Sara Stewart

The Pretty One does find a handful of genuinely sweet moments in which Basel and Laurel bond on letting their respective freak flags fly. Like the film itself, Kazan is at her best when she’s not trying so hard to be cute.

None of this is particularly innovative, although Garcia and the elder Farmiga develop a nice spark and a gentle humor in their characters’ stolen day together.

It has no real reason to exist, other than to be a passable option for parents whose children are too young to handle PG-13 fare and feels like it.

Heck, between this and “Cats,” maybe Universal is now just specializing in confounding talking-animal movies. At least this one leaves you feeling kindly toward other species, rather than freaked out by them.

Concert sequences are engaging, though I was disappointed not to see any animated flourishes.

Hugh Jackman, as a (fictional) former American jumper named Bronson Peary, enlivens things a little.

Kelly & Cal is at its best when focused on Lewis and Weston.

Despite the film’s wispiness, though, there is always something compelling about Waterston, who is usually the best part of any film she’s in (see also: “Inherent Vice,” “Alien: Covenant”).

Like Cam, Tracers is fun to look at, if not too bright, and even includes a line I can only assume is a winking reference to Lautner’s claim to fame: “There can only be one alpha in every pack.”

Despite the dramatic dystopia, performances here are uniformly low-affect, which isn’t helpful given the exposition-heavy dialogue and unremarkable set (though Nick’s extraterrestrial visions have a pleasantly kitschy look). Also puzzling is the fact that the pivotal song is not actually performed by Morissette.

There's also a refreshing lack of wrapping everything up in a neat, happy bow at the end.

Are Some Girl(s) like this? Yes. But I left this movie with no additional insight on why.

This unambitious Michael Bay-produced version doesn’t seem interested in cleverness, cravenly settling for the usual generic CGI shtick.

Good-looking but tonally dubious feature debut from Elizabeth Wood.

Sunk by too much schmaltz (even for the Lower East Side).

Feels both deeply rote and way overpacked with characters.

“Gatsby” meets “Gossip Girl” in this outsider-among-the-wealthy story set, like Fitzgerald’s novel, on Long Island.

Thrillers can be a valid Hollywood escape, but this one made me as uncomfortable as its hero is with small talk.

Overall, everyone’s working far too hard at hitting their marks in this march toward a conclusion that’s both predictable and laughable.

Despite a terrific cast and a sexy noir look to rival the two “Blade Runner” films, Jones (son of David Bowie) delivers a bit of a letdown.

It is admirably unsparing and gloomily atmospheric. And I looked at my watch a bunch of times.

Director Peter Chelsom (“Hannah Montana: The Movie”) and screenwriter Allan Loeb (“Collateral Beauty”) squander countless opportunities to make this fish-out-of-water story intellectually curious or even much fun.

A warm-hearted and ambitiously honest look at the pros and cons of monogamy, but it tends to be understated to the point of underwhelming.

Even an 11th-hour cameo from the late Dick Gregory as Ella’s long-ago boyfriend can’t keep The Leisure Seeker from being, well, forgettable.

Despite all its problems, The Last Days on Mars serves up a deliciously shivery hypothetical: Wouldn’t we all secretly love it if the Mars rover sent back footage of a “walker” or two?

The intriguing story behind Seberg and the always-interesting Kristen Stewart promised greatness. But this biopic squanders both; it’s a bland period piece with an irritating lack of focus.

The film strains credulity as it hurtles toward its conclusion.

Salma Hayek, as their vengeful ex-boss Eva Torres, is fun to watch as she plots to outwit them time and again, but ultimately, there’s no one here to really care about.

A rather unremarkable, if endearing, entry in the quirky rom-com genre.

The tone and focus of David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn careens around so much it’s hard not to end up as irritable as its title character.

The romance between Winslet and Schoenaerts — billed as the film’s centerpiece — is, regrettably, never really allowed to bloom.

More frustratingly, Brooks jumps back and forth in time between the couple’s past relationship and the current day, with nary a physical or emotive change evident in either party. It becomes a task just to figure out which timeline you’re in, and then convince yourself why you should care.

A horror movie with an anti-globalist bent that’s more interesting than its halfhearted scares.

Whether you dig this aggressively campy horror-comedy is, to some extent, dependent on your squeamishness.

Movie adaptations shouldn’t require that you know their source material. But in the case of The Glass Castle, it’s impossible not to just say it: You’re better off reading the book.

[JK Simmons] provides a little comic relief, and sums up my feelings on this whole outing: “Goddamn time-travelin’ robots!”

