For all the film's flaws, this is a war story told with passion about a band of brothers that still has the power to inspire.

Seven Years in Tibet, however flawed, has feeling and purpose. It bears witness.

If you tamp down your expectations -- those gaping plot holes are dangerous! -- there is a storm of scary fun to be had in this Scandinavian splatterfest.

Recipe for nutso fun: Mix Zach Galifianakis with Robert Downey Jr. Apply the same mold John Hughes used for "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Have Todd Phillips stir with wack-ass abandon. Don't worry about missing ingredients, like plot. Serve to an audience ready to lap it up.

As a movie, Tag is all over the place, with gags too hit-and-miss to cohere into anything truly memorable. But the partytime atmosphere – as if "Dodgeball" mated with "Game Night" – might be just what you're looking for on a hot summer night. With these actors, there’s no downside to watching them let it rip.

There are times when this mindbending bromance actually achieves a twisted tenderness. There are also times when you'd like to ride Manny's farts to the nearest exit. It's your call.

When the script sags, Wain and producer Judd Apatow rely on a top team of actors to keep you laughing.

Prom has its modest delights, chiefly its young cast.

Helgeland's script is hit-and-miss, not on the Oscar-winning level of his L.A. Confidential. Still, Hardy is a show all by himself, an actor flying without a net and having a ball. You will too.

Run, Fat Boy, Run stays out of sitcom quicksand long enough to make you think that Schwimmer has a knack for this comedy-directing thing.

RocknRolla is a kickass crime drama that just doesn't know to quit while it's ahead.

Thanks to the fleet direction of Niki Caro and no-bull performances by the boys, notably Carlos Pratts as the team's best runner and Ramiro Rodriguez as the worst. Along the way, McFarland, USA gives us a vital sense of hardscrabble lives and dreams of glory deferred. All cheers here are fully earned.

This movie, with its flashbacks to past sins and traumas, rests squarely on Berry, a mesmerizer who makes every moment count.

Fast Five will push all your action buttons, and some you haven't thought of. So what if you hate yourself in the morning.

Shepherd wants to say something profound about the effect of a deceitful government on human values. But it's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.

When Short is onscreen, a movie that provides only fitful laughter bubbles over into bliss.

Soul Men is a chance to salute these masters of mirth and music. Take it.

Dench and Nighy are class personified. The secret here is merely to luxuriate in the pleasure of their company.

Whatever you think of Dubya, he has balls. The movie doesn't.

In telling a tale of love across time, Aronofsky is sometimes guilty of creating arty, pretentious psychobabble. But in visual terms, he's trying to expose his own raw, romantic heart. Folly? Maybe. But a risk worth taking.

On the waves, The Finest Hours finally finds its sea legs and delivers an old-school adventure based on a heroic deliverance that deserves its day in the sun.

If you’re willing to be patient, the characters become richer, the narrative takes more risks and the set pieces are more enthralling, like an engrossing disco sequence and a lumbering car chase in giant, period-accurate sedans.

Hallelujah isn’t a definitive, life-spanning doc on Cohen’s life, nor does it claim to be, but the tale of “Hallelujah” serves as a metaphor for Cohen’s life.

Starting with the French revolution and ending with Monsieur Bonaparte’s no-bang-all-whimper exit from this mortal coil, the director’s sweeping, swaggering, occasionally stumbling history lesson is nothing more than an attempt to conjure up the road-show movie magic of yesteryear.

What you won’t be bowled over by, however, is the storytelling, which makes Missing Link the weakest link in Laika’s chain of movies to date.

You can kill the vibe of Minghella’s film with nitpicking, but Fanning rides the movie home to glory. She is simply sensational.

The rousing life that Malek brings to this extraordinary recreation deserves all the cheers it gets. Screw the film’s flaws — you don’t want to miss his performance.

The pity is that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark will mostly be seen by jaded genre completists and nostalgic fortysomethings. Wrong demographic. You owe it to your kids to take them to this. It’s training-wheels horror done right.

