A useful aspect of watching the movie on streaming rather than onstage is you can turn on the subtitles to catch all of Minchin’s clever lyrics. Many of the quirky phrases, coming fast and furious, were muffled on Broadway and the score improved when I listened to the album later.

Unfortunately, you could probably improve Split by editing out everything around McAvoy and making it an experimental one-man show.

Struggles to maintain a sober, evenhanded tone about an utterly ridiculous story.

There are a lot of parallels with “Breaking Bad” here: the Southwestern setting, the dorky husband turned criminal, the blond wife and the scene in the carwash. But if you can avoid dwelling on its derivative qualities, After the Fall has its own case to make about how far the middle class has fallen — and continues to slide.

In the House promises to be a social satire with a flash of Hitchcockian menace, but gradually it turns into a routine thumb-sucker on reality versus fiction.

Though Water Lilies endlessly teases the audience with its sapphic subtext and young female flesh, Sciamma seems most interested in showing how extremely cruel adolescent girls can be to each other.

Pretty far-fetched even for a franchise about rare genetic mutations that allow people to read minds and shoot lasers with their eyes. It’s not bad, just crazy.

Personal Shopper doesn’t have much of a plot, but if you can tune into its languid frequency, it will get under your skin.

It's hardly a dramatic story. You learn absolutely nothing about her personal life. But there is plenty of drama in that amazing, soulful voice and the songs she sang.

Undeniably powerful, grimly fascinating.

Grows on you like kudzu.

Blunt and Dornan’s chemistry eclipses anything the hunky actor ever managed with Dakota Johnson in “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Even after nearly three hours of sitting, I didn’t feel as though I’d gotten to know the characters very well.

Like its monstrous hero, The Incredible Hulk gets the job done with minimal artistry and a lot of noise.

This absorbing documentary, which has already been shown on cable, is getting a theatrical run to capitalize on the Broadway musical "Taboo."

The collection is a mixed bag, although there are no clunkers.

Although the script works in a couple of pages of collegiate-level ethical debate about "the question of German guilt," what the movie is really interested in is the question of German sex. So think of it as "Schindler's Lust."

I enjoyed the visual effects used to create some hellish creatures and the amusing nods to "The Exorcist" - cranial rotation, even a spooky staircase. But the movie slips in the last act.

Despite the lacking wrap-up, “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is, like most of the “Hunger Games” films, a well-made dystopian yarn that’s better acted than it needs to be.

I have to confess that this surreal departure by the iconoclastic filmmaker tried my patience more than a bit.

Après Vous arranges for a normal guy to get stuck with a blithering wreck. But whenever things threaten to get really silly, it pulls back.

Uncommonly well-acted and beautifully shot on location in southern India, but it's not exactly riveting.

Well-acted and nicely photographed, and has good action sequences, even if the screenplay (by M'Bala, Jean-Marie Adiaffi and Bertin Akaffou) is simplistic and there are slow stretches.

Unfortunately, director Jessie Nelson (“I Am Sam”) gradually turns the script into marzipan.

Frears has a lot of fun with the bad tempers and high spirits of this crew of adrenaline junkies, and though the story falls a little flat, the script is sprinkled with dry wit.

Much of Finding Amanda doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but at its best the still-boyish Broderick suggests his most famous character, Ferris Bueller, going through a midlife crisis.

The film’s cool-looking desaturated look (not unlike “The Road”), plentiful action and Washington’s charismatic gravitas as the taciturn hero make it relatively easy to overlook the pretensions and implausibilities in the script.

It turns out that constraint is really what the show is all about, or to put it another way, I'm disappointed that they turned my horny-teen comedy into a gross-out comedy.

Almost everything about Ice Age proves to be disappointingly generic.

It’s the wonderful performances by Bening and Harris that make this flawed, somewhat maudlin film worth seeing.

Overall We Have a Pope should prove a crowd-pleaser. Sacred music by the great Estonian composer is a plus.

