Passengers turns out to be a very strange journey indeed; here’s hoping these two team up again, in something more worthy of them.

The film is ponderous, the performances mostly subdued.

Within this uncertain world, Lopéz-Gallego relishes such noir staples as fatalistic shadows, eruptive mayhem and terse, ironic dialogue. But he and his cinematographer, Jose David Montero, also carve out fresh visual territory.

Collateral Beauty is a pretty terrible movie, but it left me with one overarching thought: My life, and surely yours, too, would be vastly improved if only Helen Mirren were perpetually lurking nearby, offering advice.

Jackie is mesmerizing; a familiar story told from an entirely different angle. It’s voyeuristic, to be sure — the scenes of Jackie alone in her White House bedroom, after the shooting, feel almost unbearably intimate — but you can’t look away.

Like a gift from the movie gods, here comes Damien Chazelle’s dreamy La La Land, right when a lot of us are in desperate need of some light. It’s a valentine to cinema, splashed with primary colors and velvety L.A. sunsets.

The action sequences, both on the ground and in space, are rousingly staged. But the losses incurred in those sequences are sobering. The stakes in the “Star Wars” rebellion are high indeed.

The performances are first rate, particularly Rains’ work in the lead role.

It’s fun to spend time with these performers, but you wish they were invited to a better party.

Director Ma has made a quietly merciless picture, a horror movie, really, about a decent man, an ordinary man, left alone, bereft, embittered, ruined by his act of decency.

Every Manchester scene gives you a sense of the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, where it’s bitter cold but nobody makes too much of it, where the past stays with you whether you want it to or not. This is a movie that pays careful attention to details.

Offering only an atmosphere of deepening gloom and a premise of utter hopelessness, Man Down is like movie antimatter: It repels interest.

Weirdest. Feminist. Movie. Ever.

If ever there was a movie that should never have been made, Bad Santa 2 is that movie. It’s vile, like something written by a pen dipped in bile.

Allied runs out of steam before its overwrought ending. It’s as if the film, struggling under the weight of the classic epics it recalls, just gives up.

Nocturnal Animals is, I think, a beautiful mess, but I might have to watch it again to be sure.

Malick, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and the cast create a mood that lifts the viewer through the occasional head-scratching moments and into a place of serenity, where answers somehow seem in reach.

If The Eagle Huntress sounds familiar, that’s because the outline of a modern feminist epic is always there in the background. What’s surprising is how fresh and charming the movie manages to be.

Beatty directed and wrote the script, but from a man who made the weighty epic “Reds” and the corrosively funny “Bulworth,” Rules Don’t Apply feels curiously weightless and as forgettable as its title.

Everything in the picture, from the characters’ clothes and hairstyles to the vessels they sail, bear the stamp of authenticity. But Moana’s greatest strength is the verve in which they move the action along and the sheer joyousness evident in every aspect of their storytelling.

The script by Liu Zhenyun becomes ponderous and redundant, kept on oxygen by its lead actress’s complex performance as a child-woman with enigmatic wisdom.

The acting and script are so strong that the picture is an outstanding achievement even in the 2D version that most people will see.

It’s a film about heroism and the right to love, told without stirring speeches. Instead, it unfolds movingly in the tiny moments between Richard and Mildred.

In the central role, Miles Teller is impressively bulked up, but there’s a flatness in his performance. It’s a dogged, rather than an inspired, portrayal. The best work is done by Aaron Eckhart, who plays Vinnie’s trainer, Kevin Rooney.

The Edge of Seventeen, in its R-rated way (booze and sex play supporting roles), is a sweetheart — just like Erwin.

There’s room for improvement in the “Fantastic Beasts” universe; perhaps we’ll see it in the next installment or two. Meanwhile — even if you, like me, are a bit Pottered out and wish Rowling would devote herself instead to her marvelous Cormoran Strike detective-novel series (magic comes in many forms) — it’s still a pleasure to revisit the author’s world.

The script’s weaknesses are difficult to ignore.

So much of the pleasure of Denis Villeneuve’s poignant science-fiction drama Arrival lies in watching Amy Adams figure things out.

A deeply resonant literary quality gives what might otherwise seem like a dubious series of coincidences a profound sense of plausibility.

Prisoners is a dark, deeply serious examination of how loss can unhinge us; it grabs onto you, and you may have trouble shaking it away.

So much of Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s disturbing drama set in the world of law enforcement and Mexican drug cartels (the title is the Mexican term for a hit man), takes place on Emily Blunt’s face.

At 2½ hours, Aquarius is about a half-hour too long for the story it tells, yet it feels like a privilege to be in the presence of such a powerful character and such a quietly commanding performance.

