For a while, director Roth plays this stuff relatively straight, and Willis periodically reminds us he can act (the grieving Kersey cries a fair bit here).

The cast excels at transcending its material. The script by Justin Haythe matches Francis Lawrence’s direction; it’s workmanlike and steady and pretty flat.

Game Night itself is not a long night; it’s reasonably snappy. But co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein place a misjudged emphasis on keeping the violence and the action “real,” so at its most routine and generic, the movie forgets it’s supposed to be a comedy.

The movie feels torn between styles and intentions. It’s trippier than “Ex Machina,” and Garland makes a valiant go of its concerns, but Annihilation feels like a short-story amount of story pulled and twisted into feature length.

This dizzy sequel can’t match any of the first “Detective Chinatown” action highlights, such as the food fight at Bangkok’s floating market. Here’s hoping the third outing, which will take the main characters to Tokyo, returns to the amiable, artful high jinks of the first.

May Marvel learn its lesson from Black Panther: When a movie like this ends up feeling both personal and vital, you’ve done something right.

The Cloverfield Paradox is “Lost” in space — a faint, well-acted blip on the radar of your viewing life.

A Fantastic Woman is the likely front-runner for this year’s foreign language Academy Award. Its clarity of purpose translates to an effectively lean and straightforward story of adversity and survival, in any language.

The animation technology is top-notch, but the gentle spirit of Beatrix Potter's books is subsumed into a chaotic, violent mayhem, manically soundtracked to the day's hits.

The films are bad, but they are entertaining. Fifty Shades Freed, the final film of the trilogy, just might be the most competently made yet — which is a shame for those expecting the high camp factor of "Fifty Shades Darker."

It’s the last thing he wanted, I’m sure, but Eastwood’s latest ends up feeling like a stunt.

As a period ghost story, it’s pretty pallid.

In the end, as proven by that mixed emotional chord, any director this far along in developing an assured visual style truly is a director to watch.

A more honest script might’ve supported Reda Kateb’s laid-back, medium-effective portrayal of Reinhardt more fully. As is, he’s depicted as an artist man floating through his awful times, living for the music.

It fascinates both as film history and as a sobering reminder of how little credit a woman like Lamarr received, even at the peak of her popularity.

The story is resolved a bit too easily, but that works for the world of the film, which is sanded down, buffed out, a bucolic, "Steel Magnolias"-inspired fantasy land of wide front porches, charming flower shops and the mega-famous rock stars that wander into them.

Mom and Dad may be a blood-soaked lark of uneven quality, but it has the good sense to use Reagan Youth’s punk anthem “Anytown” as an accompaniment to Cage’s parental … change of heart, let’s call it.

It’s a sidewinding but often effective L.A. crime thriller saddled with the wrong leading man.

12 Strong sticks to the basics, without much interest in the differentiating specifics of the men involved, or anything on a geopolitical scale beyond the impulse these Special Forces veterans shared in the wake of 9/11. It seems to me a qualified, limited success.

The script is just so-so, but Ball’s directorial eye, clear in the first “Maze Runner” film though largely AWOL in the second, saves the third and final adventure from its own bloat.

The movie, directed by Paul McGuigan, may be a bit tame and well-behaved for its subjects. But it’s a valentine, not a psychodrama.

Turns out to be every bit as deft, witty and, yes, moving as the first one.

The movie feels both expansive and confining, depending on the story chapter. Anderson’s visual facility by now has become so intuitive, so fluid and effortlessly right, if you’re at all susceptible to the allure of a moving camera you’ll fall headlong into Phantom Thread.

One of those movies with good things going in one direction, and cheesy things going in the other. The ever-valuable Farmiga is a faceless voice after her sole on-screen appearance, and director Collet-Serra’s frantic, hand-held technique ensures that every supporting player looks as guilty as possible.

It’s Blocker’s story, and Bale’s very good. But for Hostiles to fully make sense of its introductory on-screen D.H. Lawrence quotation — “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted” — we’d need a tougher, less comforting ending than the one Cooper provides.

The Post has a lot going for it, alongside a certain amount of hokum.

The best of Molly’s Game, however, is more on the “Social Network” level, edgy and rhythmic. This is Sorkin’s feature directorial debut, and I’m happy to say it doesn’t look that way.

Father Figures is a movie, ostensibly. I'm pretty sure it is. Moving images were projected, along with recorded sound, which indicates it is a movie, but the effect was so listless, low-energy and profoundly unentertaining that I jotted down in my notes "what even IS this?" It would be more accurate to describe the experience as a nearly two-hour borderline hostage situation, with torture involving bad, offensive and unfunny "comedy."

Pitch Perfect 3 is so breezy it's completely weightless, but it manages to deliver just enough of the goods.

