Soren Andersen

Egerton is commanding throughout. His performance is truly a marvel. Rocketman as well.

There are plot levels here that are deeper than the original, which is quite complex and moving in its own right.

Childhood: courtesy of Mr. King. Filtered through the pedestrian sensibilities of director Andy Muschietti, who seemingly never met a horror-movie cliché he couldn’t incorporate into his adaptation of King’s thousand-page-plus mega-opus.

The true power of “Penguins” lies in the breathtaking visuals of Antarctic scenery and overhead shots of penguins, thousands upon thousands of them, moving across ice fields, black dots on bright white background stretching to the distant horizon. When it steps back from the schmaltz, “Penguins” becomes an impressive piece of work.

The friendship of George and Harold is celebrated, and the cheery vocal work of Hart and Middleditch gives the picture its sprightly spirit.

Action scenes are so chaotically edited it’s often difficult to figure out who’s bashing and crashing into whom.

The picture’s pyrotechnics are first rate, and the acting by the principals is more than serviceable.

Yep, we’re in Tarantino territory for sure: way too self-indulgently long, and way, way overboard with that N-word.

Thanks to its two central performances, Chuck is a solid contender.

The camera is fixated on the face of Alice, the lead character in The Girl in the Book. And no wonder. There’s a lot going on there.

There’s a problem with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. It’s attempting to mock something that is beyond mockery.

An Inconvenient Sequel is both a rebuttal and a rebuke to the voices who vociferously disparage him and his cause.

“Link” is fun as far as it goes, but from Laika we expect something with a little more depth.

So yes: Wow! Gasp! There are some really pretty pictures here. But wow! Gasp! The story is really pretty … stupid.

T2 is a sequel that is at least the equal of the revered original.

These filmmakers have made arguably the best Halloween since that first one.

Director Ridley Scott, who knows a thing or two about how to mount sweeping historical epics (see “Gladiator”), is in his element here.

“I’m tired.” — Overheard from a member of the audience at the end of the seemingly endless closing credit crawl at the critic’s screening for “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.” - I hear you, lady. Believe me, I hear you.

It’s a rare misstep for the usually sure-footed folks behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It’s a fun, satisfying picture.

What distinguishes “Girl” from most zombie pictures is Nanua’s appealing performance and a chilling scene toward the end.

Martial-arts action, excitingly mounted, is all part of the package as Po battles a glowering, green-eyed bull (J.K. Simmons) and tries to whip peaceable pandakind into a fighting force to defeat the villain. One-liners fly as fast as kung-fu fisticuffs in this sweet and satisfying picture.

For his live-action debut, Knight slips into Bay boomboom mode.

Henry’s performance is delicately nuanced. His character is by turns cheerful, ruminative, anguished. His performance and Lawrence’s are complementary. They play off each other well.

Ball takes his time presenting Noa’s world in detail. Too much time, frankly. There is no real sense of urgency here. Everything is carefully worked out. The visuals are handsome but unremarkable. Consequently, the picture feels dutiful and oddly bloodless.

Maximally cheeky. Perversely potty-mouthed. Riotously funny. Insanely violent. Uneven as all get out. And fun, fun, fun.

The original “Deadpool” caught lightning in a bottle. The sequel sparks only intermittently.

Affleck, who has struggled in real life with alcoholism and has been in and out of rehab on a number of occasions over the years, makes his character’s pain palpable and totally believable.

Though The Infiltrator breaks no new ground in its storytelling, it is nonetheless a riveting piece of work.

Everybody involved seems to be having a blast making this latest “SpongeBob” a funny, fast-paced pleasure.

The action sequences, both on the ground and in space, are rousingly staged. But the losses incurred in those sequences are sobering. The stakes in the “Star Wars” rebellion are high indeed.

Cruise and company wanted to make American Made a fun and often funny ride, but there’s something oddly joyless about the whole enterprise. Its overweening cynicism leaves a curdled aftertaste.

With its well-drawn characters (a Linklater trademark) and mood of quiet restraint, Last Flag Flying touches the heart at a deep level.

You loved “The Conjuring” in 2013. Now here’s “2,” with more, more, more of what you adored the first time around.

