Who emerges as the winner of this “Civil War”? The audience. The picture delivers in a big, big way.

Stuffed with touristy images but not enough dramatic substance to make any of them count.

Pali Road — an engrossing psychological thriller with a trapped damsel’s very sanity on the line — demonstrates how an enigmatic story can unabashedly overflow with disorienting puzzles and perverse twists, all for the sake of blurring the line between reality and illusion.

Though Dough is often in danger of running off the rails with improbable and unnecessary plot twists, it is always essentially entertaining and warm in its observations of hope rekindled through simple relationships.

There is fragility in the beauty we see. The picture drives home the need to safeguard it. It is, after all, our home.

Sing Street reminds us of being young and lost in a song, realizing with a jolt that someone else had the same feelings we did.

We don’t even see that much of Cuba. Most of the action takes place at Hemingway’s estate there — the actual house, a vanilla-ice-cream-colored mansion (now a Hemingway museum), which gives a restrained, elegant performance. Pity the rest of the movie doesn’t rise to its standard.

Screeching, screaming, bouncing around the galaxy. Insufferable. And seemingly interminable.

Key and Peele’s fast-talking chemistry, as they shift their language instantly from suburbanite to street (a theme in many of their sketches), make Clarence and Rell’s transformation into bellowing, gun-wielding tough guys and back again feel fresh and often very funny.

It’s a lazy movie that fades from memory the instant the credits start to roll; a blandly pretty cog in a studio wheel. Moms deserve better. So do moviegoers.

Achingly sad and dismayingly familiar.

Sachs’ A Space Program is a disarmingly delightful out-of-this-world trip.

The results are uneven. Almost any scene with Hawkes is alive and satisfyingly showy. You feel his absence when he isn’t there, though Joanna Cassidy, Crystal Reed and Robert Forster all have their moments.

Criminal has a strong supporting cast, but the big names aren’t doing much beyond the bare minimum to qualify for a payday.

For the most part, the movie finds a family-friendly balance between stunning scenery, hold-your-breath action and animals having goofy conversations with each other.

The script’s first half is vigorous enough.... But the movie needs the audacity of a “Trainspotting” to lift it above the norm.

It’s a film that effectively combines two distinct — and very different — pleasures.

What rescues “Diaries” and its grimy, cracked-glass look is its firm grip on Stephen’s incremental awareness that he and his misery are not the center of the universe.

The picture’s time shifts are smoothly handled by Kwak. But eventually confusion sets in.

Sky, despite its Hitchcockian beginning, is no thriller; instead, it’s a character study of a woman seeking a second act, and of a landscape that gradually transforms from foreign to welcoming.

It has its value as a vigorous variation on a theme.

The problem with Miles Ahead isn’t the playful, broad license it takes with Davis’ story, but that it’s so silly.

Much of this is funny, some of it is scary and a lot of it is as twisty as a mystery thriller. Very little of it, thanks to a superb cast, is predictable.

Green Room is one nasty piece of work. And I mean that in a good way.

This stranger-in-a-strange-land mood piece has an appealingly serene pace.

The Huntsman is a flabby mess — yet another sequel with no reason to exist.

There’s much pleasure to be had in Elvis & Nixon from its two lead performances.

Frot’s performance, as a woman so caught up in the joy of music that she doesn’t quite understand how bad she is, is particularly delightful, and often quite moving.

Blending archival footage, actor re-creation and special effects (sometimes all in the same shot), [Sokurov] creates a sense of specific place and time — and, in doing so, crafts a sort of cinematic ode to art.

The film draws you deeply into Baker’s fantasy world, to the point that the entreaty of his famous recording, “Let’s Get Lost,” almost seems like a good idea.

The Phoenix Incident is an indigestible mess.

Thanks to Walken’s superlative, multileveled performance and Edwards’ trenchant writing, this complicated guy...is a weirdly beguiling figure.

The horror is all the more effective for having sneaked up on us quietly.

Rockwell and Kendrick, both of whom can really sell this film’s brand of laid-back quirk, keep things lively.

By the end, it’s falling apart under the weight of all the extraneous divergings, but thanks to Gyllenhaal’s performance, Demolition stands out as a powerful meditation on the unhinging effects of deep grief.

