Which version of the film each viewer sees will be a subjective choice, of course, but the fact that the lead character is so utterly guileless and innocent and kindhearted...makes Katie less a victim of the world and more a victim of first time writer-director Wayne Roberts.

Mexican-American culture isn’t merely draped over the story as an added element but woven throughout with a casual practicality that respects both the primary characters and their shot-on-location East L.A. setting.

The minimal character development will frustrate filmgoers seeking substance, as will Coppola’s stilted dialogue.

Despite this noble intention to create palpable tension — and dialogue — between two strangers, Dwain Worrell’s script repeatedly falls short.

What we’ve gotten in Snatched is an uninspired, scattershot disaster romp that mostly serves the talents of one half of the marquee pairing, underuses the other half, and struggles to blend R-rated humor, foreign misadventure, and oil-and-water mother-daughter dynamic into a cohesive diversion.

There are quick cuts and CG imagery and bro-ing out in nearly equal proportions; I found some of this excess to be heady and exciting, but by the end of the film’s running time, it all became a bit tiresome, to say nothing of tiring.

On a gutbucket genre-film level, Alien Covenant delivers when it delivers. As with so many of its monster-movie peers, however, there’s just not much to it when the creature isn’t preening for its close-up.

It’s a film that positively reeks of good intentions, but it’s so timid and tentative — the words “trans” and “transgender” are never uttered aloud — that it feels as hopelessly retro as casting a cisgender actress in the lead.

In the fraught relationship between controlling subject and probing filmmaker who start out as comrades in activism, the tension should be explored, not glided over. It leaves “Risk” feeling like the outline for a dozen different documentaries, instead of a complete one itself.

Dabka winningly traces the ways that a callow American gets schooled in concepts like honor and sacrifice until he is considered an expert on a country and a people that he grows to love.

Chuck takes a small subject and turns it into a basic redemption story, and as such it has some merit. Not much, but just enough.

Aardvark is the sort of movie that gets by with its unpredictable where-is-this-going vibe for about a half-hour or so.... But it becomes apparent at a certain point that the set-up is pretty much all there is to this movie.

There are some movies that are misguided in a simple way, and then there are those rare unrelentingly awful movies like Flower that decide to go wrong in as many ways as possible in as short a time as possible.

What Coogan and Brydon are doing in these films is an acquired taste, but if they want to continue on doing them then they’re going to need to cut down and edit their interminable actor impressions.

This film is a real pleasure and surprise because it sees old emotions as things that can be replenished and renewed if you are open and not too rigid about the boundaries of your relationships with others.

Derbez brings warmth and intermittent goofy humor to this too-broad and uneven comedy.

Unhinged and witty, Slack Bay is one of those rare movies that looks like it was fun to make, and is even more fun to watch.

One Week and a Day succeeds in recreating that precise feeling, as hard to articulate as it is commonly felt, where exhaustion wears down any line between emotions.

Sleight is slight in the good way, because it floats along and draws your attention instead of yanking it by the collar.

The Circle takes a valid concern about lack of privacy in the Internet age and turns it into a hyperbolic and finally laughable melodrama.

The surprise here is that Rosefeldt has managed to deliver an intellectually-charged, cheeky, and very funny film that feels unruly and expansive in spite of its tight 12-day shooting schedule and its focus on just one performer.

There is wit and there are explosions, and while none of them represent a step above “Guardians of the Galaxy,” neither do they impugn the memory of one of the freshest and most fun of the Marvel movies.

Tower himself contributes to the film’s appeal. Still elegant in his mid-70s, there’s no doubt of his arrogance, though that seems to be a prerequisite of the trade. He knows that his work has been extraordinary, he’s well-spoken, and he cares intensely about decorum and class.

This is history from the inside, told by people who don’t always look like they’ve gotten past it, and it’s what makes “Let it Fall” so memorable.

Leon’s New York has plenty of uncertainty, but it hums with possibility, especially the notion that if you miss one connection, another one’s right around the corner. In that respect, Tramps is beautifully breathless.

