Its tactile feel for the dirt and labor of a farm, and tender regard for the young protagonist, are immensely endearing.

Watching Schenck and McBath campaign to fellow Christians for a dissociation between God and guns, you suspect their words are falling on deaf ears.

Both Adam and the stakes are so low, it’s like watching 100 minutes of a slug trying to crawl over a twig.

A slapdash, sporadically funny cross between the infamous “Ishtar’’ and the mercifully forgotten “American Dreamz.’’

Fans of the cartoon should stick around for Lewis’ after-credits sequence, which introduces a dastardly rival band. It’s the movie’s best scene, setting up a sequel we’ll never see.

The movie left me amazed — amazed that Nicolas Cage wasn’t in it.

Despite Mulligan bringing her A-game, the film falls short of its potential.

Wiig and Adebimpe give appealing, naturalistic performances — it’s Silva’s character who grate.

Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg’s best film since “Saving Private Ryan,” stars a flawless Tom Hanks in the smart, old-school thriller as James Donovan.

Dopey as the film is on a plot level, it’s equally vapid in its psychology.

Ethical objections to Milgram’s work are presented as killing the messenger; well-known issues with his methodology appear not at all. The movie’s an intellectual shock tactic, but it succeeds.

James Purefoy (“The Following”) makes a pretty decent bad guy. Olga Kurylenko (“The Water Diviner”) is passable as an action heroine. Neither of those facts makes Momentum any fun to sit through, crammed as it is with leaden dialogue and predictable plot turns.

Sure to be a favorite with racists, Beasts of No Nation sheds no light whatsoever on Africa’s civil wars but turns its gaze on black people brutalizing one another with machetes, howitzers, rifles and anything else that comes to hand. I picture Calvin Candie, the plantation owner in “Django Unchained,” yelling, “Yeah! Git ’em!”

What everyone will remember about Goosebumps is . . . nothing. Except that it was kinda like “Gremlins.”

Truth also ignores Rather’s famous showboating, pettiness and hubris. He’s worked in lower-profile gigs since, but trust me, there’s a good reason why no news organization will touch Mapes with a 10-foot pole.

Chastain and Wasikowska take center stage while Hiddleston flutters around like one of Allerdale’s huge black moths. Watching the women square off within del Toro’s eye-popping, painterly palette is a feast for the eyes, if not particularly substantial fare for the mind.

For a long stretch this movie plays well. Quiet moments, such as when Victoria plays a piano waltz and reveals herself to have a concert-level talent, have a feel for urban yearning. Costa is appealing; it’s a pleasure to watch her brush her teeth in real time.

This joyless, 10-megaton bomb fails in just about every imaginable way, as well as some you couldn’t possibly imagine.

Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin and Mathieu Amalric contribute cameo appearances in the The Forbidden Room, a visual feast that may be a bit overwhelming for those unfamiliar with Maddin’s work.

Long on heart if short on surprises, Big Stone Gap is an easygoing visit to small-town America.

Men are pigs! Women are psychos! One-percenters have it coming! Pick your moral in this nasty, single-setting thriller that’s ultimately quite tame by the standards of torture-porn director Eli Roth (“The Green Inferno”).

Comparisons to “Slumdog Millionaire” are inevitable, but the kinetic Trash has a rhythm all its own.

Steve Jobs is a tale of two men, not one: A more accurate, not to say wittier, title would have been “Steve Jobs and Aaron Sorkin.”

Whether you dig this aggressively campy horror-comedy is, to some extent, dependent on your squeamishness.

The Martian is a straightforward and thrilling survival-and-rescue adventure, without the metaphysical and emotional trappings of, say, “Interstellar.’’ It’s pure fun.

It’s a disappointment as a movie, though Shannon is especially fine in a rare sympathetic role.

Often extremely funny, always thoughtful, the movie transcends its static nature to become a deeper picture of modern Iran than any news story could offer.

The film slows to a crawl when the topic turns to computer science. The deadpan humor carries it, though, as with the German composer who records the mold’s vibrations and says, “Slime mold is very happy. This is happy melody.”