Steve Persall

Lara’s appealing enough in humor and drive but Vikander brings deeper notes than the script and green screens require, from sorrow and fear to first-kill horror. Tomb Raider isn’t a place to expect good acting even from an Oscar winner, but Vikander persists.

DuVernay finds herself in the unenviable position of being both the right and wrong person for an important job. A Wrinkle in Time is gratifying for what it is, a step forward for creative women of color, and so disappointing for what it turns out to be.

There is nowhere logical for the story to go since it wasn’t intended to run this long. Sex is everything in this movie because nothing emotional or thrilling registers beyond the moment.

Bale operates in full brood throughout. Studi is a strong presence stymied by the movie’s misplaced priorities. Hostiles is another Western in which Indian characters are props for white man problems.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is passionless window-shop cinema, each static tableau lovingly arranged for display and easy dusting. Its centerpiece is a mannequin, albeit played by Daniel Day-Lewis, whose gift for keeping anything interesting is seldom so necessary.

Extraordinary heroism deserves a less ordinary movie.

Steven Spielberg’s The Post is a fake news movie, a true story told phony to further an agenda.

It takes too long for The Commuter to build a head of steam but it’s medium speed ahead after that.

Gary Oldman may finally get that Oscar he has long deserved for Darkest Hour, a movie that seems constructed to do little else.

Alexander Payne has a great idea with Downsizing and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

Denzel Washington’s labored portrayal of a shambling legal savant named Roman J. Israel, Esq. is the least of the movie’s worries. This is a story of shifting ethics that should be dramatic, but shaky logic prevents that from happening.

It’s so respectful that vibrancy suffers. Coco is a bright pinata of a movie that breaks and nothing falls out.

Murder on the Orient Express is prestige gone off the rails, a tony chunk of nothing that doesn’t beg the question whodunnit as much as why?

The third act sustains a fevered level of absurdity and everything prior is stylish, well-acted yet off-putting.Art without any noticeable heart.

A Bad Moms Christmas is a comedy with better casting than jokes, a sequel sticking to the formula of using twice as much of whatever worked before.

George Clooney’s latest directing effort, Suburbicon, is a movie tipping off why it’s going wrong before it actually happens.

After such a revolutionary acting career, Andy Serkis should be expected to make an equally inventive directing debut. Breathe is anything but that.

Jackie Chan, master of martial arts comedy, wishes to be taken seriously as an actor. Seriously. The Foreigner is no place to start and a smart place to finish.

Despite another charismatic turn by Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood, Marshall gradually feels less like his movie.

Ain't no mountain high enough, no plot valley deep enough, to keep Idris Elba and Kate Winslet from setting off romantic sparks in The Mountain Between Us. But this movie surely doesn't do them any favors.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a tarnished sequel demolishing the original's balderdash charm in tumble-dry camera moves, CGI slosh and Elton John f-bombs.

Everything was awesome in 2014's The Lego Movie, a high-wire risk paying off with a new look in computer animation based on Lego's interlocking design. The Lego Ninjago Movie hasn't abandoned that uniqueness but certainly reins it in.

Director Patrick Hughes' instinct isn't to find dark humor in violence, only to graphically depict it. There's a sadistic edge to The Hitman's Bodyguard that's unbecoming to its comedy.

From the impure perspective of someone who hasn't read King's series, The Dark Tower isn't half-bad. Faint praise, but this movie will take all it can get.

Atomic Blonde is a rare case of a woman toplining an action flick, but it hardly feels revolutionary.

Chaplin is a screen biography of a comedy legend that takes itself much too seriously. [08 Jan 1993, p.8]

Every fallen-star cliche director/co-writer Brett Haley employs goes down smoother with Elliott's baritone and unforced cool. He has deserved a spotlight role for years and now deserves a finer one.

It's the little pleasures in mediocre movies that mean a lot.

Rough Night wouldn't be fresh or funny no matter what gender it's written about or for.

It Comes at Night lays down a heavy layer of dreadful promise and doesn't follow through. Edgerton's fine performance is overshadowed by a title and ad campaign springing a bait-and-switch scam on horror fans.

Calling Dead Men Tell No Tales the most entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean movie since the original is a backhanded compliment with all the bilge water under the bridge since then. Time to deep six Capt. Jack Sparrow. This franchise should tell no more tales.

Baywatch is a running gag in slow motion, a thong-in-cheek TV retread swapping wholesome jiggles for dirty giggles. There are places for such humor but beaches don't have gutters.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword isn't a movie as much as a feature length montage of bastardized lore and rejected Game of Thrones pitches.

Like the live action Beauty and the Beast, its best impressions come from imitating the source, lifting visuals and dialogue to deja vu effect.

