The whole picture is an exercise in obvious effort, try, try, trying really hard to win the audience’s affection. However it only succeeds in trying the audience’s patience. It’s a trial.

Amsterdam is not entirely without small pleasures: Emmanuel Lubezki’s sepia-toned cinematography is lovely to look at, and it’s fun to play spot-the-movie-star with the talented cast, and to note with pleasure how Washington’s scratched-velvet voice sounds so much like that of his father Denzel. But ultimately it’s a big disappointment.

Though the messaging is a bit flat-footed, it’s nonetheless effective, and clearly deeply felt, and it brings a sense of significance to this otherwise wacky real-life story, one that really does have to be seen to be believed.

Bacon’s performance as well as Finn’s detailed craft manage to hold tension, and the audience’s attention, for the hour and 55 minute runtime of this horror curio, which is as opaque and somewhat silly as the smiles that drive it.

Catherine Called Birdy is Dunham’s best writing and directing work yet; it’s an easy breezy, emotional good time, and an instant teen classic.

There’s nothing original in the movie. Indeed, the off-screen controversy that’s been consuming social media lately over the casting of pop superstar Styles and whether Pugh and Wilde are at odds overshadows the movie itself.

Bandit wants you to believe there’s some kind of moral underpinning to all this. There isn’t. There’s only another place to case, another outfit to don, another person to lie to, another bank to rob. No one’s born bad, but that doesn’t mean Bandit, the film or the man, is good, either.

Directed by Smoczynska, The Silent Twins feels like an art exhibit to be installed on a continuous loop on a TV inside a cage in a museum. There’s a barrier that holds the audience at a distance so that watching this film feels like studying an invasive social experiment that places the Gibbons twins on display — like caged parrots asked to sing.

At the center, the true general, Prince-Bythewood, marshals every aspect of The Woman King in concert, conducting action, thrills and emotion beautifully. It is a remarkable, powerful film, and not to be missed.

See How They Run is the Saoirse Ronan show. Start to finish. Top to bottom, Now and forever. Amen.

Despite its flaws, Flight/Risk is a comprehensive and stinging critique of a once-proud company that has lost its way and is struggling to make a comeback. And it’s a tribute to the people who died and the families who mourn them.

Medieval is a film with an identity crisis, caught between its lowbrow sword-and-splatter charms and grander ambitions. As a quick and dirty 90-minute corker, it could have been a nice and nasty slice of genre filmmaking, but Jakl aims for something more epic in scope, and the film drags, easily 30 minutes too long.

Barbarian is skillfully directed, smartly cast and superbly acted.

Hall’s performance is remarkable, full of shadings and intimations of significant emotional depths.

Originality was on vacation when this picture was made.

A horror film that’s a true triple threat: stunning, smart and wildly entertaining.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is a cerebral film that barters in riddles. It’s a cautionary fairy tale about wishful thinking. It’s a flawed, but intoxicating kaleidoscope of stories. If only the film's ending were as strong as its beginning and middle.

The entire film feels like an exercise in dashing expectations, for both our heroine and the audience.

Elba, always a powerful presence in whatever role he takes on, does the best he can in Beast, but the threadbare nature of the plotting and dialogue ultimately defeats him.

Leitch’s emphasis on excessive and nearly nonstop stunt-filled action is hardly surprising. His lack of directorial discipline, however, is. The guy apparently couldn’t help himself, piling on the action beats until they become numbing. By the end, you’re more than ready to get off this Bullet Train, feeling drained and disheartened.

It’s a detective story. It’s an insightful commentary on the state of us, which is to say us, the U.S., in this divided, disjointed, distracted age. It’s a comedy, sharp and frequently hilarious. It is, above all, consistently surprising.

It’s fun, but it’s not prime Peele by any means.

Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris is all sweetness and light. So sweet it nearly dissolves one’s fillings, especially at the end. So light it practically floats off the screen. It’s a gossamer fairy tale. Pleasant. Charming. A trifle, though not without some substance.

I wished I was actually watching “Batman and Robin” or “Superman IV,” because for all their camp, those movies felt less pointless and more human than “Thor 4,” a cheap corporate commercial for upcoming Marvel content.

Kids will love all the silliness, but oddly the greatest resonance of the Wayback Machine plot will be felt by the kids’ grandparents (if any find themselves in attendance) who were around in those bygone days.

As it is, Elvis is a gorgeous tragedy, a movie mixtape with a sonorous performance at its core, maybe Luhrmann’s best since “Romeo + Juliet” (1996) and perhaps his most postcard-perfect movie ever. But it has a rubberized script, a turgid length and a key issue that affects many musical biopics: It’s not really sure what it thinks or wants to say about Presley.

Garland has yet again created something singular here, but he hasn’t cinched it.

Downton Abbey: A New Era is a chaste, mannered soap opera that feels like a relic of another time in more ways than one, but perhaps, that’s the entire appeal.