Soren Andersen

The characters are so thinly sketched that the audience feels little emotional investment in them, and the handheld (or rather head-mounted) cameras produce the same jittery visuals that many viewers found so off-putting in the original.

Get out your handkerchiefs, but don’t expect to believe a minute of this vastly improbable tale.

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

All things considered, this pitifully plotted Belgian-French production represents the nadir of animated movies released so far this year, a farrago of frantic action and mindless cacophony.

The picture is like an onion. There are layers here, and beneath them more layers. Peeling them back with surgical skill, director Alexandre Aja reveals complicated family dynamics.

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.

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

It quickly becomes apparent that the narrative content of “Kingsglaive” is a barely coherent muddle.

Cheap and cheesy at every level, this Ben-Hur barely qualifies as an epic. It’s a wholly unnecessary addition to the venerable franchise.

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.

It’s Harley Quinn’s movie and everybody else in Suicide Squad is just a supporting character. No surprise there. That’s the way it is in the comic books, too. It’s all about personality, and Harley has that by the freight carload.

A confused mishmash of plot elements featuring overwrought extraneous characters. Kids likely will love it. Their parents will just have to grin and bear it.

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

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

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

It’s a detective story. It’s a spy thriller. It’s a cautionary tale. And it’s true.

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

Its theme of white man as savior of black Africans is, to say the least, highly anachronistic in these days and times.

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

A virgin, defiled. A pact with the devil, consummated. Erotomania, running wild. It’s Belladonna of Sadness, and in it there will be blood. And watercolors.

It’s Honeyglue, a romantic drama, which fittingly, given that title, is sticky with sentimentality.

Paula Patton, playing a half-orc, half-human female warrior, is the most sympathetic character and actually gives something approaching a fully fledged performance, but for the rest of it … ugliness as far as the eye can see.

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

The film’s action scenes are masterpieces of stately choreography, with elements of humor incorporated.

This is a production from producer Michael Bay, master of the cinema of CG run amok. And all we helpless mortals can do is cower and duck as those 3D fists fly.

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

Inspiration, old-fashioned style, is the main course being served in Pelé: Birth of a Legend. In essence commissioned by the soccer icon, who is credited as one of the picture’s executive producers, “Pelé” is hagiography. But appealing hagiography.

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.

We can see everything that Manhattan Night has in store from a mile off. Every step of the way it’s predictable. And that predictability makes it tedious.

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

In his third outing as the Captain, Evans seems totally comfortable in the role. He manages to convey his character’s goodness without making him seem like a self-righteous stiff. There’s an ease in his performance, and a sense of humor that makes him very appealing.

Who emerges as the winner of this “Civil War”? The audience. The picture delivers in a big, big way.

There is fragility in the beauty we see. The picture drives home the need to safeguard it. It is, after all, our home.

Screeching, screaming, bouncing around the galaxy. Insufferable. And seemingly interminable.

Sachs’ A Space Program is a disarmingly delightful out-of-this-world trip.

Criminal has a strong supporting cast, but the big names aren’t doing much beyond the bare minimum to qualify for a payday.

The picture’s time shifts are smoothly handled by Kwak. But eventually confusion sets in.

Green Room is one nasty piece of work. And I mean that in a good way.

The Phoenix Incident is an indigestible mess.

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

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.

Linklater gets it right in every significant regard.

A more disagreeable collection of cynical, backstabbing, self-aggrandizing, shallow, vicious and vile specimens of humanity gathered together in a single motion picture would be difficult to conceive of.

The picture is a long tease, artfully constructed. Mood is all-important, and it’s a mood designed to keep the audience off balance and on edge until the very end.

Shot in stark black and white, the picture’s sense of place and time is strong — pungently so.

Greetings from Moldova. Where surly locals stare sullenly at stupid strangers. Where the traditional regional greeting extended to said strangers is a hatchet in the forehead.

In the matter of searching for work in a difficult economy, Get a Job traffics in fairy tales that come complete with happily-ever-after endings.

Many decisions...make “Batman v Superman” a joyless slog.

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

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

All of it feels warmed over, reprocessed … and, yes, confused.

Throughout, the fragility of the native cultures and of the rain-forest environment that is their home is underscored by Guerra in this fascinating, melancholy movie.

Board games, threats from Howard and desperate escape planning by Michelle take up most the picture. And then, first-time feature director Dan Trachtenberg and the screenwriters, apparently realizing that not much has been going on so far, ramp up to a full-bore CG explosion extravaganza finale...Too little. Too late.

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.

Zootopia delights, in ways big and small.

The action is pumped up. The destruction is extreme. The whole thing is absurd.

Using a rich trove of archival footage and interviews with Cernan, members of his family, other former astronauts and key Apollo mission figures, director Mark Craig charts the flight path of Cernan’s life.

Imagine the worst costume epic imaginable. Imagine no more. It exists.

“Fury’s” pace is delirious, the stunts are incredible — such crashes, such explosions, such a lot of flying bodies — Hardy’s performance is a marvel of subdued conviction and Theron brings an impressive gravity to her work as Furiosa. Put it all together, and you’ve got a rousing crowd-pleaser that hits on all fast-revving cylinders.

[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.

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.

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

Eggers’ depiction of the family’s psychological decay and his relentless piling up of deeply disturbing imagery make The Witch an unnerving and fresh-feeling horror masterwork.

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.

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

The eye is enchanted by the richness of the picture’s spectacle.

The segments, though short, are nastily effective.

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.

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

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

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

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

This picture stands as the best argument yet that the YA dystopia cycle has passed its sell-by date.

Thewlis voices Michael with weariness and despair until the character encounters Lisa. Leigh mixes eagerness...and an abashed vocal quality that emphasizes her character’s vulnerability.

No child should be exposed to this.

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

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 fact that Bracey is the equivalent of a charisma black hole (at the movie’s center, there is no there there) and the further fact that the movie runs out of plot long before it runs out of stunts to showcase, make Point Break a remake that ought not to have been made.

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.

Exposure to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip may result in the dislocation of eyeballs in viewers over the age of 7 due to uncontrollable rolling of the eyes at the sight of the idiotic antics committed on screen. To avoid eye strain, which is to say, eye sprain, avoid this movie at all costs.

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

Daddy’s Home is a movie with a one-joke premise: Will Ferrell, he’s a pincushion of punishment. Make him screech. Watch him squirm.

See the movie. It’s a treat. And educational, too.

Freighted with symbolism and beautifully mounted, Youth is dreamlike and at the same time stultifying.

Gore and guffaws attend this very dark horror comedy in roughly equal measure.

The visuals relegate the acting to secondary importance. They overwhelm the story. And they make The Assassin unforgettable.

Ridley is the picture’s real find. Her Rey is fearless, forceful, resourceful, and with a hidden side to her personality that slowly manifests itself and will surely be more deeply explored in the sequels.

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

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 such a thing as something being too personal. James White is that thing.

DiCaprio’s performance is an astonishing testament to his commitment to a role.