Labored and boring, The Mountain Between Us is a soap opera in the snow that fritters away the time and talents of Kate Winslet and Idris Elba for all the wrong reasons.

Eventually The Florida Project (the working title Disney gave to his dream in its planning stages on the drawing boards) sucks you into a world you would never otherwise know anything about.

Walking Out is a skillfully made thriller with a pair of very talented actors who knock themselves out, in more ways than one, to guarantee that it never becomes boring.

Shot is sobering, suspenseful and exemplary.

Hack director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is lucky to engage Cruise’s box-office appeal for a tale that otherwise would never have seen the light of day.

The movie is so carefully observed and quietly calibrated as the old man moves from one scene to the next, as unobtrusive as a lap dissolve, that you can’t tell Harry from Lucky, or vice versa, and it doesn’t take long before you stop trying.

A trite little comedy so jumbled, disconnected and bad you can’t believe it doesn’t star James Franco. Instead, it fritters away the talents of the charming Justin Long, a seasoned and resourceful actor who deserves much better.

Grim and hopelessly despondent, but superbly acted and strangely effective as crime on the screen goes.

Judi Dench can do no wrong, and playing Queen Victoria for the second time in the richly satisfying Victoria and Abdul is an acting lesson par excellence that proves how rapturous it is to watch this great artist do everything right.

The movie, as relevant now as the story was then, lacks the same spark as live tennis, but the two stars are equally dynamic and unforgettable as the original players. You won’t be bored.

Nothing about mother! makes one lick of sense as Darren Aronofsky’s corny vision of madness turns more hilarious than scary. With so much crap around to clog the drain, I hesitate to label it the “Worst movie of the year” when “Worst movie of the century” fits it even better.

The surprising results are unlike anything I’ve seen lately, and the best surprise of all is a funny, inspired and career-enhancing star performance by Ben Stiller that left me touched, applauding and laughing out loud.

Salinger fans never seem to tire of new revelations about the man or his work, so if this is the kind of material that interests you, it should keep you sated until the next one comes along. I recommend it highly.

The Good Catholic is a sober, thoughtful and well-made little gem about a young priest torn between his dedication to God and his sudden physical and emotional attraction to an unconventional woman who forces him to question his faith and his purpose. It’s a small film in every way, but I found it riveting.

With so much to look at and a plot to digest as thick as Dutch cocoa, it is not without a few problems, but I found this astonishing movie so rich and satisfying that I liked it in spite of itself. It’s the kind of guilty pleasure that sometimes confuses, but never bores. Color it flawed but gorgeous.

The most memorable thing about it is the profoundly understated sensitivity of Harris Dickinson, a (surprisingly) British actor to keep an eye on.

It just seems exaggerated and silly. Maybe there’s an idea rattling around in here somewhere, but I’d like to see it in a better movie than Bushwick.

It does provide a welcome antidote to the usual surfeit of formulaic Hollywood junk.

Unflinchingly written and directed by Austin, Texas-based filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh, it’s too unnerving to recommend to the squeamish, but for anyone curious enough to find out what really happens to turn decent people into savages in the bedlam of the American prison system, this is one for the must-see list.

It’s a forgettable film, but what it says about the debilitating effect of technological abuse is sickening enough to make you think twice about upgrading your smartphone.

There are heart-tugging moments in The Glass Castle, but Walls’s bestselling memoir needed to be roughed up and aired out. For it to match up to the book, the movie needed the glass to be smashed, not every shard treasured.

This one he (Pattinson) could have skipped. Vile and repulsive, Good Time is just under two hours of pointless toxicity.

It’s one terrific, offbeat and heart-pounding thriller set in the frozen wilderness of a Wyoming Indian reservation that never ceases to surprise, enthrall and pump the adrenaline with an energy that stuns.

Berry knows how to seize the center spot and hold on tight. In Kidnap, she gets quite an exhausting workout, and so does the audience.

For repeated breathless sequences involving hand-to-hand combat, assassination attempts, and a wicked climactic car chase, shout out to Director Leitch.

It is still Gerard Butler who keeps it all afloat, negotiating rough waters with superior skill.

It’s meant to be a gritty slice of cornpone about revenge from a woman’s point of view, but the female protagonist who emerges is nothing but a cartoon.

Plotless and leaden as a rusty drainpipe.

The film ends up getting stuck in a no man’s land between fiction and documentary, never quite coming together as a complete narrative.

In the end, Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a mixed bag: a ripe visual adventure of limitless imagination hamstrung by an undercooked plot propelled by lackluster heroes.

At its core, the drama is a character study. It gradually reveals the impact these two contrasting characters have on each other, excavating the past to unlock the repressed Claire and reveal hidden depths below the flamboyant Beatrice’s surface.

