It delivers plenty of exciting action with some CGI-assisted visual flair, from stampeding bison to a starkly beautiful image of a frozen lake with our hero flailing on the wrong side of the ice. Hughes’ efforts to bring emotional drama to the proceedings fall flat, however, relying on coming-of-age clichés that strip the story of any real surprise.

It's fun to watch the actors work. But you wish they had material a little stronger to work with. Laggies doesn't give it to them.

It's all too much on the surface, not enough underneath. In other words, fans of the first film will love it.

This cartoonishly violent exercise in cinematic hero worship comes at the audience with chambers loaded and fires off rounds too rapidly to worry about how vapid it all is.

If Keanu sometimes comes off as another sketch stretched a little thin, that doesn’t put it in too shabby of company. It may not be as great as “The Blues Brothers,” but it’s up there with “Wayne’s World” — and light-years ahead of “Coneheads.”

Aster, who also directed the excellent “Hereditary” and the somewhat less excellent “Midsommar,” has the audience where he wants it — off-kilter, uncomfortable, bewildered. It’s his comfort zone, but not ours. Whether you enjoy this kind of manipulation will go a long way toward deciding how much you like the film.

If you're looking for a fun movie to start the spooky season, this is the perfect film for you.

This is Ferrell's movie, meaning some inspired laughs sandwiched between annoying bits that stretch on well past their usefulness.

It will quench the thirst of die-hard fans who always want more. But does that thirst justify “The Matrix Resurrections?” Maybe. But it can’t make it a great movie. And despite Reeves’ willingness to jump back in, neither can anything else.

It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached.

Fantastic acting by the likes of Garret Dillahunt, Chris Cooper and Joel Torre lift characters above the cliched, offering a one-sided history lesson that is still well worth learning.

It does give Cera a chance to play at being a bad boy. But it's just that - playing at it.

Movie-release schedules are set by studios months in advance, and many are the movie that had the misfortune to open at an inopportune time. But Hotel Mumbai is responsible for myriad other poor creative decisions that make a spectacle of misery.

Certainly Anything’s Possible is a welcome unique entry into the high-school romance genre, with representation playing an important part. It’s not as deep or as deeply felt as it might have been, but at least it’s a start.

Rarely do you find a Gen Z movie that doesn’t make the group seem so insufferable. This film shows the struggle of modern dating during this time, at this age.

A perfectly capable movie that has chases and romance and double-crosses and double-double-crosses and action and is, ultimately, absolutely inessential.

Downey is as funny as ever, if not more so. He ensures that Iron Man 3 is a solid installment in the franchise, and helps to make it seem, at least for a time, that it might be something more.

Helgeland has given us an impressive introduction to one of the most important men in U.S. history. But you can’t help wanting more.

Shipka is both funny and gritty as the wry observer unwillingly drawn into the action, the kind of role at which she excels.

How many times have we complained that summer blockbusters are all about the action, at the expense of niceties like character development? Well, Edwards has gone in another direction, one that's more intriguing in theory than on the screen.

This is a movie that's just out there, beyond our normal experience in a theater. You may walk away impressed or offended by Killer Joe, but Friedkin and McConaughey make sure you won't walk away indifferent.

The ideas are there. Or at least mostly there. The performances are first-rate, particularly those of Vikander and Olsen, waging a war of wills — the tension is palpable. Maybe the payoff just can’t match the build-up.

The movie is a pretty humdrum affair when it focuses on humans, even when actors are playing characters based on real people.

Visually you can certainly call the film a breakthrough.

Maybe the Manson murders are not meant for easy explanation, which in part seems to be what Morris is getting at. Maybe we’ll never really know the answers. But we don’t seem to be able to stop looking for them.

It’s a weird film all the way around.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is a horror movie, no doubt. It’s also an intelligent one, with the courage to challenge its audience, to make it see the horrors not just in the monster, but in the societal inequities that ultimately created him. Thankfully, Story isn’t afraid to rework a classic.

It's easy to get sucked into Begin Again, to enjoy the friendly performances and the goes-down-easy songs, and to not even notice until it's over that the film is more a feel-good fairy tale than anything else. We might not have seen much that was truly meaningful in the end, but it was warm and fuzzy while it lasted.