A lot of Beautiful Boy is necessarily hard to take, though the script softens the roughest of Nic’s travails. Is this why the movie’s anguish feels more indicated than inhabited? Still: You can’t fault the performers much. Or Chalamet, at all.

It’s a fairly engrossing bit of fan service, boasting many clever touches and a few disappointing ones. Director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s picture veers erratically in tone, and the killings are sort of a drag after a while, en route to a rousing vengeance finale.

Like Tarantino, Goddard is a clever structuralist. He attracts strong actors, and lets them stretch out and try things, and gives them juicy dialogue.

I’m glad Chazelle’s film offers some fresh points of view on its subject; it’s proof he’ll be able to keep his filmmaking wits about him, no matter what genre he’s exploring. He has made his Apollo 11 movie. And it’s a good one.

The only performance worth mentioning is Jeong, who brings his energetic weirdness to a rather small role.

The comedic actor makes his directorial debut with a politically charged comedy that's sort of a satire, designed to wring wry laughs out of our deeply divided political state. But in this climate, it's just frustrating and unpleasant to watch.

Cooper is very much a real director, with a genuine facility with filming musical numbers. We believe in the characters’ talents, and spend time soaking them up without a lot of nervous, overcompensating editing. Between songs, he and Gaga make even the bluntest cliches about love and career and misery minty-fresh, all over again.

I hope Spacek gets a role as spacious and accommodating as Redford’s someday. By contrast, Spacek’s co-star delivers what he has been best at: a single, careful look, or mood, or understated note at a time. Redford is not a chord man. I wouldn’t call the film itself complex, but it’s sweet-natured.

It's a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess. Those are always so much more thrilling than any of the formulaic superhero movies that parade through multiplexes all year.

The marriage on view here, a little ridiculous, a little galling but full of interesting sharp edges, presents Knightley and West with a full array of emotions to explore. The tone remains deceptively light, but it feels both true and in period.

Amid this conundrum of a movie, the actors provide what the facile screenplay cannot: a human pulse, shrewdly underscored by composer Alexandre Desplat’s time-traveling musical landscape.

This Little Women adaptation is faithful to a fault, which results in a very strange world where this group of five present-day women depends on men for their social lives and careers — basically anything that gets them out of their cozy house of feminine fantasy.

Movies about reckless, chemically addled men rarely have the nerve to go whole hog with the bad behavior, because it makes for alienating company. Still: Blaze comes closer than most to an honest look at this sort of troubadour and this kind of life.

The actors aren’t the problem with Night School; the material is.

Life Itself is an emotional mugging, not a movie.

The documentary Love, Gilda works different ways for different viewers. For older fans, it’s a welcome excuse to reminisce. For newcomers it’s an entertaining primer on Radner’s life, times, demons and famous inventions.

Despite all the rich elements — the fantastic cast, the wonderfully detailed production and costume design, an oddball family story of black sheep finding each other — there's something missing from The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It's weightless, hop-skipping over necessary story-building, glossing over Lewis' warlock training as well as the personal histories of his guardians.

An emotional and intellectual roller coaster. Moore swings for the fences, as he usually does. But the film, done in Moore's traditionalist maximalist style, is overblown and overstuffed with editorial indulgences. It's clear that stylistically and structurally, less should be more for Moore.

Hunt gives it as all as the tortured Louis, but Patterson is the heart and soul of the film, giving a far more interesting performance as his long-suffering wife.

The consciously campy A Simple Favor is as bright and bracing as an ice cold gin martini with a lemon twist, and just as satisfying.

Director Yann Demange's film White Boy Rick balances these details, both outlandish and intimate, carefully.

The dialogue they deliver is crisp, witty and occasionally biting. Levin's script has the style and rhythms of the kind of romantic comedies of the '40s and '50s when actors like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn used verbal banter like boxing gloves.

While it's fun to watch Garner return to her action roots, the brute force haymaker that is Peppermint is a far cry from the sophisticated thrills of "Alias."

The surface may be ominous, richly textured and morbidly fascinating, but storywise, it remains shallow.

It's just a devastatingly sad and terrible story about two brothers who make bad choices, suffer the consequences and lose the last shreds of family they have left. No amount of 11th hour twists, reveals or bigger ideas can shake that inescapable feeling of dread and sorrow.

The ideas aren’t exactly new here, and one need only look at the entire career of Chicago filmmaker Joe Swanberg (a producer here) to realize the difficulty of shaping living, breathing, vital art out of gormless improv techniques. Here, clearly, the actors have been well and truly guided along the way, and Howard is a serious find.

Minding the Gap is an exceptionally reflective examination of the 29-year-old filmmaker’s life, and surroundings, and it works because the movie concerns so much more.

Unfortunately, Operation Finale feels a bit behind the ball when it comes to the dramatic true story.