McCarthy’s trademark blend of chipper likability and treble-voiced rage just isn’t quite enough to carry things through.

Linklater gets it right in every significant regard.

Wonderfully confident and strange, Take Me to the River marks an auspicious directing debut for Matt Sobel. There’s not a stale moment in it.

If you don’t already care about Hank Williams, this movie isn’t likely to change that.

As feverish and dark as this first feature by filmmaker Can Evrenol gets, there is a sense that something larger is at stake — an elusive explanation having to do with a recurring dream, twisted destiny and the bond of a promise.

A more disagreeable collection of cynical, backstabbing, self-aggrandizing, shallow, vicious and vile specimens of humanity gathered together in a single motion picture would be difficult to conceive of.

The picture is a long tease, artfully constructed. Mood is all-important, and it’s a mood designed to keep the audience off balance and on edge until the very end.

Shot in stark black and white, the picture’s sense of place and time is strong — pungently so.

While the film’s formula gets repetitive, little revelations peppered throughout keep it engaging.

For all its strengths, Krisha can also be self-indulgent and artificial.

Hock handles that perennial sports question — what is the athletic limit of a human? — with interesting sidebars about the brain and physics. Such mysteries mingle with irresistible lore in this satisfying work.

Greetings from Moldova. Where surly locals stare sullenly at stupid strangers. Where the traditional regional greeting extended to said strangers is a hatchet in the forehead.

In the matter of searching for work in a difficult economy, Get a Job traffics in fairy tales that come complete with happily-ever-after endings.

None of this has any real reason for being; even the tiniest bit of drama that Vardalos’ screenplay scares up...gets wrapped up by the hour mark. But Vardalos has created a community of characters and players so likable, it seems almost mean to criticize.

Many decisions...make “Batman v Superman” a joyless slog.

Creative Control is a hypnotic voyage into a society where technology addiction comes to rule and ruin those who fall under its seductive spell.

Field, carrying the movie on her shoulders and handing it to us for our approval, makes us root for wistful Doris. Single-handedly, she makes the movie work. I didn’t always believe Doris’ behavior, but I knew I wanted to see her smile again.

At times, the film approaches gallows comedy...perhaps a little too much so; at others, it’s a tense, chilling look at a seemingly unbearable choice — refreshingly, without telling its viewers what to think.

What the film does have going for it is a ghostly atmosphere that leads to a few surprising developments, including some color effects and a charmingly off-the-wall musical number.

A surprisingly sweet-spirited picture about a man’s redemption and a boy’s initiation into the ways of the world.

I found myself admiring The Bronze for its stalwart refusal to soften Hope, and for Rauch’s carefully detailed performance.... But admiring isn’t quite the same as liking. This film is a comedy wrapped in barbed wire; approach with caution.

All of it feels warmed over, reprocessed … and, yes, confused.

This modest film’s heart is really in the mysteries of small moments.

Throughout, the fragility of the native cultures and of the rain-forest environment that is their home is underscored by Guerra in this fascinating, melancholy movie.

You keep waiting for the film to come together, for Rick to emerge as a character rather than a cipher, for the women to seem less interchangeable — in short, for a point to it all. By its end, I was still waiting.

Board games, threats from Howard and desperate escape planning by Michelle take up most the picture. And then, first-time feature director Dan Trachtenberg and the screenwriters, apparently realizing that not much has been going on so far, ramp up to a full-bore CG explosion extravaganza finale...Too little. Too late.

Anime enthusiasts will enjoy The Boy and the Beast, but so will anyone who appreciates a good fantasy yarn.

Swedish director Roar Uthaug (“Cold Prey“) depends on well-crafted suspense, spot-on casting and ingenious special effects to tell the story of a dedicated geologist (Kristoffer Joner) who prophesies watery disaster in touristy Norway.

Strange movie. And despite the presence of Tina Fey playing its lead character, a cable-TV reporter named Kim Baker, it’s not a funny one.

Zootopia delights, in ways big and small.

The action is pumped up. The destruction is extreme. The whole thing is absurd.

Using a rich trove of archival footage and interviews with Cernan, members of his family, other former astronauts and key Apollo mission figures, director Mark Craig charts the flight path of Cernan’s life.

