Buying Pepe as misunderstood and buying Pepe as a character destined for redemption are two different things, and it's the argument after the buildup where Feels Good Man stopped feeling persuasive for me. Your hopefulness may vary.

Ultimately, this is an original adventure that feels stitched together out of a hundred familiar film plots, often freely acknowledging its pop-cultural plundering, as in the family's obligatory slo-mo power strut away from a building exploding in flames. But for audiences content with rapid-fire juvenilia, the busy patchwork of prefab elements will be entertaining enough.

It's the kind of plush, pleasurable comfort viewing that goes down as easily as a favorite artist's hits compilation.

Handsome and intense, Ahmed is a reliably magnetic screen presence, while his punchy real-life chops as a rapper and lyricist also serve him well here. But his screenwriting skills are less assured, and Mogul Mowgli is strangely low on dramatic or emotional bite given its high-stakes storyline. Baggy editing, underexplained context and flat dialogue add to this muted effect.

In the end, there is a method in all this madness, suggested by Dafoe’s calm face and reassuring voice as Clint confronts his most emotionally charged memories with courage and curiosity.

Though the message comes across loud and clear, the four tales suffer from being narratively uneven, making the film’s two-and-a-half-hour running time seem long indeed.

Sensitive performances only go so far toward generating sparks in the slow-moving film, which never becomes the crime-and-punishment nail-biter it might've been.

The film offers enough low-key goofy pleasures to provide an amusing diversion.

Peninsula suffers the same type of sequelitis that suggests a second entry must be more/bigger/louder than its predecessor. Where Train to Busan’s two hours were impeccably paced and every frame meticulously used, Peninsula spins its wheels in between its admittedly impressive key set pieces.

Though the movie is rife with too-convenient coincidences and relies on another iffy plot point or two to make its emotional arc work, the monster-killin’ functions well enough that few will complain.

Taken on its own terms, it's a solid if hardly revolutionary thriller that bodes well for the filmmaker's future in genre films.

May, a radiologist making his directing debut, spends ample time with his now middle-aged subject, offering a sympathetic but clear-eyed view whose intimacy compensates to some degree for less-than-compelling storytelling.

Like some children who aren’t so cute anymore after they’ve grown up a little, this follow-up lacks much of the appeal of its predecessor. While the film provides the elaborate action set pieces, colorful villains and save-the-world plot mechanics expected of the comic book movie genre, some of the magic is missing.

Quick and pretty constant cutting between different threads of this story keep Most Wanted from feeling as long as it actually is, but it also keeps us from committing fully to any one story, all of which feel slightly underwritten.

This is a powerful story that deserves to be told — even if it's rendered in sometimes less than cinematically compelling terms. And at this point in the twilight of her life, Marthe Cohn deserves every accolade that comes her way.

For anyone who’s had to struggle to escape difficult situations, the self-reliance and perseverance these teens require to improve their lives will seem quite familiar and reassuringly realistic. Pahokee is also a worthwhile reminder for those who haven’t faced similar challenges that things rarely come easy for those from modest circumstances.

Here’s a quick tip: If you’re old enough to be reading this review, you’re too old to enjoy the childish pleasures of PAW Patrol: The Movie.

The film is quite well-acted and made with a stylistic imprint that's atmospherically tailored to the subject matter, if a little fussy and self-conscious at times. But it's an unrewarding downer.

The main reason the film is worth a watch is the strong performances of its two leads.

Becky tends to work best when it revels in the blood-splattered set pieces of its script (written by Ruckus Skye, Lane Skye and Nick Morris), going that extra mile and a half in the gore department (special effects makeup was by Karlee Morse) to create some truly disgusting moments, albeit ones that are laced with a grim sense of humor.

A solid B movie whose pleasures aren't diminished much by the screenplay's dicey dialogue — plenty of the film has no dialogue at all — it's a welcome vehicle for its star, who has been underused by filmmakers for decades.

Though touching on a le Carre-like web of loyalties, ambition and hidden agendas, the film is generally less engrossing than that might suggest, only coming to life in the sweaty hours leading up to that murder.

As a glimpse of a distinctive world and what happens when a young man who thrives within it gets uprooted, the film will yield low-key charms for patient viewers.

While Botero proves an enjoyable and accessible primer about the octogenarian Colombian-born artist whose paintings and sculptures have delighted millions, it lacks the depth and context to make it more than an easily digestible tribute seemingly designed to be shown on an endless loop at the Museo Botero in Bogotá, Colombia.

Koepp and his cast successfully convey how afraid the family becomes once it's clear they're being supernaturally prevented from leaving the house. But that's not the most original idea upon which to build a franchise, and it's clear from both third-act exposition and the pic's final scene that the filmmakers want just that.

There’s little that’s unpredictable in Miguel Sapochnik’s unabashedly sentimental sci-fi road movie, which could almost have been assembled in a robotics lab from the durable parts of countless movies past. But darned if I wasn’t misting up in the melancholy climactic scenes.

As a glimpse at the nitty-gritty of building a music career in the '60s and '70s, the film is instructive, though the record-by-record trajectory could have been tighter. Tracing the ups and downs and stops and starts, Firmager sometimes lands in the weeds and loses the beat. The film is strongest in its portrait of the formative years of Quatro's career and their emotional residue, which turns out to be the core of this chronicle.

Though tech values and supporting performances (especially Knoxville's) are unimpeachable, Suspicion doesn't conjure its setting as persuasively as some of the other drug-centric rural dramas we've seen lately.