It’s Peele’s first film, but it has none of the rough edges or self-indulgence you’d expect from a rookie.

It may be a second-rate “Lord of the Rings,” but at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Mia Goth is as fine a name as can be imagined for the actress playing a creepy, hollow waif in A Cure for Wellness, and her name is practically a tag line for this fantastically eerie movie: “Me a Gothic!”

Director Peter Chelsom (“Hannah Montana: The Movie”) and screenwriter Allan Loeb (“Collateral Beauty”) squander countless opportunities to make this fish-out-of-water story intellectually curious or even much fun.

Nutty as The Lego Batman Movie is in conception, it’s nifty in execution.

A touching love story that gets sidelined by a tiresome intra-family African political dispute, A United Kingdom has a big heart that beats far too slowly.

The first “John Wick” was taut and nasty, a potent slug of B-movie. This one is so enamored of its own extravagance that, on more than one occasion, I was reminded of “Zoolander 2.”

Fifty Shades will make you dumber.

In “Raging Bull” and “The King of Comedy,” Robert De Niro did stand-up comedy badly. In The Comedian he does it badly again — there’s that same air of menace and gracelessness — but this time the movie want us to think he’s brilliant.

Like his Oscar-winning “A Separation,” Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest, nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film, is an expertly crafted domestic thriller.

What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, but lose his hairline? Matthew McConaughey considers the question in Gold, which is in essence a vanity project about a vanity project.

It’s too bad that Keaton plays Kroc as a grasping, alcoholic sleaze as he builds the McDonald’s brand into an all-American empire, but I forgive the movie’s cheap shots because this is one of the most thorough and satisfying depictions of business — everything from quality control to cost-cutting and branding — ever put on film.

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

There is an honesty and realism to Driver’s performances that work well in the part of a blue-collar poet who feels no need to court the spotlight.

Despite being set in the late 1970s, 20th Century Women feels like the perfect movie for this moment.

Heavy-handed message movies don’t come more harrumphing than “Miss Sloane,” a clunky dramatization of the gun-control argument liberals still don’t understand is being conducted solely among themselves.

It’s a sprawling plot that consistently teeters on the edge of unwieldiness, but Affleck’s assured directing, gorgeous cinematography by Robert Richardson and a who’s-who of Hollywood’s best character actors keep it mostly on track.

Based on the book by Patrick Ness, the film belongs alongside “Pan’s Labyrinth” in the realm of darkly creative kid-centric films that are, at their core, not really kids’ fare at all.

Silence comes to us billed as 30 years in the making. Unfortunately, it plays like 30 years in the watching.

If (like me) you have a parental obsession with brainwashing your children to adore everything from Sinatra to “Shake It Off,” Sing may be your most effective weapon since “Happy Feet.”

Note to Greek chorus of execs: Turning a space psychodrama into a “He went to Jared” commercial is pretty low, even for you.

There is a passable 85-minute comedy in here, caked in an additional 30 minutes of flab.

As might be obvious, I’m not a gamer, so perhaps all of this will be thrilling for fans who’ve played it. The rest of us, I imagine, may come out of this film invigorated with a creed of our own: Avoid movies based on video games.

A triumphant and heartwarming film, not an angry and scolding one, that carefully maps how excellence and determination win over the doubters.

A great American movie about the greatness of ordinary Americans, Patriots Day combines an electrifying manhunt with the intimacy and feel for character writer-director Peter Berg showed in his brilliant TV series “Friday Night Lights.”

The Will Smith weepie Collateral Beauty couldn’t be more calculated and manipulative if it slapped you on the back, shoved a giant lollipop into your mouth and immediately tried to sell you a time share in Tampa.

Honorable, worthy and windy, Fences is essentially a PBS episode of “Great Performances” that is inflated for the big screen without ever quite belonging there.

By the time its credits rolled, I was ready to forgive Rogue One any imperfections. Its last 10 minutes are spectacular and dark, with a final flourish that should give any “Star Wars” fan goose bumps — and a new hope that the next main installment will be this good.