In the end, the whole enterprise comes off as too clever for its own good, a social satire without a clear target. It’s a movie that you admire more than you like.

Logan Lucky is not a contemptible piece of work. It’s a genuine effort by talented people that never quite comes off.

It’s so uncritical of its subject that it has the unintended effect of undermining its mission, which appears to be recruiting new devotees of the faith.

Salma Hayek stands out in a comic role as the hitman’s impossibly vulgar, assertive wife. It’s also worth noting that there are lots of car chases here, and they actually aren’t boring. That qualifies as a rare achievement.

The Nut Job 2 isn’t maddening like “Smurfs 2,” where you continue to hate yourself years later for spending the money. It’s an adequate babysitter that completely fails to inspire.

The best thing about “Living Boy” is the performance of Cynthia Nixon, who plays Thomas’ emotionally unstable mother.

An impressive effort and an impressive result that opens up a world that most of us have never thought about and renders it with sorrow and vividness.

False Confessions can be admired for its high style and distinct tone, but if you really want to enjoy it, you’ll have to force yourself.

The quietly stirring, exquisitely photographed Columbus is an art-house gem that beautifully illuminates not only the architecture of a small Indiana town, but also the characters that inhabit it.

In This Corner of the World is 129 minutes, an eternity for an animated film, especially one so wispy in look and so sparing in plot.

Ultimately, Whose Streets? is timely not only because of its social message, but also because it fully embraces the cell phone footage and tweets that have been crucial tools in the Black Lives Matter and other movements.

There are “gotcha” jolts that definitely got me, but for each of those, there must be a half-dozen scares telegraphed in very large letters. I think Annabelle: Creation is suffering from sequelitis.

Still the spectacle of this, of beautiful, sensitive children at the mercy of damaged adults — this is what we take from The Glass Castle. It’s a universal awfulness rendered with truth and detail, and somehow that’s enough.

Actually, there is one other thing that’s unforgivable. After building up to the great climactic confrontation for two-thirds of the movie, it’s a letdown.

This is a film that keeps it simple: Don’t cross a mother, or she’ll hunt you down.

It’s a lot to cover in 83 minutes, and you might wish for a little more depth in the girls’ back stories. Then again, the brisk pace is part of what makes the movie a crowdpleaser.

It’s imaginative and even brilliant at times, and then it starts to cave in. But then we think no, maybe not, maybe everything’s going to be made right . . . until it collapses completely. A cynical, smart movie about the dangers of mass culture gives way to a sentimental embrace of the very thing it’s criticizing.

The unsure approach to rich material (based on a story about a newspaper’s homophobic coverage of a drowned man) mixes the sexy and grotesque — and cancels each other’s good parts out.

In this case, the Big Apple has never looked so small and inconsequential.

It’s giving away nothing to say that the answers here are a mix of good news and bad news.

Detroit is a movie that will make you angry. It is designed to make you angry, and it does nothing to soften the blow or create some artificial uplift. But there is something about honesty that’s exhilarating. Detroit is tough, but it’s worth it, every minute of it.

It’s a mix of comedy that isn’t especially funny — offering something more like general high spirits, rather than laughs — and drama that isn’t really dramatic, except to the people on screen.

A mostly fabulous, though thinly plotted, ode to the glories of hand-to-hand combat, Euro ’80s music and the good/bad old days of the Cold War.

A lot of talented people with the best of intentions got together and made The Last Face, and yet it’s an almost unwatchable flop.

If you want to fall in love with Catherine Deneuve, don’t start with her youth. Start with her here, in her 70s, and then work your way back.

The more an audience member sees the beauty left in the Buddhist leader’s wake, the more it becomes clear that his influence has the power to continue generations beyond his passing.

A curiously downbeat, rather cold work without much passion or science that portrays a woman whose life was brimming with both.

Mainly for those who already know and like Jodorowsky’s work.

Girls Trip balances sincere sentiment and boisterous comedy with honesty and skill, and for people who like their comedy a little nasty, this one’s a blast.

This is a likable documentary that casts light on two respected but relatively unknown people, who made major contributions to film and managed to have a normal life — and in Hollywood, of all places. It’s nice to know such things are possible.

A movie for science fiction fans who wish every minute of “Star Wars” was the cantina scene.

Barely 20 years old at the time of filming, Pugh has a surface poise and an inner turbulence, a capacity to command the screen with the spectacle of her watching and thinking. The last time something like Pugh happened, she was called Kate Winslet, and the movie was “Heavenly Creatures.”

It’s one of the best war films ever made, distinct in its look, in its approach and in the effect it has on viewers. There are movies — they are rare — that lift you out of your present circumstances and immerse you so fully in another experience that you watch in a state of jaw-dropped awe. Dunkirk is that kind of movie.

