The leads’ prolonged, puffed-feathers sparring is entertaining while it lasts, but the sensation of something sizable is only fleeting.

In the mold of their previous films "Ice Age" and "Robots": a nice blend of rudimentary and inventive touches.

Isn't a comedy, but it's not entirely a tragedy, either, and it straddles this razor's edge with a deeply nuanced aplomb.

White couldn't stay away, and neither can the band's legions of fans, who bop up and down in sold-out arenas at the reunion tour that provides the film's hopeful coda.

The casting is solid, with an even more pumped-up Jordan once again anchoring the movie as the conflicted young boxer in the title. But it’s the underdeveloped villains of the piece who ultimately prove more intriguing, despite their one-dimensionality.

Winter can't resist the cheering idea that, for all its sins, YouTube has created a new, disseminated knowledge base. However, that core concern about its dangers is what really drives The YouTube Effect, and re-enforces its central finding that it has had an undeniably corrosive effect on our lives, even as we've fallen for its steady stream of pablum and bootlegged shows.

The fabricated story that propels the movie, though tenable as events that might have occurred, is insufficient to seize our attention. It’s like a bent note that never finds its correct register.

The film stumbles a bit in its third act, when war kills the good times for good.

Twenty-four years ago, the original Toy Story broke ground as the first-ever entirely computer animated feature film. What’s more astonishing now is how all those ones and zeroes are harnessed to produce something so utterly lifelike.

A two-hour-plus cat-and-mouse game between the two heavyweight actors unfolds, and is enthusiastically filmed against a to-die-for soundtrack, detailing the exhaustive efforts on both sides to take the other down.

Go see it, get the adrenaline rush, and then go home and forget about it. It's noisy and fun, but that's all it is.

This is a war film with precious little war, which was also the crux of Swofford's book.

Unostentatious originality, psychological insight, and stark beauty make it well worth any film lover's time.

It looks like an authentic period drama and has a pleasant spirit, even if it has difficulty keeping things totally interesting. It may not pack the esteemed grandeur of a five-course meal at a Michelin star restaurant, but it does deliver the gentle nourishment of a thoughtfully cooked dinner to share with a loved one.

Provocative and prodding, but apart from its queen bee Ellen (the marvelous Rampling), the characters are representational types instead of fleshed-out human beings.

It’s easy to see why Richard Turner is the stuff of inspiration, regardless of whether he wants to you think so or not.

The challenge – the one this film proves incapable of overcoming – is how you marry a broad family comedy with the endless complexity of the adoption process.

The Front Runner spends too much time involved in the glare of the situation rather than examining its intricacies or characters. Like many of Reitman’s films, particularly Men, Women & Children, The Front Runner is interested in the subject of privacy as mitigated by the TMI era. The character of Gary Hart, unfortunately, becomes only a means to this end.

The movie is cute but predictable.

Although there are some exhilarating moments here, they're offset by frequent distractions: Lewis' standard (and now boring) weird performance, an occasional lack of logic in the story line, a tendency to go operatic, and the overall feeling that the movie is unsure of where it is going.

As a whole, September 11 never reaches any conclusions or ready insights. But as a collection of moments, the film often soars.

To its credit, the film shows no interest in creating blind heroics but instead uphold the nickname Kyle earned in Iraq: the Legend.

All the action in Souvenir happens in such a dreamlike haze, that it’s my personal pet theory that none of it is actually real and Liliane has been sitting in front of the TV the whole time.

Still, this is recent and public history, and Fair Game, which both fascinates and infuriates, comes across as little more than a footnote in an ever-lengthening list (thanks, Wikileaks!) of the Bush White House's sordid, potentially treasonous actions leading up to and beyond the invasion of Iraq.

Never gives us the nuts and bolts of mental illness and guilt, just the sight of cooped-up steam escaping from a valve that’s about to blow.

The interpersonal storylines, the tackling of the connections between grief and rage and flight, are some of the deepest and most nuanced in the franchise's history, as is the underlying narrative of two powerful nations heading to a needless conflict in the fog of war. When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is at its best when it looks at confusion rather than adds to it.

There’s an earnestness about Accidental Texan that can only warm your heart. Every moment is predictable, but in Bristol’s capable hands that becomes a strength.

July sees the world in a most unexpected way, and it's a shame that Me and You's preciousness sometimes overwhelms that uniqueness of vision.

Two terrific performances and the interplay between the two actors – Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen – are the reasons to see Green Book. Their pas de deux is a master class in acting, and the twosome’s give and take provides good company for the road trip that comprises the heart of this narrative.

The film's cast, all unknowns with the exception of comic/Broadway performer DeLaria, acquit themselves well, with the skinny, innocent-eyed Stafford a credible Candide navigating a new world of experience. His grounded performance charters Eric's stumbling progress to a sense of self that befits Edge of Seventeen: without apology.

Phillippe does a dark, searing turn with a character that could have easily been little more than Taps-era hubris, and Gordon-Levitt, as one of King's more fragmented former charges, is riveting and convincingly small-town Texas.

This violent, sometimes brutal suspense thriller was thus quite a surprise, both in how effectively Cruise creates a commanding physical presence despite his lack of size, and for how well the film works in general.

