It’s a raunchy, rollicking story of movie legends off the set and between the sheets.

Despite committed performances across the board, I left the film craving a deeper, more conventionally attentive character study.

Kendrick’s interplay with Lively’s big, alluringly langurous temptress is deliciously diverting, but the script could have used some judicious editing; a surfeit of credibility-straining, overly antic plot developments crowd the last third of the film, which until then had an intriguingly languid pace.

Writer-director Colin Minihan’s thriller is tightly plotted and delivers a couple of terrific shocks, shocks that are firmly rooted in character

Jordan really commits, and his scenes with Thompson have genuine warmth and intimacy.

It’s a movie made with an insider’s knowledge (directors Ben and Orson Cummings are both proud graduates of the school) and affection (Shaquille O’Neal is one of the producers, as is art-world titan Larry Gagosian). And yet, while it has heartwarming moments, it’s not a predictable, eager-to-please entertainment.

Better than mid90s’ treatment of adults is its evocation of the euphoria that comes from discovering one’s place in the world, and confidence—highlighted by Stevie’s nerve-wracked first sexual experience—as well as the way skating provides a liberating release, and a surrogate family, for these unruly teens.

although it’s far too fannish—this is not a movie that wants to dig deep into anything uncomfortable—it does give the rocker her props, while reminding fans of some modern rock history.

As fascinating and well-crafted as it is, The Public Image Is Rotten is ultimately a vanity project, authorized by Lydon and his manager and meant less as an unvarnished journalistic documentary but as a burnishing of, well, his public image.

Puzzle proudly wears its unfussy metaphors on its sleeve, while sidestepping trite clichés of stories about self-discovery. Its premise might sound dull, but this charming crowd-pleaser is thankfully anything but—so much that Puzzle might even restore your faith in remakes.

The contrast between young and old, life ending, life continuing, is leaned on too heavily.

Director-producers Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, along with narrator Wendell Pierce (of TV’s “Treme”) keep the tone light, but the underlying message is both timely and worth remembering: You can mess with Mother Nature, but she will mess back.

This is a simple, macho morality tale—of the oppressors and the oppressed, of good and evil, and of the one man who sets out to settle the scales of justice. And the level on which it works is primal—and frighteningly effective.

It’s a smart reimagining, but not a particularly compelling one, which is the problem overall.

Devoid of any corniness, sentimentality or condescension, Pick of the Litter is a must for dog lovers, but it will also serve all those needing reminders of how kind, decent and giving humans can be and the role dogs play in our lives.

While this culinary-themed doc offers a little kitchen sizzle and artistically plated tastings (a delicious shrimp dish sautéed, a daring soy sorbet, etc.), the film has more of a scattershot, look-at-me Facebook feel.

Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is a truly engrossing film, one that balances the big picture and the small one.

Path of Blood is more an immediate experience, and as such succeeds in unexpected ways. The human normality of what it shows is nearly more sickening than the carnage itself.

Damsel is a worthwhile effort gleefully carried out by a dedicated ensemble—including the impossibly charming Butterscotch (Daisy in real life), who steals the screen one miniature step at a time.

You come away from the film feeling that Cecil Beaton represented the very essence of the fashion business, which continues to celebrate, be inspired by and imitate his huge legacy: absolutely exquisite and impeccable on the surface, often hiding a much darker and uglier reality.

The movie...is a visual feast, one of the rare 3D films which was clearly designed with that extra dimension in mind.

The performances in Beautiful Boy are superb, and overall this intense father-son drama, helmed by Belgian directorFelix Van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown), has the ring of authenticity.

Griffiths never quite manages to convincingly shoehorn her loftier themes into the modest narrative, resulting in some disconcerting tonal dissonances.

The acting is not the problem. It rarely is. And, within parameters, the movie is not dull. Just don’t expect to feel much short of guilt in response to your own apathy.

With its star-studded cast of experts, from Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk to automated warfare experts like Peter Singer, and a brief that is nothing short of the survival of humanity, Do You Trust This Computer? is a more sprawling and diffuse piece of work. It has a larger frame of reference than Paine’s battery-car docs but never hammers it into shape.

The Bookshop is an exquisitely understated tragicomedy.

Marking her feature debut, Frizzell’s direction is competent, but her screenplay, which is semi-autobiographical, is a series of vignettes that narrowly add up to a narrative.

It’s a bit self-glorifying, but you can’t deny that Garcia’s story of job-hopping and success won on charm, passion and hard work is compelling.

Bo’s secret weapon in The Island is Shu Qi, an effortlessly magnetic star who enlivens even the dullest material. Kept in the background for a lot of the story, she still brings a welcome human touch to a plot that keeps threatening to turn into a lecture.

The Front Runner works hard to accommodate all points of view.

Character development and backstory needed more work and would have added to better, more engaged storytelling.

There is only so much a director can do to bring surprise to certain stock elements—it would be refreshing to just once see a convoy survive a movie without being ambushed—but Sollima knits together big, sweeping aerial shots and tight-in, juddering angles that work each nerve not already done to pieces by all the automatic weapons fire and exploding vehicles.

