Stephen Holden

The movie, directed by Gavin O’Connor (“Tumbleweeds”), makes little sense. The screenplay, by Bill Dubuque, is so determined to hide its cards that when the big reveal finally arrives, it feels as underwhelming as it is preposterous.

Although Mascots is neither as funny nor as satirically acute as its forerunner, it would be churlish to complain too loudly. And the sharpest verbal jokes in the screenplay by Mr. Guest and the actor and writer Jim Piddock are as inspired as ever. Mr. Guest’s gift for the archly comedic mot juste is undiminished.

Nostalgia gives way to melodrama, and dramatic truth to soapy histrionics, and Blue Jay falters on a formulaic revelation about mistakes made and lessons learned too late.

The movie is not really about deciding whether you’re gay or straight — those terms are never spoken. It’s about the chemistry of two people at a moment in time.

The absence of an emotional catharsis in the film, efficiently directed by Mick Jackson (“The Bodyguard,” “Temple Grandin”) from a screenplay by the British playwright David Hare, leaves a frustrating emptiness at its center.

As it seesaws between Greta’s conscious and unconscious minds, the movie begins to feel like a waking dream.

The heavy-handed man-beast comparison is one of several grossly overstated themes in a movie that abruptly changes direction as it goes along while taking shortcuts that leave its characters underdeveloped and crucial plot elements barely fleshed out.

Chronic ends with a sudden, terrible slap in the face that is a final blow to your equilibrium. It is left up to the viewer to decide whether it is a cheap stunt or an ultimate moment of truth. I vote for the latter.

Ms. Rabe’s beautifully balanced performance reminds you that people never really grow up.

Despite an abundance of mostly tepid jokes that keeps the comedic tone at a quiet simmer, Bridget Jones’s Baby doesn’t jell. Ms. Zellweger floats through the picture, charming but strangely detached from her suitors.

As I Open My Eyes is best when it observes the fraught but loving mother-daughter relationship between Hayet and Farah.

The characters have enough dimension to avoid appearing to be symbols of a social tragedy, and the movie’s relative gentleness makes the harsher realities of Brandon’s world all the more distressing.

We’re all familiar with the term contact high, but not with its antithesis. Because it is so believable, White Girl is a contact bummer that’s hard to shake.

As a drama about adult responsibility, selfishness and moral obligations, however, it never wavers in its commitment to examine what it means to raise a child.

If the movie, loosely based on two books by Fatima Elayoubi, tells a familiar story of immigrants struggling to make something of themselves in an alien culture (Fatima speaks some French but reads only Arabic), it does so in a tone that is kindhearted but clearheaded, and the performances are low-key and believable.

The film’s method of circling around its subject, then closing in at the end, feels coy and withholding, as if Mr. Greene reserved the few juiciest moments for last.

The film is a contemplation of the loneliness, tension and anxiety of outsiders pursuing a piece of the American dream.

Overseen by a director not known for his human touch and lacking a name star, except for Mr. Freeman, Ben-Hur feels like a film made on the cheap, although it looks costly.

The voice casting and the visual representations of the characters the boy encounters on his journeys are superb.

Indignation might be dismissed as a small, exquisite period piece, but it is so precisely rendered that it gets deeply under your skin.

The movie comes alive only when the camera lingers over the actual paintings and allows their power to speak for itself.

Quitters is repellent but believable, which makes it a little scary.

Don’t Think Twice, which has a warm heart, could have been a much nastier movie. Yet its disappointed show-business hopefuls dreading their expiration dates make no bones about their insecurities.

It is so vague, cliché-ridden and devoid of surprise and suspense that once you grasp its premise, watching it is like leafing through a design magazine kept in a refrigerator.

Robert is not a Shakespearean figure like Walter White, but the film at least grants him the moral stature of an incorruptible man risking his life in a dangerous job. The Infiltrator is still a good yarn that, when it catches its breath, allows Mr. Cranston to convey the same ambivalence and cunning he brought to “Breaking Bad” and “All the Way."

The spectacle of actors of the quality of Russell Crowe, Aaron Paul, Janet McTeer, Octavia Spencer and Jane Fonda earnestly struggling to wring eye moisture from hammy, flat-footed dialogue (credited to Brad Desch, an unknown), while maintaining some dignity, is depressing proof that an actor is only as good as his or her material.

Zero Days has a similarly balanced outlook along with a critical political viewpoint that avoids hysteria and demagogy. Its strongest protest is against what Mr. Gibney sees as the dangers of excessive American secrecy.

Blistering.