Chappaquiddick misses that target. But it’s a fairly intriguing mixture of strengths and weaknesses, a case of a sharp cast and a careful director toning up a script best described as “a good try.”

My favorite moment, an encounter between Regan and one of the monsters in a cornfield, plays with sound and image and tension, creatively. Other bits are more shameless.

Stylistically, Acrimony has moments of genius — slow camera movements that push in on Melinda, emphasizing Henson’s performance and the building pressure — but it’s also hilariously cheesy, and slightly chintzy, which adds to its schmaltzy charm.

Stone had the right instincts about the part — she inhabits Senna beautifully, and her performance anchors the light-as-air All I Wish. It's the perfect role for her to sink her teeth into, sexy and fun, but she brings a sense of real intelligence and soulfulness to the character. That's true star power.

Some of the dialogue is on the clunky side; much of it comes straight (or nearly) from Lord’s memoir; and Hammer has yet to find a fully easy-breathing way of behaving naturally on screen. Rush, by contrast, has so much fun with Giacometti’s tetchy, restless qualities, you don’t always buy the “tortured” part.Yet Rush is such a formidable technician, he creates a Giacometti of substance both real and theatrical.

What’s frustrating about this worthwhile movie is pretty simple: All Anderson needed to do, really, was to let more of the characters, dog and human, female and male, have a say in how the story gets told.

Spielberg’s control of pacing, rhythm, action dynamics and tonal juggling is so astute that the story of Wade never quite gets lost in all the fly-by jokes and references. Sheridan’s highly skillful, as is Cooke.

The overall picture doesn't have the kind of true wow factor that would make this one stand out from the rest of the pack.

Despite the ever-present layer of cheesiness, every now and again, some of those emotions are just big enough to land a somewhat effective blow right to the heart.

This is the second feature from Maoz; his first, the superb “Lebanon” (2009), is one of the essential war pictures of the young century. Foxtrot qualifies as a war film as well, and as in all such pictures made by, and for, grown-ups, the psychic battles are no less intense than the literal carnage.

It’s a grubby, fairly intriguing genre exercise given a weird, did-it-myself-in-a-hurry visual quality.

Pacific Rim: Uprising may be not be much, but in the spirit of the film itself, let’s be realistic. It’s better than any of the “Transformers” movies, and shorter.

Mordant in the extreme, and often hilarious, The Death of Stalin somehow manages to acknowledge the murderous depths of Josef Stalin’s regime while rising to the level of incisive, even invigorating political satire.

An honorable, evenhanded but curiously flat interpretation of events.

The Lara Croft reboot Tomb Raider isn’t half bad for an hour. Then there’s another hour. That hour is quite bad.

Everything about Gringo, from the storytelling to the comedy to the cinematography is incredibly lackluster. The film is dark and dim, like everything's covered in a layer of dust. Oyelowo is quite endearing and funny as Harold, but he's given very little to work with.

For material that started out for the stage, Finley’s directorial debut really does feel like a movie. It’s elegant and well-plotted but not at the expense of the performances.

It has flashes of inspiration and raw emotion, and beyond the famous faces in the cast, Disney’s Wrinkle in Time is graced with a wonderful, natural Meg courtesy of the young actress Storm Reid. Now 14, she’s easy and versatile screen company. The movie around her is a little frustrating and rhythmically stodgy, however, partly for reasons inherent in bringing tricky, elusive material to a different medium.

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."