Overlord, produced and presumably overseen by J.J. Abrams, is good, bloody fun, with all the polish and production value that come with not being a low-budget exploitation movie.

Beautiful is the apt description for this hilarious masterpiece that embraces reason, celebrates truth and ultimately believes we're civilized enough to accept both.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a minor miracle of a musical, something you never thought you would ever see.

Despite its structural hiccups, Demange’s film still manages to highlight the humanity of a family and community that fights to survive their no-win circumstances and aspire to pass on something hopeful to their descendants.

The biggest flaw in Mackenzie’s film is that it is so focused on plot and action, there is all too little emotion, save that surge of rage for (or in) battle.

There are disjointed elements here—a modern-leaning script, driftless performances and an overwrought score from Jeff Russo, its clanking piano more suited to an out-and-out Gothic thriller—that Macneill is ultimately unable to wrestle into a cohesive, compelling whole. The result is a dull retread of a story that deserved better.

Given the magnitude and complexity of the topic, an entertaining film is almost irrelevant, at moments trivializing. This particular story cries out to be viewed through a new, fresh lens. Otherwise, why are we hearing it? Why now?

The simplicity and wonder of Sól’s quest for identity is muddled by pretense, and by circumstances and subplots that are tangential to her.

The level of internal anger in this flick obliterates all semblance of tone. Its wafting from giddy to gritty and back is unnerving, when not downright annoying.

This is a more-than-promising directorial debut, well worth seeking by adventurous moviegoers.

While the film’s vision of Nelly Arcan may ultimately remain just slightly out of focus (a notion that’s duly literalized in its final shots), Mylène Mackay’s powerhouse turn seems certain to resonate.

The fun of Uncle Drew is to be had in the energy of its athletic cast, all of whom appear to be having a grand old time playing around.

The switch between moods—obvious comedy and sermonizing message—comes often, and clumsily.

A few minutes into The House with a Clock in Its Walls, you realize Eli Roth knows what he’s doing—and that means carefully mixing the scares and stillness for a horror comedy that’s made-to-order for certain monster-loving 10-year-olds.

Above all, this is Sarandon’s picture and maybe her best film work in many years.

There are few elements of suspense or intrigue in this drama, as it’s largely an inward journey into Duras’ agonized, shaky state of mind over the unknown whereabouts of her Resistance-member husband, Robert Anselme.

Laurent’s film is gripping throughout. The filmmaker shrewdly frames each scene to convey the characters’ loneliness and isolation without being too obvious.

Weightless is a bleak slice-of-life movie that’s tightly focused and stylistically cohesive. The narrative is not without interest and the film’s atmospheric mood is effective. But ultimately its slow pacing (unremittingly so) grows tedious and the ending is a non-ending.

From the get-go, Levinson makes every wrongheaded directorial decision imaginable in an apparent effort to make one loathe Assassination Nation—and his success in that regard proves this teensploitation schlock’s lone triumph.

It’s clearly meant to be a light romp –a party movie to be enjoyed in group settings—and it is.

Cassel, one of France's singular talents, delivers an absorbing performance, committing to his role on both mental and physical levels.

The film does mix up the formula in some ways. Unfortunately, these changes are by and large for the worse. It edges away from horror and more towards action, favoring shootouts to scares. The latter are in short supply.

The film isn’t a genre changer, but it’s elegant and admirably remorseless—and when it breaks bad, it breaks very bad indeed.

Aside from a witty montage near the start of the movie and sparks of his cheeky, goodhearted subversiveness later on, most of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is bludgeoningly broad and obvious.

Unfriended: Dark Web doesn’t deserve your faves or your retweets. Instead, it’s a regrettably stupid horror sequel that was better left in the drafts folder.

Although the film hits all the time-marks of cinematic storytelling, the characters are broad, the music intrusive, and the dialogue made-for-TV-movie-esque. Just because the plot is swift does not mean the story compels.

It’s a completely new crew, on both sides of the camera, dispensing warmed-over chills.

It's a slick, beautifully designed movie with no soul and very little subtext. If Animal, always mercifully succinct, were doing this review, he might have written: 'Snore!' Then he'd stick his head in the toilet bowl and flush.

Funny little Nazis require rather more finesse than The Littlest Reich possesses.

This exquisitely mounted sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) skims past any narrative shortcomings through the complete and convincing totality of the wizarding world it creates, drawing you into another reality with perhaps more verisimilitude than any film in the Harry Potter canon.

It’s a deliriously silly, often preposterous movie...but director Susanna Fogel keeps things moving too quickly to leave much time for complaints.

Bayona fights against the script’s weaknesses to craft a movie that, against all odds, feels fresh, fun and even a bit vital. A lot of it’s dumb, and the human characters haven’t gotten any more compelling than they were in Jurassic World, but dammit, everything involving dinosaurs is top-notch.

The Rock retains his uncanny ability to elevate his material. Through sheer will he makes it seem possible that he could shimmy up a fraying rope outside a burning building's glass wall while carrying his own leg.

The filmmakers believe they have better emotional beats at the end than what that hack Dr. Seuss came up with—and in the process make the Grinch pathetic and practically groveling.

