It’s disappointing and actually kind of cynical in its unwillingness to try anything even vaguely innovative with these beloved characters.

What makes “The Wrecking Crew” worth seeing is what the cast and filmmakers do with the material. Simply put, this movie is better than its synopsis suggests, though not good enough to entirely overcome the familiarity of the component parts and the alternately jokey and sentimental tone (which is harder to pull off than studio executives seem to think).

Nighy is, of course, exceptional in fleshing out what could have been merely a set of irascible tics and traits. And the Andersonisms, while not particularly exhilarating, are not thematically inapt. But this is a film best consumed by those who don’t mind “slight.”

A charmingly filthy, albeit rather amateurish stab at making a macho action-hero persona out of Moore's stand-up sensibility.

Just when you thought the zombie genre was out of ideas, along comes Colm McCarthy’s smart and engaging The Girl with All the Gifts, a film with echoes of George A. Romero, Danny Boyle, and Robert Kirkman but one that also feels confidently its own creation, a unique take on responsibility, adulthood, and a new chapter in evolution.

Expect to be moved to tears during this reflective film as clear-eyed as Souza’s photo books, reliving the memories of dignity that once piloted the country and often pondering, “How could we have gone from this to Trump?”

Grief and loss can take hold of your soul, not unlike a possession; what Clapin explores here is the temptation of reconnection, and what that oft-impossible yearning can do to a person.

You’ll be able to figure out where Run is headed pretty quickly, but that doesn’t detract from the precise thrills and campy fun along the way.

It’s all the more disappointing when a techno-driven montage of dark imagery kicks in or some other choice that feels cheaper than this movie needed to be. No Man of God ultimately sinks into the shadows of so many similar and superior projects, and it feels cheap. It just doesn’t have enough to add to the conversation or a strong enough artistic POV to justify its shallowness.

This is a movie that is too frenetic and basic to make a substantial impression. I appreciated a kernel of observation here and there, but not enough for me to give it a whole-hearted embrace.

Nina Conti’s delightfully crude and disarmingly heartwarming directorial debut, “Sunlight,” adds an intriguing hook to the two-wayward-souls-on-a-road-trip subgenre.

It’s not an especially deep script in terms of character, but there’s something inspiring about seeing a comedy production in which everyone is on the same page, harmoniously working off each other’s personalities like a choir.

Nancy exhibits a seriousness of purpose that’s rare in American movies today.

Watching the scientists research the mysteries of humpback whales is an inspiring tribute to the power of curiosity, purpose, and the triumphant joy of adding one more piece to the jigsaw puzzle of knowledge.

As an evocation of on-the-ground political reality, The Final Year is a a solid and often entertaining work in much the same wheelhouse as the durable political documentary "The War Room."

On paper, Wild Canaries sounds like it has all the ingredients for a reasonably diverting comedy, but they just never quite pull together into a cohesive or entertaining whole.

It isn’t bad, per se, but I just never felt the emotional impact it's clearly hoping to achieve.

As awe-inspiring as this footage is, it’s every bit as amazing to envision how the filmmakers had to prepare for framing these moments with impeccable precision.

While there can be an artificiality to monologues, the raw and complex contradictions each character contends with are rooted in emotions that never once ring false, and the actors bring an authenticity that transcends treacle.

To be fair, “Smile 2” does lose some of its many thematic threads about how fans feel like they own pop stars and how so many of them are asked to bury their trauma and just smile, but enough remain in the foundation of the piece to get it across the finish line.

The tone starts out bleak and steadily darkens. The movie is sometimes fascinating, though—particular in the early stretches, before the dominos of catastrophe start to fall, and the little details of the characters' relationship and their world are replaced by a constant fear of getting arrested or killed.

While this isn't another Garbus documentary, she’s made a film with all the power of great non-fiction storytelling, and found a way to make the emotional message of this story hit home in a way that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

With robust direction in an incredibly confined space and Laurent’s phenomenal work, Oxygen should feel like a breath of fresh air for people looking for something to watch on Netflix. (Sorry.)