Bardem gives such a brilliant performance in The Sea Inside, it's a crime that the film itself drowns in tears.

What keeps “The Lost Bus” from going full PlayStation — or full Brosnan — is a pulsing performance from McConaughey as a flawed dad desperately trying to reach his ill son (played by McConaughey’s own offspring, Levi Alves McConaughey) while saving the sons and daughters of others.

Mostly about extending a Hollywood franchise with ever-diminishing returns.

It Ends With Us is, despite its failings and indulgences, a highly emotional and absorbing couple of hours.

Not an easy movie to watch, and it's far from perfect - but it does have an artsy integrity and a fascinatingly intense performance by Paul Giamatti.

What is missing is any sort of psychological insight. Just what made Renato run? You won't find out here.

Somewhere on the axis where David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson and Joey Bishop intersect, a man in a Salvation Army tuxedo wanders the Mojave Desert supplying anti-comedy to every cocktail lounge and prison in his path. This is Entertainment.

Soulfully directed by Michael Cuesta ("L.I.E."), Roadie is short on narrative momentum, but it's a perfectly attuned character study of this rock relic and his middle-aged sorrows.

Light on dialogue and heavy on creepy atmosphere. See this movie and a visit to the tailor's will never be the same.

Where "Bridesmaids" tackled the subject of weddings and wrestled it in Jell-O, Bachelorette just kicks it right in the crotch.

At best, it’s a fairly enjoyable hate-watch of a farewell to DDL, charting the course of a twisted love affair between a real pill of a guy and a woman who inexplicably adores him.

The Other Woman isn't a perfect film, but it makes better use of her (Portman) talents than her other current movie, "No Strings Attached."

There is much more suspense in this sequence than a similar scene in last week's "The Sum of All Fears" -- which wasn't intended to be funny.

Prime date fare, but cotton-candy light and occasionally just a little too whimsical.

Unfortunately, you are often distractingly aware that you are watching re-enactments of real events.

Heck, it's great to have the big guy back.

Sensitive and sincere and has a talented ensemble cast.

The mild British wackiness is more droll than funny, but the movie is a pleasant cup of tea.

This jagged blob of a movie features a solo dance in the 1930s scored to the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant," several scenes of a rich Manhattan woman chatting with the ghost of Wallis Simpson and a Sotheby's auction that draws a crowd reaction of the kind associated with "Family Feud." Yet I found the movie fascinating. Except for the boring bits.

For a bad movie, this one is an awful lot of fun.

Has some terrific aerial sequences and exciting dogfights. But the clichés in the script by Zdenek Sverak (the director's father) keep the film firmly grounded when the action's not aloft.

So daring and unsparing in its depiction of the psyche and experience of adolescent girls that it's hard to imagine an audience that wouldn't find it deeply provocative despite a slow pace.

Promising new writer-director Mark Christopher is like "Dollhouse" director Todd Solondz's more cheerful little brother.

The initial suspense of Cautiva gives way to sentimental clichés, but Lombardo's performance (including a daring nude scene) keeps us watching.

Viewers willing to accept the contrived plot at face value will find much to like.

Wants to be an epic in the mold of "Saving Private Ryan," but it's hindered by its modest budget.

Pray will force you to look at the music as more than just gobbledygook created by musical-bower birds who can't spell.

The movie isn't bad, only scattered and incomplete.

Initially, this low-budget film writes a lot of checks on the First National Bank of Whimsy, but I was astonished when none of them bounced.

The Other Son is played with warmth and conviction by its cast. But it's also a little pat and toothless, set in an Israel where not even the notorious border crossings seem that difficult.

The movie was always going to be a record of another unique New York institution, making way for another glass box.

The film is passionate, but not exactly revelatory.

Entertaining as he is, there are many times when you wish you'd been given a few more facts and numbers so you could understand what the young CEO and his colleagues were celebrating or bemoaning.

No one's going to confuse The Core with art -- or even a good film -- but it's 25 minutes longer than "The Hours" and I had at least 25 times as much fun.

