Roger Moore

Its beautiful, digitally-realized other-worldly visuals are eye-popping, so crystalline as to be disorienting. You lose track of where the screen ends and the tactile, physical cinema you’re watching it in begins.

The film loses much of its lean, mean narrative drive when we get into group dynamics — who can you trust, who has been drinking the tall grass KoolAid — and the whole supernatural mumbo-jumbo “explaining” what they’re dealing with, and how they can escape it, takes over In the Tall Grass.

Donkeyhead has heart and humor in nicely matched doses, and is good enough that you hope Darshi has another movie in mind as a follow-up, and that Netflix has the sense and Canadian dollars to let her make it.

The lack of dramatic fireworks mute the film’s impact somewhat. And young Ms. Nelson has an unfortunate tendency to mumble, swallow her lines.

So it’s no “Starbuck,” which most people won’t mind because Americans don’t read subtitles. But even in this form, Delivery Man and the guy who plays him still deliver where it counts.

But Teems and his team get a nice spin on Southern Gothic tropes and types, and The Quarry makes for a slow, simmering tale that has glorious performances and rewards, even in its noticeable shortcomings.

Martyr’s Lane is a reminder that you don’t need entrails and screams, demons and cadavers to cast a ghostly spell. Sometimes, a weathered abandoned doll in a fall-cluttered English garden, a lock of hair or faint scratching at a window is all it takes.

Not every player has the screen presence of our leading lady, so director Symington never lets a scene go by that Lelia Symington isn’t in the center of.

Williams, playing a young woman fighting her fears even as the hint of recognition of what she’s dealing with keeps her from flipping out entirely, makes us believe Val’s peril and believe in her ability to fight it.

Sure, it’s a surface gloss treatment of the subject, mentioning the racism groups encountered, the financial exploitation rampant back then (and on through *NSYNC). But Streetlight Harmonies is valuable in rounding up a lot of the first and second generation stars and getting their memories on film before they die off.

It’s a brooding performance in a brooding movie, not your conventional rags to riches triumph or Jeremy Allen White Sings The Boss biopic. But White and Cooper make it interesting and entertaining enough to invest in.

Through it all, Washington’s stillness is emphasized, so much so that the film slows down just to make sure we appreciate the presence and the talent behind it.

Wonder, through depictions of the burdens shouldered by its characters, through jolting displays of childhood cruelty and heartfelt moments of compassion, earns that reach-for-the-handkerchief.

Veteran British nature documentarian Alastair Fothergill and his “Penguins” director partner Jeff Wilson give us a sober-minded call to action in this beautifully-shot film.

It’s worth checking out Stonewalling just to see a picture of China that’s not State Approved or attempted by outsiders.

The big and small screens have been awash in military features and documentaries since 9/11, and there’s not a lot to The Kill Team that qualifies as new or surprising. But a decent level of suspense and the genuine dread Skarsgård casts, like a shadow, inform it and make it stand out in a genre that may not outlive America’s endless military involvement in that corner of the world.

Butterfield is quite good, the other kids well-matched and Spall, Hawkins and Marsan terrific in support. That adds up to a picture well-worth your time.

Still, lovely as it often is, Atlantics isn’t as deep as it wants to come off and isn’t anybody’s idea of a great film. But in the world it depicts and the vivid characters inhabiting it, it is engaging, informative and absolutely worth your while — perfectly Netflixable.

The band’s rippling impact is undeniable.

The Nonnas are the stars and the hook that makes this one work.

The only “issues” that feel lived-in are the ones literally everybody faces — health, aging parents and grandparents — mortality. It’s the players most wrapped up in those who stand out. The rest is just colorful, sometimes flippant, background noise.

The leads click just well enough in a serio-comic “bromance” sort of way. And Antonaroli ensures that the story clips along, never letting us lose the thread or the fact that the stakes are literally life and death, something underscored by the hammer blows of the finale.

I like the women’s world this picture creates, with Sue Jean Kim cast as a Columbia U. colleague and Ann Dowd as the sympathetic support-system neighbor. But The Friend is an uneven, not wholly satisfying experience in most ways.

It was never going to be as riotous as the trailers, but it's still funny, and in the case of Isla Fisher -- damned funny.

There’s little that I’d call hilarious here, as Operator is more smart, smooth and droll than laugh-out-loud funny.

It’s immersive enough, luring us into this world and fearing for our heroines’ safety. But the abrupt shifts in focus make one wish Han Shuai had taken some more crowd-pleasing course, or gone all-in on the darkness of this underworld an out-of-her-element ex-pat finds herself in.

A gonzo, gory and goofball B-movie about fathers, sons and killing or being killed.

You’ll want to catch The Wave because it’s fun to see Hollywood disaster movie cliches rendered in Norwegian.

This is a storyteller’s movie, one where we can’t really trust any story to be true. That’s something of a cheat, because we are set up to believe there are bigger deceptions going on and hidden agendas that simply don’t pan out or are left hanging.

The movie revels in watching the out-of-place Beatriz as she quietly observes the guests arriving wearing clothes and jewels that cost more than her broken car.

What works beautifully are the grace notes to the craft of acting, to first love/first marriage.

The Flash, while it never comes close to the gee whiz “I can do THIS?” novelty of the many Spider-Man “origin” iterations, makes a charming, nostalgic and sometimes touching addition to the genre, and lets us hope Miller will recover enough to return to acting this character and others.

Hardley has conjured up an interesting twist to this “journey of healing” narrative, abandoning laughs for metaphysical pathos.

Peace by Chocolate is a charming, almost achingly-sweet fish-out-of-water comedy about Syrian Civil War refugees adjusting to life in small town Canada. Considering the family business they try to establish — chocolate making– “sweet” is pretty much a given.

