Sam Adams

The movie is a character study in search of a character.

Like its characters, who can't believe their stable nation could be threatened by ethnic unrest, Cirkus Columbia looks to the past, evoking the kind of unreal, vaguely politicized tales that were once the lifeblood of arthouse cinema.

Like the monsters at its center, it’s built from parts that don’t always fit together, but dammit: It’s alive.

The Intervention is a movie whose small moments are worth savoring even when the big ones don’t come off as intended

Good For Nothing is billed as the first Western shot in New Zealand, but that tourist-brochure distinction pales besides its more pungent claim to fame as the first Western whose hero spends the entire film attempting to overcome a bout of erectile dysfunction.

Mufasa was almost inevitably destined to be Barry Jenkins’ worst movie, and it is. But it’s not a black mark on his record, just a blank space on the timeline.

The Commuter has nothing so heady as the plight of the forgotten man on its mind. The movie, whose screenplay is credited to Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi, and Ryan Engle, is flagrantly, even willfully silly, juiced with such corny audacity it frequently made me laugh out loud.

Shot with tiny digital cameras to minimize the sense of intrusion, The End Of Love sometimes feels like a home movie, but that’s also the source of its strength.

It’s hardly a masterpiece, but then, it shows no signs it ever wanted to be, and sometimes that’s a relief.

With The Fate of the Furious, it feels like the movies have gotten as big as they can get, and the gleeful absurdity that drove them is losing ground to the specter of obligation.

Entering the minor canon of movies named after sports regulations - move over, "Offside!" - Don Handfield's Touchback takes a handoff from "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "It's A Wonderful Life" and runs it up the middle for a modest gain.

The character-building is proffered in bad faith, like every scene in Safe that doesn't involve bloodshed. Statham can sell a punch, but not his own vulnerability.

Subtitled “A Fable,” Megalopolis can be read as a parable of what happens when you let artists take over the world, and while that may not run more smoothly, it’s a heck of a lot more interesting.

Wan not only embraces the inherent silliness of a hero whose signature power is talking to fish; he revels in it, finding the childlike awesomeness at its core. You can still see every plot beat coming from miles away, but it feels like destiny rather than repetition, the fulfillment of a promise every movie makes and few deliver on.

Perhaps fittingly, part of the problem with Everyday is that it’s too short, both in micro and macro terms. Ninety-odd minutes isn’t long enough to make the full weight of the elapsed time register.

Even at his most indulgent, Malick brings something to the movies that no one else ever has, a way of looking at the world that is easily imitated but has never been equaled. It’s worth sifting through the sometimes half-baked philosophizing and breathy poeticism to see through his eyes.

This might be the best week for The Reluctant Fundamentalist to open or the worst, but the timing doesn’t matter when the powder is damp.

The improvised dialogue takes hairpin turns, some less fruitful than others, holding onto just enough traces of structure to sustain the film's brief length.

There are moments when Big Wednesday strains under the weight of Milius’ ambition, but they’re balanced with lively authenticity and a brisk lack of sentiment.

It’s goofy as hell and borderline inexcusable at times, but it’s also kind of glorious.

It’s frenzied, briefly infuriating, and eventually, grudgingly, satisfying, but it’s like being force-fed fandom: Your belly is filled, but there’s no pleasure in the meal.

Between the exhilaration of great movies and the disappointment of bad ones lie the particular pleasures of trash. Ma isn’t a bad movie, and it’s sure as hell not trying to be a good one, but it scratches a particular itch that neither noble failures nor cranked-out hackwork can touch.

Despite its sizable budget, Detective Pikachu has a similarly run-down quality. What story there is barely makes sense, and it feels as if large chunks have been taken out at random. But in a world packed full of franchise-extending would-be blockbusters, there’s something strangely appealing about its patchiness.

Eastwood and Blyskal can’t seem to decide whether they want Stone et al. to be ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation or whether they were destined for greatness, so they waffle between foreshadowing and simply biding their time.

Branagh is more preoccupied with the challenges of keeping a movie set in a series of steel tubes visually interesting than he is in engaging its story.

For all its untrammeled excesses - and Kaye has proved that he'd sooner torpedo his own career than accept a little constructive trammeling - Detachment is almost forcibly moving, body-slamming its audience into submission.

Central Intelligence doesn’t feel like the birth of a great comic duo — more like a blind date that goes a little better than expected. The chemistry’s not there yet, but let’s give it another shot.

The credibility Bowen and Amy Seimetz, as his fearful ex-girlfriend, bring to their roles nearly legitimizes the movie's underlying silliness.