In the small-town-conspiring-on-a-big-lie genre, The Grand Seduction doesn’t get near the mastery of 1998’s "Waking Ned Devine," but the shots of the village in Newfoundland, where it was filmed, are beautiful, and the local accents are convincing.

Overall, it is the performers that give the story life and allow Arkansas to rise above some of its shallower instincts, which include a garish costume design that seems to posit the idea that people from the South dress like rodeo clowns. Hemsworth in particular brings a truth and measured heartbreak to his portrayal of someone who has been forced to glimpse how the world works and deeply wished he hadn’t.

Beautifully shot and reeking with style, Last Night is as slow as sorghum; nothing ever really happens.

Nothing to line up for or write home about, but it’s a pleasant time-passer, not a regrettable time-waster.

Burton’s riff on the elephant that could fly and the circus freaks who love him is about as subversive as a Pottery Barn Kids fall catalog. Which is not to say it isn’t beautiful, and sometimes mesmerizingly so.

In this case two mesmerizing performances by Clive Owen and his astounding co-star, a remarkably adroit child actor named Jaeden Lieberher, who is going places fast.

There are some forces, like Ford’s magnetic presence on screen and our affection for one of his most epoch-making characters, that remain undimmed by time.

Fortunately, despite its stranger-than-fiction premise, this thriller does have a handful of interesting ideas outside of the realm of true crime. Unfortunately, it also all but abandons those ideas in its messy third act, making for a mixed bag of a movie.

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.

Marvel's latest movie feels just as sanitized and safe as its other products, even with its killer cast and talented director Destin Daniel Cretton.

A well-meaning, expertly acted film, it unfortunately drowns in its own sorrow.

The violence is intense, and at two hours and 12 minutes the movie is too long and the pace too leisurely to sustain it, but I wasn’t bored. When in doubt, bring on the Troglodytes.

Those looking to re-experience the tear-jerking emotional heft of Inside Out won’t find that here, although the climatic scenes are sweet. It’s less joy than it is moderate satisfaction.

No matter how you regard its limited commercial possibility for success, there is nothing funny about Tully. Having forewarned you, I must add that suffering through her never-ending agony is less daunting than it has to be when it is Theron who is doing it for you.

Certainly not a bad movie, but a disappointing one. It knocks itself out trying to break your heart, but it's too starched and blow-dried for its own good. Maybe if it had manipulated me less, it would have moved me more.

The Gorge is chaotic and fun, despite some narrative and design hiccups. It’s too bad it’s not heading for the big screen. This is the sort of thing you want to experience with a lively audience with the sound turned all the way up.

Despite reaching the conclusion of the first novel’s plot, Dune: Part Two deliberately leaves an assortment of dangling threads that will leave you either tantalized or frustrated.

Add up the ingredients and you get a mostly enjoyable dog-eared formula for escapist entertainment without critical perception.

Has brief moments of levity and charm, but mostly it's depressing.

As sports biopic, Gran Turismo is solid. As a video game adaptation, it feels like some of the key elements still haven’t downloaded.

It does have a dark, satisfyingly sinister feeling of gothic creepiness that I somewhat reluctantly admit appealed to my enjoyment of perversity as entertainment.

Mr. Gere is miscast as Eddie, too naturally regal in bearing to be the screw-up he’s supposed to be, and for a broken man, he still moves with the same confidence as his younger self did in "An Officer and a Gentleman."

Sure, it’s a silly R-rated raunchy comedy in which we get both testicle and poop jokes (classic). But it’s proudly open hearted and a funny, if absurd, champion of friendship.

This gruesome thriller set in a fogbound insane asylum is incomprehensible and fatally flawed, but having said all of that, I will also say this: It never seems anything less than the work of a skillful film buff. Mr. Scorsese may be a smart aleck, but he’s a professional smart aleck.

A family epic that is strangely ineffectual and disappointingly underwhelming.

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.

As the corpses pile up on every side of the law, it reminds me more of those nasty, sometimes laughable Charles Bronson genre vehicles from the 1980s, buried under 50 feet of snow. Call it "Death Wish" with icicles.

Øvredal also coaxes mostly strong performances from his young cast. This is especially true of Zoe Colletti (Showtime’s City on a Hill) as protagonist Stella.