It’s a detective story. It’s an insightful commentary on the state of us, which is to say us, the U.S., in this divided, disjointed, distracted age. It’s a comedy, sharp and frequently hilarious. It is, above all, consistently surprising.

A surprisingly sweet-spirited picture about a man’s redemption and a boy’s initiation into the ways of the world.

You come to an “Alien” movie with certain expectations: creepy thrills, impressive production design, chest busters, acid saliva. Going back to basics, Scott delivers what we’ve come to expect in “Covenant.” And how.

“Oppy” is a salute to the best of what humans are capable when they unite in a common purpose to expand their knowledge of matters beyond the realm of the known.

The uneasy marriage of clunky psychodrama and overwrought special effects along with the fact that none of these characters are particularly likable make Strange World a chore to sit through.

In the midst of all the mayhem it’s sometimes hard to stay awake.

There are no safe places in his pictures. And Eddington is dense with multiple levels that stoke the ever-present unease.

The picture itself is more workmanlike than transcendent. It marches along but doesn’t soar.

Directors Rob Cannan and Ross Adam have made a picture that’s technically rough-edged but absorbing.

The movie’s unrelenting sensory onslaught is exhausting. It’s torture to sit through.

Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee (the latter also wrote the screenplay, both directed the original), it’s gorgeous-looking. It’s briskly paced. And it’s tuneful. Uh, about those tunes: They’re blaringly, oppressively, crushingly LOUD! With “Frozen” we got the rousing Oscar-winning “Let It Go.” With Frozen II, someone should have told the songwriters to tone it down.

Sometimes hilarious, ultimately poignant, Swiss Army Man is a picture like no other.

As with any Michael Moore movie, attention must be paid.

You know, there was a time when “Guardians of the Galaxy” was fun. That time was 2014, when the first picture came out... Now here’s “Vol. III.” And it’s no fun at all.

What Warner undergoes in Crown Heights is difficult to watch. Yet in the end, remarkably. there is triumph. And, finally, justice.

Big, bold and bordering on the unbelievable, Gladiator II delivers, big time.

The emphasis here is on the splashy spectacle with those insider-knowledge elements jammed together in a frenetic hodgepodge.

Writer-director Ti West brings not an iota of originality to his handling of this material. Plods, the picture does, through its predictable paces.

The characters are well-defined and Rockwell holds the picture together as he conveys Mr. Wolf’s shifting emotional states: suave, vexed and morally conflicted. Kids will love The Bad Guys and there’s plenty of substance for adults as well.

There are lots of ideas rattling around in it — about artificial intelligence, about racism, about American aggression on the world stage, about the future of humanity. And rattle and clang they do. And also clunk. The various elements are not well integrated.

The flowers in Flowers are touchstones, reminders of a person, but more significantly of the conflicted feelings shared by the three main women in the picture.

The picture is essentially a brief for Wise’s case. And as such, it’s as dry and uncinematic as a dusty legal document.

Hall’s performance is remarkable, full of shadings and intimations of significant emotional depths.

The picture is a no warts-and-all look at Francis’ papacy, but rather emphasizes his humanity and humility. Those personal qualities and his words are sources of hope In this politically fraught and fevered age.

Hughes’ handling of the material is unfailingly serious but the picture’s tendency to stray into the ridiculous robs it of the majesty the director so clearly hoped to achieve.

Its take-no-prisoners pacing [takes] it up a notch from the average low-budget shoot ’em up.

Wachowski has taken the familiar and modified it in such a way to make it seem new. It’s a brilliant act of transformation.

By the time the big reveal comes along, it’s almost beside the point. The audience, so numbed by the gore, is likely to barely care who indeed did it.

It’s a horrifying tale, and Maras, a Greek-Australian filmmaker, does not shy away from showing the carnage.

Good fun, and all that, but its flawed central performance ultimately makes “Solo” a distinct disappointment.

In the central role, Miles Teller is impressively bulked up, but there’s a flatness in his performance. It’s a dogged, rather than an inspired, portrayal. The best work is done by Aaron Eckhart, who plays Vinnie’s trainer, Kevin Rooney.

Burton’s command of this material and his masterful visual sense makes this Dumbo an engaging delight. Like that winsome elephant, it really does soar.