Of all the impersonations, Thomas Lennon‘s spot-on send up of the balding, sunglassed cynic Donaghue is the one that dazzles. Matching Belushi’s fearless lunacy or Chevy Chase’s studied pratfalls is trickier on even a “generous” Netflix budget.

Hart’s portrayal of the young Lennon, cocky before the confidence that universal adoration swept over him, remains definitive and makes one want to revisit “Backbeat” (where I first interviewed him) and get the fuller picture, John in living color.

The design... is stunning, an improvement over 2006′s “300.” And the action never disappoints. It’s a pity this colorless cast doesn’t hold a candle to the Butler/Headey/Michael Fassbender/David Wenham crew of the original, that the writers couldn’t conjure up thrilling speeches to match the original.

I laughed more than once, and grinned at a couple of adorable surprise twists. Definitely Netflixable.

The Fortune Cookie still plays as funny. Not as funny as “One, Two, Three,” his grandest farce, or the more celebrated “Some Like It Hot.” Matthau makes it amusing. But there’s just a sliver of hope and the tiniest hint of “bittersweet” about it, something Wilder occasionally allowed into his screenplays.

The cleverest thing about the laugh-every-two-minutes comedy John Bronco is that nobody involved tried to stretch this extended sketch of an idea into feature film length.

Even if “cool” is prioritized over logic or novelty in this bloody battle to the death, it’s still enough to recommend Ngo’s bracing, kinetic and beautifully shot and edited tale of life and death, rape and revenge in Old/New Saigon.

Ritchie papers over a paper-thin story with artificial twists and very funny turns by the likes of Farrell, Grant, Marsan and Dockery.

Divorce Corp is a lot pointed outrage that damning as its seems, feels suspect.

The flashbacks, the “everybody has a story” part of The Flood, puts it over.

There’s more than a hint of the ‘90s Roddy Doyle adaptation “The Commitments” in all this – people far removed from Memphis and Detroit connecting to soul music on a spiritual level.

The great pleasure in the picture is the way Pearce, Minogue, McMahon and the other adults hurl themselves into the vulgarity of it all.

The mystery isn’t all that engrossing, and the picture devolves into some CYA third act over-explaining to compensate for that. It can be a bit much, and more often than not. So OK, maybe it is a bad picture that’s still fun.

A tale of boy-meets-girl, girl-wrecks-boys-life told with sublime melancholy by Japanese auteur Kôji Fukada, The Real Thing plays like the darkest “romantic comedy” you ever saw.

A daft, sometimes dizzy and occasionally sentimental dash through relationships, parenting, morality, and life experiences packed into a story of a boy born and magically aging “four years, every hour on the hour” through his life over one long day, it is one filmmaker’s One Big Idea for a movie.

It’s a meditative movie, as one underscored with Beethoven’s solo piano pieces “Moonlight Sonata” and “Für Elise” would have to be. Brodsky isn’t the first to get across what it feels like to experience the world without hearing it, so she doesn’t dwell on that, even if it is her central thesis.

I didn’t expect to like it, and Timothy Brady’s script never quite hits that “sleeper” sweet spot. But All Square rides its spot-on casting, sharply defined performances and beer-stained sense of place well past second base, if not all the way home.

This crisp and ever-co-conveniently murderous farce demonstrates that revenge can be served hot or cold, and as messy as is necessary, just so long as you have the proper cleaning products at hand to tidy up afterwards.

Hatching, titled Pahanhautoja in Finnish, is a sins-of-the-mother creature feature parable played out in blunt, gruesome strokes in director Hanna Bergholm’s film, based on a script by Ilja Rautsi.

Mau, which tells a short version of the designer’s life story and early triumphs, dwells mostly on his ongoing crusade, accentuating the positive. The man insists that as we’ve designed these messes, we can design our way out of them.

Lost Girls is a moody, atmospheric but oddly unemotional mystery.

Tone counts for everything in action mysteries like this, and the team that made “Lone Survivor,” “Deepwater Horizon,” “Patriots Day” and the debacle “Mile 22” know each other’s strengths and play to them.

I can’t say Seventeen sprints by, but its many grace notes make up for the slack pace.

The predictability of much of what we see unfold here isn’t an asset. “Marsh King’s Daughter” can feel perfunctory, lacking the interior life that a novel gives characters. But the settings, the striking cinematography, sharp, suspense-heightening editing of the action beats and the stars lead this Marsh King’s Daughter out of the swamp.

Visually, this is a most impressive effort. But it’s not particularly smart or witty or even kiddie profound in its messaging, and in avoiding easy laughs (jokes), it achieves liftoff even if it never quite soars.

John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum still gets a bloody job done, and still merits all the fan-murderer adulation our anti-hero gets every time he meets a new hunter hoping to cash in that reward money.

The funny moments outnumber the warm ones. There's a touch of religion and plenty of melodrama, especially in the contrivances of a cluttered and drawn out third act.

Whatever precious touches emerge, I have to say Words on Bathroom Walls works. The performances are stellar and earn the emotional connection we feel with the characters. The lighter touches — Garcia, Bostick and especially Robb (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”), going all Woodstock Stevie Nicks — are a delight.

It’s not a great film, with a story that has too much “Lifetime Original Movie” slack and soap operatic touches for its own good. But as Jerry Wald says, “It’s all about timing.”

And Turman, as he has pretty much every time the role is worthy of his talents, stands out, giving Justine that extra dose of humanity and heart that makes it worth your while.

If Booker goes on to unseat the hilariously hated, Russia loving Rand Paul for a Senate seat this fall, From the Hood to the Holler will make a fascinating footnote for a sea change in American politics.

