By crisscrossing time frames, Crowley, working from a script by playwright Nick Payne, halts his film’s momentum and lessens the overall impact of the central romance.

Like that dash across the freeway, the dirty jokes, bad language and bursts of violence end up being something that we have to grit our teeth to endure to get a glimpse of the inner lives of these boys, which are far richer than we typically see from a Hollywood comedy.

Yes, it’s a bit helter-skelter, but it is also an adequately enjoyable and untaxing way to kill off a couple of hours.

It’s sexy, violent and creepy, but damn if it didn’t keep me glued to my chair with tension.

It’s not much of a movie, but it feels good and leaves you with life-affirming optimism.

I Used to Be Funny reflects on essential concepts, even if it doesn’t always grasp them in a satisfying way. Still, it’s worth watching Sennott in almost anything.

The true star of the show, however, is M. Night Shyamalan, whose camera work remains a marvel. Most of Knock at the Cabin takes place in a single room with its protagonists trapped in a stationary position, and yet Shyamalan continually finds new ways to frame the space, the characters, and their relationships to each other.

Mulligan’s raw portrayal of a woman trapped by invisible walls is certainly powerful — she keeps the film afloat even when it falters — and the way Fennell gives human form to those walls imbues the film with a simmering rage. However, these handful of strengths are hardly enough to render its other failings moot.

There’s plenty of magic in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, but viewers will need a summoning spell to conjure up a tangible plot.

There’s nothing else to watch or care about in the entire film anyway. Once again, a great actress is on her own.

There is a cool detachment to the presentation of the story that, while perhaps fitting for a movie about a crime so carefully calculated it defies imagination, nonetheless serves to undercut the film’s high stakes.

It is just that when some of its lines fall flat, pulling in portents of a future we all know well, it wakes us from a dream few of us want to be over.

My reservations about Copperhead are outweighed by the noble intentions that inspired it.

The result is an old-fashioned play turned into an old-fashioned movie that looks like an old-fashioned play. Nothing happens and everybody talks incessantly.

So which side of the movie finally prevails — the lackluster conventionality of its text or the breathtaking singularity of its visuals and action? The latter does, if just by the nose on Brad Pitt’s perfectly imperfect face. Combined with the film’s lavish technical achievements, his classic movie star sturdiness makes Ad Astra a memorable filmgoing experience even as the story it tells slips off into the ether.

Written and directed with precision and sensitivity by Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent), it revives the pleasant art of storytelling most of today’s young filmmakers have all but abandoned, and cures (temporarily, anyway) my allergy to Adam Sandler.

It’s mostly nostalgia that keeps the movie going, although Grace is very compelling and should have been allowed to properly lead the film.

Megadoc is a mood piece and a process piece, shot up close with lo-fi video equipment, but it’s never allowed to probe deeply enough.

The unfolding action is never farcical enough to make the film satirical or outright funny, but it’s also never imbued with enough historical gravity to truly matter.

This time around, super-spy Ethan Hunt feels overshadowed by star and producer Tom Cruise and his own unquenchable desire to climb buildings, cling to airplanes, and sprint across rooftops. It makes for a great theatergoing experience, but not necessarily a great film.

A mixed bag of dumb jokes and unspeakable violence that is a big improvement over his (McDonagh) other work (it towers over Seven Psychopaths, which was one of the worst movies ever made) but not good enough to write home about at today’s inflated postal rates.

The Girl sounds like a real mess. It isn’t. It’s just a slow, well-made human interest story on a very small scale, ultimately touching but as inconsequential as a slice of pineapple at a Hawaiian luau.

Five Nights in Maine is too inconsequential to spend money on in a major release, which, I predict, will be brief.

Die Another Day is the most thrilling, lavishly designed and imaginative Bond picture in years. It is also the most preposterous.

You watch the movie like you read a book, which leads to eventual tedium. You can’t put a bookmark in a movie, come back later, and pick up where you left off.

With little action, no suspense and an ending that fails in every way, Matt Damon is the only thing memorable about Stillwater.

Enola Holmes isn’t a revolution or revelation that is going to forever alter the course of cinema, but it is enough of a charming and cheerful change to give Netflix a new franchise.

Dual can occasionally feel like a one-joke film that never bothers to be funny, or where the comedy comes off as so arch that it lands as something else entirely.