If you could take the Shrek, Happy Feet and Smurfs movies, toss them in a blender and hit the pulse button a few times, the result would be a pretty reasonable approximation of Trolls, an admittedly vibrant-looking but awfully recognizable animated musical comedy concoction.

The sheer likability of these lived-in characters is a powerful magnet, thanks to insightful writing and a note-perfect ensemble anchored by a never-better Annette Bening.

Delivers an easily digestible and amusing portrait of youthful hijinks that should well please its target audience.

Danger doesn't quite translate into sustained drama here, in part because the reliance on voiceover distances us from the action.

Starting out with a bracing, off-kilter wryness, Ove moves steadily, and disappointingly, toward the crowd-pleasing center.

There's enough variety in the workplace settings here to keep us interested, but the doc's chronology isn't the smoothest.

The Last Film Festival is stuck in a loop of painfully silly humor, with stars Dennis Hopper and Jacqueline Bisset offering glimmers of the satire that might have been.

Judging by the number of Nagels listed in the film's credits, ClownTown would seem to be some sort of family project. A trip to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion would have been a better choice.

Derivative to such a degree that it seems almost a parody of its genre that has lost significant box-office steam, Maximum Ride is so ineptly executed that it might as well feature its own Mystery Science Theater 3000 soundtrack.

Both unassuming and surprisingly affecting in its DIY authenticity.

Thor, who partnered with screenwriter Ashlin Halfnight on their debut feature Diving Normal, crafts Astraea as an eerily resonant piece of speculative fiction sustained by a consistently elegiac tone and realistic performances, rather than grandiose narrative devices or intrusive special effects.

Bilal is a grand-scale, fast-paced animated adaptation that is both empowering and inspiring in its call for social justice and equality.

The film’s main problem is that it can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up not having enough time to develop anything in any depth.

Mother is a crisp, sardonic, darkly funny mystery thriller with a claustrophobic feel that occasionally betrays its roots as an Irish radio drama.

The mother of all allegorical monsters takes on new meaning in a talky, vaguely nationalistic reboot that slips on like a comfortable sweater, even if it’s a sweater with some holes in it.

The puzzle of how the various personal and narrative pieces will eventually fit together exerts a smidgen of interest, but the characters are so dour and un-dimensional as to invite no curiosity about them.

The sarcasm of superstar director Feng Xiaogang reduces Chinese bureaucracy, the legal system and government inefficiency to ashes in I Am Not Madame Bovary, but risks doing the same for audiences in a caustic, overlong satire whose coy visual effects overpower the story and characters.

An assured doc debut that knows how to stand out in a crowded field, Craig Atkinson's Do Not Resist avoids the handwringing format of other (very welcome) examinations of 21st-century American policing, offering instead something like a despairing tone poem.

One of those not-rare-enough limp comedies that leaves viewers wondering who managed to round up so much underexploited talent.

To say 13th is stimulating and thought-provoking is the understatement of the year.

Music naturally plays the central role here, but the film usefully lays in historical and political details that lend it more heft and poignancy than most films of its type.

Among the Believers is a step toward understanding how such a man can be entrusted with such a large percentage of a nation's children.

Davis' film is a disarming underdog story that doubles as an animal-rescue advocacy tool.

Interspersing technical talk with a quick history of nuclear testing and other near-misses, the doc demonstrates how often situations like this arise.

Amanda Knox makes for succinct, involving viewing — a true-crime doc that acknowledges the lingering debates over its subject's guilt while prompting one to ask: Why did anyone ever believe this outrageous stuff in the first place, much less cling to it for years?

At its playful best, the screenplay by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Emily Spivey sends up crime-movie clichés with a light touch, and Hess shows uncharacteristic restraint in letting those moments play out without reaching for punchlines.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy certainly makes many valid points, but they tend to be lost amidst the overriding cutesiness.

You don’t have to be an animation buff to appreciate the chances this stirring saga takes.