For a company that purports to be all about sparking creativity, asking a kid to follow Ikea-evocative directions to assemble an X-wing fighter seems at odds with the mission.

Mostly, though, it’s the same old story: Bad mutants versus good mutants, with the fate of us humans — mostly off-screen, disturbingly expendable — hanging in the balance.

Heavy on quirk and light on wit, first-time director Gillian Greene’s comedy leans too heavily on the badly wigged Kranz.

The birth of the titular infant — what the whole movie’s leading up to — is just an anticlimactic mess.

On the whole, the film would probably be more at home on cable and at a reduced running time. I’d like to see a competition series of the same name, in which rival engineers compete to see who can endure having the hard-driving Cameron for a boss.

I know this is a teen-boy fantasy — it was produced by Michael Bay, after all — but the female characters in Project Almanac are lamely retro, little more than props in short shorts.

As a distinctly not-insider, though, I would have benefited more from a broader portrait of the woman herself, and how she became such a legend.

The idea of combining creature-feature invisibility with domestic-abuse gaslighting — playing with someone’s reality to make them think they’re going insane — is inspired. This middling horror film, regrettably, is not.

Too often content to smile beatifically instead of delivering the necessary thrills.

Zoey Deutch is fine in a non-demanding role as the requisite starry-eyed female student, and Danny Huston (“Wonder Woman”) gives us a softer side as Richard’s weepy best friend. But this is, at its core, a one-man show, and given the uncertain future of Depp’s career (being axed from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, for example), it might also have been titled “Johnny Says Goodbye.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a pretty silly idea. So why on Earth is this movie, based on the satirical book by Seth Grahame-Smith, not having more fun?

From time to time, it works.

Men are pigs! Women are psychos! One-percenters have it coming! Pick your moral in this nasty, single-setting thriller that’s ultimately quite tame by the standards of torture-porn director Eli Roth (“The Green Inferno”).

At the risk of sounding 100, I think it’s regrettable this film had to be shot in digital 3-D. Both those formats actually do a frustrating disservice to the depiction of the action, making them look choppier, more flickery and occasionally blurrier than they would otherwise.

As an exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder in US war veterans, the psychological thriller Jacob’s Ladder was ripe for an update. As a piece of enjoyable ’90s shock schlock, it maybe should have just stayed where it was.

Despite James Wan’s capable direction and very game cast, the whole thing goes increasingly wobbly like a bad axle, until it’s just a tangle of metal and bullets and yelling.

Well-intentioned, if ultimately underwhelming, ode to the ongoing fight for a cure.

Like its synthetic heroine (Scarlett Johansson), the live-action Ghost in the Shell is a feast for the eyes. With its killer-robot geishas, Godzilla-size hologram ads and nearly nude fighting gear, it’s a cyberpunk wonderland — but there isn’t much ghost left in this smokin’ hot shell.

Nancy Meyers is known for her obsession with kitchens — sun-drenched, timelessly chic architectural marvels that provide a safe haven for all the director’s characters. The Intern puts a new spin on this trope: Robert De Niro is the kitchen.

There’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.

It’s well-executed but familiar territory, with a dearth of jarring moments. Those of us who aren’t friends and family of the crew could use a little wake-up shove here and there.

Director Tom Harper (“War Book”) defaults too often to gotcha scares, which is disappointing.

Director Niki Caro, whose 2005 film “North Country” gave creative life to another true story, doesn’t allow this one enough narrative twists; it starts off at point A and heads straight for point B, much like one of its many racing scenes.

While absolutely nothing in Grand Piano makes the least bit of sense, it is admittedly gorgeous to look at and listen to. Give Mira a decent script, and he might be a director to be reckoned with.

No personal revelations surface in “This Is Us.” Also, no narrative, no conflict — no differentiation between band members, even, besides the designation of dark-eyed Zayn as “the mysterious one” (he likes to paint).

For a movie called Sparkle, the absolutely least interesting or central thing about it is Sparkle (and Sparks), although the "Idol" singer does bust out one impressive performance.

Bad Samaritan plays like an unambitious episode of “Black Mirror,” low on techno-savvy but enhanced by the always-compelling David Tennant and Robert Sheehan, an Irish actor best known for his role on the British series “Misfits.”

Compared to another recent teen weepie, “The Fault in Our Stars,” this one comes up wanting. That film’s strong point was the delight its heroine took in detonating romantic clichés; If I Stay seems determined to keep them on life support.

Director Christian Charles gets some comic mileage from the inimitable Walsh and Rae, but it’s ultimately hard to care too much about a caddish protagonist like Norman — or, for that matter, about the clichéd “women are crazy!” sentiment that hums nastily under the antics of Dori’s unorthodox family gathering.

