Carney gets everything right here: Sing Street hums with authenticity.

The most intriguing character in the movie is the confused, tormented Conrad, who initially comes off as the kind of troubled adolescent who will end up riddling his classroom with bullets.

Played by Adrian Sparks in a style better suited for dinner theater or a Key West tourist attraction, Hemingway comes across as a complete cypher. Everyone in the film keeps talking about his genius, but other than a scene in which he writes a short story on the back of a napkin, the movie doesn’t try to humanize or explore his talent.

The movie has an exhilarating energy that is never exhausting, and the filmmaker’s trademark excesses, although toned down, are still at play. The meek should be wary; for everyone else, it’s party time.

The Jungle Book has its moments — the panther Bagheera voiced by Ben Kingsley, the python Kaa voiced by Scarlett Johansson and a funny porcupine voiced by the late Garry Shandling are all memorable creations — but the overall film feels cold and mechanical, befitting a movie that was made primarily because technology made it possible.

I Saw the Light, though, doesn’t live up to Hiddleston’s efforts; it’s shallow and disjointed, handicapped by a weak, cliche-sodden script.

Demolition is so busy trying to be profound, the film doesn’t have much use for humor.

One question in particular hangs heavily over the entire film, a plot hole so distracting it becomes the only thing you can think about.

This is a smart, wise and compassionate movie about young people in the act of finding out who they are and not always behaving properly but never crossing the line into cruelty or crassness. If you happen to have been around during 1980, the soundtrack is just a bonus.

This huge, unwieldy movie is busy and overcrowded.

The Wave builds up a nice bit of genuine tension and hits some surprisingly dark notes.

The film moves jerkily, in fits and starts, squandering its promising setup and bogging down in explanation.

No, it’s not all that sophisticated. But compared to glib junk like Zoolander 2, The Brothers Grimsby is practically high art. Unlike Ben Stiller, at least Cohen is trying.

Dark, nasty fun that gets better when you play it over in your head. But the plot holes seem even larger in hindsight, too. Just tamp down those expectations, then tamp them down some more.

Fey is a good fit with the material, and her co-stars are all solid, including Billy Bob Thornton as a laconic general; Martin Freeman as a boozy, charming Scottish journalist; Alfred Molina as a local politician with a crush on Kim; and Christopher Abbott (Girls) as Kim’s fixer and translator (he tries to keep her out of trouble).

Race never delves under the skins of its characters, because they’re intended to be used only as symbols — reminders of an important chapter in history rendered quaint by this noble but patronizing movie.

James and Riley might make an interesting Elizabeth and Darcy in a traditional Pride and Prejudice, but this version? It’s dead on arrival.

The Coens feel out of step this time; they’ve lost their rhythm the way they did in The Hudsucker Proxy, where the style consumed the entire picture, turning what should have been humorous and snappy into a grating chore.

The Lady in the Van doesn’t give in to platitudes. It’s unnervingly honest about its subject.

The movie is filled with small, loaded moments that resonate like gunshots in an echo chamber.

The film’s visual artistry works as an ideal counterbalance for Kaufman’s heady brand of middle-aged despair.

The fact that the last line of dialogue is spoken five minutes before the end credits roll is telling: Words matter little in a movie that favors seeing and feeling above all else. It’s a work of pure, furious sensation.

Although not quite as over-the-top visually as his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, Youth is still spectacular, filled with tableaux (a group of people sweating silently inside a sauna, a naked man and his prostitute inside a hotel room) that juxtapose the desires and personalities of young and old without dialogue.

Director/screenwriter Peter Landesman builds a solid dramatic story around this premise, and Smith delivers a terrific, award-worthy performance as Omalu, nailing his Nigerian accent, his intelligence, his determination to do what he knows is right.

But there is so much information to process in The Big Short that only hedge fund managers and stock brokers will be able to track every nuance and shading of this complicated story.

What the film truly reveals is something else entirely: how Jennifer Lawrence can elevate any material, any time, even middle-of-the-pack fare like this.

But Tarantino isn’t glorifying the ugliness; he’s condemning it. He just wants to put on a grand show at the same time. “Are you not entertained?” he seems to be asking. Yes. Yes, we are.

What’s missing in The Force Awakens – and this is a major, critical flaw – is a fresh story template, a plot that doesn’t build toward a climax you’ve already seen, played out in practically the exact same way. That’s the kind of failing that a lot of fans will overlook while they bask in the undeniable bliss-out the movie delivers. But in hindsight, as you play the film back in your mind, the huge lack of imagination and freshness become more problematic.