Soren Andersen

Holding it all together is Ford, his hair steel-gray, his face craggy, playing the part with authority. And this time he invests Indy with an inner depth not previously seen.

Thanks to Walken’s superlative, multileveled performance and Edwards’ trenchant writing, this complicated guy...is a weirdly beguiling figure.

The picture’s real weakness is that the reanimated dead display a great deal more vitality than the characters in their pre-killed state.

[Ip Man] is the calm at the center of a storm of kung-fu combat sequences, and Yen plays him with grace and serenity.

A more self-impressed movie than Dicks: The Musical would be hard to imagine.

The Wedding Guest is a thriller without thrills.

Strange movie. And despite the presence of Tina Fey playing its lead character, a cable-TV reporter named Kim Baker, it’s not a funny one.

You get a sense [Eli Roth]'s struggling to rein in his penchant for gory frights, and for that reason “Clock” feels like a movie at war with itself.

Taylor-Johnson’s agonized performance holds the audience’s attention, but his portrayal doesn’t really take the character anywhere.

The most interesting revelations come early as Wyman, in voice-over, describes his upbringing in a rough section of London.

There is grace in Sarandon’s performance. And heartbreaking power.

After having been made and remade for the screen and converted into a long-running hit Broadway show, it might have seemed like “The Lion King” was a played-out property. “Mufasa,” under Jenkins’ poised and creative direction, proves there is still plenty of life left in the long-reining “King.”

Kids will love all the silliness, but oddly the greatest resonance of the Wayback Machine plot will be felt by the kids’ grandparents (if any find themselves in attendance) who were around in those bygone days.

[Neeson's] impressive physicality, (a tower among men), his rumbly basso-profundo voice and his impressive demeanor give him a natural gravity that allows him to rise above the most absurd material. And he does exactly that in The Commuter.

Combining rowdy concert footage and revealing offstage interactions of the band members, Mad Tiger is a well-executed portrait of a band coming apart at the seams.

Woodley and Claflin make an attractive pair, but they’re not particularly convincing playing people deeply, deeply in love. There’s something lacking in the conviction department there.

It’s all big action. Big colorful visuals. Outsized vocal performances.

What the picture lacks is a certain spark. It’s a workmanlike effort that diligently covers a lot of bases...but never achieves a transcendence that befits a figure like Owens.

It’s an undeniably fun picture but rather too self-impressed. It’s Ritchie at his limited best.

It seems director James Wan had one overarching goal in making “Aquaman.” His prime directive? Crush the audience into submission.

The picture is a hugely entertaining crowd-pleaser studded with laugh-out-loud moments from beginning to end.

The gore quotient is high in this one (lots and lots of exploding heads) and the one-liners flow freely. Bloody good fun, but not for the whole family. That R rating is well-earned.

Coerced jollity is the order of the day in the kingdom of trolldom in this animated kids movie from DreamWorks. And I do mean order.

There is fun to be had here. Adults can appreciate the verbal byplay. For the kids, there’s frenzied noise, and those toys.

The new version amplifies and deepens all that is good in the original. The key is in the visuals. Photorealistic computer-generated imagery renders its African landscapes and animals with astonishing realism.

In space, everyone can hear you yawn.

Elba, always a powerful presence in whatever role he takes on, does the best he can in Beast, but the threadbare nature of the plotting and dialogue ultimately defeats him.

The fourth time is truly the charm in this long-running franchise.

Betrayals, narrow escapes and much battle action ensue in the course of the picture’s paint-by-numbers plotting.

The acting in all roles is first rate, but in this one De Niro regains the title of undisputed champion.

Thanks to the excellence of its two key performances, “Stockholm” an uncommonly effective thriller, one with a heart and a brain.

It’s a remarkable true tale of great heroism. It’s also an account of a clash of cultures.

On the whole, “Spies” is a very nice trifle turning up just in time for the holidays for families seeking a kinder, gentler alternative to “Star Wars.”

As a creature feature, Cocaine Bear isn’t bad. Not great, mind you. But not bad.

Fuqua’s remake is a worthy successor to the ’60s “Seven.”

Arnie, oddly, supplies a significant amount of humor here. His Terminator has developed a kinder, gentler side over the years, asserting “I’m a very good listener and I’m extremely funny.” Well, maybe not “extremely,” but yeah, he actually is.

Limited by his budget, Woo makes the most of what he has, but the whole thing feels like he’s cautiously dipping his toe back in the Hollywood pool.

The Rise of Skywalker rates right up there with the 1977 original, “A New Hope,” and 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.”

It’s got a flying carpet. It’s got an enchanted lamp. It’s got a shape-shifting genie. But alas, Aladdin lacks real magic.

Director Raman Hui mixes martial-arts fights and slapstick comedy (lots of mugging by Jing) into a whimsical, fast-paced monster mash.

Lively, fast-paced and ever so familiar, the picture is a happy addition to the holiday. It’s worth leaving the house to see.

Overlong set-piece action scenes pitched in the key of chaos, full of running and screaming and a whole lot of falling down, ultimately turn “Pikachu” into a wearying slog.

The acting and script are so strong that the picture is an outstanding achievement even in the 2D version that most people will see.

Snowtime! is by turns ribald (there’s a flatulent dog), boisterous (there’s charging through the snow with wooden swords wildly waved), tender (there’s a boy grieving quietly for a father killed in a real war) and, yes, tragic.

