Soren Andersen

Jackman and Stewart give perhaps the most heartfelt performances that they’re ever brought to an “X-Men” movie. Though the tone of the movie is pervasively downbeat, they’re both going out on a very high note.

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

What a pestilential little picture is Fist Fight.

It’s all kind of funny, actually, and deliberately so. Director Chad Stahelskii, a former stunt man, stages a flailing fight down a seemingly endless flight of stairs that is like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The nonstop silliness of this picture leaves one choking on stifled laughter.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage is the movie equivalent of cotton candy: all empty calories. Excessive consumption of this product is likely to give a body the queasies.

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 main monster communicates in noises that sound like belches. Appropriate for a picture that’s the equivalent of a cinematic burp: gassy and inconsequential.

The silence in Silence is deep and profound.

What say we tiptoe quietly away and pretend this movie never happened?

The picture has an undeniable rough stylishness...but in terms of coherence of storytelling it leaves the audience choking on all that swirling dust.

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.

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

Director Ma has made a quietly merciless picture, a horror movie, really, about a decent man, an ordinary man, left alone, bereft, embittered, ruined by his act of decency.

Offering only an atmosphere of deepening gloom and a premise of utter hopelessness, Man Down is like movie antimatter: It repels interest.

Weirdest. Feminist. Movie. Ever.

If ever there was a movie that should never have been made, Bad Santa 2 is that movie. It’s vile, like something written by a pen dipped in bile.

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.

Everything in the picture, from the characters’ clothes and hairstyles to the vessels they sail, bear the stamp of authenticity. But Moana’s greatest strength is the verve in which they move the action along and the sheer joyousness evident in every aspect of their storytelling.

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

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.

At 2½ hours, Aquarius is about a half-hour too long for the story it tells, yet it feels like a privilege to be in the presence of such a powerful character and such a quietly commanding performance.

With Andrew Garfield in the lead role and Mel Gibson in the director’s chair for the first time in 10 years, “Hacksaw” is an incredibly powerful picture once it gets to the battle scenes.

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.

Director/co-screenwriter Scott Derrickson generally keeps the massive enterprise moving smoothly along. The trip’s the trip here, and it’s well worth taking.

The interweaving of animation and nonanimated footage gives the picture a kind of surreal quality that befits the sense of the survivors of how unreal the event seemed to them.

The chase, chase, chase pace is tiring, not least because it’s not clear who many of these people are and what agendas they’re following. Mixed-up confusion is the result.

The spell Miss Hokusai casts is a powerful one that lingers long after the lights go up in the theater.