Thanks to the comic tornado at its center, Isn’t It Romantic is still your best bet for a Valentine’s date at the movies. You could do worse.

What does matter, besides the collection of deranged characters who can’t escape their limitations, is the southern-fried atmosphere so resonantly captured by DP Steven Meizler (Contagion).

Bahrani’s take on Balram’s present-day circumstances is eventually so restricted to the beginning and end of the film that it begins to feel like a foregone conclusion, rather than like the curiosity that it is.

But this is Washington's show, his Scarface, if you will, and his smiling, seductive monster is a thrilling creation that gives Training Day all the bite it needs.

The movie’s not quite a fight-scene masterclass, though compared to much else on offer from studio action of the moment, it sometimes feels like one. It’s solid entertainment — refreshing, even, for finding ways to navigate the familiar pivots on its own terms.

At 134 minutes, Grindelwald can feel like an overload of homework on which we’ll we tested later. Fine for Pottermores, but a trial for us Muggles.

Levinson wants nothing less than to capture the hope and despair of the American dream through the saga of one family — his family. It’s a grand ambition. But the film, though exquisitely crafted, lacks the political, spiritual and sociological depth to realize it. What Avalon does offer are rich period details, abundant scenes of humor and heartbreak and outstanding performances.

You Don’t Know Me, directed by Ursula Macfarlane (who made the 2019 Harvey Weinstein exposé Untouchable), doesn’t quite know what to do with this tension, saving much of its complexity for the waning moments rather than giving its heroine’s story deeper shading from the start. But it remains a visually engaging portrait that depicts Smith as more than just a little girl lost.

The movie is too much, too long, but not lacking in its glories. To find them, follow Harley. She’s leading the way.

Witherspoon -- though miles from the keen satire of "Election" -- stays one sharp cookie even as her film crumbles.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. But first you have to cut through the noise.

Too crude for the kids and not crude enough for connoisseurs of the "Something About Mary" school of hair jism and balls caught in zippers, Osmosis Jones seems doomed to fall between the cracks.

Thunder Force is another of McCarthy’s collaborations with her partner, Ben Falcone (who has a small role), and bears all the effortless likability of a well-oiled machine, which cannot help but feel like a real limit on what McCarthy et. al. are capable of while also making a great case for how watchable these actors are when they lean in to being a little washed, a little lo-fi.

Emancipation is not better off for laying any claim to the actual man that it purports to be about. It is a historically dubious, morally incurious piece of genre fare that satisfies as entertainment and not much else. Pure Hollywood heroism.

Official Secrets remains a compelling tale of injustice on an individual and global level. It’s a shame that it hasn’t been told better, but give it points for being told at all.

The fans show up for this kind of movie to watch Neeson knock heads with bad guys, and Moland lets him rip. There’s no dawdling over sentiment. If you want to see a snowplow used as a weapon of mass destruction, you’ve come to the right movie.

As a film about two gay men in their middle age, Supernova does all the right things, anchors its sense of conviction in rhythms and silences, in-jokes and private conflicts, that cohere into a natural portrait of being together. In a word, it’s a solid, emotive drama, all the more so for the pain at the movie’s center being equally natural, valid, inevitable.

Whatever cause you pick, the idea of representing or recreating sex as a narrative device now feels like a relic of the distant past. No one seems to have informed French director Jacques Audiard of this demise, however, and there are moments when you watch Paris, 13th District and wonder if he’s singlehandedly trying to resuscitate the concept of old-fashioned screen shtupping.

Ultimately, The End is a cult movie that, until it eventually finds its cult, will be more admired than loved. It isn’t the last word on the pending apocalypse. It simply has the fortitude to go out singing.

If you wanted to get the scoop on the when, where and how the Bishop Sycamore scandal happened, BS High is a good primer.

I could have done more with the edgy humor of "Diner" and "Tin Men" and less of the mythmaking of "Avalon."

You could do way worse if you’re looking for a comic blast for the holidays.