One of this generation’s most interesting filmmakers still has plenty to say and an impressive dexterity at saying it.

Free Fire is an ultra-violent, gut-punching spectacle that borders on a slog. It makes you feel guilty even for enjoying minutes of it, and then empty after it’s all done.

Framed like a phantom in black shadow and silvery silhouette by legendary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (“The Right Stuff”), Heigl slices through this silly little universe, consumed with her mission, bigger than all of it.

There’s simply no time for the impact of anything that happens to get its reflective due, because the movie is too busy reverting to the up-and-down status of Michael’s and Ana’s increasingly inconsequential relationship while lining up its next large-scale set piece.

As involving as the story is with its impressive ensemble cast, “Norman” is above all a showcase for Gere’s substantial talents.

Little Boxes has good intentions if not the subtlest delivery.

Layered images, un-erased pencil strokes, odd color blocking, jagged edges, heavy lines, painted frames with visible brush strokes, juxtapositions of marker, crayon, and charcoal, collage techniques, photographic effects, a set of psychedelic human lungs: this is is low-budget ambition firing on all cylinders.

The degree of difficulty here is steep, and Davies has not been entirely successful in making Dickinson’s milieu come to full and convincing life.

Born in China” doesn’t flip the script in any significant way, but while the storytelling here has significant weaknesses, it’s hard to stay mad at any movie that offers so many close-ups of an insanely adorable baby panda.

There is only one inventive action sequence here.

The clichéd story wouldn’t even be an issue if the movie were enjoyable. But little works as humor or suspense or sentiment once the job is on.

Hathaway makes Gloria feel familiar and unique all at once. The same can be said of Colossal itself, which lives up to its title without losing sight of small-scale human drama.

Their Finest delivers in a way that would please the Ministry of Information: it’s rousing and emotional, there are laughs and tears, and it portrays people trying and, mostly, succeeding at being their best selves in the service of their country.

The Assignment is reprehensible, yes, but it’s also dull and inept. Fans of Walter Hill should treat his latest effort like the kind of car crash from which it’s best to avert one’s eyes.

Gifted finds a collective of competent people making a perfectly competent movie — nothing more, nothing less.

Ghost in the Shall is a technical knockout, a here-and-now valentine to what design wizardry Hollywood can pull off in 2017. At the same time, it does so in service of a tired tale full of repurposed visual tricks, storytelling clichés and big-studio concessions.

Lots of little lessons are interspersed throughout Smurfs: The Lost Village, but the film itself is an example that even the big, powerful, well-paid grown-ups who run movie studios can learn a thing or two.

Brought to life on screen, Wilson is a fractured, heartsick, funny adventure in mundane misery.

Life never reaches greatness, but it’s solidly good, from its earned scares to a spot-on ending. (Don’t let anyone ruin it for you.) The film’s tight spaces and layered audio will work best on the big screen; see it with someone whose wrist you can grab.

The humor is way more miss than hit, prone to the kind of raunch (analingus debates, homophobia teasing, who’s-hot-who’s-not) that feels available, not thought-out, and pain gags that don’t get funnier the more they’re repeated.

The Żabińskis were as unfailingly heroic as it gets, but memorably rendering a resistance shouldn’t be so resistant itself to the rough-and-tumble humanity of the details, and the unsentimental doom that shrouded it all.

Power Rangers is baloney through and through, but as baloney goes, it’s better than you might expect. It packs enough zing to make you forgive the origin-story clichés. And the predictable save-the-world stuff. And the insanely ubiquitous product placement.

Talk of accepting truths and moving on will knot your stomach; inevitably, you’ll reflect on your own station in life and weigh whether or not you feel like Ryota, who tells his son, “I’m not who I want to be yet.” And isn’t such evocation the point of all art? With this measure in mind, Kore-eda has created a masterpiece.

