get them killed dead-dead-dead.

Liev Schreiber is outstanding as the hulking, rough-edged, amiable and charismatic Wepner.

This is a monster movie disguised as a war movie.

The Lovers gets a tad too theatrical in the last act, and the deeply cynical resolution might not sit well with everyone. (I thought it was just about perfect.)

The tantalizing enticement of Goldie Hawn pairing with Amy Schumer for a mother-daughter, road-trip buddy comedy has some moments, but never fulfills its promise. As their onscreen adventures and antics grow zanier and broader, the laughs actually grow softer and more sporadic.

In its finest moments, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is swift and clever and exhilarating. At its low points, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword plays like a cheesy B-movie, with ridiculous monsters and unintentionally laugh-inducing moments.

Almost nothing about Illicit rings true — but thanks to the likable, earnest and attractive cast, and the semi-salacious, soap-opera vibe to the proceedings, my attention never wandered, and I’ll admit I was mildly curious about how everything would play out.

Risk is filled with dramatic scenes straight out of a spy thriller.

As you might expect from this cast, all four leads are simply outstanding.

Like many a sequel to a slam-bang, much-liked mega-hit, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 isn’t quite as much fun, not quite as clever, not quite as fresh as the original — but it still packs a bright and shiny and sweet punch.

I don’t think you and I need to connect on InstaSkypeChatFaceSnapTweeterBook for you to understand I’m saying we’ve seen this movie before. It’s just usually not this smug or condescending or muddled or inconsistent.

In a film about a magician, the most impressive trick in Sleight is how director and co-writer J.D. Dillard is able to spin such a memorable and unique tale on a micro-budget.

Either you’re in the mood for a series of gruesomely creative kills and lots of dark humor — or you’re not.

Gere’s work in “Norman” is to be treasured. It’s one of the best performances in any movie this year.

Yes, The Promise veers into corny territory, and yes, it’s derivative of better war romances — but it’s a solid and sobering reminder of the atrocities of war, bolstered by strong performances from Isaac and Bale, two of the best actors of their generation.

This is the type of adventure that transports you to a world so exotic and lush and mysterious and dangerous, it feels as if we’re on a different planet.

Before it was even over, I was already forgetting about it.

The great and usually fantastically innovative Werner Herzog has turned Bell’s story into a conventional, cliché-riddled, overly talky and plodding biopic where very little happens for long stretches of time, and we have to endure deadly-dull voice-over narration while looking at admittedly gorgeous scenery and, well, camels.

The problem this time around is the plot is particularly idiotic, the supposedly snappy quips are lame and come at some weirdly inappropriate moments — and it’s all delivered in an extremely bloated package.

From its weird little prologue to a nearly perfect ending, Colossal is a trip in multiple meanings of that word.

Win It All is just the latest stellar collaboration between Swanberg and Johnson.... This is their most conventional film in terms of story arc, but it still has a nifty, indie-without-trying-to-be-hipster feel.

Gifted isn’t the best or most sophisticated or most original film of the year so far — but it just might be my favorite.

So many scenes in Wilson play as if they’re dropped in from a different genre.

You need to be strapped in and focused for director and co-writer Charlie McDowell’s ambitious, unnerving, slightly loopy and beautifully ambivalent gem, which only tackles the question: How would people react if there was absolute proof of an afterlife?

Just about every scene in Ghost in the Shell is a visual wonder to behold — and you’ll have ample to time to soak in all that background eye candy, because the plot machinations and the action in the foreground are largely of the ho-hum retread variety.

If you appreciate dark, original and chilling gothic horror stories with a supernatural twist, if you like low-low-budget indies that somehow manage to look and feel like big-time major motion pictures, you gotta check out Dig Two Graves.

Director Daniel Espinosa’s stylish and at times fantastically gory Life features an A-list, international and diverse cast, a few grotesque surprises and one very cool and labyrinthine spaceship — but eventually crashes and burns due to multiple failures.