Ultimately, Mortimer and Rosen’s film succeeds most as a sincere, wonderstruck tribute to a fellow climber. And if glorifying a sport as lethal as alpinism itself runs a kind of risk, there’s no denying the heart-in-mouth thrill of watching Leclerc in the zone, following an impossible dream and, on his own terms, touching the sublime.

The most enchanting thing about “ChaO” isn’t necessarily its hyperpoptimism, but the many little ways in which its breezy and arresting style reflects its creators’ lightly held Utopianism.

Barbershop: The Next Cut belongs, as the entire series does, to Cedric the Entertainer.

The Book of Life bedazzles your eyes and buoys your spirits as it treads upon themes most commonly associated with the macabre universe of Tim Burton.

Gleefully high-concept and defiantly low-budget two-hander.

The number of important, enduring 1960s and early ‘70s songs that a group of studio musicians known as The Wrecking Crew brought to life is staggering.

Titely’s feature debut does an admirable job condensing the show into a powerful hour-and-change saga.

Generally speaking, the museum seems like a modest, but vividly-detailed freak show.

A documentary with a defeated spirit, but with fleeting glimmers about why the oppressed keep playing.

Still, you can’t fault a family entertainment extravaganza too much if it actually goes out of its way to integrate the ensemble of a fairy tale in an Old World European setting with a diverse array of supporting players. Branagh deserves an extra bravo just for that. And we mean it sincerely.

Zahn is excellent in these tender moments, demonstrating his acute ability to imbue such stories with a deep well of feeling without a false or exaggerated note. There’s also something really beautiful about a dad watching his daughter excel.

The case itself ultimately proves less an involving puzzle for the audience than a lesson for Holmes in humility.

Worth seems to get it, all of it, in a way that films of this type rarely do, which makes it all the more irritating when it appears to retreat from the implications of the way it's telling its complex narrative.

Justin G. Dyck’s very smart movie lures viewers in with its clever concept and instantly strong characters only to present them with the kind of nightmare fuel that would impress Clive Barker.

If “Palestine 36” is indeed a filmic history lesson, it’s one worth sitting through. That a traditionally realized historical drama with impeccable production value and consistently effective performances centers the Palestinian perspective makes for an essential endeavor.

It's suspenseful, but also hilarious.

By expanding the play’s world, Gaines opens himself up to new scrutiny. Beetz does the best she can with a thinly drawn character, but it’s hard not to wonder what The Dutchman would look like if Gaines showed any real interest in her.

Gabriel isn't a perfect movie, but it's a great reminder of what movies can do, and used to do often, until American movies decided to concentrate mainly on spectacle and franchise building and leave characterization to TV.

Blink Twice sucker punches the audience with its sexual violence and then fails to find intelligence or dexterity in its handling of it or any of the themes running adjacent.

In spite of its abundant action — and for all the interspecies mashups, this is as much an action-adventure animated movie as it is a funny-animal animated movie — is a pretty relaxing experience for the adult viewer.

Mary Tyler Moore knew how to play confident, happy, honest women early in her career, and it is good to see how she finally learned how to be one.

While it’s a bit disheartening to see such a unique performer given such a traditional bio-doc, what comes through in “Life is Short” is the affection for its subject from pretty much everyone he’s ever worked with.

Speak No Evil is a throwback to the 1980s-’90s era of medium-budget thrillers like “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” “Unlawful Entry,” and “Fatal Attraction,” in which representatives of supposedly respectable bourgeoisie society were menaced by dangerous outsiders who smelled weakness in them and/or wanted to punish them for their sins, perceived or real.

Uniformly strong performances help ground the story. Tremblay, who showed instincts beyond his years in the devastating 2015 drama “Room,” provides both a sweetness and an intelligence to his 10-year-old character that make him accessible even when he’s wearing an astronaut helmet to hide his face.

What’s fascinating about Jimi: All Is By My Side is not only its decision to show us this particular chapter in Hendrix’s life, but also the way it teases out the shadings in a famous figure we only think we know so well.