It’s a gripping addition to the canon of war on film that is definitely worthy of attention, and some of the images are electrifying.

War for the Planet of the Apes marks the apex of what has been a bludgeoning season of spectacle cinema.

Oldroyd has found a terrific lead actress on which to hitch his wagon.

It achieves its humanity by connecting audiences to dynamic Muslim men who reveal so much about themselves in the silence between traumas, warmly greeting each other with affectionate kisses and hugs in sterile safe houses, or line-dancing in an upscale hotel room in a rare moment of triumph and release.

As long as the kids stay in the picture — thankfully, that’s most of the movie — Spider-Man: Homecoming is the fun playdate most of us have been looking forward to since the character stole Cap’s shield last spring in "Captain America: Civil War."

Sometimes I just want a movie that kicks ass. And Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver delivers.

13 Minutes is proof that a hero isn’t about having success against impossible odds; it’s about doing the right thing when everyone else on the planet is doing something else.

The real stars are his screenwriters. By borrowing from their real life, Gordon and Nanjiani have crafted the rare romance that sparkles with real life emotion.

A sloppy, stupid, and — evidenced by other casual misappropriations of history at its darkest (Frederick Douglass was also part of this Transformers secret society but apparently couldn’t convince them to do anything about slavery)— quite possibly evil movie.

A gorgeous color palette and a tactile sensitivity to the emotions and intelligence of rural people help to create an organic work that integrates brilliant casting, yummy production and costume design, and fine cinematography.

The Book of Henry is a wildly imaginative film with a lot of shifting parts, and an absolutely huge heart. A film this original deserves to be seen and felt.

What I don’t need is more undercooked leftovers: elevator pitches that satisfy the suits (It’s The Hangover with chicks!) because risk-averse studios don’t want to take any chances with that chick stuff and therefore create a self-fulfilling prophecy of estrogen dreck.

It’s not quite enough to completely undercut what had been an engrossing and well crafted chamber play of a movie, but it does leave you with the profound sense that all of these characters, the angels and the devils, deserve better.

You only have to watch the trailer to know that Producer-Director Alex Kurtzman’s reboot of Brendan Fraser’s once-charming mummy movies is full of embalming fluid.

A far too anemic and restrained take on a story that demands at least some kind of dour sensuousness if not straight-up bodice ripping.

Wakefield is a terrific movie, with a devastatingly bravura performance by Bryan Cranston that seizes and grips attention from first scene to last.

Peel away the big budget genre film’s veneer of Western Civ citations—embodied by references to artist and inventor Michelangelo, composer Richard Wagner and the romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, among others—and what you have is rather conventional Lego blocks of sci-fi horror.

Together, as a grotesque mother-daughter team kidnapped in Ecuador, they’re the most depressing Mother’s Day present since "Mommie Dearest," only not half as funny.

Sometimes beauty and charm are enough to turn a middling movie into pure ambrosia. Diane Lane has plenty of both, and she uses them wisely in Paris Can Wait, elevating an otherwise mild and inconsequential film to unexpected heights of enchantment.

While Marvel metastasizes as a movie brand, the irreverent Guardians of the Galaxy franchise has become a healthy off-shoot. There’s something loose-limbed and unexpected about this series.

The awkward results are too contrived for comfort.

It’s a routine story, worth seeing for the galvanizing (pulverizing?) star performance by a smashing Liev Schreiber in the title role.

The best thing here is the muted cinematography, which caresses the wet leaves and cloudy purple Tuscan skies like an old Italian master oil painting that comes to life. In the desultory Voice From the Stone, it’s the only thing that does.

Informative, fascinating and surprisingly funny documentary.

Terry George remains a director I admire, and as movies go, the integrity and importance of The Promise are irrevocable.

The movie has its share of flaws, but you can’t say Charlie Hunnam, who plays the lead, has no charisma, or the story lacks excitement.

Watching Richard Gere’s charm and sweetness, as he turns into a metaphor for the nobodies of the world who hock their souls to be somebodies, is something very special indeed.

I lost count but the word “family” is mentioned upwards of 50 times, many more times than it is in, say, Lilo & Stitch. Yes, it is way too much, like everything else in this aggressively over-the-top film, but at the same time, it just feels nice to be part of the group.

To quote the late, great Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?” I’m talking about Colossal, a delirious, moronic mess that landed with a thud at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and now opens commercially, seven months later, with a head-scratching “Duh”.

Beautifully cast, intelligently written and a gorgeously assembled range of beautifully gauged emotions about movies and war, Their Finest is one of the best films of a still-young 2017.

One only wishes they would put their talent and intelligence to better use than a formulaic and manipulative tearjerker that is really nothing more than a woman’s picture from a man’s point of view.

Misguided and lethargic horror movie.

