Stephanie Merry

In the end, “Rental Family” is a movie that gives viewers a lot to ponder — about loneliness and family, about the importance of truth and the comfort of white lies — even if the delivery mechanism proves imperfect.

The movie is more than an admonition for the living; it’s also an achingly bittersweet love story about caregiving.

Like a real-life game night, the comedy may not leave a lasting impression, but it’s plenty of fun while it lasts.

In the grand scheme of movies for kids, the stop-motion comedy is hardly a stinker. But it’s also less fun and inventive than you’d expect, given the company’s stellar, Oscar-winning track record.

The performances remain subtly powerful, especially Karam’s. Tony is a man whose unpredictable rage can be sparked by one wrong move, but Karam infuses the character with pathos through the subtlest gestures and facial expressions. El Basha, who is also moving in his role, was the first Palestinian to win best actor at the Venice Film Festival.

A charmer from its first action-packed frames to its over-the-top jailhouse-musical scene during the end credits.

Don’t overthink it, in other words. All “Showman” asks of you is that you give yourself over to the holiday-cheer machine, if you can. Like the circus, it’s an experience that’s been engineered for this precise moment in time, and not one minute longer.

The movie still holds power, mostly thanks to Leuenberger’s arresting, self-contained performance as Nora. She plays the character as an enigma, the last person you’d expect to lead a cause.

Not only is it a wholly original story, but it also honors a culture that’s so often overlooked by the movie industry. That alone might have made it a hit, but Coco has so much more to offer.

Wonder does occasionally suffer from kid-movie pitfalls, straining to be cute or mining humor from ridiculously precocious little ones. But mostly it succeeds in telling not one complicated story, but many, and giving the experience of being a confused or lonely or scared youngster the space it deserves.

“Murder” may lack urgency, but it does have style. The sets, the costumes and the vistas are stunning.

For all the story’s cosmic echoes across the ages, the pacing just feels off. Still, the approach is inventive.

The acting ensemble has a believable, brotherly chemistry, especially Teller and Taylor Kitsch, playing a troublemaker who initially teases Brendan brutally before the two warm up to each other, forming an adorable bond.

Visually, it’s spectacular. Conceptually, it’s jaw-dropping to simply considering the effort that went into this. The story, however, doesn’t always hold its own.

What starts out trivial gradually turns into a drama about big ideas: mortality and the meaning of life; the value of relationships and the vulnerability they require.

Stronger isn’t always easy to watch; Jeff makes bad decisions and life gets messy. But it does feel like a realistic depiction of one man’s life.

“Kingsman” is essentially a live-action cartoon, one that aims for an audible reaction and little else. That may not be the world’s loftiest goal, but whether it results in a gagging eww or a chuckle, it’s a plan that usually succeeds.

In the end, Viceroy’s House works, but mainly as a historical refresher on the 70th anniversary of Indian independence. As drama, it’s a reminder that truth is sometimes more affecting than fiction.

The uneven tone especially undermines the ending — one that’s as tragic as it is predictable. Viewers may expect — even crave — to feel an emotional impact, but the movie hasn’t laid the groundwork.

The drama is a realistic and methodical meditation on family obligation, personal sacrifice and — of course — the power of architecture. That makes Columbus as lovely to look at as it is to ponder.

The movie often undercuts itself by spelling things out rather than hinting at them, belaboring emotions and ideas to ensure that the audience understands what the characters are feeling and thinking.

“Brigsby” never ventures into the caustic simply for the sake of comedy. These days, that’s refreshing. There aren’t many movies that value sweetness over cynicism.

Girls Trip accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: shock and amuse. Along the way, it reminds us how important old friends can be.

The story it tells is conventional, chronological and straightforward. And that’s enough. With a story this charming, who needs bells and whistles?

For all its late-in-the-game silliness, The Exception is a solidly acted, well-told tale about how love of country holds up in the face of other, less nationalistic passions.

Dean has its moments. The cast is solid, and the story moves along smoothly. Slight though it may be, it’s a sweet enough tale, while it lasts.

Davies is a master of the slow build, lyrically evoking the dreaminess and gravity of his subject and her verse.

Director Matt Tyrnauer mixes lively archival footage, including a memorable news interview with an angry Italian grandmother, with testimony from passionate experts to demonstrate the importance of city design.

In an effort to make Fawcett a logical, upstanding guy, the story never fully convinces us of his obsession with returning to find the lost city.

“Fate” gives fans of the franchise exactly what they want, provided they can ditch logic as easily as the movie does.

Although the relationship lacks a certain fire, the acting is superb.

In the end, The Founder is little more than a deflating reminder, as if we needed one, that the winner takes all, and integrity isn’t always the key to success.