The dimension of humanity only buttresses the humor.

The resulting episodic narrative is light on dialogue and heavy on ambiance; it's precise to an unsettling degree since a number of scenes start and stop whenever Lizzy can feel her way in and out of them.

Borgman can sometimes frustrate but it is an accomplished piece of work, driven by a uniquely malevolent tonal balance and two fantastic central performances. It sometimes simmers when I wish it would boil over but damn if it isn’t fascinating to watch the water bubble.

Minihan’s stylish film taps into our deepest fear as women, queer folks, or survivors of domestic abuse that the person we love may be the reason we end up in a body bag.

Burman's film languishes on the chaos of the events, and it can never be accused of not having some ideas about fatherhood and legacy. But the humor of this rambling film runs dry to the point of unpalatable.

A welcome surprise for sports cinema, The Phenom handles itself like Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" when exploring the psychology of a Lebron James or Johnny Manziel-like sports sensation.

The plot description is a good old-fashioned okey-doke, a distraction that lulls you with its absurdity so you’ll be blindsided by the lean, suspenseful and effective movie director Jon Watts delivers.

Here, [Ruben] lets loose with many of the goofy, creepy impulses that make him such a welcome voice in crowd-pleasing horror, creating a giddy spirit with his long roster of future household names.

Religion can provide some solace, but it can also complicate matters. Science can explain the natural processes, but even then, it cannot account for every detail in every situation. To Dust is about those contradictions and, in the end, about the ultimate one: that, to some questions, the only logical and spiritual answer is that there isn't one — except whatever we make of it.

At its best, The Lost Arcade captures the sense of competition, community and commitment by these people, many of whom saw Chinatown Fair as not just an escape but a home.

In its lumpy-porridge way, this film makes a better case than any other Marvel picture for the notion that quarter-billion-dollar-budgeted, CGI-festooned slabs of multimedia synergy can be art, too, provided they're made by an artist with a vision, and said artist appears to be in control of at least part of the production.

This intimate Irish drama travels a road that'll be familiar to anyone who's ever seen a film about addiction, or known an addict, but the fact that all stories of addiction are essentially the same doesn't blunt its impact.

There are certain varieties of whimsy that either click with you or don’t. I point this out because what didn’t click for me in “Brian and Charles,” a new comedy directed by Jim Archer, might do something for you.

Even with the world-building and direction making for an immersive experience, at times the script gets tangled in its own complexity and “The Kitchen” bites off more than it can chew.

If the delightfully nutty “M3GAN” was a cautionary tale about the perils of relying too heavily on technology, “Missing” ends up being a celebration of its possibilities.

The movie’s prime mover, Rogen, is a doge of stoner humor, and he shows incredible discipline in this film by saving the first weed joke for twenty minutes in. I commend him for that.

You shouldn't watch Shin Godzilla for Godzilla alone. He's not really the star of the film—Yaguchi and the rest of his human adversaries are. They credibly resist the end of the world with ingenuity and teamwork, making Shin Godzilla just as winningly optimistic as it is pleasurably eccentric.

A single frame of “The Imaginary” can outshine the mass-produced, visually uninspired animation in some of the American offers targeting the same demographic.

"The Last Movie Star" paid tribute to Burt Reynolds' career, but also appreciated what he brought to the table as an old man. The Life Ahead operates the same way, allowing Loren similar grace and space.

I wish the long-gestating dream had resulted in a better film. I don’t want to read too much into things that I only know second or third hand, but in a sense Peterloo shows the pitfalls of the dream project.

Sometimes the walls don’t have to be closing in to create an oppressive atmosphere. Sometimes it’s just enough to have the wallpaper closing in.

So, no, this is not a frivolous film. There are a few surfing sequences that provide a rush of “whoa!” adrenaline, and some breathtaking Hawaiian landscapes on display. But the movie is a character study more than anything else.

Throughout Clara’s Ghost you can’t help but think that you’re watching a quaint home video that would appeal to the members of the subject family only — the unnecessary square aspect ratio certainly doesn’t help with the amateurish feel of the whole thing.

