Characters overflow on the screen, crowding out emotional investment, and there is a severely misplaced emphasis on the power of special effects — many characters appear to be entirely digitized, and none has much screen impact.

Gore is his own form of renewable energy. He is tireless, never wavers in his devotion to his crusade — an apt term in “Truth to Power,” which invokes Pope Francis and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The movie’s money line has Gore (he repeats it in virtually every interview) invoking the Book of Revelation.

Result[s] in pleasant but forgettable results.

The movie is mostly gore free and tame by the standards of modern horror movies, and some of the familiar visual touches borrow greedily from the James Wan school. But it’s smartly written and well-acted.

It’s not an easy watch: It might be the darkest pop music movie ever made. But it largely succeeds at its main goal, which it not to entertain, but make you think.

Suffice it to say that as James is pushed into the real world, the real world is more than willing to meet him halfway, in a way that is touching and charming, and at the same time plausible.

Unlike with the series' other sequels, this one finally feels like it was worth the wait.

Waters' novel was content to let the evil within Hundreds Hall remain shapeless and nameless. Director Lenny Abrahamson's (Room) movie wants to give it definite shape, and even a name, though the movie is not better for it.

You could call Juliet, Naked a romantic comedy, and you could probably predict with some accuracy how the relationships play out. But it's the details here that count, and they paint a substantive and truthful picture of middle age, and the way it is acquainted with regret and failure.

The ability of political power to impose narratives, says Chappaquiddick, has always been conditional on our willingness to believe them.

This is an intriguingly weird, gender inversion of the Cinderella fantasy at the root of Pretty Woman.

It’s a funny concept, helped by Marshall-Green’s blended look of pleasure and consternation at being the vessel for an invincibility that he enjoys but cannot control.

Patti Cake$, in the end, is a little pat, but it doesn’t take its underdog, band-of-misfits formula too far, and Macdonald’s infectious grit carries the day.

The cast is uniformly fine, although Rooney Mara is stuck playing a composite of various women that feels, well, like a composite of various women.

There's something to be said for the movie's heavy pour of mommy noir — a jigger of Bombeck, a dash of Highsmith. It's a cocktail with a kick.

A movie that succeeds as a tearjerker, if you can withstand those pushy moments (and there are a few) when it kind of makes you want to hate kindness.

The movies may be frivolous (and stitched together from British TV shows), but they are unique — they have an astute understanding of mature male friendship that is rare, even in a male-dominated industry.

It’s a movie touching on labor issues that some may find a bit labored, but for the patient viewer there are insights — Leigh is giving us a history lesson that makes some pointed nods toward the current Brexit debate.

The movie sticks to formula, and spells everything out.

Ben is Back, operating with the flexibility of fiction, flirts with the idea that a mother’s intuition and love can be decisive, even as it acknowledges the pitiless, relentless nature of the disease. Or maybe all the movie wants to propose is that miracles — rare as they are — can happen.

Game Night is not the greatest comedy in the world, but it has a great grasp of the ingredient that makes comedy work, identified centuries ago as brevity.

What stands out, though, is the dynamic between Dana and Ali. It’s been some time since I’ve seen sisters drawn this well and this convincingly.

If you're a great fan of either Hopkins or Baldwin, or a wilderness aficionado, The Edge may prove to be entertaining. But for everyone else, it's a pretty long walk in the woods. [26 Sep 1997, p.F10]

Marshall overcomes some early stiffness and flat-footed storytelling and evolves into an engaging courtroom drama, where witness-stand theatrics and Perry Mason flourishes give the movie needed narrative momentum.

Here, Leitch uses brevity to do for witty action what it famously does for wit alone.

Khan and Macdonald make it watchable.

This glossy, handsomely budgeted musical deploys topflight talent throughout, from casting to choreography to songwriting to animation and modern digital effects, and though it achieves a Poppins-like level of hyper-competence, it lacks the most elusive attribute we associate with Mary — magic.

Seal, though, makes for a poor fall guy. Liman had it right in that first scene: The turbulence in Seal’s life was of his own making.