Nate Parker’s film isn’t always successful at balancing empathy with suspense or its prison reform message with character development. But there are engaging moments from start to finish, with a plot that, while not as surprising as writer-director Parker may have thought, wracks nerves multiple times.

Sokolov has cited notable filmmakers like Sergio Leone, Park Chan-wook and Quentin Tarantino as influences, and their inspiration can be seen in the film’s tense standoffs, corridor fights and flashing swordplay, respectively. For all that and some original flourishes, though, this mainly feels like a Radio Silence rehash.

Dialogue, quirky incidents and a general acceptance that this is the unfortunate way life is make this more than just a genre exercise, though hardly a breathtaking grabber of “Get Out” proportions.

There’s a difference between extending a story and deepening it. While this latest entry is thoughtful and stirring, it doesn’t exactly improve upon the elegant finality the series granted Tommy Shelby four years ago. Sometimes the most powerful ending is the one that understands when enough has been said.

In the Blink of an Eye proves yet again that Stanton is a dreamer, with an unshakeable faith in humanity. That’s not nothing.

Knowing what Powell is capable of, it’s not unreasonable to go into this expecting a bigger payoff.

Crime 101 is often smart, ultimately ridiculous — man, that ending! — and mostly absorbing. But as with Davis’ sleek rides, your mileage may vary.

Yes, Charli is playing a version of herself, but she does it well.

So Orwell it’s not. But “Mercy” is a cinematic feat of a different kind, even if it begins to fade soon after leaving the theater.

The Rip is another one — efficient for what it is, but if it’s remembered at all it will be for Damon and Affleck’s matching beards and effortless way of appearing at home together onscreen.

Although more Fiennes is always a good thing, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple simply doesn’t have the solid storytelling or enthralling characters that its predecessor has.

The inescapable, undeniable weakness of Father Mother Sister Brother is that, while its first part is thoroughly satisfying, its second part is just OK, and its third part is close to a waste of time.

As Ella, Mackey shows that she can carry a movie and remain sympathetic, despite a script that sometimes works against her.

It all becomes silly, monotonous and boring. Maybe not as monotonous as being cast out into void, but boring enough to put you to sleep.

It’s such a pure delight to see Erivo and Grande just standing around when they finally duet on “For Good” that we will take that scene over a hundred where their characters dance, preen or ride a broom on their own.

Describing this makes it sound like there’s more plot than there actually is, but “The Carpenter’s Son” isn’t a conventional story. It’s more of a mood piece, with a true run time of just barely 90 minutes. But it’s got Cage, and that’s the difference maker.

It’s hard to make a two-plus-hour chase movie like this compelling, but Wright gives it a go by peppering the cast with brief appearances by characters far more interesting who help Ben along his way.

Die My Love is not plot-driven, with events that don’t necessarily follow one another in cause and effect. Rather, it’s a slow-burn psychological drama populated by imperfect people struggling with painful realities. Instead of a dramatic arc, it’s a dramatic decline.

Whatever their differences, love is this family’s language, and that’s undeniable throughout “Road Between Us.”

The narrative is hamstrung by cliché attempts to build McKay’s backstory, shamelessly changing key facts. McConaughey’s performance is just fine, as is Ferrera’s, but the personal stuff feels like a distraction.

Ultimately, “The Long Walk” is a heartfelt metaphorical drama about people bonding under duress. Instead of focusing on the darker side of human nature one might expect from the average dystopian film, it finds power in small acts of connection.

Entertainment value and reasonable length still make the film a decent, low-effort option for home viewers — especially those already subscribed to Hulu.

Two decades after its predecessor, Disney’s “Freakier Friday” plunges back into “legacy sequel” waters — where nostalgia keeps storylines afloat and originality barely treads water.

Superman is a mess, but it’s a colorful one. It’s either a terrible superhero movie or an OK parody, take your pick.

Despite moments of unintentional humor, “The Ritual” has an appealing gravity about it, which probably derives from its adherence to the historical record.

The fighting in the “Karate Kid” movies and its Netflix series offshoot, “Cobra Kai,” has always been quality, but in “Legends” it’s too quick-cutting and chaotic, hard to follow and over much too quickly.

Male loneliness and insecurity is a thing and the subject of much discussion in media. For me, though, there’s only so much cringe you can binge.

Rust isn’t so much a poor story or even badly told; there’s just too much of it, strung out along a discursive narrative trail that turns out to be unnecessarily repetitious.

While “Viet and Nam” is filled from beginning to end with outstanding visuals and thought-provoking ideas, it is perhaps too lethargic and, at a little over two hours, overlong. Yet there is still much to enjoy.

There’s no way to call Havoc a good movie, but as bad movies go, this is a good one. Depending on your mood, its variety of craziness could be what you’re looking for.

In some respects, this feels like two movies, and the filmmakers couldn’t decide which story should be the focus.

The documentary could have used a little more excitement, but “Coastal” leaves us with a lingering notion that we’ve seen something special.

The King of Kings gives the Jesus story an animated treatment with some whimsical Dickensian touches. It’s nothing to write scripture about, but it should provide amusing and possibly enlightening Easter entertainment for younger children.