As for the magical-realist horns, they make a nice bad-boy look for Radcliffe and a handy plot device, but are never really explained in a satisfactory way. They have the side effect of making anyone who sees them immediately forget them — which I suspect may be the case with this movie as well.

For a movie called Breathe, Andy Serkis’ directorial debut is curiously airless — or maybe just quintessentially British, all stiff upper lip and light on emoting.

Teen Lisa Johnson (Abigail Breslin) is trapped in a kind of undead, unfunny “Groundhog Day,” living one particular 24 hours with her family over and over.

I cracked up here and there watching this broad heist comedy, but it wasn’t laughter I felt great about. Director Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”) has always gone for geeks and oddballs, but this film mostly punches down at characters for being poor, unfashionable and stupid.

For all its CGI showiness, the fact that Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal signed on for this splatterfest is the film’s most impressive feat.

Too much of the film is taken up by creaky plot devices and one sibling vowing to track down and talk to another one to resolve a problem.

Mines the increasingly fertile territory of aging boomer parents and chafing middle-aged siblings, but at irritatingly high volume, with the cantankerous voices of Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman nearly constantly talking over one another.

Frothy, forgettable comedy.

Unfortunately, “Arthur” is rarely at its best, bogged down in countless CGI sequences of battlefields or monsters.

The Report, true to its no-nonsense name, does the admirable work of trying to interest viewers in the way that bureaucracy can be used to hide the most terrible truths. Alas, the movie gets as buried in paper-pushing as its characters do.

Director Ben Hickernell soft-pedals the material into a blandly feel-good dramedy. As Abigail's spirited young trainees, Alexandra Metz and Meredith Apfelbaum give Backwards their all, but can't row their way clear of its clichés.

This Cinderella is all dressed up with nowhere very interesting to go.

It’s never a good sign when the real people behind a movie’s story appear in the end credits and you’re stumped as to who’s who.

Good intentions aside, it fails to resonate, though there is a certain voyeuristic intrigue to attempting to figure out how much of this toxic stuff is drawn from the real Reiners.

Those People also suffers, perhaps, from a lack of timing; Kuhn’s group of one-percenter millennials harkens back to early Whit Stillman or, more recently, “Gossip Girl.”

My All American would have done better to dig deeper in its portrayal of a man who set such a high bar for the intrinsic character of a football player. Because he’s actually the kind of example the sport could really use right now.

Pollak obviously had fun, but you get the feeling the best bits never made it in.

Just in time for Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday comes this gloriously colorful animated musical, which almost (but not quite) makes up in visuals what it lacks in snappy dialogue.

It feels like the brainchild of middle-aged guys (James Ponsoldt directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Eggers) who still think of Facebook as cutting edge.

The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Wiig and Adebimpe give appealing, naturalistic performances — it’s Silva’s character who grate.

Italian director Carlo Carlei has a background in TV movies, and this film, plodding and earnest, seems meant for the small screen, too.

Despite Mulligan bringing her A-game, the film falls short of its potential.

Using autism as a plot device walks a fine line between empathetic and exploitative, and The Night Clerk is wobbly in that respect.

The plot swerves around just enough to make you think something more complex is going on. Ultimately, it really isn’t — certainly not enough to make up for the clichés and sexist tropes that litter Lucas’ path toward a confrontation with the bad guys.

As actor pairings go, you couldn’t hope for better than Oscar winner Sam Rockwell and nominee Taraji P. Henson. So why is The Best of Enemies such a slog?

Director Mark L. Mann seems to be searching for the meaning in aimlessness, and in lowered expectations. But too often the narrative left me feeling the titular “um.”

Nobody does the rebellious-elder thing as well as Duvall, and whenever he’s center stage in A Night in Old Mexico, this scrappy film from Spanish director Emilio Aragon is entertaining enough.

Ultimately Unicorn Store shows little appeal beyond, perhaps, a young-adult audience with a very high tolerance for glitter.

The many silences in Hide Your Smiling Faces don’t speak quite loudly enough, and the film ultimately gets bogged down by its own ponderousness.

Here's the thing: Found footage is scary when - because - it leaves you to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself. But actually watching whole families have terrible things done to them - well, hard-core horror fans may dig it, I guess. I'd call it forced voyeurism of the worst sort.

The script’s by Robert Ben Garant, also behind last year’s scary-movie spoof “Hell Baby,” and this one teeters right on the edge of laughable, with its V.C. Andrews-like series of goth twists.

Love is the weak link in this clumsily titled rom-com, which plays a bit like a hipster infomercial for Austin, Texas.