Caro (“Whale Rider”) largely forgoes the eardrum-shattering ballistics of a typical war movie — yes, there are bombings and shootings, but they’re the backdrop, not the focus. Her film dwells more in the aftermath of violence.

Like its synthetic heroine (Scarlett Johansson), the live-action Ghost in the Shell is a feast for the eyes. With its killer-robot geishas, Godzilla-size hologram ads and nearly nude fighting gear, it’s a cyberpunk wonderland — but there isn’t much ghost left in this smokin’ hot shell.

For all its CGI showiness, the fact that Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal signed on for this splatterfest is the film’s most impressive feat.

Wilson doesn’t have the emotional heft, or the narrative arc, of Johnson’s last film, but it does remind you how much fun it is to watch Harrelson. In real life, Wilson would just be a straight-up a - - hole.

For all its promise to be a wry commentary on the savagery of office politics, The Belko Experiment is more like an experiment in how many cracked-open skulls can be crammed into one movie.

Yes, we remember one of the best movies of the 1990s, but the sequel is like the moment at the party when someone raises the shades and you realize that it’s blinding broad daylight, well past time to go home.

Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), as the Beast, has the heaviest lift. He’s emoting through a CGI veil that never quite feels real. But his cranky character is more engaging this time around.

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

Vogt-Roberts never develops the characters enough to make us care whether anyone lives or dies and never whips up even a flirtation between Hiddleston and Larson.

Congratulations are in order to Table 19: This comedy about the random losers stuck together at a wedding reception actually, uncannily, creates an experience as dull, awkward and excruciating as the thing it mocks.

It’s a captivating throwback that promises to lead the genre away from sci-fi flash and trickery. I’d rank it beside “X-Men: Days of Future Past” among the best X-Men entries.

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.