So many great actors, cast adrift by a script that feels incomplete and a brilliant director delivering one of his lesser works.

T2 Trainspotting has one foot firmly planted in nostalgia and the other rooted in the present, and thanks in great part to Boyle’s unique, world-class talent, everything old feels new again, and everything new has the blazing look of an original and blazing piece of art.

There’s an admirable commitment to absurdity, yet it belies the thoughtful coming-of-age journey for the five teens up until they hit “morphin time.”

While the plot often travels familiar paths and even the impressive camerawork is evocative of other films, Mean Dreams has a few story tricks up its sleeve — and it has Bill Paxton, playing one of the most odious characters he ever played, and doing it with absolute mastery.

It’s a brilliant character study, a devilishly confounding murder mystery, a legitimately haunting psychological thriller, a hell of a ghost story — and one of the most memorable viewing experiences I’ve had in the last few years.

Bill Condon’s take on Beauty and the Beast is almost overwhelmingly lavish, beautifully staged and performed with exquisite timing and grace by the outstanding cast.

A couple of action sequences are well staged. That’s about it for the plus side.

For all the visceral depictions of hatred and violence and human destruction, it feels as if the director is chasing his own tail and forgetting about making it all mean something.

Shirley MacLaine is still a big-screen force. With a quick dismissive glance or a sharp-edged delivery of a one-liner, she creates a handful of genuine and genuinely funny moments.

It’s wildly entertaining and it has a sense of humor about itself.

The Shack is a well-acted and sometimes moving but far too often slow-paced and unconvincing spiritual journey.

For all its moodiness and melancholy, Logan is also a rip-roaring action film — and it’s wickedly funny at times as well.

To its credit, Dark Night does not exploit or glamorize the gun culture, nor does it attempt to hammer us over the head with social or political views. Sutton is undeniably talented. Better, deeper, richer work is almost sure to follow.

Dying Laughing is a movie about stand-up with no performance footage. It’s like a documentary about baseball with no game footage — but it’s great and it’s valuable and it’s wonderful, because we love seeing and hearing these all-time greats talk about what they do with such passion and candor.

The real star of the film is writer-director Jordan Peele, who has created a work that addresses the myriad levels of racism, pays homage to some great horror films, carves out its own creative path, has a distinctive visual style — and is flat-out funny as well.

Had I been attending Fist Fight as a non-critic, any number of scenes might well have catapulted me out of my seat and out the door.

The Great Wall is so fantastically misguided and so wonderfully bad, I could see some coming for the action and staying for the camp laughs.

Thanks in large part to the genuine movie-star charisma of David Oyelowo and to the breathtakingly beautiful on-location cinematography in Botswana, here we are with the arrow pointing up.

When Alone in Berlin reaches the end of its journey, it’s the performances of Gleeson and Thompson that ensure we’ll never forget the bravery of Otto and Anna.

This is one good-looking, occasionally titillating, mostly soapy and dull snooze-fest.

Just when we thought Keanu Reeves was destined for a career of mostly forgettable films piling up in our straight-to-video cues, the guy is headlining a bona fide, first-class action franchise. Whoa.

Director Chris McKay keeps things zipping along, alternating between smart and often hilarious rapid-fire exchanges of dialogue, and big, big, BIG action sequences that fill every inch of the screen with brightly colored, fantastically kinetic action.

With The Comedian arriving in theaters, it’s safe to say I now have only nine spaces left on my list of the 10 Worst Movies of 2017.

The acting is the purest thing in Gold.

Sure, we get the obligatory slapstick dog-shtick in the form of overturned food carts and disastrous dinner scenes and wacky chases, and there are some uplifting moments — but the overall mood of Lasse Hallstrom’s pup-point-of-view film is … melancholy, sometimes even grim.

Director Adam Smith (shooting Alastair Siddons’ inventive script) doesn’t hit the mark with every chance he takes, but for the most part this is an admirable and successful effort.

Paterson is a fable, brimming with symbolism and inside literary references and nods to playwrights and authors from decades and centuries gone by — but it’s also authentic and plausible, in its own weird way.

