Ornamented heavily with creative visual pleasures, the film is bogged down, not just by weighty thematic issues — death, divorce, bullying, unfairness — but by professions of its own grandeur.

When executed with love and peopled with actors who breathe life into their characters, Hidden Figures is precisely the delight it aims to be.

Fences is a feast of brilliant acting, in a story that’s sometimes as difficult as it is powerful.

Another entry in a long line of good video games adapted into terrible movies, Assassin’s Creed is ragingly stupid. That its incoherent plotline is treated with the utmost reverence by skilled thespians only brings its idiocy into sharper relief.

Sing is like an album with a good song here and there, but too much filler and not enough hits

Where the film falters a bit is with the story. The final act is reminiscent of any of your garden-variety sci-fi adventure movies, which is a jolt after we’ve spent the rest of the movie watching these two figure each other out and try to make peace with their situation.

Gosling is terrific, playing hangdog and irritable yet still managing to be someone you root for (even if you want to smack him in the head every now and then). Stone is even better. It’s her best performance, and that’s saying something. Their relationship, their chemistry, everything about it, and everything about La La Land is, well, magic.

This wildly distasteful premise is meant to be cute and enlightening, like a modern Frank Capra flick, but this is hardly "It's a Wonderful Life." Instead, the movie keeps tripping over itself.

Rogue One stands on its own, an entry that is at once part of the “Star Wars” franchise (obviously) but also separate – a tougher, grittier film.

The characteristics that make Evolution an intriguing piece of cinema also make it a not entirely successful one.

It’s fun enough in places, outrageous (in mostly a good way) in others. Ultimately, however, the plot falters enough that it’s more like a two-hour audition for Great Actress. Chastain passes with flying colors, even if the movie doesn’t.

There are some funny bits, to be sure. You can’t bring this bunch together without a few hits among the misses. But despite McKinnon’s best efforts, it’s just not enough. This is one Office Christmas Party you can skip.

Calling Jackie, director Pablo Larrain’s absorbing film, a construction project is not to demean it but to praise it.

I can give the filmmakers — director Dito Montiel and screenwriter Adam G. Simon — the benefit of the doubt on good intentions, but their approach doesn’t tug at the heartstrings so much as it pistol-whips the audience with its grandiose and (ineptly) manipulative storytelling.

Seasons is a gorgeous movie that is exceedingly strange — not necessarily in the story it tells, but in the way it tells it.

It’s so ridiculously overstuffed it’s kind of fun. That extends to, or perhaps begins with, the look of the film. It’s rich, overripe, yet still kind of seedy.

It’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately, in her slavish devotion to creating the world of schlocky, B-grade sex-infused horror films, she recreates the good and the bad, the latter including some boring stretches that could’ve been lost in the two-hour running time. But it’s all quite enjoyable and a knowing take on patriarchy besides.

Manchester by the Sea is a masterpiece in a minor key, an exploration of grief that never lets its characters — or its audience — off the hook. It manages this even when it’s funny, which is surprisingly often.

It’s kind of funny, it’s kind of revealing, it’s kind of insightful as a glimpse into Hughes’ increasingly twisted mind, but it never adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

What it lacks is magic, or at least a decent amount of it.

There are some laughs, sure, but not enough. It was funny the first time. This is the second time, and returns diminish accordingly.

Allied is a decent movie, but frustrating — it should have been great, but never gets out of its own way long enough to be.

The film is not a classic of the genre, but it definitely falls into the upper echelon of the “worthy entry” category, and Steinfeld and Harrelson worthier still.

Yes, it’s a boxing comeback story. But the car accident makes it different, and Teller and Eckhart make it better than it ought to be.

It’s an interesting film, no question. But too much of the message gets lost in the medium.

There’s a story within a story here, one more compelling and relatable than the other. Perhaps that’s by design. But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean the two parts co-exist comfortably, no matter what the intent.

It’s all quite intricate and entertaining and terrific to look at. The “Fantastic” of the title might be stretching things a bit, but it doesn’t miss the mark by much. Better still, it makes you look forward to, and not dread, the next installment — and that’s real magic.

Even with the revolving door of characters and plot developments, there are some laughs in Almost Christmas.