To see this final installment is to know: It’s time.

He (Barinholtz) works hard to creatively lampoon a nation divided, and his first-timer’s ambition and thematic investment are admirable. Disappointingly, though, he lacks storytelling chops, aiming for wildly provocative satire but instead churning out a technically spotty screed.

Turbo makes an entertaining go of it by borrowing very liberally from the “Fast & Furious” franchise — Michelle Rodriguez even voices a character — and sticking a slime trail onto “Rocky” for the rest.

When the new movie wings it, it sputters but clears the runway. When it sticks to the script, it crashes and burns.

Doing nothing special, Freeman manages to make the picture seem wiser, funnier, and more eloquent than it is.

The movie wails in pain. And it's that sort of grand empathy that makes Iñárritu both impossible to dismiss and impossible to live with.

You're left with an inert, politically neutral movie, a satire that can't bring itself to properly satirize anything.

The trouble with Quantum of Solace is that the frills are a mess, too. Even the customary opening title sequence, with its writhing silhouettes and screechy theme song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, is a cheesy throwback to the Roger Moore era: Ladies and gentlemen, the Quantum of Solace dancers!

You’re left with another Denzel Washington performance that gets under your skin and stays there, rankling away. That’s a lot more than most movies offer — even the better ones.

Inventive and enjoyable but ultimately shallow.

Imagination is what these filmmakers could use more of, as their ingenious concept doesn’t develop much beyond a gimmick.

Stylish and only superficially superficial, Happily Ever After plunks us down with three male friends as they dance on the edge of their 40s.

Danny Collins leaves absolutely nothing to chance. The cast is full of sharp little turns by Melissa Benoist — the girlfriend in “Whiplash” and a future Supergirl — and Josh Peck and Katarina Cas, the latter playing Danny’s bubblehead user of a fiancée.

The movie rarely takes the easy way out of a scene, and the observational details can be rich.

This does seem to leave room for bigger, bolder, more momentous adventures down the line.

The Midnight Sky is handsome to look at and, in its early scenes, quite engrossing. But it’s an oddly structured affair and, in the end, the director can’t keep it on course.

A movie called Snakes on a Plane had better be one of two things: So bad it's good or so good it's great. Darned if it isn't a little bit of both.

Avildsen's - and the screenplay's - blatant manipulations make Freeman's job harder. To his credit, Freeman not only sustains the level of fever pitch at which Clark operates throughout, but succeeds in making him seem admirable, if not exactly likable. A well-meaning steamroller is still a steamroller. Are people who question Clark necessarily wrong? And why, for instance, do the students have to be presented with an either-or picture of Mozart and gospel music? Why can't they have both? The script to Lean on Me plays like something written by the Reagan administration. It supplies a rationale for white-controlled governments to ignore the educational needs of largely black school districts that need funding most. With Freeman breathing inspirational fire, Lean on Me is never dull. But it sidesteps some troubling questions. [3 March 1989, p.43]

The good news is that while the movie is susceptible to some pandering, it also takes the story’s charming core elements and gives them a contemporary luster.

iIf you can ignore a ridiculously overbearing soundtrack - a big if - the film's a pleasant bauble. Still, those coming in cold may be forgiven for thinking they've wandered into "Atonement" remade as a farce.

A relentlessly serious action movie, characterized by, of all things, sorrow.

Should be seen: It's a worthy ordeal, with flaws that, ironically, make grist for later arguments.

It takes us nowhere we haven't been before, except geographically.

A hardly fair, not especially balanced broadside that has the advantage of being correct.

Hirschbiegel and Friedel win credibility points for painting Elser as noble without painting him as a saint.

Stay patient through those Seinfeldian stretches in which Martin isn’t so much acting as performing, and you’ll be treated to the bonus of some surprising emotional depth and poignancy.

Despite the appearance of numerous free-speaking conservatives, the movie's partisanship leans nakedly to the left.

You realize the movie isn’t nearly as clever as it looks.