With the chilling, creepy, bold and sometimes bat-bleep absurd Split, the 46-year-old Shyamalan serves notice he’s still got some nifty plot tricks up his sleeve and he hasn’t lost his masterful touch as a director.

It’s some of Keaton’s finest work. It’s also the first great movie I’ve seen in 2017.

There’s not a single false, “actor-y” note in Bening’s work. It is a master class in nuanced acting, and it is deserving of an Academy Award.

Overall, this is a Boston Strong film about one of the worst terrorist attacks ever on American soil, and a community’s resounding response.

A curiously unfocused Prohibition-era gangster epic with some well-choreographed action scenes, a few provocative plot threads — but an increasingly meandering main story line that goes from intriguing to confounding to preachy to what exactly are we even watching here?

Arsenal is garbage. The cast includes familiar faces...but it’s still a trashy, blood-spattered, sadistic thriller with a goes-nowhere plot, overwrought dialogue and a throbbing soundtrack that’ll leave your ears ringing.

It aims straight for our hearts, sometimes hitting the target, especially in some of the quieter scenes with Conor and his mother. But then the preachy tree rears its thorny head, and it keeps on talking and explaining, long after we get it, we get it, we get it.

What beauty. What brutality. What madness.

Lion is a beautifully told, uplifting story of courage and determination.

What works: the brilliant dialogue, and the raw intensity of the performances. It’s a privilege to watch Washington and Davis lay it all on the line.

You might just find yourself applauding during certain moments of dramatic triumph in Theodore Melfi’s unabashedly sentimental and wonderfully inspirational film, and yes, some of those moments feature people working out high-level math problems.

Not funny, not funny, not funny, not funny, not funny.

This is a well-designed, initially intriguing, visually interesting sci-fi romance torpedoed by a premise — and a payoff — so creepy and misogynistic, it’s amazing nobody who read the script or green-lit the film (or chose to star in it) raised concerns about how it would play with an audience of, you know, people with working minds.

In some truly inspired casting choices, Ashley Judd provides emotional depth as Barack’s mother, and Jason Mitchell (who deserved an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Easy-E in “Straight Outta Compton”) and Ellar Coltrane (who literally grew up onscreen in “Boyhood”) deliver stellar work as friends of Barry’s who remind of us of the multiple worlds he inhabits.

Chazelle’s script is hopeful and sweet and clever and rich. His direction is innovative and captivating.

Collateral Beauty is a fraud. It is built on a foundation so contrived, so off-putting, so treacly, the most miraculous thing about this movie is this movie was actually made.

This is a very “Star Wars”-y “Star Wars” movie. It’s not quite on the level of the original or “The Empire Strikes Back” (the best of ’em all, of course), but it’s on a par with last year’s “The Force Awakens” and it’s light years above “Attack of the Clones” and “The Phantom Menace.”

Director John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love,” the “Exotic Marigold Hotel” movies) expertly juggles the various subplots while never losing his main focus, which is to showcase Jessica Chastain’s nearly infinite palette of acting shades.

Portman’s performance carries the day.

The individual parts never come close to fully meshing into a quality team effort.

Sometimes we talk about seeing a performance so real, so believable, so authentic, it takes our breath away. Then there’s Shia LaBeouf’s work in Man Down.

This is one of the funniest films about coping with tragedy I’ve ever seen. Not that it’s a comedy, not for a second. It’s an immensely moving and beautifully resonant drama about the walking wounded and how they cope with a horrific event from many years past.

A lazy, crummy-looking, poorly paced, why-bother follow-up that lacks the Christmas bells to go full-out politically incorrect.

The movie is entertaining, perhaps more so if you’re at one of those establishments where they allow you to bring a generous pour of wine into the theater.

While the overall tone of Moana is uplifting, the story makes room for some pretty deep insights.

Rebecca Hall gives one of the great performances of the year as the title character in Christine, an intense, stomach-churning, unblinking drama.