It’s one of the few narration-dependent films in recent years in which the words don’t get in the way of the story.

The film’s basic problem is that it jumps around too much, with an array of speakers from Montana to Washington, D.C. to California.

Black Phone 2 may be a power ballad to the original’s minor chord metal, but it still rocks.

As it stands, an extremely funny script and one J.K. Simmons do save the movie from being just a standard TV biopic of the week.

Finally, along comes a remake – a darn faithful one, too – that's not a just a pointless rehash or mindless retread.

Alive is no Oscar-challenger, certainly, but it does treat a very dicey incident with the even-keeled direction the story deserves.

The script unfortunately replicates one of the worst errors in "Toy Story 3": Sidelining just about every major supporting character from the early installments.

Ultimately passable movie entertainment, but like most future in-laws leaves a feeling of something still desired.

Ultimately, The Equalizer 3 marks a fitting and warm end to the franchise. It offers all the audacious violence and familiar set-pieces of the previous films, paired with a wistful goodbye to its central vigilante. It’s not reinventing the genre, but it doesn’t have to. Like its protagonist, this movie knows it has a simple job to do and accomplishes it in the most satisfying way possible.

A very funny and well-acted comedy about the slings and arrows of outrageous adolescence.

Much has been made of the film's ending, vis-à-vis whether or not it's a pro- or anti-organized religion commentary of some sort. The Hughes Brothers, for two, say they just wanted to make a kickass piece of contemporary entertainment, and I, for one, believe them.

Parker has cast credible young versions of all the original players, although in most cases vintage outperforms new grape.

What really keeps Wander Darkly together is yet another convoluted, conflicted, and honest performance from Miller.

What They Had has a lived-in ring of truth that will be instantly recognizable to any caregiver, spouse, child, or other loved one who has experienced something of this sort.

It closes the film in what I suspect was intended as something of a happy ending, but it’s unnecessary: Thirty happy years should be happy ending enough.

As a portrait of what happens to a family when its glue disappears, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wrung a bucket of tears out of me.

A pastiche of classic plot devices scrounged from "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," "The Conversation," "Blue Velvet," and dozens of other movies, the story often feels familiar, but director Anderson (The Machinist) has a such a flair for suspense that even the most jaded viewers will find themselves in a sweat.

There are flashes of what made the franchise work. Turner, after stumbling through the part in the rocky terrain of X-Men: Apocalypse, finally gets to grapple with the emotional complexities of a woman whose gifts are the most constant curse.

More often than not The Heat is just stupid-funny, which circles us back to McCarthy, motor-mouthing four-letter fury like an operatic aria. She sells Mullins as delightfully unhinged and fairly radiating with rage, and it’s irresistible.

There are no life lessons here, only an uncommonly focused look at one life – the sometimes joyful, sometimes punishing day-to-day existence of a young man whose future is more uncertain that most.

Gloriously gonzo Appalachian creeper Spell makes one big change – having both the urban family in peril and the horrifying hicks with malicious intent be Black – and that's a refreshing change to a genre that's felt moribund since about "Wrong Turn 2."

For anyone of a certain age, the ending will come as no surprise, but, as always, half the fun is getting there, and cynical though it may be, American Made is undeniably a whole lot of action-oriented fun.

While Enys Men may play with the trappings and symbolism of folk horror, it's ultimately more of an internal psychological drama, one driven by Woodvine's tragic and quiet embrace of the island's bleak remoteness.

The family’s reunion story is enhanced by showing it from each character’s perspective. Each time, we discover more about each person and come to admire the sensitivity they show toward one another.

To the filmmakers’ credit, the points of view in The Great Invisible are comprehensive and varied, though it’s clear who they view as the good guys and bad guys here.

The location, the cultural mores, and most especially the sparse soundtrack (mixing minimalist electronica and the guzheng or Chinese zither) may be Chinese, but this is all-American noir at its blackened heart.

Never achieves the satisfaction of a real crackerjack con movie.

Queens delights in its inspirations, saturates its toxic love story with the markings of an era just now getting its resurgence.

While Linklater's version has its own unique pacing, mounting up more like a series of innings than a series of acts (even if you think you know how it ends, that bottom-of-the-ninth screwball still beans you silly), it lacks the screwball-to-the-noggin punch of the original.

Solid performances, capable visuals, and the honesty of the interracial subject matter make Restaurant stand out from the typical "I'm an artist, not really a waiter" pack.

The Descent may not be everything you've heard, but man, it's also a lot of things you haven't.

It’s bleak and brutal, and Waugh’s cold tone (a definite throwback to Shot Caller) leaves no one with clean hands. But as a testament to the costs of a noble sacrifice in the face of institutional inhumanity, it’s as vital as any of his earlier films.

As far as nonraunchy, adult-geared rom-coms go these days, Crazy, Stupid, Love. leads the pack by several heads.

An upper-tier addition to a long running horror franchise that arguably deserves better than a January release.

While the movie principally focuses on Flynn’s professional aspirations, including his desire to be accepted as a chef in his own right despite his age (the online trolls had a field day after the NYT article), a prickly relationship with his mother, Meg, provides a subtextual narrative that sometimes feels a bit uncomfortable.