The Boss Baby is a bun needing more time in the oven, some rethinking of what sort of animated comedy it wishes to be.

MacLaine keeps things interesting, snapping off one-liners with precision that comes only through experience.

Harrelson and Dern's efforts aside, Wilson is indie ennui at its emptiest, a vessel of misshapen wit with a hole in the bottom. Its nihilism is exhausting. Oddness gets oppressive when a movie goes through more mood swings than its unbalanced heroes.

Sure, the plot is paper thin like most reboots, but CHiPs is less about the story and more about the special effects and stunt riding, which are jaw-dropping.

Broadbent carries the movie with signature ease, making Tony easy to dislike while wishing him an overdue peace. Despite its time-flip fixation, The Sense of an Ending finds emotional focus in Broadbent's wilting gaze and discoveries in character with the simplest line deliveries.

With each musical reprise and imitated frame, Condon continues a fight of comparisons he can't win. Either imitate a classic faithfully or leave out the songs and make your own version. Or just leave perfection alone.

Kong: Skull Island strips the beauty from a legendary beast, reducing a classic movie star to soulless monster mechanics. Kong smashes, but not much else. Whoever dies doesn't matter. Whoever lives has a sequel promised by the end credits.

The Great Wall is a so-so movie with eye-popping images.

Fifty Shades Darker is what you'd expect from encoring a regrettable one-night stand. Not a keeper, but nothing to gnaw off your arm about.

Gold isn't a bad movie, just lifeless except for McConaughey.

Live by Night is ambitious to a fault, with so much material and technical pizzazz that a cable miniseries format might have been a better way to go.

Chastain plows through this tangled scenario with an icy ferocity that's entertaining. You get the feeling that Miss Sloane would work better as a streaming or cable series, allowing more time to explore characters and issues, giving actors more room for dense dialogue. Maybe come up with a better way out of that corner.

This is science fiction needing more work on the fiction part, an intriguing premise running its course halfway through. Passengers is too smart for starters to devolve into green screen spectacle relegating its attractive stars to unconvincing gapes.

Office Christmas Party contains enough lunacy from McKinnon, Bell and Vanessa Bayer to nearly recommend, then enough lame plot threads, Rob Corddry and Olivia Munn to reconsider.

Rules Don't Apply is affably mediocre, even tolerable between brief pleasures. The movie's lone constant amusement is Beatty's madcap portrayal of Hughes, keeping aloft his Spruce Goose of nonromantic not quite comedy.

Any resemblance between Allied and a much better movie on the subject isn't coincidental but unfortunate.

It's just another example of technology intruding upon storytelling, that's been happening since kinetoscopes cranked one frame at a time.

Not even J.K. Rowling can say abracadabra and make a worthwhile movie franchise appear. The lightning that struck Harry Potter once merely grazes Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, turning the sorcerer's mentor into a fantasy apprentice.

Inferno is another docent tour dressed as an action movie, a baby boomer's fantasy of travel and intrigue.

When we-know-who finally gets what's coming, The Girl on the Train briefly reaches its campy feminist potential, after two hours of taking a transparent mystery too seriously.

The Hollars plays like a Zach Braff cast-off, with its strenuous quirks and strummy musical interludes.

Lewis' performance is a spectacle of ego and last-chance craft that could only be possible for a legend near the end.

Hanks keeps things interesting with an array of concerned expressions and distant gazes. But there's no tension in faked suffering. The actor and Eastwood's movie are limited by the goodness of their subject, the flawlessness of his actions.

Let's cut to the chariot chase. The latest screen version of Ben-Hur would be little more than a condensed miniseries without it, framed for small television screens, with performances to fit.

Kubo and the Two Strings is lovely to behold, if viewers manage to keep their eyes open. It's an animated doozy and drowser at once, an uncomfortable mix of Miyazaki-style imagination and generic dullness.

It's the garish swarm of colorfully twisted action that Batman v Superman needed, the anarchic approach such timeworn superheroes deserve. Suicide Squad characters aren't nearly as familiar, so writer-director David Ayer's movie is also messy, not entirely by design.

Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is superb, casting gauzy glows and sensual silhouettes against impressively designed sets. Allen drops a few philo-cynical lines worthy of his reputation but not nearly enough.

Filmmakers simply can't make Tarzan like they used to. If someone tries, like director David Yates did with The Legend of Tarzan, he's just another superhero, swinging on vines rather than spider webs. Natives can't be restless. Lions won't be wrestled...Tarzan fans leave feeling Cheetah'd.

The Conjuring 2 is serviceable horror, heavy on the audio stings yet smarter than the average gorefest.