This is a bloodless, cold, self-congratulatory exercise in style for style’s sake.

Miles Teller gives the performance of his career as the indefatigable Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza, and writer-director Ben Younger delivers one of the best boxing movies of the decade in Bleed for This.

The special effects are of course top level (though again, I wouldn’t say they’re breathtakingly special); the sets are amazingly rich in detail; the cinematography is fluid and vibrant. The result is an effective if not everlasting magical spell.

Dog Eat Dog occasionally positions itself as social commentary, but it’s mainly a bloody, trippy, bare-fanged pulp thriller featuring terrifically entertaining performances from old dogs Cage and Dafoe.

The cinematography, the set design, the costumes, the overall feel of Loving: all first-rate. Negga and Edgerton are undeniably good. I was impressed. I just wish I’d been more deeply moved.

I’m not entirely convinced the ending is the perfect landing to everything that transpired before, but Arrival is not a linear adventure of the mind, and it is a film probably best seen twice.

What a waste of a wonderful cast.

Keith Maitland’s Tower is a stunningly powerful and gripping documentary.

Hacksaw Ridge is faithful to the story of Desmond Doss in every sense of the word.

It’s a beautifully filmed, wonderfully challenging, multi-layered tale of trickery upon trickery, short con upon long con, deception upon deception.

Moonlight is gorgeous and yet bleak, uplifting and yet sobering, exhilarating but also grounded in some unshakable realities.

Ewan McGregor is a versatile and durable actor who has spent a lot of time on film sets, and someday he might become an accomplished filmmaker, but his feature directorial debut is one of the most unfortunate literary adaptations in recent memory.

The whole thing is just so sloppy and dumb and overflowing with clichés.

The performances are strong, even if the characters aren’t given much depth.

If you think Kevin Hart is funny — as I do — you’ll laugh frequently, as I did. If you don’t, you’re not going to this movie in the first place, are you?

Madness abounds in The Accountant, an intense, intricate, darkly amusing and action-infused thriller that doesn’t always add up but who cares, it’s BIG FUN.

At times the symbolism grows repetitive, and the running time of 2 hours, 42 minutes admittedly tested my attention span on occasions — but this is an original, sometimes breathtaking depiction of a certain slice of American life.

A powerful but often stilted drama bolstered by two great performances from accomplished actors and nearly sunk by an unfortunately (and surprisingly) off-key performance from another fine actor.

Parker reaches with both hands for greatness and falls short — but this is nevertheless a solid and strong and valuable piece of work.

It’s shiny trash that begins with promise but quickly gets tripped up by its own screenplay and grows increasingly ludicrous and melodramatic, to the point where I was barely able to suppress a chuckle at some of the final scenes.

This is a messy, confusing, uninvolving mishmash of old-school practical effects and CGI battles that feels … off nearly every misstep of the way. It’s like watching a master musician play a piano he somehow doesn’t realize is out of tune.

It’s a well-made, sometimes horrifyingly realistic re-creation of events — but it often feels like a formulaic disaster film.

This still works as a solid Disney sports movie because of the remarkable story, Mira Nair’s energetic and uplifting direction, and one of the most endearing casts I’ve enjoyed in any movie this year.

Over all, this is a rousing, albeit sometimes cheesy, action-packed Western bolstered by Denzel Washington’s baddest-of-the-baddasses lead performance, mostly fine supporting work, and yep, some of the most impressively choreographed extended shootout sequences in recent memory.

From start to finish, this film seems strangely out of touch, never more so than when it tries to come across as enlightened.

Snowden works best when it’s just Edward and the three journalists in that hotel room, sweating it out, or when we see the pattern of events that led him to commit acts that exposed the shocking practices of our own government but also quite possibly created serious security breaches.

Some movies swing for the fences — and either strike out in big-budget, spectacular fashion, or hit a home run. Others, such as the smart, lovely, funny, occasionally edgy, slightly cynical and ultimately heart-tugging Other People, are the equivalent of the singles hitter in baseball — content to accumulate one small and legitimate successful moment after another.