In Seberg, Kristen Stewart gives a fully-inhabited, body-and-soul performance as a Hollywood casualty pushed beyond the limit. It’s such a stellar turn that she almost redeems this well-meaning but wobbly biopic — which earns points for trying to do her justice.

The something extra comes with watching Black and Blanchett match wits, especially the former; he radiates his signature comic moxie with glimmers of the dramatic chops he demonstrated in movies like "Bernie" (2011) and this year’s "Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot."

Coming 2 America is a good time — even more, it’s evidence that this actor-director pair are on the verge of something great.

The script by William Goldman (Misery) is based on fact, and when the movie sticks to fact (in an unprecedented bout of man-eating, the lions took just a few months to slaughter 130 bridge builders), the result is a hypnotic spectacle. The natives fear that the lions are unkillable demons. The hunters — Douglas and Kilmer spar splendidly in their roles — aim to prove them wrong. Hopkins, unfortunately, won’t leave well enough alone.

The script hits rough patches, especially when Phoebe and Wolf get it on, but the sisters cut to the heart.

The Boy Who Lived lacks the complexity and frisson that might have set it apart in an increasingly crowded documentary field, or pushed it beyond its feel-good parameters.

The mixture of the fantastic and the sublime that’s constitutes the Ghibli house tone is very much what Casarosa & co. aiming for, though the many, many bits of business onscreen suggests a homecooked meal of Disney/Pixar leftovers.

It bristles with the brute force he brought to 1986's underrated "52 Pick-Up."

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) does his duty by delivering eureka moments, a few greatest-hits sequences, some personal drama. The result is a perfectly functional look at a legend, one that will definitely make you want to put Exodus back into heavy playlist rotation. It’s still not enough.

Hard to ding something for wanting to be a cult rom-com so badly, especially when it’s so well-acted.

In a moral universe so keenly prescribed as this, the goodness we see in Cry Macho — goodness that seems to come with age or, as in the case of Marta and Mike both, after great sacrifice — resounds even as, scene to scene, the movie feels shaky.

If you’re seeking anything chewier about the pitfalls of modern dating, or con artistry in the age of social-media enabling, or what women want — from careers to friends, life, love — look elsewhere, pilgrim. But when Shlesinger opens the passenger door to her star vehicle and turns it to into a full-blown buddy comedy, the movie goes from being merely good on paper to being great onscreen.

Enough Burns pungency remains for She’s the One to qualify as a setback, not a drop into quicksand.

Statham is always worth watching. But it’s in its closing scenes that this particular vehicle, Wrath of Man, earns its keep.

Toothless satire relatively inoffensive and relentlessly mediocre.

The creative workaround does drop you into the middle of the shady-as-hell action in a way that, say, recordings playing over a close-up of a grainy photo does not. But it also starts to become more than a little distracting, and you find yourself tuning into the performances instead of the particulars of the case.

So what’s the problem? For starters, It: Chapter Two is an ass-numbing two hours and 50 minutes. That’s a good half-hour longer than Chapter One, proving the adage that less is definitely more. The dragging pace diminishes the film’s ability to hold us in its grip.

Harmless girlie trifle. Or at least it means to be.

The first-person passion is genuine. The form its being presented in feels slightly secondhand.

Caught Stealing is a decent wild ride through the past, filled with enough memory-bank fodder and hairpin turns to keep anyone engaged.

The actors have a ball with the fun and games. And you will, too, unless — as noted — you and the TV series have never crossed paths.

An uneven blend of mirth and malice.

Papillon pushes too hard with diminishing returns. Though Hunnam and Malek give it everything they’ve got, they’re denied the chance to make their characters as indelible as McQueen and Hoffman did.

It Lives Inside knows you can use the cover of monsters and things that go bump in your psyche to examine the real-life horrors. But when the message starts to eclipse the medium, it’s time to get out.

Unlike most revisits of previous box-office hits, it doesn’t rely on nostalgia for the original. It does, however, display a serious soft spot for a bygone era of moviegoing, when two photogenic stars, a simple high-concept premise and the promise of digitally rendered chaos was enough to put millions of asses in seats.