David Lowery has made a movie that is as outside the pattern of our current popular filmmaking as can be possibly imagined. That takes more than vision alone. It takes courage.

This isn’t close to being a great movie. But if you don’t overthink it, there is some fun to be had in the grisly consequences.

A meandering, slow journey with a fairly bland leading character. Director Kirsten Tan, who is from Singapore and based in New York, must be admired for the audacity of casting an elephant as a co-star in her feature film debut.

The music links it all together, creating the sense of some overarching, unseen logic connecting all human activity and making everything inevitable. Indeed, it’s that last impression that elevates Dawson City: Frozen Time to the level of poetry. The story of the town is interesting, without being scintillating.

This is formidable filmmaking, and Heineman has become one of our most daring, and interesting, documentarians.

In the new film, War for the Planet of the Apes — the best of the series, by far — the series’ viewpoint comes into focus, and it’s a lot more intricate and enlightened than some unthinking death wish.

Funny and disturbing in the best way, the comedy-drama Austin Found captures something beyond its story of a woman’s obsession with making her little daughter a beauty pageant winner.

This is one of the funniest movies of the year.

The Ornithologist has its pleasures. Perhaps one day Rodrigues will turn his considerable talent and unique approach to a portrait of the real-life St. Anthony, in the way that Roberto Rossellini paid tribute to his hero in “The Flowers of St. Francis.”

It’s written by six screenwriters, and it feels like it.

So this is fairly interesting history, not as interesting as we’d like it to be, but interesting all the same.

No film biography can capture or explain or add to the magic of Chaplin at his best, because these screen moments are perfect in themselves. But Chaplin, with dignity and some vitality, does what it can -- it holds up a light and points the way. [08 Jan 1993, p.D1]

You could rightly call it a thriller, but a slow-burning one, and a film that’s driven by character, not plot points. And that won’t do in Tinseltown. So enjoy the original, preferably in a theater, and revel in the rich, layered performances of veteran actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye (men are incidental in this movie, another Hollywood no-no).

Best of all is Richard Harris as Paddy O'Neil, an IRA spokesman. With his deeply lined and very Irish face, Harris has a wonderful look for the part. [5 June 1992, p.D1]

If anyone steals the air-show with his deadpan, it's Lloyd Bridges as Admiral (Tug) Benson, a total maladroit whose body has been wounded in every major battle since the Little Big Horn massacre and who has flown 21 missions without ever landing his airplane (he was shot down every time). Bridges gets away with some wonderfully corny lines and sight gags. [31 July 1991, p.E1]

When The Journey keeps its eyes on the road, it’s a nice little drive.

This laugh-out-loud comedy is set in the world of daytime television and is reminiscent of the sex farces that were popular in the early and mid-'60s -- except that Soapdish, unhampered by a desire to be perceived as sophisticated, is actually more sophisticated and much funnier than the movies that were around then. [31 May 1991, p.E1]

In the end, though, the movie’s superior craftsmanship can’t overcome its aura of joylessness.

Nanjiani is engaging throughout, though the scenes of his standup routine are a little confusing. He’s not funny, not even slightly. Is he supposed to be? That’s not clear.

Having hooked us with style, Wright knows he has to deliver on the story, and he does. His plotting is tight and fluid, wild and ultimately satisfying. It’s the ultimate cliche to compare a movie to a thrill ride, but sometimes the cliche applies.

Byrne is the furthest thing from being a manipulative filmmaker. But Raising Bertie is moving nonetheless.

In the riveting, masterfully executed Harmonium, bad karma pays a visit to a family — and overstays its welcome. It’s a bleak film, no doubt, yet it remains engrossing throughout with its genuinely surprising twists and outstanding acting.

There’s something to be said for simply watching Blanchett at work. Without the contribution of this exceptionally talented actress, Manifesto would be rough going indeed. With it, the film rises — barely — above the category of “enough already.”

Frankly, we are left with nothing, except with a movie that insists that we love it — or worse, assumes we will — because its subject is so worthy. Even on that score, that of convincing us of the worthiness of its subject, Maudie falls down.

It’s all about as exciting as watching two drawings fight each other on a computer monitor.

This flick is a summer diversion, pure and simple, so don’t expect a deep message.

It’s summer, weed is legal in California now and laughs are a scarce resource. You could do worse than Rough Night.

Despite some cumbersome moments, the film delivers a to-the-point message about how the sins of the parents can be visited on the children.