Writer director Gaspar Antillo peels the cover off this mystery with the patience of an art cinema veteran, limiting his dramatic “incidents” to amplify their impact.

First time feature director Jeannette Nordahl puts us in Ida’s shoes and makes us ponder her uncertain fate just enough to make Wildland work.

Timlin is terrific, showing us a wonk and political animal in the making — focused, unintimidated and kind of fearless, a young woman traveling solo to the roughest corner of the country for smelly, disgusting work with the hardened souls who perform it.

The fights and deaths are somewhat comical, the one-liners hit or miss and the stunts faked with less sleight of hand than a director experienced in action might have managed. And Feig can’t bear to end this thing, which goes on far past the point of endurance. But he’s done better by McCarthy here, and she has delivered a performance that’s more deft than her usual daft.

Live-action kid-friendly fare like Grow is a rare thing, these days, especially at the height of Horror Season. Better grab the tykes and dash off to this before the last “pumpkin spice” lattes are served.

Fincher’s made a sometimes fascinating/sometimes plodding recreation of film history, perhaps with its own share of Oscar bait attached. But his richly-detailed movie just reminds us that the more modest “RKO 281,” about the actual filming of “Kane,” and “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Me and Orson Welles,” about Welles’ days shaking up New York theater, were a lot more entertaining.

Brewer gave the film a little Southern hip hop, and brought in real Southerners Quaid, Andie MacDowell and Ray McKinnon to further Southernize it.

Manages to tell an over-familiar coming out story with sensitivity, and a Georgian accent.

I can’t say I loved it, as it drags and drags and only occasionally springs to life. But this “tale as old as time” resonates as well as it ever has, and its songs still stick with you long after the closing credits.

The stern star and fascinating if limited peek into the world of ratings, even in a period piece set in a more conservative time, makes Censor a horror title well worth a look, “video nasties” included.

For the Birds unfolds its increasingly bittersweet story and we see the problem and the destructive nature of the solution to it, one can’t help but wish there’d been a tad more attention paid to “What’s going through the bird lady’s head?”

The dialogue and performances are far more interesting than the lazy, cliche-ridden story Feste cooked up.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 offers up more giddy giggles for the little kiddies, a dog-wise/cat-savvy comedy that aims squarely at the youngest common denominator — and scores.

It’s not the career-making genre thriller that the fictionalized “At Close Range” was for director James Foley. Patrick’s no Christopher Walken, after all. But his riveting turn, and some terrific support from the under-used Davison and misused Graham make Last Rampage worth checking out.

Every artist has a hint of the self-obsessed navel-gazer about her or him. And Serendipity has its share of that. And suffice it to say, if you’re not into modern conceptual art, this isn’t for you. But if you are, there’s something celebratory in this artist obsessed with female sexuality, fertility and the female form taking this potentially deadly diagnosis and making art out of it.

Schuster wrote Frau Stern specifically for Sommerfeld, and we can see what he saw in her in just a scene or two.

The Disappearance of My Mother captures the 1960s supermodel turned ’70s (and beyond) Marxist/feminist, a striking figure who raised children by building an afterlife of journalism, activism and education.

Limerick native co-writer/director David Gleeson (“Cowboys & Angels”) ensures we get lots of local color in the people, the scenery and the school and Irish pub life in this story.

Kongsi Raya may never fully shake the feeling that we’re watching a Malaysian take on some Doris Day “Virgin Queen” rom-com from the early 1960s. But Chin manages to get G-rated laughs out of this subject in 2022, which is saying something.

An unblinkingly fierce and bloody tale of slaughter and revenge.

Coarse, crude but often cute, The Big Wedding serves up the spectacle of its title, and the bigger spectacle of four AARP-eligible Oscar winners cursing like sailors.

What holds our interest and holds the story together is this winning cast in these familiar, lovable (somewhat) roles. A dozen years on and this exercise in globe-trotting, in “We’re growing older, but not up” reminds us that what’s true in life is just as true in casting movies — pick your friends carefully enough and they’ll entertain you for a lifetime.

The execution, acting and chilling Soviet Bloc production design are more impressive than any surprise “Hyacinth” struggles to come up with.

It’s not the most ambitious, original thriller or dazzling writing-directing debut. But Galluppi makes his covenant with the genre and the audience, and fulfills his obligations in a solid and satisfying roadside diner drama with moments of suspense, blasts of violence and enough dark dry laughs to remind us it’s supposed to be fun.

Manipulative, contrived, melodramatic — all labels we slap on that most perfectly titled movie genre, “the weeper.” All fit If I Stay like original packaging.

The tennis, with augmented sound, shotmaking, balls-eye-view camera work and the like, dazzles. And whatever the strengths of the leads, the sexual dynamics of this relationship are every bit as of America at this “moment” as the beautiful biracial player’s “color” that the script takes pains to point out.

It’s a funny, bloody mess, but a polished C-movie that aspires to B-movie status.

Reaser, Thomas, Basso and especially the demonically playful Miss Wilson play the Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard script like a fiddle.

It’s engrossing and touching and very well-acted, with Kajol taking this star vehicle as far as her temper, her chastened rage and her skill in applying that Old English word that starts with an F can take it. Anu even gives Milan a George Carlin-style lecture in its proper usage. Nicely f—–g done there, sister.

I wanted a little more out of the script, some further explanation, at least a few of the loose ends wrapped up. But what’s here is a near triumph of mood and tone over “story,” and certainly creepy enough to recommend.

A perfectly adequate superhero comic-book movie, all explosions, chases, gunfights, sword fights and blood feuds. There’s even a little humor in it.