It’s a baggy movie, with some things (such as whether Idris taking Ritalin in high school improved his performance) unexplained, and it may appeal most to those raising kids themselves.

Smith’s appeal, just, holds together a thin plot upon which Bennett, who wrote the script, and director Nicholas Hytner have loaded gimmicks.

It has a dogged all-night charm and a sense of who its audience is.

You have to hand it to Huppert. She doesn't let the hokey plot and syrupy cinematography (what's with those repeated shots of flowers blowing in the wind?) keep her from giving a profound performance.

Nair makes Vanity Fair an elegant showcase for an unforgettable heroine.

Almost too creepy to be poignant, and generally funny only in an uncomfortable, squirm-in-your seat way.

It's hard to get close to a wild creature, and True Wolf doesn't always manage, either.

Boisterously amusing.

Apart from some irritating and redundant camera tricks early on in the film, director Blair Treu plays it white-bread straight, delivering an uncommonly inoffensive, after-school-special-style teen flick.

No matter how good Blethyn is at playing up the sweet hurt of a woman who is well on the decline but never made it in the first place, your admiration for her shrieking-and-drinking breakdown scenes is likely to be tested after about the fifth go-round.

The Innkeepers is no masterpiece, but you may well leave with your nerves expertly jangled.

There are many funny lines and situations, accompanied by strong performances all around. Sadly, Good Bye Lenin! falters at the end, when it loses its edge and lapses into sentimentality.

The film is ultimately a one-man show -- and when that man is the singularly crafty Depp, it's hard to look away.

The frequently funny The Grand Seduction is a thoroughly pleasant way to pass a couple of hours.

Kevin Smith's attempt to combine sketchy low comedy with long-winded theological speculation results in a mostly unfunny and occasionally tedious mess.

Cameron Diaz redeems her reputation somewhat in In Her Shoes, Curtis Hanson's schmaltzy, but reasonably entertaining dramedy about mismatched sisters.

So warm and well-meaning that you may find yourself wanting to like it more than you really do.

The mellow Laue... makes a likable enough subject, if sometimes low-key to the point of dull. Watching other people watch him play, though, is definitely not.

In this season of self-important filmmaking, it's nice to watch a movie that entertains while refusing to take itself too seriously.

But at the risk of sounding ungrateful, Sydney Pollack's latest film should have been a lot better.

Sometimes, it’s enough to walk out of a film with your heart warmed — even if your brain’s still craving a little something more.

This carefully observed slice of life is dragged down by the dreary and distracting hand-held camerawork.

Even if this film may irritate some people who remember "the movement" differently, it's nevertheless a fascinating and often moving document of recent history.

Egoyan treats the Armenian genocide and its aftermath as a metaphor for cruelty and denial -- an exercise in either pretension or timidity that exploits this tragedy.

The film is well shot and edited, backed with a bouncy hip-hop soundtrack and full of pep.

In terms of its outlook for young girls in Georgia, the movie title might as well be “Buried Alive.”

For gays who remember the nightmare, Sex Positive may be too depressing to watch. But the movie strikes a cautionary tone for a younger generation that, it says, isn't taking the HIV threat seriously.

Stieve and Glosserman may yet strike a vein: This thing screams out for a Hollywood remake with, say, writers from "The Simpsons."

The script depends heavily on familiar stand-up comedy bits, but it's full of sharp wisecracks and slacker charm.

Things Heard & Seen is an adequate haunted-house film, to be sure, but it will certainly give you pause about that three-bedroom, three-bath listing in Kingston.

Contains too many weak performances and predictable lines to succeed, but it's probably the best rave movie so far.

Only the Brave is at its best at two extremes: in the middle of the action, as the firefighters do things like improbably light fires to contain bigger fires; and at home in the midst of banter between Eric and his wife Amanda.

Heller’s enjoyable film is not the cringe fest you walk in expecting it to be, even if the premise will be a hairy leap for some moviegoers.