The uneven, misanthropic French comedy Slack Bay, one of the weirdest period pieces in quite some time, is an odd combination of “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” Monty Python, and “Laurel and Hardy,” with some cannibalism, incest and gender identity issues thrown in.

It’s impossible to resist a film that has such rich characters, and makes a complicated subject both enlightening and entertaining.

In The Hero, as elsewhere, Haley really is dealing with the subject of heroism, but the kind of heroism not usually found in movies, the heroism of daily life.

Although it would take much more than a 95 minute documentary for true enlightenment, Letters to Baghdad also helps us understand the complex political situation stemming from the gradual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

It’s all so heavy-handed that it’s hard to stay engaged with the movie.

Intermittently entertaining.

The magnificence of Weisz’s performance — yes, it’s another magnificent performance from Rachel Weisz — is that she is never hiding anything, beyond what a 19th century woman might conceal out of polite reserve. In her every moment on screen, she is an open book. We’re just not seeing all her pages.

Like George Bailey, and the Cartwright family from “Bonanza” and other fictitious families, the real-life story of the Sungs is one of loyalty and adhering to their code, even as they face losing everything.

There’s just one big problem here: It Comes at Night is about as enjoyable for the audience as it is for the people in the movie. On both sides of the screen, misery reigns.

Band Aid is her (Zoe Lister-Jones) first film as a director — she also wrote and stars in it — and something about her and this film is really appealing.

As Whelan slowly comes to terms with the loss of her identity, she begins to forge a new one as a contemporary dancer, going on to produce her own performances on a national tour titled “Restless Creature.”

The Mummy is the rare Cruise film that doesn’t quite give audiences their money’s worth.

One-half of an unremarkable war movie, followed by a touching story about the importance of animals in people’s lives. Fortunately, the stronger part is saved for last.

Captain Underpants is a very popular book series that doesn’t seamlessly translate to the big screen, and the filmmakers can’t solve this problem. The result is a cinematic wedgie: a little too dark, a little too nihilistic, a little too empty.

Cox does a better than average job — almost everybody bombs when playing Churchill — capturing the leader’s seriousness of purpose and the weight of his responsibility. He gives us Churchill’s irascibility, but he doesn’t convey Churchill’s twinkle, his charm or his wit.

Kline is good in a role that suits him perfectly, and his scenes with Steenburgen are among the film’s most affecting. Jacobs is pretty good, too, really pouring on the Southern California “charm.”

Johns is terrific, the heart and soul of the movie, playing the kind of guy that’s the heart and soul of any industrialized country on the planet.

Wonder Woman achieves touching and powerful moments that are unusual for a movie of this kind.

Ultimately, the film is what Freeman aspires to be: Not a big person making his mark on the world, but a small part of something very big.

It’s original and idiosyncratic, but Swicord lets herself get away with things another director might not have allowed.

Baywatch should have been a lot more fun.

“Dead Men” is a jumble of half-baked impulses.

A complex rumination on the nature of true love and how it evolves. It is also a film rooted in Orthodox Jewish faith.

Its cinematic stylishness and its attention to modern-day anxiety raise it to something out of the ordinary.

The “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series has been, at its core, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” without the rodents.

This is a movie that can be enjoyed in different ways and for lots of reasons. It’s dramatic and it’s funny, and it has a warm humanity at its center.

A poorly acted, colossal bore of a film that strikes wrong notes from beginning to end.

Risk is far from a narrative masterpiece — it hopscotches all over the place, with even Lady Gaga making an appearance — and it peels only a layer or two from a man with many masks.

The story itself is arresting, and if that’s all “Bang” offered, that would be enough. But “Bang” does more.

Whatever the numbers and whatever the broader entertainment trends, The Wall proves it’s good when big directors have the flexibility to make small projects.

This is a movie that derives most of its suspense on whether a piece of paper will be signed, not a strong basis for dramatic tension. Here and there, we see moments of genuine emotion, but even then, it feels like we’ve been there, done that.

A dead woman tells her own harrowing story in the documentary God Knows Where I Am. It’s the kind of movie you need to be prepared for — its most intense moments have echoes of tragic literature.

In a sense, Jacobs has made a movie about sex that’s not about sex at all. We often hear about “sexual sublimation,” but The Lovers depicts the reverse, which is probably more common, in which sexual adventure becomes the most available substitute for cherished lost dreams.

The highly enjoyable documentary Obit finally gives credit to the storytellers who bring people to life one last time.

It’s brilliant, and extremely moving. One Week and a Day has its moments, just not enough of them.

The Chuck Wepner story is a compelling one — and the performances ensure its place as a sports movie contender.

It’s a funny movie, but it’s also one in which Schumer becomes truly legible, as someone who could be headlining comedies for the next decade or more.