Despite its overt feminism, Neighbors 2 makes the sorority unravel when its guiding man leaves. It's one of several mixed messages in the screenplay, possibly due to having five writers' fingerprints on it.

X-Men: Apocalypse is sprawling to a fault, in both geography and characters to be given something to do.

Malaise isn't Tom Hanks' thing, so A Hologram for the King with its death of an IT salesman vibe isn't a good fit. Hanks is far too indelible as a can-do personality to play why bother.

Winter's War isn't tedious. Amiably bad movies seldom are. Theron and Blunt look fabulous doing silly, screechy things in Colleen Atwood's costumes. Chastain makes Sara a formidable match in battle and bed with Eric, who becomes less important as these wonder women converge.

The Boss feels like a fun character gradually wasted.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was supposed to settle a fanboy debate older than Adam West. Instead it raises another: Is being a superhero really this much of a drag?

Field's eager-to-please performance makes [Showalter's] shovelfuls of sugar go down easier.

Good intentions don't always make for good movies. Case in point: Zootopia, a Disney film with more on its mind than animated fun and fuzzies. So much, in fact, that it loses track of what audiences expect, what they're being sold.

Like a struggling sprinter, Stephen Hopkins' film suffers from wasted motion, too much going on. It's the difference between a merely competent movie and one justifying more discussion of Hollywood's commitment to reward diversity.

Hail, Caesar! is maddeningly hit-and-miss.

It's a story told accurately, if not particularly well.

13 Hours is another flag-wrapped paean to true-life Alamo heroism in the vein of Lone Survivor, hoping for ticket sales like American Sniper. Neither of those movies carry the political burden of 13 Hours, and Bay isn't one to channel it.

McKay's frustration about the financial crisis is obvious, his instinct of how to engage viewers less so. Buyer beware.

Endings have never been Russell's strong suit. This time the beginning also eluded him, and the middle fell into his lap. Joy leaves a feeling of panicked disappointment, as if phone lines are open and nobody's calling.

What keeps Daddy's Home watchable is Wahlberg's checkmate machismo, as the intimidating foil necessary for Ferrell's namby-pambyism to register.

Fey and Poehler remain game throughout, mustering a bit of besties magic here and there. Sisters flips a tested formula to become the New Coke of comedy, looking familiar and bubbly on the surface, disposable before it's finished.

The movie has all the propulsion of a trolling motor, traversing long-charted dramatic waters.

The Night Before isn't anything Harold, Kumar or Billy Bob Thornton didn't desecrate before and better.

The 33 has a disappointing lack of depth for a movie about being trapped 2,400 feet below.

Watching Spectre unfold, lumbering and slumbering, on the heels of a franchise high is a shock, so much talent coasting this time.

Our Brand Is Crisis shows flashes of insight cribbed from reality, nibbling the edges of satire without ever taking a big bite.

Rock the Kasbah isn't respectful of truth, or consistently funny in the way it lies.

Big Stone Gap isn't everyone's cup of sweet tea. It's a homespun tale populated by broadly drawn characters and solid actors — Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia — sounding like they gulped hush puppy batter.

Director Joe Wright's movie barely gets off the ground, and gets old quickly.

Pawn Sacrifice tells a fascinating story in unspectacular fashion, resulting in a draw.

The Intern is a movie outmoded in style and strangely retro-sexist in spirit.

By all accounts, Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger was a monster. That's exactly how Johnny Depp plays him in Black Mass, a dark blob of underworld cliches and bad contact lenses.

A Walk in the Woods is a trifle compared to 2014's Wild, which tracked a similar real-life journey toward self-discovery in richer detail. But darned if Redford's easy charm and Nolte's gravelly lack of it aren't enticing throughout.

American Ultra is a clumsy mix of courtship and gunpowder, passion and horror leading to a romantically sick-humored conclusion. The end nearly justifies director Nima Nourizadeh's means of getting there. But not quite.

Stylish to a fault and straying from the source, Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. revives a 1960s television hit for the short attention spans of today's youth-skewing movie audience.

As an actor, Meryl Streep is incapable of making false moves. That doesn't mean she's incapable of making false movies.

Vacation is a Gen X comedy franchise rebooted exactly how audiences can expect in 2015, bawdier and less likable than whatever classic inspires it.

At times the screenplay by brothers David and Alex Pastor strikes the proper tone for claptrap.... Mostly, though, the dialogue thuds in circles.

Comedy and narrative demand more rhythm than simply scamper, jabber, fall but that's what Minions bring to the table.

Someone describes the T-800 as "nothing but a relic from a deleted timeline." Too harsh to lay on Schwarzenegger yet, but certainly it applies to the Terminator franchise.