Franco makes the most of his showy scenes, and Garrett Clayton (known for “Teen Beach Movie” and other shows from the Disney Channel) is a convincing hunk. But only Christian Slater’s lonely voyeur suggests what “King Cobra” might have been.

The Charnel House is watchable, even if you can tell very soon what’s really going on behind mysterious doings.

It’s Hall’s performance that jolts Christine, carrying the movie on her slumped shoulders.

Jarmusch allows Pop and the music of the Stooges to be the focus of the film. For most fans, that will be enough: Pop proves to be as likable and riveting on screen as he is on stage.

Barry Jenkins’ beautiful Moonlight seems to have more in common with poetry than with a typical narrative film. It’s less a story than a collection of moments, which leaves its viewer feeling moved and changed, as if you’ve spent time in someone else’s dreams and woke up understanding who they are.

With Andrew Garfield in the lead role and Mel Gibson in the director’s chair for the first time in 10 years, “Hacksaw” is an incredibly powerful picture once it gets to the battle scenes.

So compelling is writer-director Joel Potrykus’ unnerving scenario — with its largely ambiguous tone of horror dramatically offset at times by explicit frights — that a viewer isn’t necessarily bothered by a lack of basic story information about who, what, when, where and why.

Coerced jollity is the order of the day in the kingdom of trolldom in this animated kids movie from DreamWorks. And I do mean order.

Director/co-screenwriter Scott Derrickson generally keeps the massive enterprise moving smoothly along. The trip’s the trip here, and it’s well worth taking.

It’s an unfinished story, which leaves Dancer slightly unsatisfying, as if we’re abandoning a book mid-chapter. But what a pleasure to wallow in the talent of a ballet rock star — and to watch a troubled young man find peace in a split-second of perfection.

The interweaving of animation and nonanimated footage gives the picture a kind of surreal quality that befits the sense of the survivors of how unreal the event seemed to them.

You have, I promise, never seen a movie quite like Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. It’s a period drama gone mad; a lavishly colorful, beautifully-filmed-erotic-revenge-crime thriller set in 1930s Korea.

There’s magic amid the chaos of Oasis: Supersonic, the exceptional new documentary that charts the rapid ascent of British band Oasis.

12 Years a Slave isn’t easy to watch, and it shouldn’t be; it’s one man’s tragedy, but it’s also the tragedy of countless thousands of souls beaten down, literally and metaphorically.

The chase, chase, chase pace is tiring, not least because it’s not clear who many of these people are and what agendas they’re following. Mixed-up confusion is the result.

The ingenious cinematographer, Bobby Shore, uses the Newfoundland locations to achieve some of his most striking effects. The result is sort of a horror film, but not really. It’s too funny to be categorized that way.

The spell Miss Hokusai casts is a powerful one that lingers long after the lights go up in the theater.

The pace is swift, archival clips are well-chosen and conspiracy theories pile up in a way that seems intentionally funny.

Writer-director Ti West brings not an iota of originality to his handling of this material. Plods, the picture does, through its predictable paces.

On this wintry landscape, with its endless plains and biting wind, it seems as if everyone — even the quietest — has a story, if you take the time to listen to it.

The film’s bleached colors and Reeves’ trademark woodenness add to its emotional remoteness, though Basso, Zellweger and Belushi create a convincing family in crisis. Zellweger, especially, delivers a fascinating, complex performance as a damaged survivor.

With anybody other than a superstar like Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back would just be a routine potboiler. With superstar Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is … a routine potboiler.

There’s no problem keeping up with these Joneses. The audience is way ahead of them every step of the way.

For a horror sequel built around a foundation of genre trends, Ouija: Origin of Evil contains far more goofy-spooky fun than one might expect.

The best thing about The Greasy Strangler: that title. The worst thing about The Greasy Strangler: everything that follows that title.

With its boyhood-to-manhood tropes (growing up means getting a girl’s attention and winning an idol’s respect), London Town can’t be taken too seriously. But it’s nice to see part of the Clash’s populist legacy in a fan’s journey.

Ultimately Denial works, thanks to its strong cast — particularly Spall, who gives Irving a slightly mad gleefulness, and Weisz, whose smart, tough Deborah chafes against the quiet acquiescence expected of her.

All in all, a brilliant piece of work.

The film distinguishes itself by what it lacks: simple, unrealistic answers to Perry’s regrets and the hole in his soul. His path to authenticity might not lead back to glory days, but contentment is closer than he thinks.

The finale to this uneven movie makes the most of Hart’s gift for physical comedy.

The premise of accountant as action hero might seem absurd, but The Accountant makes it credible and fascinating.

