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.