Cage, without having to play a ghostly motorcyclist or hot rod driver from Hell or sorcerer or sci-fi hero or kinky cop, reminds us that he used to know subtlety. So even if Frozen Ground breaks little new ground in the serial killer thriller genre, there’s hope Cage will leave the ham behind before Alaska freezes over.

It’s not a great film, but Beatriz grows in stature as Bonnie searches for firmer footing. She and Stahl create a relationship that feels lived-in and fragile.

It is immersive, letting us hear and feel the concussion of artillery, if not whistling hail of bullets and the desperation and fury of hand to hand combat.

The setting and old fashioned structure of the story won’t be to every taste. But The Physician is quite good at recreating its era and reminding us that once, long ago, it was the West that was backward and always looking East for enlightenment, education and a way out of the Dark Ages.

Fey plays this inner-outer conflict well. But at her most wide-eyed and vulnerable, she still has trouble making a romance credible, even with Rudd, edgy comedy’s puppy dog of a leading man.

A sturdy melodrama, more enjoyable for its performances than from its aged, time-tested and formulaic plot.

“Sting” isn’t great fun or great really in any sense. But it’s not bad for a giant spider killer thriller B-movie set in snowy New York and shot in Australia.

With its obvious melodrama, obviously misleading “locations” and even more obvious big stunts, Black Beauty doesn’t transcend its sentimental children’s entertainment origins. But Avis more than does the novel justice.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints feels like a fresh and poetic treatment of a prosaic story that should be utterly worn out by now.

Massalas immerses us in this pole-dancing “Oliver Twist” tale and the cast goes all-in to show us a Greece beyond the migrant headlines and the tourist sites, one where you’d better watch your wallet, because not everyone can count on a stampede of drag queens to bail you out of a jam.

“Thriller” doesn’t quite fit here, because no matter what the stakes, nobody seems that worked up about them. It’s more disquieting than fun, but more amusing than troubling.

"Dated,” quaint and tentative it may be. But Jenkins’ themes and big ideas make “Cane River” a debut film with promise, ambition and social currency.

Its predictability doesn’t break Between Two Worlds, but it does soften the blows it intends to deliver.

Writer-director Wang isn’t splitting the atom or reinventing the wheel here, and the film’s variations from the tropes for this genre aren’t unique or all that revelatory. But “Didi” makes a most relatable tour guide in helping us remember what running straight into a wall as you hit your teens was like.

The climbing footage is striking and the Alpine settings breathtaking in “Summit Fever,” a mountaineering thriller that also boasts some of the most stark and startling deaths the genre has ever seen.

The film still manages to be a beautifully-detailed recreation of a well-worn piece of history, most thought-provoking in its novel approach to the motivations and intent of those involved.

As a film, it’s not particularly revealing and adds little to what we know and understand about Young.

It’s a slender film with simplistic “live your truth” and “YOLO” messages, but Spall and Newman and Dena Kaplan . . . give it the heart and pathos it needs to pay off.

There’s no denying that this works as a thriller, that Smile is a well-crafted fright delivery system even as it slows to a crawl and stumbles into an ending we’ve seen coming for the past hour.

A moving and engaging kids’ movie with just enough hard edge to come off.

It’s no “Babadook” or “Mama,” but for a horror movie for people who won’t realize they’re watching a horror movie, it’s not bad.

The Package is funnier than any one joke/”dick” joke comedy has any right to be.

Trackdown goes down easy, and the character portraits are just interesting enough to hold our attention. But you can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a more interesting movie that cut closer to home.

The energy flags in this lighthearted dark romp, but that happens in comedies that live and die on their snappy, shticky banter. Blood Relatives is still shticky enough — and sticky enough — to deliver laughs with bite.

American Gadfly is about a campaign that few noticed outside of the twitterverse, a funny, unfiltered re-introduction of Gravel to America and a peek into todayt American politics and the political and political news ecosystem.

Mom and Dad is a reminder of how much gonzo fun a B-movie can be, how hilarious “Crank” was and what a hoot Nicolas Cage — who makes almost entirely B, C and D movies these days — is when he’s uncaged and unhinged.

It isn’t until the “camp” is shoved upstage and the kids and their Big Theater Show step downstage and into the light that “Theater Camp” finds its heart and hits its best notes.

There’s not much new here. But a savvy, sassy script, smart casting and genuine “I feel sorry for this white boy” chemistry between Hart and Gad make Wedding Ringer an R-rated bromance that will touch you as often as it tickles you.

The light and lightly-unsettling charms of Sublet win you over, even if you suspect that Fox has merely added a sexual edge to atone for the political and ethnic strife he’s taken care to avoid.

Book Club, aka Sisterhood of the Traveling Spanx, stuffs the screen with Oscar and Emmy winning actresses of a certain age and hopes the laughs will follow. And they do, just often enough to make this genial, eye-roller of a farce work.

At a nearly relentless two hours and 49 minutes, “Painted Bird” is an excessive test of patience and tolerance for the range of human depravity touched on.

All these disparate boons, bonuses and bungles combine to make The Fabulous Filipino Brothers a film that transcends it failings and becomes not just funny and warm enough to work, but a cultural touchstone, a movie well worth dropping in on if you enjoyed any of other “cultures among us” comedies that preceded it.

The jolts may be few, as most chapters focus on the don’t-look-away gruesomeness of what they serve up. But almost all of the jokes land.

Origin is noble, high-minded, moving and eye-opening. But as difficult as it was sure to be, shaping these themes, threads and characters into a movie, the film should have been sharper, tighter, poignant but more to the point.

Wilmer Valderrama utterly reinvents himself here as Angel.

Britney Vs Spears adds just enough to the story to be worth the obsessed-viewer’s trouble.

