A fairly entertaining gloss of a docudrama elevated by its cast.

The problem is that one can't help but think of better, more interesting movies based on this premise.

It's just a mediocre action movie, poorly edited and larded with a terrible musical score, based on a video game. Nothing new there.

Robust, delicate, sublimely acted and a close cinematic cousin to the theatrical original, director Denzel Washington's film version of Fences makes up for a lot of overeager or undercooked stage-to-screen adaptations over the decades.

Collateral Beauty is much more shallow nonsense than anything else.

Stone is spectacular, and she's reason enough to see La La Land. Chazelle is a born filmmaker, and he doesn't settle for rehashing familiar bits from musicals we already love. He's too busy giving us reasons to fall for this one.

I do wish Felicity Jones’ character popped the way Daisy Ridley’s did in last year’s franchise offering. “The Force Awakens,” directed by J.J. Abrams, was smooth, consistent, even-toned, nostalgic. Rogue One zigzags, and it’s more willfully jarring. Yet it takes time for callbacks and shout-outs to characters we’ve seen before, and we’ll see again. And again. And again.

Office Christmas Party, which delights in a grotesque carnival of the worst behavior, and still has its heart firmly in the right place.

It's an odd, hermetic and fascinating picture.

At its best, Seasons shakes off its predecessors and captures the simple, grand ideas it's after purely visually.

LaBeouf's quivering instability creates the impression that his performance is constantly buffering on us. He's never dull — he is, in fact, a compelling actor in any circumstance — but the material ends up cheapening the experiences of so many real-life veterans, which surely was not the filmmakers' intention.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful.

This lazy sequel is a lump of coal in a dirty stocking.

There may be less than meets the eye here. But what meets the eye is pretty striking.

It would still be a stinker even if it wasn't cloaked in a dark shroud of cultural and political relevancy. It's just that bad.

The film is bright, busy, enjoyable, progressive without being insufferable.

In a movie built around two characters, Pitt does not hold up his 50 percent.

An interesting misfire. It's also the victim of lousy timing.

Don't expect miracles. Not every biopic needs to reinvent the form. Sometimes it's enough to inhabit it, engagingly.

The storytelling rhythm gets a bit pokey for the amount of story being told.... But director Yates knows his way around this stuff. The visual evocation of '20s Manhattan with a twist offers considerable satisfaction, as does Redmayne's embodiment of a boy-man more comfortable in the company of animals than with humans.

If you're looking for a rock star to carry a movie mostly by himself, though, Iggy (aka James Osterberg), now 69, is a good candidate.

Nick Kroll is shrewdly cast as the Lovings' ACLU lawyer, green but enthusiastic; my favorite of the supporting turns comes from Sharon Blackwood, as Richard's rock-solid midwife mother.

Shot under gray skies and in artful shadows by cinematographer Bradford Young, scored to wickedly disorienting music by Oscar-nominated "Sicario" composer Johann Johannsson, Arrival will cast a spell on some while merely discombobulating others. Right there, I'd say that indicates it's worth seeing.

For all the over-the-top operatic moments — car wrecks and prom throwbacks and rifles at the dinner table — there's something about the wild tonal shifts and chaos of Almost Christmas that rings true about the holiday season.

Vince Vaughn, plainly enjoying himself, plays his casually astonished sergeant, who encourages hazing and beatings of Doss.

There's something about the neon-tinted, sugar-smacked highs of Trolls that can be bizarrely infectious. When it's weirder, it's better, and there are elements of the animation design seemingly inspired by old 1970s cartoons and children's shows like "H.R. Pufnstuf."

This latest in the ever-broadening Marvel movie landscape is fun. For an effects-laden franchise launch it's light on its feet, pretty stylish, worth seeing in Imax 3-D (for once, the up-charge is worth it) and full of tasty, classy performers enlivening the dull bits.

The reason it's distinctive has less to do with raw emotion, or a relentless assault on your tear ducts, and more to do with the film medium's secret weapons: restraint, quiet honesty, fluid imagery and an observant, uncompromised way of imagining one outsider's world so that it becomes our own.

This is a franchise with lead weights tied around its ankles.

They're lifelike, I suppose, in that you believe and become invested in what happens to everyone. But they're poetic, too, in that Reichardt and her first-rate ensemble find intersections of the mundane and the mysterious all around this broad, blustery landscape.

Braga isn't quite the whole show in Aquarius, but she's certainly a lot of it.

Galifianakis steals the show as the friendly fussbudget in a performance we've come to expect from him. The enormous potential on screen is tantalizing, which is why the disappointment of failed execution stings.

The latest Reacher film is directed, with reasonable skill and no trace of personality, by Edward Zwick, based on a screenplay taken from the 18th novel. I wish I had more dynamic news to report, but contrary to Reacher's own violent tendencies, some things in life and the movies practically defy a strong reaction.

Hart's turn as 0054 is both a fun riff on the genre and a statement that Hart doesn't need to ask for permission to be Bond — because he can do whatever he wants.