Imagine the worst costume epic imaginable. Imagine no more. It exists.

It is another sumptuous visual feast from the studio, full of endless images finely detailed and often lavish.

While Eddie the Eagle feels formulaic and overstuffed with weirdly random scenes...it’s still a charmer.

Director Park Hyun-gene skillfully engineers the inevitable triumph of the heart over every kind of human foible, and — why not? — a viewer is temporarily hooked.

“Fury’s” pace is delirious, the stunts are incredible — such crashes, such explosions, such a lot of flying bodies — Hardy’s performance is a marvel of subdued conviction and Theron brings an impressive gravity to her work as Furiosa. Put it all together, and you’ve got a rousing crowd-pleaser that hits on all fast-revving cylinders.

[Hillcoat’s] an expert in creating and sustaining gut-twisting tension. Good qualities all, but used here in the service of a story that is truly unappetizing.

Where the film falters is in establishing a cohesive tone.

Rolling Papers is an instructive and fun film that will keep you giggling — high or straight.

Snowtime! is by turns ribald (there’s a flatulent dog), boisterous (there’s charging through the snow with wooden swords wildly waved), tender (there’s a boy grieving quietly for a father killed in a real war) and, yes, tragic.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato is an outrageous comic-erotic extravaganza that has more of a narrative arc than most Greenaway movies.

You leave Touched with Fire wishing there were a little more to it — the screenplay needed to flesh out Carla and Marco a bit more as people, rather than Bipolar Poets in Love — but undeniably moved.

Oddly, the film lacks any footage of Twisted Sister’s videos or hit songs, which received heavy rotation on MTV. That may be a drawback for casual fans, but the juicy details about the band’s early days make up for it.

With intelligence and great moviemaking skill, [Reynolds] has created a classic variation on a venerated ancient theme.

Eggers’ depiction of the family’s psychological decay and his relentless piling up of deeply disturbing imagery make The Witch an unnerving and fresh-feeling horror masterwork.

What the picture lacks is a certain spark. It’s a workmanlike effort that diligently covers a lot of bases...but never achieves a transcendence that befits a figure like Owens.

As with any Michael Moore movie, attention must be paid.

A mostly agreeable but empty-headed mess. It’s sort of the movie equivalent of Derek Zoolander himself.

The eye is enchanted by the richness of the picture’s spectacle.

The segments, though short, are nastily effective.

Bjorkman emphasizes the connection between Ingrid’s private and public lives, most movingly in her last film for theaters, “Autumn Sonata,” in which she and Ullmann played mother and daughter.

Martial-arts action, excitingly mounted, is all part of the package as Po battles a glowering, green-eyed bull (J.K. Simmons) and tries to whip peaceable pandakind into a fighting force to defeat the villain. One-liners fly as fast as kung-fu fisticuffs in this sweet and satisfying picture.

Ting, to her credit, is more interested in the battle between heart and head, instinct and obligation, than in what follows. “Already Tomorrow” is about ambivalence, not gratification, and is more interesting for it.

An entertaining movie that, while lacking real substance or stellar acting, hints at themes to which we can definitely all relate.

Maximally cheeky. Perversely potty-mouthed. Riotously funny. Insanely violent. Uneven as all get out. And fun, fun, fun.

The whole thing, for me, never got past its one-joke premise. Zombies in Austenland! Funny! But … then what? Why, then … More hacking and whacking and cutting and cleaving and heaving (as in bosoms in those Empire-waist frocks); it’s all a horror fan could wish for.

Consider your multiplex choices carefully as Valentine’s Day approaches; you might find yourself weeping tears of relief when the credits finally roll.

Hail, Caesar! isn’t the great film you might like it to be, but it’s very, very good fun.

The storm effects are first-rate, immersive all the way. The tale-telling ability of director Craig Gillespie is frustratingly inconsistent.

[Ip Man] is the calm at the center of a storm of kung-fu combat sequences, and Yen plays him with grace and serenity.

In the cast, only Isaac makes a vivid impression, in a swaggery, relaxed turn that seems to imply that he’s in on the joke, or at least having a good time.

Director Raman Hui mixes martial-arts fights and slapstick comedy (lots of mugging by Jing) into a whimsical, fast-paced monster mash.