As lovely and striking as this place is, worth web searching to see about vacationing there, the drama it provides is entirely scenic — fog and snow and rain, seasons changing. And that’s not going to be to every taste any more than the tedious “I’m cold, there’s some pain” on-camera confessions.

It’s predictable, downright conventional, considering how much more “out there” his breakout film, “Sleepwalk With Me” (also about a struggling comic) was.

A fascinating if somewhat muted spy thriller from the director of “The Iceman” and “Criminal,” Ariel Vroman.

Edwin keeps the tone machismo-deflating and goofy, and the film on its feet between fights. Our leads have enough chemistry when they’re throwing down that their characters’ problematic love life together seems immaterial.

The action takes a quick turn for the preposterous and the bleak in the finale. But fear not. Just break out the Kleenex, parents. And not just for yourselves.

Even at its most unpleasant, it’s never less than fascinating.

You don’t feel Francis is challenged on anything here, and as lightly charming and impressive as he and this almost-all-access documentary is, one can only imagine what the great doc-makers — Errol Morris or Werner Herzog or Barbara Koppel — could have done with this.

Dreamworks hired the directors of "Lilo & Stitch" to turn Cressida Cowell’s romp of a novel into an animated film and can’t be too surprised that they made, in essence, "Hiccup and Stitch."

A light tone, just enough compelling back-stories and just-high-enough stakes make all the difference in the world between formulaic “plucky underdog” sports movies that work, and those that don’t.

Yeah, it’s on-the-nose and plenty of the laughs are low-hanging fruit. But for guys with limited reach, this crew makes those easy laughs come easily, and unlike the film’s title, no pun intended.

Not every cute movie about the mentally ill is Oscar worthy, but this touching and riotous one from Down Under works well enough.

Robert Redford delivers one last lecture on ’60s idealism and passes another baton to Shia LaBeouf in The Company You Keep, an engrossing thriller about the last anti-Vietnam War radicals still underground.

It’s a lot less “spice” and a bit more “sweet” than I’d care for, but Malik has made a warm comedy that introduces, embraces and every-so-gently-chides an under-represented American community in all their glory, their fun and their foibles.

If you liked “Scrubs,” and I did, for a few seasons, anyway, you’ll be happy Braff got to make his movie and happy that you got to see it.

A clever and claustrophobic thriller that will trip you up and leave you with a wicked, blood-stained grin.

An old fashioned romantic mystery that benefits from a wizened, much-honored cast and a still-exotic setting.

Its the pleasure of this cast’s company — grounded, detailed performances with a flourish here and there — that make this otherwise routine thriller pay off.

The target demo here is the same as it ever was — 8-and-under. There’s plenty of slapstick and critter gags for them, crashing furniture, trashed hotel rooms and wedding party mishaps. The rest of us? “Cute” it is and cute these two forever will be.

The film is on shaky ground as it veers into persecution and some paranoid “Silkwood” touches.

Uygur is the fuming, fulminating embodiment of the prophetic movie character Howard Beale from “Network.” He is, indeed, Mad as Hell and he isn’t “going to take it anymore.” But the jury’s out on exactly what he’ll do about that.

The Menu is entertaining enough. But the meal is — like the horror movie logic of it all — perfunctory, if magnificently presented.

It’s a fun vanity project, an interesting history as seen from its insiders.

Eisenberg, perfectly, pliably put upon, is the engine that drives this picture.

A generic sports drama, it scores points for being that rare "faith based film" to show a little edge.

The cast is quite good, and the locations — including a trip to the White Sands National Monument — ground the picture in a particular place and a corner of the culture.

Charm and wit count for a lot in romantic comedies, and they compensate for the many sins of Funny Story.

Is this Evil Dead (no “The”) any good? Yes and no. It several genuinely hair-raising moments and presents, for your edification and enjoyment, some of the most graphic horror violence ever presented on the screen.

The central romance earns short shrift, with all these characters to service and all those story lines to get in. It doesn’t help that Williams’ Lucille doesn’t give herself over to the passion and never quite sells us this “relationship.” Schoenaerts broods over just what he might be putting on the line, but Williams is so cool that we don’t buy into the risks taken.

The occasional blood-curdling scream notwithstanding, Offseason is more chilling and gloomy than frightening.

An amusing, well-acted and sharply-timed holiday comedy, old friends getting together to prove that careers, families and kids aside, they’ve still got their R-rated edge, just as they did in college.

Spring Break – it’s every bit as much fun as you think it is. Until it isn’t.

As long as their are little lives worth a little intense scrutiny, there’ll be indie films like Sam & Kate, pleasant diversions that give legendary stars the indulgence of a victory lap, this time with their kids along for the ride.

If it's not an unerringly faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's play, it still manages enough wit and charm to come off.

A solid formula sports picture with a light dose of faith and some overt small town America “conservative signaling,” and a generally entertaining movie thanks to a decent lead and stellar supporting cast.

Smith’s easy way with a joke keeps the tone light, and for all the mayhem, this is still pretty fluffy and cute. It’s not “The Incredibles,” but it’s a reasonable and quite amusing facsimile.

Devolves from quiet character study into full-blown, over-the-top “star vehicle” in its last act.

And as much pleasure as one gets out of Lawrence’s stone-faced pairings with the formidable Irons, Schoenaerts and Rampling, her third act duet with the dazzling Parker (of “RED”) reminds us of what this one-dimensional “Sparrow” is lacking — the spark of life.

This isn’t anybody’s idea of a new horror classic. But The Djinn takes a basic story and delivers the basic jolts and frights we expect from it. No more, no less.

I can’t say this is one of the best, too grim and gory. But it does get a down and dirty job done.

Rockwell, Schwartz, Fox, Ferdinando and Callow make it engaging in between its darkly-funny bursts of slow-motion violence — be their characters expertly menacing, or just mean and inept.