Sully is an absolute triumph.

The Hollars is an uneven, ineffective and self-conscious dysfunctional family comedy/drama with a Sundance-y vibe, and scene after scene in which the greatly talented and usually quite likable cast members keep stepping in big piles of wrong choices.

The only thing worse than the first three-quarters of Morgan is the supposed payoff, which veers from the dumb to the really dumb to the so-dumb-you’ll-hardly-believe-it. This is one of the worst movies of 2016.

A gorgeous but plodding and borderline ludicrous period-piece weeper.

Writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone is a rousing, well-filmed and solid (if at times overly generous to Duran) biopic with a bounty of charismatic performances, two of the sexier scenes of the year, some welcome laughs and a few above average fight sequences.

Don’t Breathe is an impressively photographed, well-acted, relentlessly paced horror film sure to sicken some and delight others with its twisted sense of humor.

Imperium is a well-spun, tight thriller, thanks in no small part to Radcliffe’s excellent, sharply focused performance.

Southside with You is a sweet, intelligent, well-crafted, wonderfully romantic, no-frills re-imagination of the first date between Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson.

Ben-Hur struggles to find an identity and never really gets there. The well-intentioned efforts to achieve moving, faith-based awakenings are undercut by the casually violent, PG-13 action sequences.

This is a solid example of the Sobering Comedy, where we laugh consistently at the madness onscreen, all the while lamenting how it’s rooted in real-world reality.

With electrifying, graceful direction by David Mackenzie...a rich, darkly humorous and deeply insightful screenplay by Taylor Sheridan...and no fewer than four performances as good as anything I’ve seen onscreen this year, Hell or High Water is an instant classic modern-day Western, traveling down familiar roads but always, always with a fresh and original spin.

This is the raunchiest, filthiest, most ridiculous and most politically incorrect movie of the year. It’s also one of the funniest — and its own very twisted and warped way, it offers some legitimate if obvious insights about our insane world.

It’s a quirky and unique coming-of-age story.

We’ve yet to get a masterpiece-level film adaptation of the classic novella “The Little Prince,” but if and until that day comes, this will do just nicely, thank you very much.

Suicide Squad does have its moments of beautiful comic-book visuals.... Those are just tantalizing hints of a better movie that never materialized.

This is one of the most moving films of 2016. Every 20 minutes or so, it grabs you and puts a lump in your throat.

Bad Moms had me laughing out loud even as I was cringing, thanks to some fantastically over-the-top hijinks, crass but hilarious one-liners and terrific performances from Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn and Christina Applegate.

Jason Bourne is the best action thriller of the year so far, with a half-dozen terrific chase sequences and fight scenes.

Emma Roberts and Dave Franco are just fine, but there’s no huge onscreen spark between them. Most of the supporting roles are thinly drawn and forgettable.

Café Society is a gorgeous and lightweight confection, a love letter to the Hollywood of the mid-1930s, as well as the New York of the same era.

Even with its big-screen pyrotechnics and its feature-length running time, Star Trek Beyond plays like an extended version of one of the better episodes from the original series, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The Infiltrator is a great-looking, well-paced, wickedly funny and seriously tense thriller, bolstered by an ensemble cast as good as I’ve seen in any film this year.

Ghostbusters is a horror from start to finish, and that’s not me saying it’s legitimately scary. More like I was horrified by what was transpiring onscreen.

Even when John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are slumming it, they’re good fun. Not enough to save the movie, but enough to keep you interested when you click across this thing sometime in your future.

This is a two-star movie with moments of sheer exuberance and clever good fun — but just as many scenes that had me tilting my head like a dog trying to figure out what the WHAT is taking place before his very eyes.

It’s pulp, but it has real actors doing real acting in a gritty story — which is a lot more than can be said for some of the much more high-profile buddy cop movies of the last couple of years.

