The too-blunt comedy defangs the film. As does the irritating voiceover from the Rolling Stone reporter, played Scoot McNary, which breaks a cardinal rule of filmmaking: show, don't tell.

Bloated, boring, repetitive, draining.

No cliché is left unturned, and Gordon compensates with slick action.

It's impossible to quantify what it takes to be a quality director – but damn, you know it when you see it. And you'll see it clear and strong in Paint It Black, a staggeringly impressive feature directing debut for actress Amber Tamblyn.

The role is a beast, and Cranston, in a tour de force of touching gravity and aching humanism, gives it everything he's got. It's astounding to watch, and an award-caliber performance from an actor who keeps springing surprises.

It's true that the film is covering old ground – the shocking originality of the first Alien is a one-time thing. No worries. I'd rank Alien: Covenant with the best of the series, right after the first two chapters. Fans are going to freak out. Join in.

The pleasures here come almost exclusively from Schumer and Hawn playing off each other like the rock stars of comedy they are.

If you’re longing for a delicious romantic romp to take your mind off the world going to hell in hand basket, Paris Can Wait is it.

That's what Blanchett is doing here. She adds a human element. She can turn anything into art. Even artistic navel-gazing.

An epic bore that believes if you make a movie long and loud and repetitive enough, audiences will conclude it's saying something profound. Wrong.

A meandering but altogether mesmerizing film from writer-director Azazel Jacobs that finds buoyant comedy and touching gravity in the ashes of a relationship.

There are bumps along the way, transitions from one medium to another will do that, but this filmmaker and his fierce foursome won't be done till they take a piece out of you. It's a gripping psychological thriller with a sting in its tail.

How do you screw this up? You've got three leading actresses – Susan Sarandon, Naomi Watts and Elle Fanning – who are usually worth watching in anything. But 3 Generations is pushing it. Even nurturing talent can't breathe life into a script that is completely D.O.A.

It's a paranoid thriller without suspense, urgency or a single new thing to say.

Hanging with Quill and his mercenary space misfits is still everything you'd want in a wild summer ride.

Free Fire may suggest Wheatley is deservedly moving up the industry food chain – it's executive-produced by Martin Scorsese – but it also merely a formal exercise, albeit one buoyed by the sense that the director is having the time of his life behind the camera.

Unforgettable is definitely the wrong title for a movie you want to erase from your memory the second it ends.

The actors do what they can to keep their heads above the sudsy script. No go. It’s distressing to see a great subject go wrong in the right hands.

Cynthia Nixon is simply magnificent as Dickinson, finding the sharp wit and searching mind of a woman out of step with the codes and formalities of her time.

A spellbinder that features Richard Gere in one of his best performances ever.

The Fate of the Furious doesn't have a thought in its head to match the best of Bond and Bourne. What it is, in every sense of the term, is insanely entertaining.

Hunnam is slow to grab us as Fawcett, but the implosive force of his performance soon takes hold.

There are times when Braff and Melfi hint at the darkness of a world that ignores seniors by making them invisible. But this new version of Going in Style sells uplift so hard it loses touch with reality – and any genuine reason for being.

Damned if this wildly witty and surprisingly touching swing at movie madness and gender politics isn't on to something deep.

Graduation, isn't quite on the landmark level of his searing 2007 abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," but this gripping film still sizzles with Mungiu's social-realist concern for people who believe they can't raise their position based on merit alone. In that sense, the filmmaker is working on a universal level.

What makes the film worthwhile, despite its flaws, are those scenes of human and animal desperation that encapsulate the horrors of war.

Alas, this isn't the Trump-trolling toon you're looking for. People may search for protest art hidden among the potty jokes, but the closest they're going to get to a subtextual statement is the Beatles' "Blackbird" on the soundtrack – and that's been repurposed as a lullaby.

Let's hope that Ridley Scott follows his own blueprint better in the upcoming "Alien: Covenant." The dull and derivative Life is no competition. It's DOA.

Missed opportunities hobble the film as a whole, but Harrelson is in there pitching his best game. That alone is a sight to see.

This movie hits all the wrong notes.

It looks the same, moves the same and sounds the same (those Alan Menken songs!) as the original. But some of the magic has gone M.I.A.

The filmmaker is walking a creative tightrope. How do you resist that? My advice is: don't. There are a few fits and starts, and a palette switch from black-and-white to color. But Ozon is onto something about nationalism, borders and a hatred of the other that's as timely as Trump.

If "Get Out" reminds folks that you can smuggle intelligent social commentary and timely conversation-starters in to theaters via explosive genre packages, then Ducournau's feature debut doubles down on the notion. In terms of the female-body politic, it's an art-horror dirty bomb.

