There’s nothing particularly surprising in the plot, once you get past the meta-Cage business. Pretty soon it’s just an action movie. What is surprising is how enjoyable Cage and Pascal make the movie anyway.

We've been down this road before. But Pitch Perfect 2, goofier than the original, makes it an enjoyable trip.

There is a gentleness, both to Allyn’s performance and to the film overall, that draws the audience in. The movie’s path is as predictable as Jackson’s, but it’s beautifully shot and the idea is a good one — reversing the typical border-crosser-on-the-run idea. That doesn’t forgive all of its shortcomings, but it comes close.

If you were a theater kid, this movie will feel like an inside joke written just for you.

Foxtrot is far too interior to be called flashy, but there’s something striking in director Samuel Maoz’s visual confidence, the way he translates his characters’ states of mind into images.

The Armor of Light can be frustrating and painful to watch. But ultimately, there is hope here. Schenck and McBath are only two people from opposite sides of the political spectrum coming together, but at least that’s a start.

Director Shawn Seet’s film is surprisingly sweet and moving.

Paddington is a mostly smart update loaded with charm, and it preserves enough of the fuzzy feelings for purists to walk away with a smile.

Like Tom Hanks in Big, Levy does a great job of capturing — or parodying — the giddiness of a kid flexing his adult muscles (literally and figuratively). The two-hour-plus running time breezes by in a well-paced adventure that mines familiar comic-book tropes for laughs.

Fly Me to the Moon shines when it doesn’t try to just tell a story about the moon landing, but instead examines how those stories get constructed, and why.

Cosmopolis is frustrating, funny, thought-provoking, weird, maddening, worthwhile. It isn't a great movie. Sometimes it's not a good one. Sometimes it is. Ultimately, it is one worth working through, a valuable exercise if you're willing to make the effort.

That everything is held at such a remove is the artistry of The Assassin, but it comes at the cost of emotional investment. It’s so elliptical in its approach that there’s no love for anyone, or anything, outside of beauty. It can be admired — greatly, even — but it can’t be felt.

Yes, it's that sappy, in between the F-bomb barrage. But Hill brings an infectious confidence to his performance, even when he's supposedly down and out.

Dominik Moll downplays the overtly scandalous nature of the story, at least for a while, with a leisurely pace heavy on imagery. He’s made a beautiful-looking film that portends disaster. And disaster arrives, eventually. It just takes its time getting there.

Muscled and ruggedly un-manscaped, Stapleton is an intimidating presence based on physicality alone, but the actor ratchets up the menace factor with a gripping portrayal of a man driven by emotions more complex than mere anger.

The Big Year is better when it is examining the obsession of the birders, and Martin, Black and Wilson are enjoyable in toned-down mode.

The risk of telling three distinct-but-related stories is that all may not be of equal quality. That’s the case here, as the movie starts strong but gets progressively weaker, particularly in the third act.

A great movie exists in Love & Mercy, side by side with a pretty good one.

His first film, "Animal Kingdom," was a terrific examination of a low-grade crime family in Melbourne. The Rover is more ambitious but not as good. Michod's patience with scenes, while laudable, is at times too much.

Thanks to its cast, The Grand Seduction turns out to be, if not exactly groundbreaking, at least agreeable, comfortable fun.

A Single Shot never rises to the level of a great film like “Winter’s Bone,” which digs much deeper in its depiction of life in the hills among the desperate poor. But thanks largely to Rockwell, it’s not bad, either.

My Policeman weaves a compelling tale of star-crossed love through different perspectives and timelines.

The film is choppy in parts, but it is George Takei's approachability, his constant big laughter, even his singing (he performs "Don't Fence Me In" after explaining how the internment camps made the lyrics poignant to him) that tie it together.

Patriots Day is a well-meaning, well-executed movie that tells the story of the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013 as a crime thriller — an interesting choice that works well, for the most part.

Civil-rights movements are never really over because they're never really won. She's Beautiful When She's Angry doesn't overtly make that case until its closing minutes, but when it does, it's made all the more powerful by the footage that preceded it.

Animals may be the kind of story we've seen, but it's told in a way that makes it worth seeing again.

The Possession of Michael King is more scary than original.

The movie’s biggest strength is that it’s not too deep. It's visually stunning but is ultimately empty calories.