Somehow, Yamanaka finds a balance for her complicated character to navigate her tantrums and tender moments.

Devotion walks the tightropes between discord and harmony, hard lessons and heroic triumphs, and full-throated allyship and useless white guilt with aplomb.

It could hit harder, however, were its impact not diluted by the overly long runtime and uneven tone. For a movie that undercuts itself for its own amusement, however, intermittently successful is pretty good.

It’s commendable that the film is committed to the character-based world building evident in the first “Creed.” With this sequel, however, the Creed franchise seems destined to travel the same road the Rocky franchise did; the intensely personal and original vision of its creator is slowly being corrupted by the seductive demons of fan service.

Hedges’ film is stronger in its first half, when it’s an understated character drama, than in its second half, when it morphs into a contrived crime thriller. But the performances remain uniformly strong and hold the story together, even as it threatens to spin out of control.

With all its humor (and there is a ton), Wiener-Dog, following the journey of a dachshund as it is shuffled from owner to owner, is one of Solondz's sharpest visions of futility.

Frequently horrifying and never less than absorbing, Rabin, the Last Day is a meticulously observant portrait of a broken society.

Had The Founder focused solely on Kroc’s relationship with the McDonald brothers, it might have been one of the great intimate, sour character studies of recent times.

Nelson pulls off something strangely lovely and generous on the whole, a clear-eyed film with something to say on the kinds of lives many would rather not talk about.

This is a fascinating story. Counterproductive style choices get in the way of the telling, though.

It’s steeped in traditional cultural locales and details, yet feels bracingly modern with the help of dazzling special effects and innovative action sequences.

Exquisitely researched, beautifully put together, with that celebratory knowledgeable chorus of voices pouring over us, what Spike Lee's documentary really is is an act of love.

Wander Darkly is not some misty-eyed golden-hued stroll down memory lane. The title of the film is eloquent. Darkness threatens every moment.

Anderson’s accomplishment here defies easy comparison. It’s not a comeback. It’s a beginning.

Even for a movie about a theatrical sport, focused around an actor who wants to learn what it's like to wrestle for real, You Cannot Kill David Arquette rings far too much like a vanity project.

By Sidney Lumet won’t just make you want to revisit his works but reappreciate the role of a great director in cinema.

If you’re a maven or even vaguely curious there’s a lot of production value to be derived here. The human story that the filmmakers want to drape over their atmosphere, though, never quite connects.

It took a second screening to better appreciate what the Zellners brought to the screen, but for some, that might not be enough to get past some of the movie’s weirder notes.

Stahl’s acting has always had a quiet power, communicating roiling emotional distress under an often vaguely menacing stillness. This gives a fresh perspective to Ryan’s eventual impotence as he negotiates his new identity.

There's not only nothing new here, there's nothing convincing either. And if I'm supposed to judge Bumblebee based on how well it succeeds at what it tries to do (rather than what came before it), it's still not very good.

Holy Spider’s rendition of this grisly tale is powerful and precise, commendably lacking the sensationalistic tone of some serial killer movies.

The film can be smothered by the obligations of its plot, but it's still beautiful and original, extremely funny, and sometimes very moving.

At 105 minutes, Elstree 1976 became a bit of a slog for me. Visually, the talking heads-style of documentary can be very dull.

The Cold Lands is less a story than an experience, and that, as such, anything one might say about it could be considered a spoiler.

Megan Leavey is that rare breed: a war movie that actually shows something new about war, a sub-culture within a familiar sub-culture, the world of the military's K-9 units. For that alone, it should be applauded.

Coppola's approach to the subject is largely impartial; depending on the viewer, this can seem refreshing or off-putting.

To reveal too many details of this “Law & Order” meets “Jurassic Park” procedural, especially what eventually happens to Sue, sort of dilutes the thriller aspect of the story. I suggest resisting the urge to Google if you plan to see the doc. I did and was glad to be in the dark.