Though the strong performances of Nélisse and Wiggins are key to convince you that they not only care for each other but are capable of thinking on their feet, it’s Paxton who must deliver sufficient menace to propel the story — and he’s terrifying.

Song to Song is that most fascinating of busts: it spurs many feelings, but they’re sentiments like real estate envy, Austin yearning (if you’ve ever been), Lubezki admiration, and pity for A-listers who can’t improvise.

The Most Hated Woman in America is ultimately a simplistic approach to a fascinating figure, more Lifetime than a woman’s life and times.

Gemini strives to be something different — something more ambitious, more potent. The results vary, as will your mileage. But the thing to remember about swinging and missing is that you still swung. Katz is putting himself in the game, and more often than not, he connects

The meager tension generated by characters discovering their survival instincts, and why you might not want to be next to them when they do, is quickly dissipated by the realization that, at a certain point, the movie is an assembly line of killing, and not a terribly exciting or entertaining one at that.

Aside from the undercurrent of pathos, it’s James Franco’s impeccable comedic timing that is the film’s ace in the hole.

Rarely do we see a filmmaker start so strong only to end with a whimper. All in all, though, Baby Driver is still worth seeking out, if only for that first hour. Inside those opening 60 minutes is the best action-comedy of the last ten years — full stop — featuring a breathtaking amalgamation of rip-roaring combat, a star-making performance by Ansel Elgort, and a string of clever bits.

"Deidra & Laney” shows an easy flair for heartwarming comedy, character eccentricity and issues that sting but resolutions that soothe.

There’s so much to like in this movie, but its best qualities are ultimately subsumed in formula. And not the nutritious kind.

The failure of Catfight lies not with the leads, then, but with wasted opportunity.

This new mainly live-action Disney version of the oft-told story directed by Bill Condon feels largely perfunctory. Where it flounders most is on the miscasting of several crucial roles.

If nothing else, The Last Word demonstrates that Shirley MacLaine still has the comic chops and screen presence that have made her a Hollywood legend.

Though it’s decidedly a Hollywood product in its polished, lockstep approach toward teen mindsets — an admittedly surprising swerve toward the mainstream for indie-marinated Russo-Young — the film’s sensitivities are honest enough to make it a cut above many youth dramas.

It lacks neither fun nor polish, but it has the square tidiness of a compartmentalized fast-food meal.

When Table 19 tries to be a goofy humiliation comedy, it’s barely engaging. (The pratfalls are numerous and laugh-free.) But when it settles down into something like an indie ensemble about disappointment and the comfort of strangers, Blitz finds a more effortless tone.

The Freedom to Marry is a movie that discourages complex thinking or contradiction, but there are little hints here and there of something more frightening and unstable.

“Girl” might be the most inadvertently appropriate analog to life in 2017’s increasingly unstable world, by suggesting that it may very well become necessary to co-exist with ongoing terror, especially if the only other option is walking directly into the path of a flesh-eating pack.

Collide has been sitting on the shelves for over three years; no need to get up now and see it.

Rock Dog stays firmly in the realm of the pleasant but unremarkable, an air-guitar effort when a stab at virtuosity might have yielded something more memorable.

Jordan Peele has made an extraordinary leap in genre here, and he’s also crafted a horror film that has more blistering observations about race than half a dozen well-intentioned Oscar-bait dramas.

At once a darkly comic social satire, a pitch-black moral thriller and an earnest plea to recognize mental illness, The Dinner is a seven-layer dip overflowing with compelling individual ingredients that, when mixed together, make the finished dish awfully difficult to digest.

Kim’s not interested in tidy resolution, and has a strong affinity for missed connections between people who know each other very well. That’s the greatest strength of Lovesong.

If you calibrate your expectations to “monster movie for eight-year-olds,” you may find some fun in this energetic and blissfully brief (a mere 103 minutes!) tale of the Chinese army battling alien beasties in the Song Dynasty era.

The most impressive aspect of James Franco’s In Dubious Battle is, by far, its cast.

Whether or not the “Wolverine” movies have a future — Jackman swears this is his last go-round — Logan is an exceedingly entertaining one.