As for Janney: Hers is a performance of such astute, subtle and compulsively watchable hamming, it’s guaranteed to win a supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Scott’s production works on the level of classy, confident yarn-spinning.

Chalamet is excellent, saving his purest acting for the killer final shot several minutes in length, when we finally see what these weeks with Oliver have meant to him.

With a lovely voice performance from Cena, the spirit of Ferdinand does shine through. But the rest of the story filler is mostly forgettable.

Much will be resolved by the final chapter of the trilogy, to be directed by Abrams. As much as I enjoy his brand of canny populism, I prefer Rian Johnson’s wilder, generous, far-flung imagination.

A sexy, violent, preposterous, beautiful fantasy, co-writer and director Guillermo del Toro’s most vivid and fully formed achievement since “Pan’s Labyrinth” 11 years ago.

Darkest Hour pulls from both extremes of Oldman’s prodigious but often unexploited skill set, the subtlety as well as the flamboyance.

In code, Wonder Wheel dances along the edge of the writer-director’s off-screen life, namely the allegations by Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, of sexual molestation, and Allen’s controversial marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Allen’s then-partner Mia Farrow.

Fans of “The Room” — they’re everywhere — will get something out of it, though I’d argue not enough; director Franco’s camera sense is neither quite in synch with Wiseau’s (thank God) or quite distinct enough in its own style.

Even when the movie loses its way narratively, Washington’s in there, slugging, building a living, breathing character out of Gilroy’s knight-errant.

Too often Coco mistakes chaos and calamity for comedy, and it’s a little perverse to prevent this particular story from becoming a full-on animated musical.

It has a wonderful message about tolerance, acceptance, understanding and respect. There's no guarantee the message would register with all moviegoers, but social ignorance can be cured one person at a time.

A vividly acted, dramatically rich depiction, harsh and beautiful, of life and death in 1940s Mississippi, following two families of intertwined destinies.

For a while it’s engaging but pretty thin. Then it gets more interesting, especially for the actors.

The breathtakingly bad Justice League, with its corny banter and terrible effects just might signify a return to that goofy Batman form.

Midway through a middling film adaptation, like this one, you realize it’s the same old clue-delivery mechanism, in a darker mood but also a less lively one.

The surreal and silly sequel to the hit 2015 comedy skates on the well-known but still-appealing comic personas of stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and their zany chemistry.

Philippe’s strongest work in 78/52 is the historical context, ranging from the images and roles of mothers in 1950s popular culture to a key handful of movies photographed in black and white (as was “Psycho,” partly to get the blood past the censors) released the previous year, 1959.

Watching Lady Bird is like flipping through a high school yearbook with an old friend, with each page leading to another anecdote, another sweet-and-sour memory. It’s a tonic to see any movie, especially in this late-Harvey Weinstein era, that does right by its female characters, that explores what it means to be a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, and that speaks the languages of sincerity and wit.

It wouldn’t raise questions about Harrelson’s prostheses and makeup, for starters, if the drama carried more urgency.

The performances by Pinnick and Spence are clean, vivid and honestly felt, with a lot of the best work emerging nonverbally in the spaces between characters closing a gap.

So it’s uneven, but the good stuff’s unusually lively and buoyant.

A movie can be unreasonably formulaic and still be reasonably diverting, and A Bad Moms Christmas is the proof.

The performances, including a sweetly sincere and easygoing turn from the deaf actress Simmonds, become the audience’s way into Wonderstruck.

Refreshingly resistant to predictability.

While parts of Thank You for Your Service work well, overall, the film is inconsistent.

There’s nothing vague about the narrative of The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Its strangeness is crystal clear. It plays out in ways both sardonically funny and extremely cruel.

This movie, a diary of a freewheeling, far-flung installation art project, combines chance and intuition and a humane eye.

Ultimately Suburbicon is woefully underwritten. Gardner and Maggie are mere sketches, a set of facial tics and accessories masquerading as real characters.

A jumbled nonsensical mess.

More than a female singing cowboy, Vargas was ranchera incarnate, whether singing the material of drinking companion Jose Alfredo Jimenez or her own cathartic cries from the heart. The film is a fond but clear-eyed tribute.

It’s stark, unadorned drama, and it feels real, reminding us that these are fine actors, giving their all.

All the performances are terrific, even when some of the scenes sputter or reiterate the grievances.

It’s a lively and absorbing picture — intelligently sexy, tastefully salacious but serious enough to stick.

Despite its literary origins, the film feels a bit like a writer tossed a few darts at a board labeled with aging action stars and various terrorist groups and just decided to make it work.

A workmanlike but vividly acted courtroom drama.

A dazzling mosaic, alert to the ebb and flow of human resilience in the face of everyday crises.

The Mountain Between Us falls flat, struggling to truly enthrall beyond a basic love story.