One to One: John & Yoko combines the best aspects of Boomer nostalgia with generational overindulgence.

This Statham exercise, like most, is mainly about body count. While that seems to be what his faithful fans want, it just gets kind of tedious for the rest of us.

The blinkered greed of the ruling class makes for pretty low-hanging fruit, and “Death of a Unicorn” can come off as smug and exceedingly pleased with itself. Writer/director Alex Scharfman runs out of places for his story to move as the plot fails to thicken.

Unfortunately, the thin story feels terribly stretched and often doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes hilarious and pleasingly intense, “Day the Earth Blew Up” can also be kind of meh. But even when not as clever as its legacy demands, there’s enough of the old aesthetic and eclecticism to make us hope that this ain’t all, folks.

There is a sweet romantic comedy action that sometimes emerges in this bone crunching, bloody spectacle, but only occasionally does it surface.

The emotion the Zucheros are trying to express and illustrate here is a deep, fathomless, infinite loneliness, and here and there, but more than once or twice, they hit their target.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.

Oh, Canada is about not so much Fife’s artistic growth as his journey to hermetically sealed narcissism.

Part of what made the prior two “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies work was their playful, controlled scope that still provided engaging, serious storylines. By contrast, the third and latest installation overwhelms with so many explosions and colorful sky beams that instead of pulling the audience in, it has the opposite effect.

Working from a script by Jeff Nathanson, Jenkins, who got his filmmaking start in San Francisco and directed the best picture-winning “Moonlight” (2016), efficiently tells a simple story very well, although his style isn’t that much different from that of Jon Favreau, who directed the first computer-animated film.

Kraven the Hunter will sate fans with Taylor-Johnson’s action bona fides and its fine cast. But those same fans may be less-than enthusiastic about the idea that, with no Spider-Man and no franchise to move forward, this one essentially has nowhere to go.

Tolkien’s fantasy world is always worth revisiting, and that makes “The War of the Rohirrim” worthy of watching even if it ultimately doesn’t amount to much once you look past the obvious visual panache.

Pitt’s all-in performance and an impressive supporting cast supply enough roughhouse wit and Brooklyn grit to hold up scenes that might have otherwise gone down for the count.

If you’re a millennial, odds are you’ll find “Y2K” amusing. But older and younger age groups will want to stick to their vinyl LPs and Tik Tok videos.

Standard issue and sluggish as it sometimes is, “Elevation” maintains engagement.

You’d have to be passionately interested in the details of an Irish small town not to find “Small Things Like These” something of a slog.

Stewart’s impact is evident within the first hour of “Martha.” That’s a good thing, because the younger audience this film might be targeting lacks the patience for another hour of Cutler’s photo parade, no matter how extraordinary his subject.

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

From moment to moment, Rumours is almost entertaining. But for it to work, you pretty much have to root for it. The movie invites you not to enjoy it so much as to appreciate the effort.

Laura Dern is not a wizard. She cannot make the dumb and formulaic elements of her romance/travelogue movie “Lonely Planet” disappear. But Dern brings such authenticity to Katherine, her confident, matter-of-fact successful author character, that her performance often outweighs this Netflix movie’s flaws.

Ultimately, it is Ronan who transcends the material and almost wills “The Outrun” into something more than the sum of its parts. Her Rona is tempestuous and passionate, and soon discovers that to master herself she must surrender to nature.

House of Spoils suffers most from genre hybridization. The more explicit horror moments feel grafted on to what is essentially a character study with mystery elements. But as “Speak No Evil” recently demonstrated, Blumhouse no longer signifies low-budget, terrifying horror. The brand has become shorthand for movies lacking clear identities.

The body-swap movie “It’s What’s Inside” dazzles up to the moment its plot gets going.

Don’t expect surprises or something to ideologically critique. This is kooky carnage. You came for Dave Bautista stomping a motorcycle into submission, and damn it, that’s what you’re gonna get.

It’s a pretty good movie that automatically goes up one full notch because of a single great scene, which is one more than most movies have.

What we’re left with is a movie that has good moments for all the actors, but which, through a series of tonal imprecisions, ends up seeming sour and pointless.

As it speeds toward conclusion, “Supremes” also stops subverting its more maudlin aspects, allowing a descent into soap operatic moments.

They can’t make “The Union” better than a genre movie, but they can make it better than a decent genre movie. Also, considering the fact that Berry is one of the most misused and underused major stars of the last two decades, any role that shows her screen personality to good advantage is probably worth a look.

There are stretches when this true story can be a clunky inspirational piece about a young man who overcomes class and racial barriers to excel at science, business and helping his community. At regular intervals, though, it shifts to darker crime drama with dire themes of injustice and manipulation. The two moods don’t always transition smoothly, but each complements the other as they unfold.

It’s a line that all horror movies must walk. The characters must be stupid enough to get themselves into trouble, but not so stupid that we don’t start thinking of them in Darwinian terms. Somehow, “Cuckoo” stays on the right side of that line, but barely.

The new movie splits the difference between the horrible and the hilarious, with predictably lukewarm results. Still, the story is delicious enough to survive an earnest treatment.