You might walk out of Swiss Army Man. You might tire of the flatulence and the erections and the self-conscious whimsy. But if you stick with it, there’s a chance it’ll grow on you as it grew on me — and you’ll be rewarded with maybe the best ending of any movie so far this year.

Technically impressive but listless and tedious.

There’s always been something a bit ridiculous about the whole Tarzan premise, and while the talented cast and a solid director make for a serviceable and intermittently entertaining adventure, there’s very little about this film that screams, YOU GOTTA SEE THIS.

This is a disaster by committee.

For a film so aggressively intent on Big Shock Moments (cannibalism and lesbian necrophilia, anyone?), it’s more often stultifying and tedious than provocative.

This is an immensely entertaining millennial B-Movie, made for summertime viewing.

This is no history lesson, but it’s mainstream Hollywood entertainment that respects the history and seems to invite discussion and debate.

Even as I was rolling my eyes, I was digging just about every stylized visual flourish, every big performance, every overly dramatic confrontation featuring first-rate actors letting loose with unabashed gusto and veracity, even when they were bellowing lines stating the obvious.

It’s a solid, entertaining, well-paced sequel featuring terrific voice work, a clever script and some ingenious action sequences. It just doesn’t quite reach the soaring heights of inspirational storytelling and elevated humor of the original.

Central Intelligence is one of those slick, gunplay-riddled, stupidly plotted, aggressively loud buddy movies — so formulaic and dumb, even if you see it you’ll probably forget you’ve seen it by the end of the year...And if that’s the case, consider yourself fortunate.

Russo has never been better than he is in this film. It is a quietly powerful, sometimes devastating and heartbreaking performance.

Sitting through the smug and convoluted and ridiculous Now You See Me 2 is like being subjected to a dunk tank again and again — and then being handed a wet towel when it’s finally over.

Careful What You Wish For is aiming for lusty, lurid, B-movie titillation, but it’s not nearly as sexy nor nearly as clever as it would like to be.

Wan retains his touch for ratcheting up the tension, providing doses of comic relief and then BOOM!, delivering another gotcha moment that will leave audiences jumping in their seats and then giggling at the visceral thrill ride — but the scary moments aren’t as fresh this time around, and with a running time of 2 hours, 13 minutes, The Conjuring 2 is at least a half hour too long. At least.

It’s funny because it gets it RIGHT without ever being too mean-spirited.

Me Before You is a beautifully filmed and well-intentioned weeper marred by an unfortunate performance from one of the leads, and a plot development that leaves us more angry and frustrated than moved in the final act.

The cameras simply follow Weiner’s every move, which includes disastrous public appearances, embarrassing press conferences, and media interviews that don’t exactly go Weiner’s way.

It’s a fine brew, equal parts cynical and whimsical, dark and sunny. It’s fairly slight but nearly great.

This isn’t A-level X-Men, but it’s a visual feast, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s brimming with stellar performances, it has some legitimately moving teamwork segments — and it contains perhaps my favorite scene of any movie this year.

The sequel to Tim Burton’s 2010 mega-hit “Alice in Wonderland” is loud, frantic, stunningly unfunny, off-putting and riddled with mediocre, out-of-tune work from normally outstanding actors. It’s one of the great movie disasters of 2016.

For about an hour, The Lobster is pure absurdist greatness, brimming with pitch-black shock humor and big, wild ideas. The second half of the film isn’t nearly as imaginative and startling, but I walked out of the screening with the surefire knowledge I wouldn’t soon shake off its most inspired sequences.

Stillman has done a marvelous job of adapting Austen’s novella Lady Susan and capturing the author’s tart and rapier-sharp sense of humor.

This is a sunny, admiring documentary about the British (and Los Angeles) treasure David Hockney, who remains productive at 78, is candid and entertaining in interview segments and seems utterly content and grateful for the life he’s had and the artistry he’s been gifted with.

The Nice Guys has a little extra padding that isn’t necessary.... Ah, but Crowe and Gosling save the day.

I couldn’t wait for this movie to end.

Despite its provocative title, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town isn’t particularly sexy. More troubling, it’s not very funny either.