Director John Carroll Lynch’s quietly assured directorial feature debut works from a simple, homey script by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja, and Lucky feels like the work of Stanton’s friends, which it is.

Every effect, each little detail in the “Blade Runner” sequel’s formidable arsenal, creates the texture of a wondrously hideous near future, full of holographic accessories, slave-labor replicants and, as one character puts it, products and services of “the fabulous new.”

As an affirmation of one famous fan’s dedication, “Let’s Play Two” works well enough. As a Pearl Jam documentary, not so much.

It’s fairly entertaining even when it doesn’t quite work, directed for maximum pace by Cruise’s “Edge of Tomorrow” cohort, director Doug Liman.

Now and then the Mulleavys capture a moment or glimmer of true mystery; more often, and certainly in dramatic terms, Woodshock feels like a movie that never stops buffering.

When he finally learns to settle into the moment, to find contentment in the things he already experiences, it's a beautiful and quiet revelation, rendered with Mike White's singular sensitivity and gentle touch.

It's the highest praise to describe Friend Request as "a hoot" — the kind of midnight movie best seen with a large crowd laughing and screaming along, offering words of advice or encouragement to the naive characters on screen.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle offers everything — several bored Oscar winners, two scenes featuring death by meat grinder, Elton John mugging in close-up — except a good time.

Some aspects of the film are quite entertaining. Garmadon is a great character, especially as voiced by Theroux (his pronunciation of Lloyd as "Luh-Loyd" doesn't get old).

The performances of Holly Hunter and Ron Silver had something Stone’s and Carell’s lack: true drive and animal energy, a sense of athletic competitors who mean business even when they’re kidding, or saying they are.

Stronger is a movie you need to see, no matter how much you think you don’t need to see it.

It’s one of the most imaginative and provocative documentaries on any topic I’ve seen this year.

Ultimately, what's revealed in the new biopic of young Salinger, written and directed by Danny Strong, poses some interesting questions, but doesn't live up to the power of the mystery around the man itself.

Despite the actors hired to deliver the story, the superassassin of American Assassin isn’t quite human. He’s just revenge in a henley T.

The inevitable disappointing CinemaScore exit polls aside, it’s worth seeing — if you don’t mind a little insanity in escapism that offers no escape, only the promise of a new fairy tale on another page.

Home Again" is pure fantasy, all softly-lit, perfectly styled, looking like the cover of Sunset magazine. A world where a 40-year-old single mom is pursued by no fewer than four handsome men. But within that fantasy is also a wonderfully deft demonstration of feminine autonomy in matters of sex, love and marriage.

Much like Bonello’s previous film, “Yves Saint Laurent,” Nocturama revels in pure experience. But the sum total of its gliding abstractions is a mite brainless.

The movie is beautiful without wasting its time on cliched beauty. Kogonada, who edited as well as wrote and directed, collaborates intuitively with cinematographer Elisha Christian, who’s as good with faces as he is with sharp modernist edges etched in concrete.

That narrative change works fine in principle. The larger question is one of rhythm, and the diminishing returns of one jump scare after another.

With its unexpected story and businesslike filmmaking, Unlocked proves to be a satisfying thriller starring one of the most exciting current female action stars, who toils and shines in these workmanlike roles.

Atits gooey center, I Do ... Until I Don't is like vanilla cake. It is sweet, but generally there's nothing that memorable about it.

When the actors get their chances, Crown Heights rises above the routine.

The film ticks a lot of boxes. Underdog triumph. Showbiz triumph. Working-class heroics. Flagrant, often effective filmmaking technique, from a first-time feature writer-director, Geremy Jasper.

The result is passable stupidity leaning hard on its wily leading men. The movie’s also pretty galling in its unceasing brutality for laughs.

The movie’s engagement is more about casual precision than cinematic exuberance, and the banter’s democratically distributed among all its characters, right on the edge of caricature.

Most crime movies, even alleged indies, make it easy for the audience to take sides and establish clear rooting interests. Good Time is better than that: It’s not always easy to take, yet you can’t look away.

It's simply a treat to watch Sandberg's style on display in Annabelle: Creation, filled with circling dolly shots that reveal and conceal evil in torturously teasing ways, effective narrative use of practical lighting for dramatic effect, and heart-pounding sound effects and a score of screaming strings.

Somehow, An Inconvenient Sequel is empowering, not depressing.

Wind River is roughly 50 percent strengths, 50 percent contrivances. Often they collide in the same scene.

You watch the movie, and you wonder: What was this life like, really? That’s a sign of a movie not quite answering the question.

The result is an act of partial, tenderly observed guerrilla filmmaking. It works; it takes you somewhere, quietly but evocatively, and it’s affecting without pulling at your heartstrings with both hands.