This Trainspotting sequel may feel like that for many who raised a fist in unison with the first film's f--k-the-world defiance. There's a hard-won wisdom at work here, as well as an aching sense of loss. Any way you look at it, T2 takes a piece out of you.

It's pure cinema, a hypnotic and haunting dream that tempts us to jump in and get lost. Do it.

The dialogue is clunky, the A-list actors are slumming and, yeah, you've seen it all before. But Kong: Skull Island is a creature feature that's damn near irresistible.

A tonally uneven mishmash of Wes Anderson quirk, John Cassavetes guts-spilling and The Breakfast Club, all of which somehow manages to dampen the talents of its crack ensemble cast.

It would be easy to write off Before I Fall as the Groundhog Day of teen weepies – but something raw keeps breaking through the formula to pull us in.

This may be one of the few rockumentaries since Stop Making Sense to tap the cinematic potential of sound and vision in a way that feels genuinely collaborative and borderline transcendental.

If Jackman and Stewart are serious about this being their mutual X-Men swan song, they could not have crafted a more heartfelt valedictory.

What's lucky is that no matter what language it's in, My Life as Zucchini never sacrifices what’s true for what’s trite and easier to sell. This is animation as an art form, inspiring and indelible.

A jolt-a-minute horroshow laced with racial tension and stinging satirical wit.

Charlie Day owns one of the highest-pitched male squeaks in the business and he puts it to hilarious use on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I could watch him in anything – but Fist Fight is pushing it, given that's it's always raining a storm of comic clichés that quickly drowns any semblance of audience goodwill.

It plays like like a video game in which the goal is to kill as many of these green-blooded monsters as you can before time's up. It's fun for about 10 minutes, and then the tedium seeps in.

This is not so much a horror movie as a lookbook for one – an assemblage of scary-flick odds and ends slotted next to each other with the thinnest of connective tissue.

While director Peter Chelsom (Funny Bones, Serendipity) can functionally guide his cast through their derring-do and dewy-eyed paces, neither he nor screenwriter Allan Loeb can steer the whole endeavor out of Clichéville U.S.A.

This, however, is not Mamet – it's a beast of roaring stupidity that devours everything in its path, including the veteran filmmaker.

It's a tender love story that never goes soft on its provocations. It's a defiant cry from the heart.

Remember how the original John Wick snuck up and wowed us in 2014? Now he's back and better than ever. John Wick: Chapter 2 is the real deal in action-movie fireworks – it's pure cinema, an adrenaline rocket of image and sound that explodes on contact.

Don't obsess over the rough edges. The Lego Batman Movie rises on its own goofball spirits. Wanna get nuts and shake your sillies out? This is the place to do it.

If crap movies carried penalties for inflicting torture on audiences, then Rings would merit a death sentence.

For some folks, such retrograde pleasures have lost their bloody-knuckled charm. If this is still your bag all these years later and you wish the 1990s had never ended, however, then everyone wins.

It's unmissable and unforgettable.

A dazzling, darkly funny, quietly devastating human drama from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A manipulative script about dog reincarnation that whacks your emotions like a piñata – that's forgivable. Not this. It shouldn't happen to a dog.

As a movie, Gold is slim pickings. But McConaughey keeps you riveted.

Diesel has chosen to keep selling stupid to audiences who are inexplicably eager to gobble it up. Damn shame.

Like Apple founder Steve Jobs, Kroc – who died in 1984 – had a genius for marketing the talent of others. Is that a lesser gift? Not in these United States. Not then. And not in the age of Trump. Set more than a half century ago, The Founder proves to be a movie for a divisive here and now. Step right up. You might just learn something. God help us.

This might have degenerated into a cheap gimmick if not for the way Shyamalan lets us inside the childhood trauma that pushed his tormentor into multiple personalities.

Huppert's brilliance is indisputable, her performance alternately playful and deeply moving.

Monster Trucks is a wreck, fueled by the crazy belief that noise and repetition can disguise the lack of credible writing, directing, acting and FX.

Horror-movie fans often have put up with a lot to get their requisite amount of fright per month, and that tolerance limit is seriously tested by this slapdash attempt to introduce a new slasher hall-of-fame character into the mix.

Like the four franchise fillers that preceded it, Underworld: Blood Wars is undoubtedly impervious to bad reviews. What it needs is a stake through the heart.

I, Daniel Blake, a new Loach landmark which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, sums up everything that has kept he muckraking motor running for decades.

Adam Driver gives one of the loveliest and least likely to be rewarded performances of the year in Paterson. Why least likely, you ask? Because Driver's indelibly moving portrayal is so lived-in and lyrical you hardly recognize it as acting.

Despite its grandiose title, 20th Century Women unfolds as series of small moments – some hilarious and heartfelt, other silly and sorrowful – that help define the characters and their time.