Oddly enough, Unlawful Entry can keep you from sleeping but when you wake up the next moring, it's hard to remember much about the movie.

Still, as a nostalgia trip that knows exactly what die-hard Star Wars fans want and then layers in some memorable new characters, The Force Awakens is exactly what it needs to be: an old-school Saturday afternoon sci-fi matinee writ big.

In most ways, the film is a conventional rock doc, a nostalgic and valorizing chronicle of a group’s rise and fall. The Band is one group that deserves the deep dive.

This is a visually stunning picture, a rhapsody of saturated color and contrasting texture, from the painstaking detail of coarse panda fur to the painterly dreamscape that is the spirit world.

Despite its predictability and sappiness, this conventional comedy about a worldly lounge singer who masquerades as a nun as part of a witness protection program busts loose as one of the funniest -- and happiest -- films in a long time.

While Midsommar never bores or truly overstays its welcome, its languor wobbles into meandering tonal shifts, with unlikely intrusions of absurdist humor.

There's a manipulative streak to the proceedings, and you'd have to be stone cold dead not to grasp the inevitable outcome long before the third act, but it's a professionally handled sort of emotional manipulation common to its genre, dating back to "Blithe Spirit" and, somewhat less memorably, "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir."

White House Down is amply endowed with enough tension, humor, and calamitous action to ensure it a solid berth in the summer box-office sweepstakes. Channing Tatum comes into his own as a leading man in this picture, proving himself as a beefy yet agile action star and not just the pure beefcake of "Magic Mike."

The film veers toward sheer silliness at times, losing the sweetness that defines its strongest moments.

This is classic Hollywood, at its best and worst, sticky rich and scabrous. It may not be the truth, per se, but it sure sounds good.

The Way never arrives anywhere you couldn't see coming a mile away, but it does so with such empathy that its conclusions feel comforting rather than overly predictable.

It's good -- no, great -- to see Williams as a mean rat bastard.

Remains an above-average and affecting descent into both heretofore unknown Soviet naval history and the always popular submarine-in-peril genre.

Shannon is monstrously good – unpredictable where the other actors are clipped and careful – and he steals the whole picture in two short, shattering scenes. When Shannon exits the film, the air gets sucked out again, and you realize the pretty artifice extends to more than just the Wheelers.

Melissa Leo has some standout scenes as the secretary of defense, who gets pretty well beaten up for defying her captors, but others, such as Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman, have little to do but bite their lips and look tense from the confines of their command posts.

With wonderful music, interesting characters, and lots of laughter, this picture feels much bigger than it really is.

Doesn't break any new ground in the baseball movie playbook. However, it does bring it all back home with the assurance of seasoned pro.

The extraordinary performances on the Paris stage and fencing piste come early in Chevalier: They set a bold and lively tone the remainder of the film has trouble matching. Instead, it melodramatically proceeds, trope by trope, as Bologne receives his comeuppance for believing in his own brilliance.

A poke in the eye of genre convention with a flensing blade and a disarmingly charming razor-blade grin.

It's almost as enjoyable watching these august septuagenarians jumping from trains, cruising with Harley-riding dykes, and exchanging pubescent screw-you/blow me repartee as it must have been for them to do it. And fun, sometimes, is its own best rationale.

Cinematographer Jeremy Prusso catches some stunning imagery, Robert Allen Elliott’s score is genuinely stirring, and the cast, most of whom are from Monrovia, is uniformly excellent.

Graham’s film teems with fascinating characters – ultimately, too many for the abbreviated running time.

Nowhere near the Hollywood disaster that was foretold, Waterworld is a near-model summer fantasy: two hours and 21 minutes of loud, expansive fun.

Cronin's film feels very Evil Dead-y – no mean feat considering these films have evolved from low-budget gorefests to comedies to high-budget gorefests. There are elements of all those prior summonings, making Evil Dead Rise a chimera that is somehow unique.

The movie isn't about Kennedy; rather, Kennedy is the sun around which all the other planets of the film revolve. And like some epic Louis B. Mayer picture from the Thirties, Bobby has a thousand stars in its galaxy, some of them great (Fishburne, Rodríguez), some of them not (Wood, Hunt), and one of them brilliant (Hopkins).

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie may not win over many or even any new fans, but devotees of the TV show, and even diehards from the single-n Nirvana web days will relish having their favorite gentle idiots back and hearing the same joke on a bigger stage.

It's just engaging enough to make you accept the possibility that two kids from the Boston suburbs may just be mankind’s only hope for the future, and just exciting enough to make you forget that you're watching a Nicolas Cage movie.

Although Bless Me, Ultima can feel a bit overstuffed, it’s an honest and naturalistic kids’ story about growing up Mexican-American.

Maybe Soderbergh felt as though he already did a straight-ahead version of this story with "Erin Brockovich" and therefore decided to revamp the tune in the key of Richard Lester.

In the end, though, the undeniable power and emotional richness of this film swing the balance toward the good.

Somm doesn’t try to write the book on wine connoisseurship, but it does give good CliffsNotes.