The children may tug at the heartstrings, but it’s the adults who give the film its heart.

Angels Sing is a shameless holiday movie, one that will stop at nothing — even killing off characters — to try to wring one last bit of emotion out of the audience.

One reason the movie works so well: Writer-director Malcolm D. Lee returns from the original, so the characters feel true to the first film. Secondly, most of the cast is back, and they have the kind of comfortable chemistry you can’t fake. It’s easy to believe these people have a history together.

Jean-Marc Vallee’s film is anything but standard, thanks to an astonishing performance by Matthew McConaughey.

You wouldn’t want Kill Your Darlings to be the only information you ever get about the Beats. But it’s a decent introduction for the uninitiated, and interesting enough to those who know the story.

The story of her life is pretty well-known. But in Diana, it’s not particularly well told.

The false notes are outnumbered by those that ring achingly true.

It’s all very competent, containing all the separate components we ask of period pieces and literary adaptations: great actors, dramatic staging, lush scenery, elaborate costuming. It looks as pretty as a tightly cinched corset, and leaves just as little room to breathe.

There’s nothing in Thor: The Dark World that wasn’t done better in “Thor,” or a lot better in “The Avengers.” Except Tom Hiddleston’s performance as Loki.

It’s not as good, nor as involving, as “Love Actually.” But like that film, it has Bill Nighy, and that’s good for something.

The folks behind Free Birds are trying to entertain us. But they rarely succeed.

It’s all predictable and, despite the best efforts of Turteltaub and screenwriter Dan Fogelman at something a little risky, it’s pretty lame.

Character development, dramatic tension and emotional resonance all get short shrift in the checklist exposition by writer-director Gavin Hood.

If you have a yen for martial-arts action, Man of Tai Chi could do the trick depending on how seriously you take Reeves’ performance. At the film’s worst, it’s empty yet still attractive (much, it can be argued, like Reeves).

The acting is outstanding, the direction assured if straightforward. 12 Years a Slave is a history lesson of the best type. It’s brilliant. But, more crucially, it’s important. It’s brutal truth that demands to be seen.

Checking in at nearly three hours and so full of passions and appetites, it’s impossible for it not to exhaust you.

Grunberg and Boyar have a charming, if broad, chemistry. It’s all kind of cheesy, of course, but it’s meant to be. And the effects, when not deliberately silly, aren’t bad.

The movie is more a collection of cool people telling great stories than it is a structured documentary (despite Camalier’s attempts in that direction). But in this case, that’s enough.

It feels like a filmmaker’s exercise rather than an involving motion picture. Although you may never be bored with All Is Lost, you are rarely fully engaged.

It never quite adds up. You can’t shake the feeling that both Scott and McCarthy are aiming for something here that remains out of their reach.

With its lush look, uniformly excellent acting, slow cadences and unhurried unspooling, We Are What We Are rewards your patience without skimping on the goods.

It’s a powerfully sensual movie, gorgeously lensed colors and textures conveying its characters emotional states while thoughtfully exploring the range of human sexuality through Adenike’s experience.

Levine shows some of the promise that would serve him so well later, but beyond an intriguing look and an initial attempt to put a new spin on the teen-horror genre, “Mandy Lane” winds up being pretty conventional.

Broadway Idiot is entertaining enough. Certainly if you’re a Green Day fan, it’s something close to essential. But it never goes too deeply into anything.

If there’s any social commentary being made here, it doesn’t come through in performances so wooden you can’t tell if the actors are that bad or the characters that vapid.

It’s not fair to either of these actors to want to see Rocky and the Terminator over and over again. But it is fair to want to see them in something better than this.

Instead of delving into the moral questions WikiLeaks asks by its very existence, Condon gives those a passing nod in a couple of weak subplots.

Comparisons are unfair and inevitable. But even when taken on its own terms, the new Carrie rings hollow, a horror movie that is unsure of itself, with little to offer the uninitiated and less to offer fans of the first film.