The whole endeavor runs a high risk of drowning in melodrama. But the movie avoids that pitfall, because nothing about the story or characters is easy or straightforward.

Lion is a complex movie, with its profound themes of home and identity, and its tonally disparate halves. A smartly understated approach to Brierley’s story holds it all together. Sometimes the truth alone is enough.

The victims are impossibly brave as they sit for interviews, revisiting the worst moments of their lives. Their stories are the strongest part of the documentary, making up for uneven pacing and some otherwise strange editing choices.

Miss Hokusai is more adept at delivering beautiful visuals than anything deeper. That’s perhaps not all that ironic, given that the movie’s portrayal of Hokusai is as a man who valued art above all else.

We’ve seen these poignant lessons before: Ove is destined to learn that he can’t do it all on his own and that life is still worth living. Yet the moving twists and turns of the love story and the bright comedy elevate an otherwise familiar story line.

Even without the guidance of narration or a single story arc, it becomes clearer and clearer that the war on terror has unwittingly spawned another war: between police officers trained to fight like soldiers and the people they’ve sworn to protect.

Girl Asleep isn’t easy to categorize. It’s a wild curiosity that shifts on a whim. In that sense, there couldn’t be a better metaphor for the inner workings of a teenage girl’s mind.

The movie may be competent at telling its story, but it’s missing one key ingredient: feeling.

The movie is a tremendous accomplishment, especially considering that the cast had never seen cameras before — much less movies — yet still agreed to star in the drama. Their performances are as stunning as the setting, and that’s truly saying something.

Subtlety isn’t the strong suit of Queen of Katwe. But beneath the hackneyed aphorisms, there’s a thrilling story worthy of our attention.

Goat doesn’t shy from showing us monstrous behavior, which might be more than some viewers can bear. This isn’t an easy film to watch. But it’s even harder to forget.

There are no huge revelations here — certainly nothing that would shock superfans. The movie offers a taste of the go-go-go pace of touring the world, which led to exhaustion and frustration, but mostly focuses on the happier times.

We get Albert’s side of the story, and that’s clearly problematic. How much faith should we put in the account of someone who tells such massive whoppers? That question constantly hovers over Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary, which is by turns fascinating and unseemly.

Starving the Beast is still a worthwhile documentary.

Even if it’s not quite as thrilling as it first seems, Complete Unknown poses questions that practically beg for animated conversation about the fantasy of leaving it all behind — and what that might look like if someone actually did it, again and again.

Ixcanul is, among other things, a movie about the resilience and savvy of women who are continually disparaged by their cultures.

Nerve is exciting, topical and potentially prescient, but it scores no points for character development, and the plot holes are so big that you could, well, drive a speeding motorcycle through them.

The comedy sails along, thanks to its charismatic leads.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is uproarious and flamboyantly raunchy, utterly stupid yet also occasionally winning

[The film] isn’t for everyone. But the story is astoundingly original. During the summer months, when theaters are occupied by superheroes and sequels, that’s something worth celebrating.

You wouldn’t exactly call the movie a thrill, but it’s curiously engrossing all the same.

“Strangers” offers an inspiring look at creative people from very different walks of life who nonetheless communicate beautifully with one another. They don’t need to speak a common language: Their dazzling music says it all.

Central Intelligence won’t win any points for originality, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.

The documentary is a compelling indictment of the way commerce drives the art market. But the movie’s methodology is hit-or-miss, jumping from one interview to another, to jarring effect.

It’s a lovely tale, even if it’s not quite the Cinderella story you might expect. The documentary also brings up some interesting points about how the Internet — the land of vitriolic trolls — can draw two very different people together to create great art from odds and ends.

Unfortunately, the movie’s second act tends to drag, getting bogged down by uninspired twists, while the first flies by with witty dialogue and a steady stream of novel details.

In the end, the plot is the least interesting part of the movie. One-upmanship gets old fast, but evolved, of-the-moment comedy helps make a stale story fresh.

Dark Horse is earnest, sweet and told with sentimentality, featuring shots of horses frolicking in fields set against beautiful string music by Anne Nikitin. Surprisingly, the effect isn’t melodramatic or overbearing, but disarming and endearing.

The lead actresses, like the story, work in subtle ways. There’s plenty of potency in small gestures, anecdotes and shared glances.

Bateman does an effective job directing the movie, which is based on a novel by Kevin Wilson (with a script by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire), smartly opting for understatement from his performers, so that their characters’ eccentricities have something to play against.

The First Monday in May isn’t a deep examination of its subjects, but at least it’s breathtaking to look at.

