Goodbye Christopher Robin is an emotionally layered story about failures in parenting that gave rise to one of our most enduring joys.

Robinson tells the story in a straightforward way, not quite breezy but definitely in mainstream fashion. You long for a little more grit; even the rough edges seem a little smooth.

Boseman and Gad are both good. Marshall drinks and smokes and fights in a bar; certainly that's a side of him we haven't seen before. If anything, he's portrayed as a little too good at his job, a risk-taker whose every courtroom hunch pays off. It's an interesting approach to the story, but it also holds the film back a bit.

It’s all joyous silliness, as a My Little Pony movie should be, packed with clean humor and pony puns.

Typically actors like Winslet and Elba can elevate even the most-pedestrian material, but making this story better would require a feat of superhuman strength.

Unfortunately, the name is the only thing emboldened about this starchy biopic, a dry, talky affair that even Liam Neeson in full glower can’t bring to life.

Co-writer and director Chris Peckover clearly knows his way around both the holiday and horror genres, and while this isn’t the first time someone has blended the two, it is one of the more-effective efforts. It’s scary and fun, if your idea of fun involves occasional gore and torture, things like that.

Lucky is one of Harry Dean Stanton’s last roles, a rare leading performance, and it is a treasure.

Things go from far-fetched to insane before it's over, and Vaughn wisely keeps the pace at a healthy clip. But never underestimate his power to floor you.

Blade Runner 2049 stands as its own film, in addition to a continuation of the sequel. It’s not the bolt out of the blue the first movie was, but how could it be? Instead, as the break between installments would suggest, it’s a furthering of not just the original story but the original world, and that’s quite an accomplishment.

It’s a fascinating story with particular contemporary relevance. And it should be better.

Agonizingly stupid and painfully illogical.

There’s daring in the film’s slow unfurling. The problem, though, isn’t one of patience but of payoff. Woodshock is beautiful but it’s all chassis, a root-dead tree that crumbles beneath the ax.

The film is a little too polished and slick to really provide the slap in the face of the U.S. government it intends to deliver. But as a means for Cruise to shake off the dust of movies like “The Mummy” for something more substantive, it more than succeeds.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie is a worthwhile entry into this growing universe, expanding it but not really evolving it. It’s fun, but not especially memorable.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a movie in search of a reason to exist. Despite a needlessly excessive running time, it never finds one.

What’s so terrific about Stiller’s performance is that we never question his genuine love for his son. He’s just got to work through his love for himself to get there.

The film, directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (“Little Miss Sunshine”), might have come off as too breezy were it not for the leads: Emma Stone as King and Steve Carell as Riggs.

It’s terrific. This was something of a surprise, as it seems almost impossible to tell this kind of story without a treacly narrative and clichéd notes of inspiration — against-all-odds kind of stuff, which so easily slips into melodrama.

The best thing is that Nichol doesn’t adopt a luddite stance. He doesn’t try to impart the evils of technology, at least not much. (Some people in the film lean that way.) He’s more inclined to chronicle the joys of a fading delight, one click-clack at a time.

Much of the film is inert, like a still life with dialogue. That’s not a detriment. That’s an invitation to see a movie whose beauty stays with you long after it ends.

Rebel in the Rye is Hollywood regular Danny Strong’s feature-film directorial debut, and it fumbles for a voice in tracking the life of a writer renowned for his.

Darren Aronofsky’s film pretty much defines “not for everybody.” He is here to challenge the audience as much as entertain it; happily, he does both, and with no half measures in either department. It is intriguing, frustrating, bizarre and over-the-top — way over. And yet when you leave, you can’t deny: There is a lot of movie going on here.

It's all-around generic, made notable by its weirdly schizophrenic tone. Sometimes it strives to be a character-driven thriller in the Jason Bourne mold. In other moments, it goes for over-the-top action and violence. But it's never very exciting.

Crown Heights is soul-shaking only in the abstract. In execution, it’s deathly dull.

Home Again is a romantic comedy with its heart in the right place. And that’s just about the only thing it has going for it. It’s facile, disingenuous, artificial in nearly every way.

This is a really fun movie. Good, too. Not great, but old-school in its approach to scares and, even better, in its approach to the relationships between kids, outsiders who band together to try to take down a monstrous evil. And maybe flirt a little while they’re at it.

Lafosse, along with actors Bérénice Bejo and Cédric Kahn, infuse the film with a brutal honesty that makes it, if not exactly enjoyable, certainly compelling.