Although uneven, both its conclusion and its hero make Izzy Gets The F*ck Across Town a journey worth taking.

Charlie Hunnam as Parisian safecracker Henri “Papillon” Charrière and Rami Malek as his pal-in-hell, counterfeiter Louis Dega, were sorely in need of richer characters written (or directed?) with more complexity, coloring, backstory, tics, or whatever might humanize them more.

A Whale of a Tale only skims the surface of the many matters it raises, be it cultural imperialism, tradition, animal rights and socioeconomic necessities. Still, its objective approach, and subtle plea for middle-ground compromise, makes it a worthwhile addendum to Psihoyos’ celebrated predecessor.

The film—Weitz’s first since 2015’s indie Grandma—feels a little cheap and shortchanged.

It’s strange that The Equalizer 2 is such a sluggish ride. Fuqua and Washington have developed a body of work over the years that is, if nothing else, reliably kinetic. But with Wenk’s pedestrian writing, there just isn’t much for Washington to work with here.

Trading “Dueling Banjos” and gut-wrenching tension for haphazard plotting and an impromptu group singalong of an original folk tune, the results are disappointing on a number of levels.

Deftly tweaking the tropes of rock biopics, this drama of singer Freddie Mercury and British hitmakers Queen dazzlingly captures an era, a man and the universal quest for identity.

The game plan seems to be to make the film as impenetrable as possible so no one will notice it is actually flatlining over pretty familiar turf.

The film’s pleasures are small ones, but they’re perfectly pitched and anyone who’s ever collected anything will empathize with the depth of Alan and Paul’s passion, if not their actions.

Spiral is a classic example of diffuse, all-over-the-map storytelling that avoids addressing its fraught subject in any fresh way; indeed, the core topic often disappears from the narrative altogether.

In story and in visual style, The Predator feels less like a Shane Black movie than a generic, middling Hollywood blockbuster helmed by a workmanlike studio hack who occasionally asked Shane Black for advice.

This doc is far more about being gay than being a gay dancer, with not enough extended performance footage to give you an idea of their real capabilities. This lack also softens the impetus of the movie’s inevitable contest climax, which takes place at the Gay Games in Cleveland, with one of the featured couples winning big.

The Super is well written and acted—two things that should be givens but often aren’t, especially in genre films

No spoiler here that all unfolds with twists and complications but lands in a colorful kibble bowl of happy endings. Surprise does lie in the fact that such familiar material can deliver some unexpected pleasures.

a plodding film with ill-placed, klutzy exposition and credibility-defying and/or colorless characters that are spokespersons for various predictable viewpoints.

The Nun resorts to makeup effects to put a frightening face on its supposedly scary sisters.

Is it a particularly great movie? No. Does it have some pretty major structural problems? Yes. Does Jason Statham fight a giant, prehistoric shark in it? Yes. Verdict: See The Meg. The Meg will cleanse your soul.

Slim movies like this live or die based on their personal charm, and the sour Destination Wedding soon wheezes its way into the ICU.

Don’t Go is sufficiently subtle that some viewers will find it dull and lacking in traditionally “scary” moments. But others will appreciate the care with which it walks the line between supernatural and psychological horror.

It’s a flashy film, but also rather derivative. In the end, Hot Summer Nights is a study in the power of talented actors to elevate material.

Much of the film’s success is due to the work of a better-than-average ensemble.

Foy and Alvarez have still spun the old and new elements together in an effective web. If this is a trap, it’s one you won’t hurry to escape from—or even fear being caught in again.

Night School pushes no buttons nor breaks new boundaries, but it pleases and entertains enough to get a diploma for good effort.

Some of the visual compositions are impressive to look at, but the overall self-consciousness of the enterprise, paltry attempts at wit such as describing Bacon as “a screaming queen who painted the screaming Pope,” and basic thinness of this wistfully wish-fulfilment material make it hard for a viewer to stay involved.

Why is she attracted to him? For that matter, why are we watching?

the film, set in 2009, misses its comic target by a mile, resulting in a dumbfounding collision of unsympathetic characters always choosing the most moronic thing to do in any given situation.

Despite its novel plot, and some lovely music and incidental artwork—the title fireworks, the rugged seaside and that glittery magic ball are all beautifully rendered—the film quickly drags.

A movie that should be seen on the big screen, in order to fully appreciate its special effects, this Disney production will likely enchant lots of little girls and boys while also tugging at the heartstrings of grown-up sons and daughters who still value all that was given to them by their departed parents

The Darkest Minds isn’t atrocious so much as it’s just plain dull, which is a worse kind of bad to be.

For fans of this goofy sort of comedy, or of Atkinson’s similarly loopy “Mr. Bean,” it may be a gentle treat.

New paint can't hide the worn-out frame behind Mile 22, a gung-ho workout that pairs Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg for the fourth time. Cribbing from themselves as well as tons of other action films, they manage to throw enough firepower on the screen to placate genre fans.

Welcome Home also features surprisingly strong performances from Ratajkowski, Scamarcio and Paul (“Breaking Bad”) and ends with a nifty little parting shot whose implicit condemnation of mindlessly consuming the lives of others should give audiences a little chill.