It’s a mishmash in which characters are thrown from dimension to dimension and from dream to dream. The main character, played by Bannister, is forever baffled as to what his actual reality is. His bafflement is shared by the viewer.

It’s essentially a plotless montage, a spellbinding filmic tapestry. Its visuals are out of this world, quite literally in the early going, as it presents the story of the creation of the universe.

Pushing three hours, American Honey feels every bit its length, often luxuriating in extended scenes inside the van, pot smoke swirling and hip-hop thumping. Like most of the film, these scenes are vividly rendered but increasingly repetitive and aimless.

Girl on the Train isn’t likely to haunt its shivering viewers the way the “Gone Girl” movie did. Blunt, however, makes the ride well worth taking.

It’s part of the strength of Parker’s film that the current controversy doesn’t entirely overshadow its impact — and that Birth of a Nation immediately becomes part of another crucial conversation, about race.

There are some genuinely funny bits but, alas, far too few.

A Man Called Ove has some tear-jerking moments, but the film is so carefully designed — with long, circular takes that seem to surround the main characters at crucial fateful points — that technique often triumphs over sentimentality.

Directors Rob Cannan and Ross Adam have made a picture that’s technically rough-edged but absorbing.

The picture’s pyrotechnics are first rate, and the acting by the principals is more than serviceable.

The time-travel element gets awfully twisty, perhaps a little too much so. But there’s great pleasure to be had in the performances, particularly Green’s deliciously avian Miss Peregrine.

Ingeniously using his low budget to address his ambitions, Johnson has directed, co-written (and starred in) a unique science-fiction film.

Fuqua’s remake is a worthy successor to the ’60s “Seven.”

The best material gives the excellent Scott and Kroll plenty of love-hate energy: Robbie’s condescension, Bill’s passive-aggressiveness. It will look all too familiar to anyone who isn’t an only child.

Filmed during three separate trips to the Auschwitz site starting in 2010, the result is a movie so intensely personal that it amounts to an extended selfie.

Just try to resist the charms of Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, a triumph-of-the-human-spirit movie that’s ultimately, well, triumphant.

Fascinating at certain moments, especially when Lewis is exploring his character’s grief and bitterness, it still feels like a work in progress.

Crowded, cornball and too busy for its short running time, The Hollars nevertheless generates a few moments of grace and reflection.

The characters are so thinly sketched that the audience feels little emotional investment in them, and the handheld (or rather head-mounted) cameras produce the same jittery visuals that many viewers found so off-putting in the original.

Feuerzeig lets us put together the puzzle pieces of Albert’s story. The film’s final five minutes — a punch to the heart — make it all clear.

Get out your handkerchiefs, but don’t expect to believe a minute of this vastly improbable tale.

A thoroughly delightful, crisply edited film.

The whole endeavor is so relentlessly lovable, like Bridget herself, that I defy anyone to not enjoy themselves.

Gordon-Levitt carries the movie, and without flash or overt dramatics, overshadows everyone else in it.

The searing documentary Hooligan Sparrow is a portrait of courage.

All things considered, this pitifully plotted Belgian-French production represents the nadir of animated movies released so far this year, a farrago of frantic action and mindless cacophony.

A number of Kelly’s scenes play out like stand-alone sketches — some quite funny; not all of them essential — rather than parts of a whole. But that’s easily forgiven considering the candor of his insights and his strong cast.

Brother Nature at least enjoys moments of deep-end mania from Killam and Moynihan.

Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki deftly create tension by twisting time around.

The first-rate cast — right down to that infant, who displays Streep-like instincts for the camera — toils mightily. But sadly, they’re trapped in what becomes a sort of A-list Nicholas Sparks melodrama Down Under.

Because these actors are Weisz, on whose beautiful face emotions flicker like fireflies, and Shannon, whose faintly mournful expressions imply a profound story not yet told, the film is never less than interesting.

The sparring couple at its center are played by Naomi Watts, a fearless actress who seems game for anything, and Matthew McConaughey, who just seems off his game here.

Co-writer and director Lars Kraume brings muted colors and a claustrophobic, urgent energy to the procedural part of this story, while reminding us that not every moral hero looks like Captain America — in fact, like Bauer, they can be a rumpled, misanthropic mess.

The picture is like an onion. There are layers here, and beneath them more layers. Peeling them back with surgical skill, director Alexandre Aja reveals complicated family dynamics.

Anchored by Mara’s rigidly controlled performance and Taylor-Joy’s tremulous yet quietly menacing work, Morgan is an effective tension generator that unfortunately falls apart at the end.

The Intervention feels confident and accomplished: The cast immediately seems to bond as a group, with each playing a distinctive, recognizable character. And as the camera becomes a discreet ninth guest, you quickly find that you care about these people.