The plot may be nothing special, but Reynolds most certainly is. He’s just so relatable, genial, nice, in an unforced sort of way that he makes the movie, which he also produced, a fun ride.

There’s nothing special about any of this, but as a generic thrill machine, Plane certainly delivers the goods.

An engaging picture brimming with uplift.

When greed runs up against conscience, you’ve got a story. It does in Triple Frontier, and the story of that collision is a violent and thought-provoking one.

Through it all, Tatum balances exasperation, an easygoing lightheartedness and a deep empathy for his character’s and Lulu’s inner turmoil. His command of the role and his confident direction of the picture make Dog a very engaging experience.

The story is strong, the music is appealing. Abominable is delightful.

Interspersed with the overabundant slam-bang action sequences which up the silliness factor with their increasing improbability are heartfelt paeans to the bracing solidarity of Jaime’s family. Their sincerity is the picture’s best element.

At heart, “Kingsman” is a comedy, though granted, one with abundant dismemberments and literally mind-blowing violence. And I mean “literally” in the very strictest sense of the term.

See How They Run is the Saoirse Ronan show. Start to finish. Top to bottom, Now and forever. Amen.

The performances are first rate, particularly Rains’ work in the lead role.

Zombies. Nazis. Clichés. Insane violence. Overlord delivers a whole lot of much too much.

The fat suit is in a sense a distraction in that you wonder how Fraser was able to act within it. But the fact that he does so and so effectively makes The Whale a searing, moving experience.

For most of its length, Stillwater goes along as a meticulous examination of its central characters. And then suddenly near the end it jumps the tracks.

Beatty directed and wrote the script, but from a man who made the weighty epic “Reds” and the corrosively funny “Bulworth,” Rules Don’t Apply feels curiously weightless and as forgettable as its title.

Filmed in sepia tones to give it period flavor, infused with a sense of unrelieved tension and paranoia, and climaxing with a furious gunbattle, Anthropoid is a gripping picture.

The teenage, first-time actor certainly holds his own with the experienced likes of Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Jason Leigh. But at the same time, he gives the impression of being just slightly disengaged from the part, almost as though he’s spectator at the kid’s life.

All Is True is handsomely mounted, filled with shadowed interiors underscoring the darkness of its story, the darkness artfully interrupted by candlelight and firelight. The movie’s impressive appearance notwithstanding, Shakespeare’s domestic problems do not a classic make.

Solid storytelling, a longtime strength of the best Pixar pictures, elevates Cars 3 into the pantheon with the studio’s finest.

You expect lots of fight scenes in a Wick movie, and Ballerina certainly delivers on that score. Overdelivers, in fact. It’s one damn dust-up after another.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is reasonably clever and reasonably diverting.

It is the scenes in a Buenos Aires safe house between Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) and Mossad agent Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), the leader of the abduction team, where “Operation Finale” departs from usual espionage-movie scenarios.

Rather than using the extended running time to dig deep into these characters, director Andy Muschietti, who also directed the original, piles on the frights in a manner that builds to an ending drenched in hysteria.

Two very strong performances anchor Potato Dreams of America, Seattle-based filmmaker Wes Hurley’s thought-provoking dramatization of his childhood in his native Russia and, later, as a teen in Seattle.

Mark this one down as a sequel that should never have been made.

The humor is broad and obvious (yes, Ferdinand winds up in a china shop, with predictable results), but there are a number of scenes that hit the mark.

Creative Control is a hypnotic voyage into a society where technology addiction comes to rule and ruin those who fall under its seductive spell.

Gordon-Levitt carries the movie, and without flash or overt dramatics, overshadows everyone else in it.

It’s all undeniably silly, but satisfying in an overstuffed blockbuster sort of way.

Part 2 is undeniably lively and very obviously pitched to young kids. It’s colorful but not especially distinctive.

The segments, though short, are nastily effective.

The storm effects are first-rate, immersive all the way. The tale-telling ability of director Craig Gillespie is frustratingly inconsistent.

Along the way, Hummingbird offers cogent commentary on the way unbridled avarice drives the search for even the smallest advantage in the cutthroat world of high finance.