I admit I would've had a hard time getting through it without the help of Simmons and Addai-Robinson, over there in the B plot. The character at the center of the story is treated with respect and admiration, but in dramatic terms he's about as real-world plausible as Batman.

Parts of The Birth of a Nation are bluntly effective and beautifully acted, though one of the drawbacks, ironically, is Parker's own performance. Even the rape victims of the screenplay have a hard time getting their fair share of the screen time; everything in the story, by design, keeps the focus and the anguished close-ups strictly on Parker.

For one thing, and it's a big thing, it's filmed all wrong. Director Taylor and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen favor handheld, Rachel's-eye-view close-ups, by the woozy hundreds. The toggling editing rhythms get to be a bit of a chore.

Burton's never been especially good at finding the internal motor or the rhythmic drive within a scene. This, I think, is why Miss Peregrine stalls, again and again, while the bird woman or Samuel L. Jackson's pointy-toothed, fright-wigged Barron tells us what's up with what we just saw, and what'll happen next.

Sweet and flinty in roughly equal measure, the movie's a big hit in its native country.

Masterminds still has its riotously funny moments, thanks to the fearless, uninhibited actors and a director who lets them play.

Berg sticks to the job at hand, imagining what it is was like to be there, and to be the victim of sloppy, deadly safety practices in the name of a good day on Wall Street.

Storks is at times cacophonous and overly busy, and the animation tends toward the goofily humorous rather than the spectacular. However, Stoller manages to pull off a third act and emotional resolution that's genuinely moving.

There's a numbing aspect to Goat. But the best of it, I'd say, is honorably harsh; the subject should be difficult to watch, or the filmmakers aren't being honest about the way we operate as a culture, and what we allow and encourage our young men (and the young women who suffer the fallout) to put up with, still.

Nair's film, her best in a long time, is hardly the first to use a chessboard as a symbol of one life's struggles. It is, however, one of the best.

This movie's all over the place, trying too hard to be all Westerns to all sensibilities.

It's fairly absorbing though, increasingly, a bit of an eye-roller, and it's designed, photographed and edited to make you itchy with paranoia.

The moments between mother and son are some of the most intimate and moving of the film.

It's a wonderful New York story, and Eastwood takes care to make it a story about the many different people who made it a miracle. That is the emotional core of the film, a celebration of the simple act of reaching out a helping hand without a second thought.

The always wonderful Martindale nails the tone in her warm and nuanced performance, combining sly humor and a soulful presence, while the men orbiting around her range from complete goofs (Copley and Jenkins) to self-involved and dour (Krasinski).

The failure of Morgan is in its lack of restraint. The first half of the film is as tightly controlled as the lab facility, with small moments of foreshadowing planted expertly, if obviously. The second half descends into a violent bloodbath, and the twists in the story that lie just below the surface waiting to be discovered are spoken aloud, taken from theory to fact

It ends up more of a study in moral and ethical decision-making, than as an emotional catharsis or release, but it's a worthy journey nonetheless.

Any film with Jennifer Ehle, perfect as the tightly wound but loving therapist, tends to be worth seeing in the first place.

Southside with You is best taken as a reminder of the value of the slow relational build, of taking your time and actually talking, and actually listening, with someone new. Even if there's not a staggering political future in your shared future.

With Hands of Stone, Robert De Niro officially enters his Burgess Meredith-in-"Rocky" phase, bringing the ringside grizzle and rumpled gravitas by the pound.

The film is a clever if increasingly mechanical suspense contraption, yanking our sympathies this way and that, before turning into a different sort of movie entirely.

The leading actors labor valiantly and to little effect.

The movie coasts on a blase, easygoing highway of cynicism regarding how America conducts its business of war. Despite all the Martifications and Scorsese-ing, we're left with virtually nothing, except the feeling that a pretty good anecdote has been inflated into a bubble-headed American Dream morality tale.

What the movie has, above all, is a dramatic line, clean and straight. In its faces, its scenery and its plain satisfactions it makes us feel like we've been somewhere, when we get to the end of that line.

[Lowery] has made a larger, very different movie without losing his instincts, his directorial stealth or his ability to finesse his actors' performances, in this case in the vicinity of an achingly expressive and unexpectedly furry dragon with a little bit of bulldog in him.

I laughed a lot in the first half, before the movie's repetitive jackhammer pacing, which isn't ideal for any kind of comedy, began working against its better instincts.

Lerman's excellent as Marcus, capturing his principles as well as his bullheadedness. Sarah Gadon's Olivia is no less fine.

But folks, this is a lousy script, blobby like the endlessly beheaded minions of the squad's chief adversary. It's not satisfying storytelling; the flashbacks roll in and out, explaining either too much or too little, and the action may be violent but it's not interesting.

A genuinely charming comedy about real people challenging themselves to create new realities for laughs and a little truth, one made-up scene at a time.

Bad Moms keeps settling for less than it should, given the talent on screen. It's lazy, and tonally indistinct; half the time you wish it went further, and risked something with the Kunis character. The other half of the time you may find yourself frustrated with the puerile caricatures filling in the margins.

At its best Jason Bourne crackles with professionalism; at its worst, it's rehashing greatest hits (as in, "assassinations") from earlier films, with a lavish budget.