It’s somehow only fitting that with Scarlett Johansson in the lead role, Ghost in the Shell leaves you with the feeling that something has been lost in translation.

Every plot twist is easily anticipated...The ending hints at the possibility of a sequel, but that’s a prospect that leaves one cold. As far as “Demeter” is concerned, enough is enough.

Thanks to McKinnon, “Spy” is a fun summer picture that is truly, weirdly special.

None of this is especially promising or, frankly, funny. In fact, for much of its length, “Despicable Me” is painfully unfunny.

[Hillcoat’s] an expert in creating and sustaining gut-twisting tension. Good qualities all, but used here in the service of a story that is truly unappetizing.

It’s pretty. It’s empty. It’s pretty empty.

There’s gunplay aplenty here, but nothing about “The Kid” sets it apart from the many Billy the Kid movies that have preceded it.

There is absolutely nothing new under the many suns in Besson’s universe. This is a voyage not worth taking.

With intelligence and great moviemaking skill, [Reynolds] has created a classic variation on a venerated ancient theme.

The premise of accountant as action hero might seem absurd, but The Accountant makes it credible and fascinating.

The dialogue, the violence, the humor (largely provided by Grant’s character) and the intricacy of the storytelling make for a picture in which most everyone in it seems to be having a great deal of chatty, bloody fun.

No previous screen rendering of the Rudyard Kipling classic — not the 2016 Disney live-action epic and certainly not the jaunty, tuneful 1967 Disney animated version beloved by generations — has been so very dark and wild and, surprisingly, thoughtful.

The whole picture is an exercise in obvious effort, try, try, trying really hard to win the audience’s affection. However it only succeeds in trying the audience’s patience. It’s a trial.

As long as the third and, one hopes, final installment is, it feels even longer. There’s more of it, much more, yet paradoxically, much less.

There’s the old cliché that says, “so-and-so is such a great actor he could read the phone book (whatever that is; as I said, it’s an old cliché) and make it interesting.” That’s pretty much what Washington pulls off in EQ2.

It’s all very bizarrely, pointlessly complicated.

By the end, it’s falling apart under the weight of all the extraneous divergings, but thanks to Gyllenhaal’s performance, Demolition stands out as a powerful meditation on the unhinging effects of deep grief.

Leitch’s emphasis on excessive and nearly nonstop stunt-filled action is hardly surprising. His lack of directorial discipline, however, is. The guy apparently couldn’t help himself, piling on the action beats until they become numbing. By the end, you’re more than ready to get off this Bullet Train, feeling drained and disheartened.

It’s an absorbing character study of a most intriguing man.

Neeson’s Felt is deeply conflicted about being a turncoat. He’s also deeply flawed, a man who authorized illegal activities to track down members of the terrorist Weather Underground.

It’s a standard kiddie cartoon: noisy, colorful and forgettable.

The blending of the realistic elements such as the planning and preparations for the raid with the more surreal aspects of the picture feels forced and awkward. In real life, the raid was an astonishing success, but the movie is ultimately a failure.

Affleck sports plenty of snappy ’20s fashions, tailored double-breasted suits, often cream-colored, and elegant Borsalino-style fedoras. He’s dressed to kill for sure. Too bad his movie is so deadly dull.

The movie’s main drawback is that its main characters are surprisingly ill-defined.... It’s a frustrating flaw in an otherwise engrossing picture.

Similar to the scenario of the original picture, it’s a band of grizzled soldier types who battle the alien menaces. Missing, however, is a formidable leading-man presence in the Schwarzenegger mold.

It’s a mishmash in which characters are thrown from dimension to dimension and from dream to dream. The main character, played by Bannister, is forever baffled as to what his actual reality is. His bafflement is shared by the viewer.

The first creature feature of the new decade is here, and boy is it dumb.

The essence of the London story is retained, with stouthearted Buck being annealed by adversity, overcoming brutality, confusion and loneliness and then responding to the kindness of Thornton to become the leader of the pack. And all that is accomplished with a soft touch. What we have here is the call of the mild

There’s nothing original in the movie. Indeed, the off-screen controversy that’s been consuming social media lately over the casting of pop superstar Styles and whether Pugh and Wilde are at odds overshadows the movie itself.

Curiously though, director Michael Dougherty and his filmmaking team obscure the battle footage in darkness, smoke and downpours, making murky much of the imagery.

Anchored by Mara’s rigidly controlled performance and Taylor-Joy’s tremulous yet quietly menacing work, Morgan is an effective tension generator that unfortunately falls apart at the end.

Sonic the Hedgehog is bright. It’s cheery. It’s here and then it’s gone in a relatively compact 100 minutes, leaving little beyond a slightly sweet aftertaste to mark its passage.

Deschamps’ camera captures the emotional roller coaster Redzepi rode during that tumultuous time and shows his conflicted relationship with fame. He dismisses its importance but also clearly craves it. The end result is a revealing portrait of an artist wholly dedicated to his art.

The whale special effects, computer-generated of course, are genuinely spectacular.

With anybody other than a superstar like Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back would just be a routine potboiler. With superstar Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is … a routine potboiler.

Reynolds is playing what amounts to the straight man to Jackson’s bad boy, and the back-and-forth between the two, with his character stewing and steaming in exasperation at the killer’s taunts, gives The Hitman’s Bodyguard its special fizz.