Doggedly indie but unpretentious, Begin Again is one of the best movies I’ve seen about the music industry and the ways it changes people whose paths diverge.

McCarthy and first-time director Falcone must have assumed that tossing a drunk and a dunce into a Cadillac would negate the need for a motive or even a script.

Chartered to provide both sides of every debate, CNN has positioned itself as the middle ground for discussions of current events. But without a knowledgeable teacher (or filmmaker) to lead such discussions into new territory, they devolve into noisy bull sessions.

Sorry, partisans, but there’s nothing obvious about Obvious Child.

Because the affable Wahlberg is making the sales pitch, you could kid yourself that this is just a high-tech vacuum cleaner, built to siphon loose change like popcorn. But our failure to understand the terrifying significance of the “Transformers” series is why we're in the age of extinction.

For real balance, the debate needs fiercely leftist truth-tellers in tri-corner hats, calling themselves the Organic Chai Tea Party.

The Rover is a sterling example of the new Australian noir.

Every character from the original is here, navigating the dating jungle, but this time there’s no pushing of Steve Harvey’s book.

The worst thing about this multifaceted failure is the two-time Oscar winner behind the camera. Where there ought to be a director, there’s nothing but an empty chair.

Thankfully, all of the voice actors from the original return, including Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill and Craig Ferguson, and keep lightening the mood.

The sharp writing and tag-team antics lift 22 Jump Street to a high level.

This movie is so tone-deaf it would only make sense in Vincent van Gogh’s missing ear.

The movie looks like it was made for broadcast television, the place where words and pictures go to die.

By design it’s monotonous, and with so much clunky hardware, Liman can’t generate the same pace he produced in the “Bourne” movies. Edge of Tomorrow has neither an edge nor a vision of tomorrow that matters today.

Although Steadman’s artwork seems like sloppy pen-and-ink caricature, there’s a method to the madness.

Cold in July has all the qualifications of a midnight movie in the making.

’Round these parts, when a movie promises a million laughs but only delivers a dozen chuckles, that’s a hanging offense.

The Immigrant is not unlike a Prohibition-era “Taxi Driver,” with Cotillard as the apprentice hooker, Phoenix as the sweet-talking pimp and Jeremy Renner (playing the theater’s magician, Orlando) as the would-be savior.

Best of all is Favreau. Instead of mass-producing another superhero epic, he has given the overfed public a dish of right-sized comfort food.

As usual for the comedies he produces, Sandler keeps pooping in the sandbox, and he expects the audience to give him a cookie for it. It’s a shame that he forces Barrymore to get soiled too.

How could you not marvel at a movie that includes a revisionist explanation of the JFK assassination, a football stadium floating over the White House and the sight of Richard Nixon firing a .45 at a villain in a Christ-figure pose?

You can tell by some loose threads and hurried workmanship that God’s Pocket is a knock-off, but it’s so stuffed with value, it’s an offer you can’t refuse.

As predictable as a 3-and-0 pitch down the middle, but when it’s baseball season, who wants dark clouds?

The latest Hollywood version of the Godzilla story is neither fun nor fearsome. It’s an empty spectacle in which the humans are as meaningless as the monster.

With stately surroundings and hissable villains, director Amma Assante imbues the finale with such dramatic resonance that Belle becomes a ringing proclamation of human dignity.

Yet if you’re old enough to read this and you find yourself at a screening, try thinking about the munchkins who worked so hard on the psychedelic scenery.

With a mad captain at the helm, this documentary version of Jodorowsky’s “Dune” is probably more entertaining than what Hollywood would have done to it, with a clearer message: Our lives are like sands though an hourglass, so dream the impossible dream.

Fading Gigolo is like two different movies on an awkward blind date at a jazz club. While Allen charms us with a parody of “Broadway Danny Rose,” Turturro is off-key in his lounge-lizard riff on “The Piano.”