The movie is a bit of a female empowerment muddle, with promising young actress-turned writer-director Emerald Fennell rearing back as if to deliver a knock-out blow, and only grazing what she’s swinging at, often as not...But she makes Promising Young Woman so consistently dark and foreboding that we never let our guard down, never get our hopes up and brace for the next moment that comes when “it’s time to pay the piper.”

It can feel superficial and less revealing than we might want. Much is left out, but for that we can probably turn to the book got out of the experience. “Mister Satan’s Apprentice.”

It’s just too much — too much graphic violence, too many plot wrinkles, too much stupidity, too many supporting players to track...For a movie as physically fit as this one wants to be, Pain & Gain is carrying way too much extra weight.

A smart and reasonably taut thriller aimed at a generation that may be hard to convince to put down its phones long enough to watch.

Humor Me is never much more than a comfort food comedy — funny people, given mildly funny situations and just enough funny things to say, find a few laughs and a lot of grins.

Ferry is a straight-up old-fashioned “mobster grows morals” thriller from The Netherlands, a movie that doesn’t surprise but does what it does with efficiency and a hint of style.

An engrossing but frustrating movie, so subtle in its depiction of a teenager struggling to come to terms with a world and worldview utterly upended that it almost trivializes the tragedy that Lore, we suspect, is just beginning to feel responsible for.

Home is a energetic, obvious animated comedy packed with the sort of low humor and silly laughs that drive very small children wild.

There isn’t much to “the story,” and certainly little in the basic situation that we haven’t seen in movies about Italians, Greeks, Spanish, gay or young or old characters. But the musical novelty numbers absolutely make the featherweight Musica come off.

Justice League doesn’t have anyone with the witty way with a line Robert Downey Jr. brings to Ironman, or the swagger of Chris Hemsworth (Thor) to carry it. But Momoa’s bemused physicality has its own cockiness, Miller’s wide-eyed Flash innocence and Gadot’s commitment to earnest, brave and spoiling for a fight Diana put “The Avengers” on notice.

This is a “feel good” movie that lets you feel good only after it shows you how bad everything can get.

Hearts and Bones isn’t particularly graceful in the way it unfolds, and it doesn’t hide one man’s secret well enough or give the other’s the weight it seems to represent. But some very fine acting, a few poignant scenes and a general earnestness carry it off.

Any time you can top your tale of crisis, calamity and heroism with sacrifice, pathos and a hopeful message, you call that a “win,” in Hollywood or Aelsund.

Turning Red isn’t so much a bad movie as a tentative one. It came to life with grand intentions, some cute characters, a ready-made toy tie-in and a hint of controversy. It plays as focus-grouped and watered-down — not the daring, boundary-pushing children’s edutainment it might have been.

It’s always nice when musicians that mattered to their fans are memorialized in movies like this. As most of us mark the waypoints of our early lives with songs, the attachments are real and last a lifetime.

That’s the fresh angle to this standard-issue “What did you do in the war?” doc, the children, grandchildren and other family members curious about “Where grandpa fought,” “How my uncle died,” “What Dad’s base when he was in the service looked like,” and even “How mom met dad.”

I’d say Parker, Najimy and Midler all did a great public service coming back to these characters and deserve the thanks of a grateful nation for giving this their all, giving us a few laughs and a lot of grins and giving legions of little girls Disney role models who aren’t princesses waiting around for some prince to get a clue.

As edgy female wish-fulfillment fantasy, showing that fantasy’s consequences, Adore engrosses and engages, never titillates and never betrays even the tiniest hint of revulsion.

There’s a lot that feels incomplete here, introduced and abandoned or at least never wrestled with. And much of what transpires after the assorted ingredients are introduced is utterly predictable.

The execution is novel, fascinating and just musically/romantically entertaining enough to not totally muck up the suspense that’s built in.

Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm is a cute surface gloss in the “if these recording studio walls could talk” genre.

The movie before it is rather undone by the third act that ends it.

A horror movie that pulls you in, bumps you back into your seat and almost brings a tear to the eye.

Nowhere Inn never quite crawls out from under the David Byrne influence as a movie or a film conceit. It’s more droll than funny, and only novel in the sense that she’s mocking the conventions of such movies and they’re beyond mockery at this point.

A cartoon with better animation and livelier action, if fewer jokes. If there’s one thing these sweet-message/great flying sequence movies don’t need is fewer jokes.

Even if Hurley has only one movie in him and this hit-and-miss proposition is it, Hurley’s personal story is fresh and engaging enough to stand out, a coming-of-age saga with modest ambitions that get to the heart of some still “self evident” truths — the freedom to be who you are, life your life and pursue your own dream of America.

Waiting for Dalí gets by on charm, settings and set-ups. It’s a pity more of those set-ups don’t deliver the “twee” the picture promises.

Epic isn’t epic, but it isn’t half bad, either. It’s just that as high as the bar has been raised on this sort of animation, this is more evidence that a strong story is worth more than any next generation software.

It’s a modest but immersive film more interested in cryptic characters and plot lines and in period detail — minimal effects, mostly in the third act — and the idea that some sort of rift in reality might be possible, that it could happen, and why not in the Swiss Alps in 1962?

This three-part picture is more interesting than titillating, a film best appreciated as a semi-sordid slice of interior lives in a culture that worships good manners and may or may not have invented pornography, but certainly perfected it in either case.

It demands attention. It requires a lot of life experience to connect to its themes and subject matter. It’s a movie for the old, and those dealing with the philosophical, taking-stock questions of life. If that describes you, sad as it sometimes feels, Nostalgia can be an exercise well worth doing.

Familiar Touch is a simple, documdrama-real film of frank honesty and sensitivity about dementia and adjusting to life in Memory Care.

