Tom Russo

Stay patient through those Seinfeldian stretches in which Martin isn’t so much acting as performing, and you’ll be treated to the bonus of some surprising emotional depth and poignancy.

In short, the film owns its immaturity. And the argument it appealingly offers in defense is that it’s healthy, even vital, to be able to laugh at scatological silliness, adults included.

The result is a scattershot comedy that only intermittently nails either tone, finally just bogging down in flatly choreographed mayhem in the late going.

For all her “Clueless” comedy cred, Silverstone just might be at her best conveying a mother’s special knack for witheringly guilting her boys.

The film’s casting in general is a strength, however deep the resonance of what the actors are playing. Schreiber’s ex-girlfriend, Naomi Watts, is a brassy, savvy presence as Wepner’s bartender soulmate.

Watching Taylor-Johnson’s character engage the enemy this way is intriguing, but also a bit removed from the realism the film is after. Can you say catch-22?

The movie also plays as an extended reminder of why we love Goldie. It’s enormous fun seeing Hawn up to her old tricks — at 71! — even if they’re tweaked to help sell someone else’s brand of comedy.

Monkeys end up supplying the movie’s real drama. While parentally overlooked mischief-maker Tao Tao gets up to the requisite, well, monkey business, he’s also witness to a stunning snatch-and-fly attack by an opportunistic goshawk. It might not be nature on demand, but it’s some scene.

Too glossy to truly immerse audiences in the horrors it depicts.

Polar chaos notwithstanding, “Fate” delivers action with more consistent visual precision than in the last couple of films, as newly enlisted director F. Gary Gray accesses the flair he brought to 2003’s “The Italian Job.”

Entertainment so generically gentle, it doesn’t compare to last year’s similarly themed, tonally looser “Trolls.”

You may find yourself wishing that Webb (“500 Days of Summer”) would just power through court. We’d gladly watch more of Grace and Evans silhouetted against the sunset, their connection evident in his indulgent posing as her makeshift jungle gym.

At least a plot point about “secret formula” is sort of clever. The rest comes across as gibberish.

Kudrow and Robinson are intriguing casting and they get some sharp Bickersons material, but the movie unconvincingly shorthands how they got together. And Revolori’s horndog just feels like the film coasting on his quirky persona from “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

It says something about Deutch’s appeal that she does manage to pull the story from the vexing hole it digs itself into. She takes us on an absorbing journey through the various stages of Sam’s time-stalled predicament.

Jackman and Stewart’s fond, easy dynamic helps to balance some very provocative brutality, as the movie pushes Wolverine’s berserk nature to graphic new extremes.

Luke Wilson, Eddie Izzard, director Ash Brannon (“Surf’s Up”), and crew combine these ingredients into something that’s uniquely likable, and even unique-looking at times.

The movie works best when it finds a balance between flatly familiar and over-aggressively unexpected.

The movie is sufficiently in touch with current comic books that it’s keen to explore Batman’s psychology — breezily, but still.

For audiences with an extremely high tolerance for brutally fetishized shootouts and bloodletting, this continuation of Reeves’s potential-filled reluctant hit man saga is electrifying, both visually and in its cracked narrative ambitions.

A lean indie horror flick that manages to creep us out even before getting to the part that’s meant to be truly unsettling.

The movie’s best bits come when Tong’s script eases up on banter and clunky Indy homages and instead simply indulges in random zaniness.

Between Josh Gad’s charmingly earnest voice-over performance and more of the arthouse gloss that Hallström has drizzled on everything from “The Hundred-Foot Journey” to “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” it’s a weepie that can be tough to resist.

It’s a movie eager to examine the stigma of mental illness and the dynamics of victimization, to a point. Past that, it’s just distressing, narratively convenient exploitation that gets by on the strength of McAvoy’s fearless, electrifyingly adaptive performance.

Monster Trucks might not be a complete lemon, but it’s hardly cherry.

A Monster Calls is a portrait of coping that’s both fascinating and heartbreaking.

A James Franco-Bryan Cranston teaming that’s not as wild as intended, but reasonably diverting just the same.

The result is entertainment whose pace and sound, while dizzyingly brisk at points, still accommodates characters and a setting that are terrifically rich — a menagerie more fully, memorably realized than “Zootopia.”