Wood and Cage have a terrific dynamic together.

Director Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump are clearly playing much of as pitch-black satire, but High-Rise keeps hammering home the same points, and not even the wealth of strong performances from Hiddleston, Miller and Irons are enough to salvage the day.

Thanks to a stylish directorial turn by Jodie Foster and the shining star power of George Clooney and Julia Roberts (as well as a first-rate supporting cast), Money Monster rises above an uneven script that veers from clever and insightful to heavy-handed and obvious — sometimes within the same scene.

Elstree 1976...is a sweet, quietly funny, fascinating and contemplative study.

Even when The Family Fang stretches credulity, we stay with it. Bateman knows how to tell a story.

As Sokurov examines a pivotal point in the Louvre’s history and gives us a virtual tour of the magnificent museum, he makes larger points about the vital importance of art throughout human history. This is one of the most beautiful films of the year.

Captain America: Civil War is a classic example of what the big-ticket summer movie experience is all about.

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria takes a sitcom of a premise and imbues it with depth, intelligence and numerous sweet, melancholy moments that feel just … right.

Nothing could have prepared us for the offensively stupid, shamelessly manipulative, ridiculously predictable and hopelessly dated crapfest that is Mother’s Day.

The cinematography, the set design, the all-important soundtrack, the editing: all first-rate. This is one smart chiller.

For the bulk of the ride, it’s a wickedly funny interpretation of the one of the great confounding moments in American pop culture and political history.

Writer-director Tom Tykwer is clearly a fan of the source material, and he has done an admirable job of taking a melancholy, beautifully rendered piece of prose and catapulting it to visual life.

[Harris and Franco] bring out the finest in each other as they punch and counter-punch vastly different memories of horrific incidents from the past. It’s great stuff. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the The Adderall Diaries is overwrought, convoluted and irritating.

Given the lurid, stupid, loony and unintentionally laughable nature of this espionage thriller, I found some measure of entertainment studying the vastly different approaches taken by Costner, Jones and Oldman — three of our finest actors over the last 30 years.

It’s impressive how well director Malcolm D. Lee (working from a script by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver) balances the serious material with the bawdy, freewheeling comedy pieces.

Thanks to director Jon Favreau’s visionary guidance and some of the most impressive blends of live-action and CGI we’ve yet seen, The Jungle Book is a beautifully rendered, visually arresting take on Rudyard Kipling’s oft-filmed tales.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Michelle Darnell was a hilarious onstage comedic creation. On film, she is a flimsy, one-dimensional, tiresome character, surrounded by equally unconvincing and unfunny players.

Cheadle the director, producer and co-writer boldly goes for broke with mixed results in this highly fictionalized version of the Miles Davis legend — and Cheadle the actor gives a brilliant performance worthy of an Oscar nomination.

What a mess. What a pretentious, uneven, off-putting, not-nearly-as-clever-as-it-thinkd-it-is MESS.

Even the world-class cast can’t save this one from teetering into the abyss.

The chemistry between Rockwell and Kendrick drives the movie. They’re fast and wonderful together. But Mr. Right has an abundance of strong supporting performances as well.

Even when I Saw the Light is giving us standard-issue concert scenes or simple interior sequences such as young Hank and his band playing live on the radio, the saturated colors and the subtle camera moves make every scene pop.

Linklater introduces us to an abundance of characters, but it’s a tribute to his writing (and the performances) that each of the baseball players has a distinct personality and story thread.

It’s refreshing to find yourself immersed in a film that zigs and zags between genres — and occasionally zaps your senses with an electric charge of shock and awe.

Indeed Get a Job is an uneven, strange little movie with a hit-and-miss screenplay, some distractingly weird camera angles and a few subplots that never should have seen the light of day (or the dark of theater), but it also has an infectious charm, some genuinely funny set pieces and winning performances throughout.

A sequel that’s never subtle, rarely surprising — and as rich, syrupy, sweet and satisfying as a tray of homemade baklava.