A darker-than-dark British comedy.

What Ozon flirts with is the superior adaptability and endurance of those who can let the past be the past, and the costs of not getting over to those who won’t.

Bodega is a dopey, druggy and funny midnight movie about one young guy’s need for social media affirmation to go along with the drug money that supports his modest New York lifestyle.

It doesn’t all come together as neatly as it might have, and there are potential laughs and screwball moments left dangling. But Winograd sticks with what he knows, sentiment, and makes this “Fix” stick.

“Raya” is a pleasant enough kids’ adventure — “Raiders of the Lost Ark” meets “Mulan” who is now a “Tomb Raider.”

No, it’s not particularly cinematic. It’s not a must that you catch this on the big screen. But if you’re a fan of the show, or have the faintest inkling that you could be one, you should. It’s not deep or all that sophisticated. Yet it’s always quick, and often damned funny.

Arctic doesn’t vary from the conventions of this genre — ever. But Mikkelsen’s star turn at the center of it makes this wintry tale its own “Revenent,” with suffering and compassion, terror and even humor playing out on his expressive face.

As cute and predictable as this all is, the cast hurls itself at this slight farce and makes it play.

Sad to say that adults in positions of authority acting like adults — diplomatic, courteous — is the most refreshing historical artifact resurrected in Worth.

So even though Signal isn’t great sci-fi, you’d never know it to look at it and listen to it.

Plan 75 rarely manipulates and never tugs so hard at the heartstrings that it breaks your heart. Honestly, I think it needs to.

It’s an earnest film graced with surprising glimpses of humanity amid persistent racist venality. The great value is in showing us a piece of history we don’t know but should, and as a terrific showcase for Mackie, Jackson, Long and Hoult.

A genuine “bodice ripper” of a thriller, with the requisite heavy breathing that comes after said bodice is ripped. The sex isn’t explicit, but Olsen and Isaac suggest the heat that gives this doomed affair its momentum.

Restless is a spare, reasonably taut thriller of the “Neighbor from Hell” subgenre, the sort of movie most any member of Western or Eastern Civilization can relate to.

Illusion isn’t a movie with a lot of highs and lows, just a downbeat tale of grief, hope and acceptance struggling mightily with defiant persistence. Buzek and Minorowicz keep us engaged almost in spite of themselves in a movie that hints it might be more conventional than it truly is, but truly isn’t.

The setting and various religious rifts are unfamiliar, if the domestic/romantic melodrama isn’t.

Experimenter is a capital example of that prophet-ahead-of-his-time narrative, a movie about a scientist who lived (just) long enough to revel in the fact that he was onto something before everybody else. And that he was right.

The Mighty Atom is an engagingly adoring film.

Violent, raunchy and raw, sexual and street-wise, Pimp is straight-up exploitation, a serious departure for the starlet, would-be pop star and 25 year old veteran of the screen trade.

Sukowa makes a fine villain, one among many “using” Dali. But Kingsley is the reason to visit Daliland, allowing us to “be in the presence…of genius” and be irritated, titillated, amused and maybe a little depressed about the trap our imperious host has flounced into and embraced as the doom he dreads but so feverishly craves.

Pledge is a bloody, nervy and lean thriller about “hazing” taken to its logical extreme. If you’re OK with torturing somebody so that the “shared experience” will “bond” you to your “brothers,” maybe there’s a little sociopath in you, Pledge.

Perhaps its going to take two documentaries to plumb the depths of Bannon’s persona, what drives this frump who rails against elites even as he’s serving their purposes so well. Klayman’s has an incomplete yet polished feel to it. There’s too much we don’t find out.

The voice casting is on the money and these funny people - and I'm including Pitt, who plays this sort of self-mocking Adonis well, even in animated form - make this cute comedy come off.

The movie is a derivative hash of comic book picture plot points and origin story touchstones — half “Captain America: The First Avenger,” half “Thor.” But director Patty Jenkins, who did not get enough credit for “Monster,” keeps Gadot in frame and the tone light.

Into the Mirror gets as close as any movie ever has to simulating the state of mind of someone conflicted, if no longer confused about his sexuality — the feelings, paranoia, decision making and resolve that takes one from the closet to the drag club.

The story is pure melodrama and more conventional than daring. But Tallulah makes a fine demonstration project to under-employed talent — in front of and behind the camera.

This “Wolfboy’s” adventures leave a sweet aftertaste, even if we realize it isn’t exactly a meal, or even a full portion of dessert, when we think about it.

But the “Quiet” once again drowns out the “noise” in this, the best creature feature of our times.

It’s a compelling Holocaust/espionage story not given the most dazzling treatment, cinematically.

Sir Ben sells it and faithfully maintains our interest in what happens, and what happens to Avram, from first scene to last, a spy in his element, a Spider in the Web.

Hollywood will simplify it to that big concept, and trim writer-director Maren Ade’s flaccid storytelling and many aimless scenes into something tighter, funnier and almost certainly less German.

Donnie is a most unusual character to serve as our tour guide to “A Dark Place.” British character actor Andrew Scott (“Spectre,””Pride” and TV’s Moriarty in “Sherlock”) utterly immerses himself in this “town weirdo” character who becomes obsessed with a little boy on his route who disappears, and then is found drowned in a local creek.

Unfortunately, the more things spiral into anarchy, the less interesting the story becomes.

Director Thomas Balmes and his editors find moments of humor in “discoveries” or the unfettered urinating of a baby brought up without diapers.

Zoo is a sweet and occasionally sad tale, told with sensitivity and performed with great charm by all concerned.