As Nerve builds to a roaring Thunderdome climax (which is resolved all too easily), it starts to lose its grip. But the ride is a neon-saturated teenage dream, high on first kisses and digital hearts.

The whole thing feels a bit desperate.

Palmer and Bello really do seem like world-weary, spook-addled daughter and mother, and they play the stakes just so, favoring neither blase understatement nor yellow-highlighter melodrama. They're strong enough to take your mind off some lapses in narrative judgment.

The latest, produced by Abrams and directed by "Fast and Furious" alum Justin Lin, isn't quite up to the 2009 and 2013 movies. But it's still fun, you still care about the people and the effects manage to look a little more elegant and interesting than the usual blue blasts of generica.

The Infiltrator works best in its unglamorous scenes of everyday deception.

Cafe Society is a good-looking nothing, but there are times — thanks more to Allen's direction than his writing, and thanks mostly to the people acting out the masquerade — when "nothing" is sufficient.

The beauty of the film is undeniable, as is the cruelty of the bull's lives. (This is not a picture for animal-sensitive viewers.)

I don't the think the "look" is quite right for the story. Nor is the dreamy, wandering score by Marcelo Zarvos, which adds the blandest sort of ambient "tension music" to whatever's going on. McGregor struggles to make Perry credible in his credulousness; Harris, far better, doesn't have enough to do; Skarsgard is fun.

It's nice to see an action movie take more than a passing interest in where our country is at the moment, and then exaggerating that moment into the realm of shrewd exploitation. To wit: Any film combining an indictment of false religiosity with an indictment of violence-solves-violence political pandering in a single line of dialogue — "These weapons have been cleansed with holy water!" — is OK by me.

For once, underneath all the motion capture folderol, the key performance really does feel like a full, real, vital performance.

I saw Resurgence an hour and a half ago, and I feel like an alien wiped my memory clean already.

Ross' smooth, steady film is just interesting enough to make you wish it were a lot grittier, and better.

The climactic battle of wits between human and shark leads to a conclusion that got the audience whooping pretty good. The rest of it's OK.

Weirdly touching documentary.

Neat and tidy and well-mannered and dull, and not even Colin Firth and Jude Law and Laura Linney and Nicole Kidman and some very sharp fedoras can enliven it.

The visual personality of the movie is fantastically vivid and bright, the story itself, less so.

It's a glorious film, in large part because it is a reminder of in what low regard we often hold those of "a certain age." You'll come out of the theater full of respect and admiration for these people.

Wan is a humane sort of sadist. His latest offers little that's new, but the movie's finesse is something even non-horror fans can appreciate.

Now You See Me 2 is more fun than "Now You See Me," which says something, I guess. It fits snugly in the long list of easygoing nothings, the narrative equivalent of a Fruit Roll-Up, designed to be forgotten in as many minutes as they took to watch.

Proceed with caution to "Warcraft," but there is entertainment to be found here. It's certainly more absorbing than the lazily assembled "Alice Through the Looking Glass," because Jones' exertion and drive behind the film is palpable, if a bit sweaty.

"Popstar" is most comfortable with material that simply comes out of nowhere.

Ultimately, any sass, sentiment and personality are obliterated in the noisy chaos of the climax, which is a grayish brown blur of flying spaceship parts, whirling turtle shells and shouts of "the beacon!" It's more cacophonous than cinematic, and loses the quirky charm of the cartoon in the avalanche of computer-generated violence.

Clarke has loads of talent, but in Me Before You she's undermined by director Sharrock's technique, and an endless slew of overeager reaction shots (She's clumsy! She's twinkling!) exacerbated by editor John Wilson.

There are comedies that make you double over in laughter, and there are comedies that are eerily unfunny to the point where you start thinking about a class-action suit.

Several aspects of Weiner, from Jeff Beal's sardonic music (interpolating, among other cues, the theme from "S.W.A.T.") to the shock-cut editing strategies, nudge the movie toward entertaining if facile mockery mixed with just enough empathy to prevent curdling. It's pretty irresistible viewing, though, which is a pretty sad thing to concede.

Parts of Sunset Song rank with Davies' very best work.

The real problem is that there isn't enough whimsy in the world to save this unengaging story.

Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship is compact, modestly budgeted, sublimely acted and almost completely terrific.

Proves to be more than just a gimmick, and it doesn't skimp on any of the quirky wackiness that you might expect from a film about blob-shaped, flightless birds battling pigs.

Is it fun? Parts, yes, and many will get exactly what they wanted from The Nice Guys.

With Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, they've flipped the script, creating a feminist party classic that's completely current and doesn't skimp on any of the wild humor. It's also even better than its predecessor.

Everything within the film connects to neighboring elements, performance to performance to cryptic absurdity (the opening is one of the strangest of the year) to surprisingly heartfelt acknowledgment of the power of love. Whether things work out or not.

Foster's direction, aided by cinematographer Matthew Libatique's sharp, clean light, is the most fluid and well-considered of her career. The script is an asset, too. Until it becomes a mixed-bag liability.