If you told me Bird Box was based on a Stephen King story — yep, I could see that. It’s that chilling. That suspenseful. And oh yes, that scary.

The problems resulting from the switch of identities are fairly predictable, but fun: This is one of the better recent Disney productions.

There is a curious problem with Birthday Girl, hard to put your finger on: The movie is kind of sour. It wants to be funny and a little nasty, it wants to surprise us and then console us, but what it mostly does is make us restless.

While there are too many characters in too much story for the movie to really involve us, it's amusing as a series of sketches about how the French think they are a funny race (or the Americans, take your choice).

One of the pleasures of Ronald Bass' screenplay is the way it subverts the usual comic formulas that would fuel a plot like this.

By casting attractive stars in the leads, by finding the right visual look, by underlining the action with brooding, ominously sad music, a good director can create the illusion of meaning even when nothing's there.

Hill doesn't really try to avoid the cliches in a story like this. He simply turns up the juice. Like his "Southern Comfort," "48 Hrs.," and "The Warriors," this is a movie that depends on style, not surprises. He doesn't want to make a different kind of movie; he wants to make a familiar story look better than we've seen it look recently. And yet there is a big surprise in Extreme Prejudice in the appearance and character of Nick Nolte.

This movie wasn't made for me. It was made for the people who will love it, of which there may be a multitude. The stage musical has sold 30 million tickets, and I feel like the grouch at the party.

Working from a clever if occasionally convoluted screenplay by David Golden, director Michael M. Scott has fashioned a classic cautionary tale about two seemingly good and smart people who make some dumb decisions when greed and opportunity come knocking.

The result is a tiresome exercise that circles at great length through various prefabricated stories defined by the advice each couple needs (or doesn't need).

The most interesting part of the film for a non-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan is the production design - the sewers and the city streets above them. Roy Forge Smith is the designer, and seems inspired by a low-rent vision of Batman or maybe Metropolis.

Who would have guessed Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would deliver the best work of his career playing a guy who squares off against a pack of small-time street thugs.

A vibrant and crazy and thought-provoking and immensely entertaining film that could have been even more resonant had it not settled for a relatively conventional final act we’ve seen in dozens of thrillers.

Though aimed at a young audience, this is one of those superhero adventures that will keep the adults entertained as well.

To give the movie credit, it's as bored with the underlying plot as we are. Even the prom queen election is only a backdrop for more interesting material, as She's All That explores differences in class and style, and peppers its screenplay with very funny little moments.

We’re not supposed to think about a movie like Skyscraper. This is superficial summer popcorn fare, given a PG-13 because when innocents are mowed down, the camera lingers on the smugly smiling sociopathic villains, not the carnage.

The movie is awfully sweet. The young actresses playing eighth-graders look their age, for once, and have an unstudied charm.

The dynamic between Dern and O’Connell is powerful and palpable, even though their bond develops solely through written correspondence and prison conversations in which they’re talking on the telephone and separated by thick glass.

The stars hold the film together.

While the subject matter is often bleak, this isn’t a depressing journey. Seeing great actors at the top of their game working with such rich material is never a downer.

This is the kind of movie that some kids would probably enjoy - it's filled with technology, special effects and action. But it just doesn't make any sense. And It lacks the wit to have fun with its time travel paradoxes, as last year's wonderful Time After Time did. It just plows ahead. Or behind. Or somewhere.

Uys's style sheds a sweet and gentle light on this new comedy, which is a sequel to the surprising international success - and, I think, a better film.

The fact is, the reverse chronology makes Irreversible a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path toward a shocking, exploitative payoff.

Give the Sony Pictures-backed Affirm Films and Risen director and co-writer Kevin Reynolds credit for making a different kind of Biblical semi-epic.

This is an unabashedly sentimental, family-friendly mashup of “A Christmas Carol” with “It’s a Wonderful Life,” sure to leave you smiling and maybe even a little teary-eyed.

A perfectly acceptable brainless action thriller.

A funny movie that only gets funnier the more familiar you are with the James Bond movies, all the Bond clones and countless other 1960s films.

Bright and zesty.