In the title role of the sometimes clever but mostly contrived Carrie Pilby, she (Bel Powley) taxes the boundaries of both.

In the end, it’s the animals who conquer the emotions and provide the suspense in The Zookeeper’s Wife.

Beautiful and challenging, Bokeh has a pristine look and chilling feel of its own that contributes enormously to the mood and tone of the whole film.

All Nighter is an alleged comedy that doesn’t know how to be funny. But at 80 minutes long, it does know how to be merciful.

Life is not a great film, but it has its thrills.

Directed with polish and restraint by Ritesh Batra, this is a gripping film that seizes your focus and never lets go. If this one fails to move you, then you don’t really care much about the power of movies.

Not a great film in the same vein as "Badlands" and "Pretty Poison," but a very good one that is well worth seeing.

Made and marketed for the sole purpose of shock and schlock. It succeeds as both, but the result seems psychologically bewildering and pointless.

I call it cinematic freebasing. It’s tired, repetitious, superficial, dreary and done to death before, by the same director, movie to movie and—forgive me for the unpardonable pun — song by song.

A charming, beautifully photographed modern fairy tale about love and gardening, This Beautiful Fantastic is worth seeing in spite of its dumb deterrent of a title.

Word to the wise: Start saving the vomit bags from your airplane flights. With movies like this, you’re gonna need them.

Boring, derivative, and infuriatingly illogical, Lavender is a ghost story with no thrills, no surprises, and no sense.

Despite the presence of Shirley MacLaine, the moments of pleasure provided by The Last Word are far outnumbered by scenes of exaggerated, phony, sugary marzipan-like make believe.

Logan is another heinous and sophomoric waste of Hugh Jackman ‘s time and considerable talent and another expensive throwaway aimed at milking money out of people who still read comic books. Color it stupid.

It’s a harrowing, sensitively realized study of cruelty, revenge and post-war retribution that ranks high among films about the cost of war and its continuing damage to humanity.

A long, incoherent German horror film called A Cure for Wellness is well on its way to late-night cable TV. If you’re a dedicated masochist looking for torture, look for it fast. It won’t live to see a re-release.

As a film, it’s uneven and clumsy, but as a responsible political statement about the chaos we live in now, it’s both enlightening and troubling.

It’s fifty times more boring than the first one. It is also fifty shades dumber.

The theme is nothing new, and the film has no shortage of clumsy biopic clichés, but sometimes we need to see the simplicity of humanity at its best. On that score, this movie delivers in spades.

The actors are superb. The nuanced writing and direction have insight. The three-dimensional portrayals of women in the rural South during the war are praiseworthy.

The terrific cast is well worth watching, but everything else about this wayward movie mistake leaves you feeling just awful.

The show, however, belongs to Batman and Will Arnett. This is a movie that will be enjoyed heartily and repeatedly.

Both Hosseini and Alidoosti underplay their parts with an apparent naturalism. And, yet, Farhadi constantly reminds the audience that they are watching a movie, that these handsome folks are actors playing actors in a film.

It is without question the best dog movie since "Lassie Come Home."

If it all seems a bit familiar, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also funny and pleasingly transporting, thanks to a game and attractive supporting cast and a transfixing setting that seems cut out of the pages of Conde Nast Traveler.

The dreary, chug-along Australian film The Daughter offers a good but sadly wasted cast, obscured in the eye-rubbing mist of a foggy Down Under countryside and struggling to rise above the sludge of a basic soap opera with literary pretensions.

Jovovich binds the episodic action sequences, her face a mask of noble pain and isolation. She outruns zombies, orchestrates catapults of flaming gasoline, literally slays a dragon with a Hummer – and all without a single unnecessary quip or wasted kiss.

Plotless and illogical.

Unfortunately, Split is a preposterous bore that steals shamelessly from "The Search for Bridey Murphy," "The Three Faces of Eve," "Sybil" and Shirley Jackson’s novel "The Bird’s Nest," made by a man who has been spending entirely too much time watching "Law and Order: SVU."

A saucy, twinkling star performance by Michael Keaton make this one of the must-see entertainments of the year.

As valiant and important as the film is, Alone in Berlin is not perfect. The director is the French actor Vincent Perez, whose commitment to the material is obvious, but whose lack of experience (it’s only his third effort behind the camera) shows badly.

The actors are fine, but the material doesn’t give their talents much room to stretch.

The question is, How big an audience is ready to relive the horror of a tragedy so close to home, especially in the light of the terrorist attacks that continue to assault our senses daily?

Live By Night boils over with ambience and charged with details, from Roaring 20s flapper costumes to shootouts in period cars, but too many aborted narratives in Affleck’s lifeless screenplay intertwine, fanning the confusion, while other subplots are abandoned altogether.

The best ensemble work of the year