Lots of movies are labeled as "inspirational" – Hidden Figures truly earns the right to the term.

There’s enough here for half a dozen movies, and you can feel the severe overcrowding. But you can't keep your eyes off it.

If you're looking for the best and most beguiling foreign-language film of the year, you'll find it in Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, a German father-daughter story that will leave you laughing and choking back tears, often simultaneously.

Evocative, mysterious and shot through with bruising humor and heartbreak, A Monster Calls gets you where you live and where there's no place to hide. There's magic in it.

By showing signs of intelligent life in a universe of diseased, digital drivel, Assassin's Creed stands above the herd of movies based on video games by default.

Almodóvar's admiration for Munro is not misplaced. Despite rough patches, Julieta morphs into a haunting and hypnotic tribute to both their talents.

Berg's unquestioning faith in law and order could have used, well, a little questioning. But there's no doubt about the worth of the movie as a well-earned tribute to the heroes and victims of a tragic event that may have just made Boston stronger.

No one with a genuine belief in the possibilities and mysteries of cinema would think of missing Silence. It's essential filmmaking from the church of Scorsese, a modern master who lives and breathes in the images he puts on screen.

Sing doesn't have the grit or the grace notes of Zootopia, which it resembles only in its concept of an animal kingdom.

The spectacle feels lifeless and what could have been a challenging moral provocation dissolves into sappy, feel-good pandering. Lawrence and Pratt deserve better. So do audiences.

The movie of Fences doesn't need Hollywood bells and whistles. This writer, this director and these actors are all the magnificence required to grab your attention and hold it.

The unholy mess that director David Frankel and screenwriter Allan Loeb have unleashed for the holidays strands an all-star cast...on a sinking ship that churns the waters from absurd to zombified with frequent stops at pretentious.

With the smashing Jones giving us a female warrior to rank with the great ones and a cast that knows how to keep it real even in a sci-fi fantasy, Rogue One proves itself a Star Wars story worth telling.

This pooped party brings you down from all the jokes that don't land and the flop sweat pouring off good actors whose forced cheer is exhausting.

Bare and Miele do more than track a remarkable career here; they reveal the essentials of what makes Benson unique. Any paparazzo with moxie can get into the action and shoot first. But what this shutterbug's eye arranges, sometimes in a split second, is the work of a singular craftsman with a rare gift: raising the click of a camera shutter to the level of art.

What makes La La Land such a hot miracle is how the passion for cinema and its possibilities radiates from every frame.

If The Eyes of My Mother is occasionally stylistic to a fault and ends way too abruptly, it's also the mark of someone who isn't afraid to make something that leaves scars.

Best Worst Thing brims over with moments of humor and heartbreak that reflect the feeling of knowing "we're what's new." This movie is more than good, pal. It's indispensable.

It plays like an opportunity missed.

Powered by a transfixing Portman, Larrain's film – one of the year's best – is appropriately hard to pin down and impossible to forget.

It simply does not have the courage of its crass convictions. There's a going-through-the-motions vibe to the whole affair.

Sound plays as crucial a role as visuals in replicating an authentic culture to drive the storytelling.

It's clear that Beatty, who has studied Hughes for decades, has an instinctive understanding of the man, from getting stuck on phrases he repeats endlessly to making deals he can't wait to run away from. No kids. No roots. Sex, movies and aviation are the only constants. Why? Beatty hints, but never tells us. But his performance, filled with comic bite and aching confusion, teases a much deeper portrait.

Sloane is a nasty piece of work. Yet Chastain draws us in, making us see what the character keeps inside by the sheer force of her fireball performance. There are times when Miss Sloane plays like a pilot for a TV series. No knock on that. If Chastain stars, I'm in.

What a handsome empty shell of a movie Allied is.

The young star, maturing nicely past the boyish enthusiasm he showed in "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Marigold Hotel" films, enters a new phase of his career with fierce commitment. Lion is one from the heart.

If nothing else, The Edge of Seventeen should make Steinfeld a shoo-in for the teen movie young-restless-and-hilarious Hall of Fame. At the very least, the humanity she gives this young woman on the verge helps the movie teeter on the edge of being an instant classic.

Younger jacks up the action in the last third, but the air goes out of a fight movie when you can see the next jab coming.

No film this year has moved me more with its humor, heart and humanity.

Ford hits it out of the park again in Nocturnal Animals, a stunning film noir that resonates with ghostly, poetic terror.

The real stars here are the beasts, supposedly ugly, weird and dangerous, but paragons of FX creativity in service of genuine ideas.

Huppert, an fearless actress (see The Piano Teacher), gives a performance that's a riveting mix of carnal and chilly – you can't take your eyes off her.