When it’s working, Three Thousand Years is an old curiosity shop of a movie, a cache of curios and strange conceits, many of which, when the movie isn’t working, are submerged into the bland uniformity of Miller’s stylistic approach to large stretches of this film.

The desert outpost, mostly shot in Morocco by the gifted cinematographer Chris Menges (a two-time Oscar winner for his camera work on The Killing Fields and The Mission), becomes a powerful symbol of human decency trying to hold out under the brutal siege of alleged law and order. It’s thuddingly obvious who the real barbarians are.

All the Old Knives is brief enough, politely suspenseful enough, for its stars to carry without much hassle.

Yes, The Piano Lesson hits a few bum notes. Its melody nonetheless remains intact.

Never adds up to anything more substantial than shrewd observations. There's no dramatic core.

The First Purge isn’t the beginning of the end of the franchise, just the start of where the narrative’s “civility” starts to erode and where that leads.

Malick has created a war film without a single scene of war, of Jewish persecution, of the thought process that helped Franz hold steadfast. It’s one thing to fashion a film about one man’s blind faith; it’s another to keep audiences in the dark about the fundamentals that made him human.

The premise is ripe; the thrills are rich; the payoff doesn’t come together quite as easily as the rest.

[Franklin's] music blows the movie out of the water — and the movie, at its best, is wise to let itself get blown away.

CODA knows how to work that conventional-to-a-fault indie feeling like a champ. You may exit smiling. Just don’t be surprised if you also experience the sensation of having just been Sundanced to death.

What’s missing is history. What’s missing is a sense that men like this really lived.

The strange thing is that for all its tricks — even that odd detour through The Wizard of Oz Taymor manages to serve us midway through — The Glorias still falls prey to the problem of making a movie out of a life far too vast for a movie. Which is to say, a deeply political life.

It’s a blockbuster that, with a few whirring movements and a half dozen clicks and beeps, transforms itself into something meant to be watched by actual thinking, feeling human beings. For once, there really is more than meets the eye.

There are times when The Good Girl is so low-key it damn near flatlines. Luckily, White creates compelling characters with a few deft brush strokes. The actors fill in the rest.

Courtesy of the stars, and of the filmmaker’s clear affection for her subject, there’s a little more soul here than there had to be, thankfully. That’s not everything. It’s also not nothing.

The movie is at its best when it’s twining together the stories of characters whose fate seems to be pulling them toward possibilities that they hadn’t only just dreamed of. Where it manages to go once they’ve gotten there is almost less satisfying. The getting-there, the discoveries made along the way, are not only the central pleasure, but the point.

Night Swim eventually runs out of places to go, but not before it weds some sneaky character development to a few good, solid jump moments. It might not find an audience, but it deserves one.

Every time things start to get goopy, we get silent-comedy slapstick like Pooh destroying the Robins’ household.

It’s slick and eager to elide the moral messiness of the material with its lightly empowering messaging, but also competently executed with a starry performance at its center. That recipe almost makes you nostalgic for what it’s selling: The old-school, middle-of-the-road tearjerker, the Starbucks latte of movies. It’s not going to blow your mind, it might taste a little burnt at times, but occasionally it does the trick.

The 24th has its share of unevenness. It also has the blessing, and the curse, of necessity. It’s a story that has to be retold.

Not even Jackman, one of the most persuasive actors around, can sell the argument that personal weakness doesn’t stain public character in the era of #MeToo.

This movie’s primary strength is in Wilson’s words, his facility with ideas and symbols and attitudes, and what the actors do with all of the above. The movie, as a movie, has its limits. But Wilson’s material remains unbound.

This film isn’t for everyone’s tastes. Then again, neither was Sorry to Bother You‘s mix of critical commentary and absurdist comedy; and, like that film, I Love Boosters takes a wilder, big-picture swerve in its third act. Still, you have to admire the fact that Riley is weaponizing his humor and using it to brusquely jostle your brain by any means necessary.