The saddest thing about “Transformers One” is the wastefulness of another dull outing in a universe geared toward kids just learning to transform themselves.

What makes The Black Phone stand out is how it perfectly captures what growing up was like in the often raw ’70s and an utter respect for the world of kids. Every adult is either dismissive and distant — or downright murderous.

To say that the many parts of In the Fade are held together by Kruger would be an understatement. As a cocktail of grief, fury and regret, she’s a remarkably original protagonist — a chain-smoking, tattooed mother who, in her trauma, is always a breath away from drowning.

Five years after we just went through (at least a lot of) this, “Eddington” somehow seems both too late and too soon, especially when it offers so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness.

Bursts of intense violence are punctuated with sometimes tedious blocks of speeches and silence, but Hostiles, despite its posture of brutal amorality, has a goodness at its core, of understanding and empathy. It also has something that so many sequel and franchise-hungry studios today wouldn’t dare show — an actual ending.

Objectivity is not Meeropol’s goal here but better understanding of who this slippery character is, and this film succeeds in that.

A slinky, slick caper that finds ways to distort expectations while unfolding a puzzle-box narrative.

Rylance is also one of those few actors who can power an entire film, and The Phantom of the Open definitely rides on the strength of his signature quirky energy as it tells the true-life story of Maurice Flitcroft, a shipyard crane operator from northern England who stunned the golfing world in 1976 by entering the British Open under false pretenses — he’d never played a round of golf — and shooting the worst qualifying round in Open history.

The plot is simplistic, but the film makes no pretense. It is aimed at the action fans, and it should immensely please them. [11 Apr 1983]

Despite its grainy, VHS aesthetics, “The Smashing Machine” is a surprisingly conventional and oddly untroubled movie, albeit one that gives Johnson an indie-film platform for one of his finest performances.

What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It’s a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive.

It feels strange to want a movie to be longer, but in the case of Last Breath I was both desperate for it to end, for anxiety reasons, and also wanting more.

This is a very big, very (very!) loud, very jumpy horror flick, and the screams will come, and they’ll be audible. Which is precisely what “Alien” fans are surely waiting for.

It just doesn’t have the exciting, lightning-in-a-bottle feel that the wonderful original had. Perhaps that was too much to ask.

Gretel & Hansel is as visually arresting as it is tedious, a 90-minute movie that really should have been a 3-minute music video for Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne. It’s in the horror genre only loosely. It’s more eerie, if that’s a genre. Actually, it’s like dread for 90 minutes. It’s dreadful.

Goth is compelling again as Maxine, especially in a killer audition scene, but her character feels underwritten.

Literal-minded moviegoers will find it easy to hate Pennies from Heaven. But those willing to go along with the device will find the film a source of constant surprise and delight. [14 Dec 1981]

I spent over two hours with Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers and I still have no idea what her personality is. Sure, there’s a lot more going on in Captain Marvel, but it’s a pretty egregious failing considering that the creative bigwigs at Marvel had 10 years and 20 films to work it out.

The actors perform their deadpan duties satisfactorily. The news about Charlie Sheen is his pumped-up body. Look out, Arnold and Sly! Bridges is amusingly wild-eyed as the bionic president, and Golino manages to be sexy and funny at the same time.

Certainly the film has a fascinating premise, one that would have worked well enough were it totally fictional — but works better with the knowledge that it’s based on fact.

You’d have to be a certain kind of grinch not to get swept up in the hurdles and triumphs, especially with such a compelling lead performance from Jharrel Jerome. And yet for a story about a guy who shattered expectations, the film itself is rather conventional.

Kiri is exceptional in carrying a film in which she’s the only talking, present actor. But that a movie so threadbare manages to feel like too much is both the film’s accomplishment and its failure.

The Lost Bus is about a few ordinary people in an impossible situation just trying to survive. While it’s not hard to wring emotion out of an audience watching kids in peril, it also, in some ways, gets right to the very heart of the matter.

The Bad Guys 2 has clearly lost its moorings.

The question, ultimately, is whether Bombshell ought to have spun quite so snappy a movie out of such a story. It does cartwheels to make a vile tale compelling, and it can feel like a parade of starry impressions rather than something genuine.

It’s a well-plotted film that excellently mixes gore and humor while also offering some social commentary by torching the clueless rich.

Luhrmann never does anything by half measures, but perhaps one of the most striking thinks about Elvis is how ultimately restrained it is in the end.

Here is a sweeping historical tapestry — no one does it better today than Scott — with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix — Scott’s spectacle and Phoenix’s the-emperor-has-no-clothes performance — makes Napoleon a rivetingly off-kilter experience.