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.