A stunning blend of styles, from hand-drawn sketches to computer-assisted visuals with flashbacks made in gorgeous, textured stop-motion animation with models and tactile sets, it does justice to the book while updating its messages for contemporary audiences.

The debut feature of writer-director Aimee Long is a somber, thought-provoking essay on policing, race, firearms and family.

The acting can feel flat and unpolished, and the intimacy of the story is both an asset and a limitation to its ambitions. But any horror fan looking for the next “came out of nowhere” genre phenomenon need look no further. It’s not the “Citizen Kane” of witch movies, but it’s creepy and DIY fun and well worth tracking down.

It’s a trifle silly. But you don’t have to take Six Minutes to Midnight seriously to lose yourself in the pleasure of some very fine actors having a go at an old fashioned B-movie, poppycock included.

No, it’s not on a par with “Bridesmaids” or “Girls’ Trip.” The sentimental stuff, the piercing insights Ali picks up about men, are instantly forgettable. But Henson plays the hell out of this part, no subtlety allowed.

This is a comic book epic with a lot of fat and flab around the edges. But the fights are shorter and more involving than the “Transformers” cluttered clashes of “Man of Steel.”

This thriller plays, with realistic real-time problem-solving, melodramatic near-misses, violence and suspense. We fear for the heroine, even if she’s not nobly heroic, and fret over her strength and cunning even as her resolve never wavers.

Fey flirts and Carell kvetches, Walhberg goes shirtless and Liotta eats Italian. No surprises there. What really clicks is the couple at the core.

I Am Another You, now streaming on Amazon, is never judgmental, although Dylan gets a tiny taste of that from one (among many) religious stranger.

Pandering? Yes. But pandering with polish.

Minions will tickle the very young and has roughly twice as many laughs as those Disney “Planes” pictures, or Pixar’s “Monster’s University.” So “Kumbaya,” kids, kumbaya.

Tramps tends towards cutesy, with its “Bonnie & Clyde” bluegrass banjo chase music and Ellie’s biting “Who’re you to judge ME?” baiting, every time moon-eyed Danny steps into it, over-sharing sexual experiences, implying she has a lot more.

The sex is explicit and frequent and pretty much covers the spectrum. The drug use that accompanies it cringe-worthy. No man could have ever gotten away with adapting Phoebe Gloeckner’s novel in such frank terms.

The Conjuring is like a prequel to 40 years of demonic possession thrillers.

I found the picture moving in spite of its seeming unwillingness to wholly grapple with race and Coogan’s unwillingness to master the Afrikaner accent. He’s a gifted mimic, and Riseborough manages it. What gives? But what it does wrestle with is profound, and profoundly disturbing.

Oh, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is. And truthfully, for a “romp” it only occasionally romps. But See How They Run is still a warm, witty and winning old fashioned “whodunit” and an equally old-fashioned “theater” comedy, pronounced “THEE-a-turr” in the British style. I found it an old fashioned hoot.

The heart of Max is a boy learning about an always faithful dog, and as sentimental and manipulative as their bonding moments are, that’s what works.

There's only so much humor you can wring from the f-bomb, even if you are a cute animated alien.

The Arctic Convoy is not all that novel or new. But it’s beautifully put together, well-acted and tautly-acted.

“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner takes his act to the big screen with Are You Here, which turns out to be the most quotable Owen Wilson comedy since “Zoolander.”

This warm, embracing little film — catching up with old friends from “the road,” remembering epic road trips following the band, chatting with other, even-more-devoted fans and even the director of another Deadhead documentary — vividly creates a sense of the community that the band inspired, with its own economy, values and shared creed.

Semans’ script suggests guilt, blame and next-level psychological mind-games in the connection between his heroine and her perceived nemesis. As in other films that go down this path, there’s uncertainty about what’s actually happening to Margaret and what’s just in her head.

“Change” finds humanity, a sweet moment or two (rare) and some good-natured laughs at the misperceptions and misunderstandings that occur when on-the-spectrum meets off-the-spectrum, and even among people all on the same wavelength.

A ditzy film that offers more evidence that good actors, good action and one-liners don’t solve the one thing missing in every movie video game adaptation – a story that makes sense.

The picture is thus a mixed bag, rather like “Hobbs & Shaw” and “Deadpool 2,” and Leitch’s “Bullet Train” — funny, but leaning on Gosling’s twinkling charisma and inside-the-movies jokes and pratfalls to come off, which it does just often enough to recommend.

This film based on Alan Glynn's novel "Dark Fields" is entirely too reliant on voice-over, a bit too tarted-up by Burger in an effort to make this head trip a visual experience.

There’s style and a vivid sense of place in this most unusual movie, a film of future tech and sonic booming jets and unelectrified farms where the work is still done by hand, the way it has been for hundreds of years. That makes this “Walk” long, but rewarding in the end.

It’s more tame than daring, at least that’s how Perfect Strangers plays north of the border. And the resolution is abrupt and unsatisfying. But the actors are uniformly superb, with Suárez and Bichir standing out.

It’s not wholly coherent. But anyone in the mood for a quirky, absurdist farce with full frontal nudity, gunplay and a lost hero trying to fulfill his pregnant girlfriend’s deal-breaker request should check out Kill the Jockey (simply “El Jockey” in Argentina). Because surreal and screwy film fare like this is rare, with or without subtitles.

Like taking a peek into the many influences Rowling synthesized into her Potter world.

The real delight here is Barkhad Abdi, the “I am captain now” pirate of “Captain Phillips.”

Levine writes and shoots enough scenes in inventive ways to make this mildly-frustrating melodrama work.

It doesn’t come together nearly as neatly as you’d like. But “Hypochondriac” manages a few chills and some eyes-averting gore thanks to Will’s memories of what happened and how close he is to repeating the awful past he grew up in.