The plot exists to be disregarded, the characters are deliberately constructed of cardboard, the sight gags are idiotic, and the dialogue is dumb. Really dumb. So dumb you laugh twice, once because of how stupid it is, and the second time because you fell for it.

Cuts between a rich assortment of characters; it's like a low-rent, on-the-fly version of Robert Altman's "The Player" or "Short Cuts."

By removing elements of magic and operatic excess from the story, the brothers Scott focus on what is, underneath, a story as tragic (and less contrived) as the one cited in the ads, "Romeo and Juliet."

Even if the ending doesn't entirely succeed, it doesn't cheat, and it comes at the end of an uncommonly absorbing movie.

The Swedish director Mikael Håfström, whose best-known American film is the chilling 2007 Stephen King adaptation “1408,” employs jump scares and quick cuts to capture the looming sense of danger (or is it paranoia?) aboard the ship, while the screenplay by R. Scott Adams and Nathan Parker takes the story back and forth between the present-day unraveling on Odyssey-1 and flashbacks on Earth.

Sometimes it’s a creepy thriller. Sometimes it’s a gripping and heartbreaking story of a man losing his memory. Sometimes it’s drive-in movie about a charismatic and thoroughly reprehensible cult leader. And then, from time to time, it’s for all intents and purposes a musical.

Born of a years-long collaboration by Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman (which included a proof-of-concept short film), with all four writing the screenplay and Gordon and Lieberman co-directing, Theater Camp is an affectionate and winning yet sometimes bittersweet satire created by a talented quartet who clearly know the territory quite well.

I don’t see Aquaman ever reaching icon status, but I’ll say this: He’s a lot more fun on his own, when he’s not saddled with those overly serious stiffs Superman and Batman.

That it transcends this genre -- that it is a well-crafted and sometimes stirring adventure -- is to its credit. But a true visualization of Tolkien's Middle-earth it is not.

The ending is a cheap shot. An inconclusive ending would have been better, and perhaps more honest. The movie and the ending have so little in common that it's as if the last scene is spliced in from a different film.

A lighthearted and goofy musical comedy about a love affair between an extraterrestrial and a manicurist.

A mercilessly convoluted version of a Twister, that genre in which the plot whacks us as if it's taking batting practice. I will not hint at anything that happens. I will simply observe that it's all entertaining.

End of the Road was produced for maybe 10% of the budget allotted for the big, bloated, star-studded Netflix thrillers “The Gray Man” and “Red Notice” (both reportedly cost some $200 million to make), and it doesn’t come close to approaching the glamour value, breathtaking location shots and epic action sequences of those two films — but it’s better at executing its mission, which is to immerse us in 90 minutes of old-fashioned bloody vigilante satisfaction.

The Green Knight contains some beautifully written passages, and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo delivers one award-worthy visual image after another.

The movie consists of the journey, the conversations, the scenery, the little human stories. No big drama. No emergencies. Just carrying the mail, which over the years has supplied the threads to bind together all of these lives.

Movies like this do not grab you by the throat. You have to be receptive.

Everything that transpires in the tightly spun if sometimes plausibility-bending psychological thriller “The Wasp” eventually connects — and when it all comes together, it’s a shocking and visceral gut punch.

It’s not that we haven’t seen this type of frat-life social commentary before, but Berger and the outstanding ensemble infuse his film with a docudrama authenticity. This is a not a movie you can easily shake off.

We walk into the theater expecting absolutely nothing of substance, and that's exactly what we get, served up with high style.

Science-fiction fans will like it, and also brainiacs, and those who sometimes look at the sky and think, man, there's a lot going on up there, and we can't even define precisely what a soliton is.

The movie is a little more lightweight than the usual People's Choice Award winner at Toronto, but why not? It was the best-liked film at the 2006 festival, and I can understand that.

Wise and subtle in the way it presents its older man. A less interesting movie would make him lustful and self-deceiving, a man who believes his is the secret of eternal youth and virility.

Tucci and Eve play well off each other, especially when they are slinging ugly revelations back and forth.

The kind of comedy where funny people say funny things in funny situations, not the kind of comedy that whacks you with manic shocks to force an audible Pavlovian response.

With clear and obvious influences from films such as “Joker,” “The King of Comedy,” “Whiplash” and, most prominently, “Taxi Driver,” writer-director Bynum and Majors team up for a disturbing and blistering case study of a man who feels utterly unseen and is obsessed with making a name for himself.

Antoon injects an occasional note of rancor, but the more radical point here is showing how freely Baghdad residents now speak in public on politics and how widely their views range. [12 Nov 2005, p.35]

The movie may leave you scratching your head way too much when it's over. Yet it proves Ben Wheatley not only knows how to make a movie, but he knows how to make three at the same time.

Claire Danes is as fresh as running water in this role, exhibiting the clarity and directness that has become her strength; her characters tend to know who they are, and why.