In truth, the story is practically beside the point with all the spectacular visuals. The steampunk aesthetic might be overdone, but there’s still a lot here worth marveling at.

The story can shift from uproarious to heartbreaking in the span of a scene, but Cheadle, in his feature directorial debut, controls the tone like a veteran.

The movie masterfully crystallizes the unruly, episodic nature of memories, re-creating the way certain small things stay with us while other, much larger events recede into a haze of cigarette smoke.

One of the selling points of The Confirmation is how it steers clear of melodrama or tidy perfection in favor of a taste of life on the margins, where even living paycheck to paycheck would be a luxury.

Embrace of the Serpent has some of the most vivid images captured on film in recent memory, and also some of the most haunting.

The human scale of this story about a very real threat to one Norwegian village makes the movie more tragic and also more chilling.

Cernan is proud of what he accomplished, calling himself the luckiest man in the world for all that he got to see. But he also expresses regret at having done it at the expense of his family.

Touched With Fire is by no means a perfect film. The production values and melodrama sometimes seem better suited for a small-screen movie. But the drama deserves points for its measured, realistic view of mental illness.

Moore’s latest movie is funny and touching, and it has a lot to say about what we settle for as Americans citizens, and how much better our lives might be if we raised some hell.

Much of the humor derives from how despicable these characters can be, and Jude doesn’t so much push the envelope as turn it into a paper airplane and let it fly.

As Omalu, Smith gives an emotional performance, bolstered by capable supporting players. Albert Brooks is especially good as Omalu’s wry boss and chief advocate, Cyril Wecht, lightening the film’s otherwise gloomy mood.

As Alice, VanCamp is exceptional, eliciting our sympathy even when the character is making maddeningly self-destructive decisions.

The script, written by Trevor De Silva and Kevin Hood, falters when farce gives way to melodrama, but the movie regains momentum with a climax in a ballroom.

The Good Dinosaur is hardly catastrophic. But the movie is a lot like Arlo. On its own, it seems fine; just don’t compare it to its capable siblings.

The acting, especially by Costa, is first rate. Exuding both a childlike openness and a tendency toward the recklessness of young adulthood, the actress backs up even her character’s most questionable choices with conviction.

The Night Before is hardly a Christmas miracle, but it’s good for a laugh or two. And that’s not a bad way to get into the holiday spirit.

It’s not pretty, but it captures something that few cooking movies do: reality.

Experimenter’s most striking quality is the way it encourages us to think deeply, from the first frame to the last, even if it’s just to consider what on Earth an elephant is doing on screen.

Some of the characters make more of an impression than others, and the vignettes aren’t always entirely thrilling or well-acted. But Panahi’s movie remains a political coup considering his significant constraints.

Labyrinth of Lies is an eye-opening story about the importance of seeking the truth — even when it’s complicated, ugly and buried beneath years of secrecy and deceit.

99 Homes isn’t just a straightforward drama. It’s a suspense movie.

The Second Mother feels lovingly handcrafted. All the elements of the story fit impeccably together for a humorous and occasionally wrenching examination of relationships.

Every scene of calm, potentially, is trip-wired for an explosion. But for all its chilling tension and horrific imagery, Sicario is also a beautiful movie.

Overall, the movie presents a worthy and historical look at the link between genius and mental illness.

The movie sometimes dillydallies, but the unhurried rhythms ultimately have a hypnotic effect.

The movie has an unhurried pace, lulling the teens — and by extension the audience — into occasional complacency with the regular rhythms of each chugging train.

Hoss’s breathtaking portrayal, especially in the film’s final minutes, makes it clear why director Christian Petzold has made a habit of working with her.

Overall the movie is a fun peek at the birth of Lego bricks and their ever-evolving place in the world.

The Look of Silence is as beautiful as it is bleak.

Under Riklis’s direction, the film’s first act lulls the audience into a sense of familiarity, before plunging into a darker reality. The effect is shattering.

Like any good Sherlockian case, the stories interweave into a satisfying conclusion. And the cinematic elements fit together as neatly as the plot lines.

It’s hard to get over the movie’s haunting atmosphere. It may be just another story of kids in peril, but this one’s particularly hard to shake.

The movie is at its best when Hargrove shows rather than tells. Anyone can appreciate these artists in motion, all of whom prove the infectious appeal of a dance that doesn’t just respond to rhythm but creates its own.

The film doesn’t always dig deeply, glossing over why certain trends have emerged. And some of the interviews don’t add much to the movie beyond star power. Fresh Dressed nevertheless offers an original and worthwhile look at the history of hip-hop style. And the soundtrack doesn’t hurt either.

What’s true in Pakistan turns out to be universal: Misconceptions can prove as dangerous as any disease and are even harder to eradicate.