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.