When it sings, “Dawn of Justice” is a wonder. When it drags, it still looks good and offers hints of a better scene just around the corner.

The acting is world-class in Eye in the Sky, a timely and tense but sometimes heavy-handed drama set in the modern world of drone warfare.

This is one of those comedies that could have been a brilliant short film on “Funny or Die” or “Saturday Night Live,” but wears out its welcome as a feature-length film.

As we’re enjoying the beautiful cinematography and the fine acting and the dark humor, Benjamin Dickinson is delivering a signature work announcing his arrival as a filmmaker to watch for years to come.

Pee-wee is still a startling and original and strangely endearing creation. He just deserved a funnier, more intriguing holiday.

Fey is such a likable and funny screen presence, but she’s no lightweight when it comes to playing subtle, honest drama.

Knight of Cups is a ponderous affair, never taking 30 seconds to make a point when four minutes is available.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone appearing in this film thought of it as more than a payday.

While it’s wonderful to see Michelle Yeoh return as Yu Shu-Lien and there are a few moments of soaring majesty, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny is an unnecessary and underwhelming experience that plays like a B-movie knockoff/follow-up of the original.

Zootopia is brimming with silly, slapstick humor and terrific one-liners — and yes, some simple yet valuable lessons about tolerance and prejudice and learning to embrace our differences. There’s nothing wrong with a lesson or two when those lessons are packaged within such a great and memorable film.

This is a great documentary about a great man.

Director Dexter Fletcher paints Eddie’s story in broad, bold strokes, never missing an opportunity to milk a suspenseful dramatic turn or go for the relatively easy laugh — but it’s a style well-suited to this wonderfully ridiculous story.

Just about every scene features an Oscar winner or an Oscar nominee or an Emmy winner and/or a first-rate character actor — and just about every scene is a bloody mix of taut thriller and utterly implausible noir plot point. This is a sordid but slick and gutsy mess that comes across like a cover-band version of a Michael Mann movie.

Give the Sony Pictures-backed Affirm Films and Risen director and co-writer Kevin Reynolds credit for making a different kind of Biblical semi-epic.

There’s a memorable movie to be made about the amazing, inspiration and controversial life of Jesse Owens. This is not a bad film and it’s a decent history lesson for those that don’t know the story of Owens and the ’36 Games, but it’s a long, long way from greatness.

On balance, Rolling Papers is more about marijuana journalism than the big picture, and as such it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

Although Bad Hurt traffics in tough material, it is filled with little moments of heart.

In the occasionally poignant but ham-handed and only semi-funny Where to Invade Next, Moore is at his shtickiest.

Stiller the director does a fine job of making Zoolander 2 look like an actual spy movie, but we’ve seen far better takeoffs, including “Spy” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service” in just the last couple of years. As for the jabs at the transient nature of popular culture and the ridiculousness of high fashion world — easy, tired targets.

It’s one of the most endearing romantic comedies in recent memory, with some laugh-out-loud dialogue, gorgeous photography and uniformly charming performances from the entire cast.

If only Deadpool were as clever, dark and funny as it believes itself to be.

Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, Southbound serves up another deliciously bloody twist.

The Choice is classic Sparks, and by that I mean it’s a mediocre, well-photographed, undeniably heart-tugging, annoyingly manipulative and dramatically predictable star-crossed romance.

Director Burr Steers...does a nifty job of rocketing from period-piece romance to gory bloodshed, with sprinkles of dark humor here and there.

Hail, Caesar! is pure, popcorn fun — a visual treat, a comedic tour de force and a sublime and sly slice of satire.

This ensemble piece plays like “Crash” in a minor note, with one heavy-handed scene after another, all leading up to an ambivalent, unsatisfying ending.

Son of Saul is lasting work of art — difficult to watch, impossible to forget.

The Finest Hours feels stitched together. None of the three main plot lines is particularly powerful or moving.

If Dirty Grandpa isn’t the worst movie of 2016, I have some serious cinematic torture in my near future.