Genre movies like “The Fabulous Four” can only be so good, but it’s pleasing enough to do its job.

It’s definitely not for everybody, but even a non-fan stumbling into the theater accidentally will find whole sections here to enjoy.

The last 15 minutes of “Twisters” are so much fun that they might easily convince viewers that they’ve seen a good movie. So this leaves you with a choice: Is it worth suffering through a boring hour and a so-so half hour, just to see an entertaining opening and a genuinely exciting finish? I know what I’d say (nope), but this is one you’ll have to decide for yourself.

Despicable Me 4 is co-written by Mike White (“Migration”) and has a bit more wit and heart — not to mention a few more laughs — than the recent entries in the “Despicable” series.

Well-acted as far as superficial characterizations allow (Costner and Jon Baird share screenplay credit) and impressively mounted for a wide-open-spaces pageant that, quizzically, was not shot in widescreen, “Horizon” is most successful at filling its frames with ambition.

What “The Grab” doesn’t do quite well is sell its argument or weave its many disparate, admirably reported discoveries into a graspable whole.

Going into this movie, there was a question whether “Bad Boys” might just feel like entertainment from an earlier time, but instead it feels like a cozy return — at least as cozy as possible, given that the movie is extremely violent.

Ezra is an opportunity for Bobby Cannavale to show his abilities as a dramatic actor, but his performance is hampered by one thing: He plays an idiot.

The Beach Boys is a breezy CliffsNotes version of the band’s ups and downs and cultural relevance and should interest established fans — even if they know it all already — and younger music enthusiasts who are looking for a window in.

The script is hopeless in both senses of the word, offering no hope and lacking in quality. But I enjoyed the two victims, at least until they started screaming, and appreciate the way director Renny Harlin creates a sense of menace by his choice of lenses and his placement of the camera.

The buddy comedy “Babes” offers keen insights into pregnancy, parenting and longtime friendships, although many get lost in the movie’s bodily function-joke jamboree.

The whole cast is likable and the scenery lovely, making this only the second-worst Shields beach movie, after “The Blue Lagoon.”

Seinfeld’s over-the-top, throw-in-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach makes for an uneven film, with some gags inspired, others groan-inducing. But its 1960s period detail and constant parade of familiar faces keeps things rolling.

It’s hard to know what Maiwenn was trying to accomplish here, besides giving herself a juicy and an entirely sympathetic historically-based role. She achieves that, and she’s good in the film — Maiwenn always is — but the “what’s the point of all this” question takes “Jeanne du Barry” down just a notch.

Does its conclusion make up for the gluten overload that was most of “Rebel Moon”? Well, the series’ not-at-all-original theme is redemption, so that depends on whether you’re in a forgiving mood or sufficiently wowed.

In the end, this is not really a World War II movie. It’s just a pretty good action film that borrows the plot from about three or four “Fast and Furious” movies, while stealing riffs from Tarantino.

Jones has many good moments, and “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is a decent remake of a decent movie.

The action ramps up so much toward the end that there’s really no time to care whether it makes visual or logistical sense. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches.

Stolevski obviously wants us to sympathize with these wounded characters who have been shunted aside by a cruel society, but that’s hard to do when they are so verbally cannibalistic.

Remembering Gene Wilder is a pleasant retro journey for fans and an efficient introduction to a comic genius for cineasts who might not know his work. It could have been so much more.

Halfway through, the humans recede into the background, with Dr. Andrews and crew reduced to narrating monster shenanigans instead of participating in the action. Unlike “Godzilla Minus One,” humans are expendable in gargantuan Hollywood creature features.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

The film, “based on the incredible true story” that happened in 2014, is an efficient, fun but by-the-numbers movie that has the distinction of being shot on location in the Dominican Republic, which looks quite lovely onscreen.

Most of the enjoyment of “American Dreamer” comes in watching Dinklage react to indignities and awkward moments.

If there’s one thing interesting about “Spaceman,” it’s how it demonstrates how a great actress’ essence — just the essence, not even the performance — can elevate a nothing part.

It’s true that “Dune 2” is as depressing as watching the news, but that doesn’t make it relevant, because it isn’t the news. It’s more like unnecessary self-torture, like watching a depressing newscast from another planet.

Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie.

If you have to watch someone cooking or eating, Juliette Binoche is as good a choice as any, but even she can’t make scintillating entertainment out of chewing, stirring a pot and putting on oven mitts.

It’s a sweet movie that accidentally expresses ideas that are complicated and perverse. This isn’t enough to make “Upgraded” transcend its formula, but it does make it slightly better than it had to be.

The problem with “The Tiger’s Apprentice” is it sacrifices character and story for the repetitive mind-numbing action we have come to expect from such fantasy and superhero films.

Essentially, “I.S.S.” is a fine movie for what it is, and the only reservation is what it is. It’s a cramped-space movie in which the stakes feel higher to the characters than they do for us.

The movie starts to fray once we realize that DuVernay is not going to make a case for Wilkerson’s ideas. Rather, she plans to serve them up as undeniable truths.

This is one of those projects in which everyone on set seemed to have fun making a movie. That joy comes through, even if the finished film induces a good-natured shrug.