Fist Fight is so ineptly assembled, shoddy-looking and devoid of comic tension or creative lunacy — like a movie comprised of outtakes — that you half-expect the filmmakers not even to deliver a fist fight.

Land of Mine is a powerful epic, superbly acted, tense and unsettling, but also poignant and occasionally tender.

The beats are too predictable — and even though the film tells a story we may not have known until now, the storytelling is too familiar.

It’s nice that the two photogenic leads are treating sex like a pleasurable activity rather than an onerous chore in this second entry, but overall, the film plays like an un-asked-for collaboration between the Hallmark and Playboy Channels.

We get a few effective set pieces early on that provide the requisite scares that A Cure for Wellness so obviously wants to deliver, but the movie just doesn’t know when to quit, lurching onward and growing more and more ludicrous.

John Wick’s world is elegant and vicious, full of slaughter and courtesies and, if “Chapter 2” can’t quite replicate the original’s sense of discovery, its ending still made me wish “Chapter 3” could start right away.

The Lego Batman Movie, for the most part, very skillfully keeps the wackiness from overwhelming the plot and vice versa. And while the various Bat-vehicles take us through vertiginous zooms on land or through the air, McKay keeps the action rousing but never jumbled.

No movie is going to fix the world, but films like I Am Not Your Negro demand accountability from its audience, both on a personal level and as a community of human beings.

Horror films that backstory the audience to death lose all hope of mining what’s eerie and unsettling about the unknown, and Rings is a perfect example: it doesn’t so much spread its familiar myth as dilute it.

It’s hard not to engage in eye-rolling over what already promises to be one of 2017’s worst movies: The Space Between Us spends so much time piling one daffy, laughable plot beat upon another that it never bothers to nail down the characters.

Oklahoma City is certainly well made and relatively searching, but it can only scratch the surface of its very disturbing and complex subject.

We get lots of films about weddings and about courtship, but this is one that actually takes the time to explore the essence of the marital partnership, and the delicate balance between expressing your own wants and needs while also devoting yourself to fulfilling your partner’s wants and needs.

Menashe is a warm, relatable and tender tale about parental love, religion and belonging, told humanely and with vivid authenticity.

It’s as if Haley viewed his star’s strengths — laconic wit, unforced masculinity, polite romanticism — as the only elements needed for a Sam Elliott showcase, rather than as the building blocks from which to mold an original character.

Instead of making us feel that these boys are meant to be together, God’s Own Country unintentionally suggests that Gheorghe should get himself to a city where his silky dark hair, bedroom eyes and developed aesthetic sense might be far better appreciated by others.

There’s no denying that the tale of Colin Warner, a man who spent decades behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, is a powerful one, but writer-director Matt Ruskin doesn’t give us anything here that a documentary couldn’t do better.

Franco’s fantastic here. He gives a fieriness to Michael as a gay advocate, then seamlessly slides into borderline madness as he starts accepting that the “voice” he hears is God’s. Michael’s confusion is palpable and intense.

Their initial meeting, as orgiastic as it can possibly be, is shot by first-time cinematographer Manuel Marmier without pornography’s genitalia-focused aesthetic tropes, and with as much intimate and magical lighting as any old-fashioned musical sequence.

For the first time, the story supports and adds to the action rather than distract from it; it’s almost as though Anderson was holding back in the earlier films because he wanted to save the best for last.

Beach Rats has an experiential, almost docudrama aesthetic whose lived-in authenticity is in keeping with that of the film as a whole.

Saving endangered animals is not a matter of sentimentality and lifting one up above another. It involves facing hard facts and brokering some compromises, and Trophy makes us fully aware of this.

A Dog’s Purpose offers many of the highlights of human-canine relations at their warmest and most affectionate, but the film chooses to skim on sun-dappled surfaces (Terry Stacey of “Elvis and Nixon” was the cinematographer) and sentimentality (Rachel Portman’s score bombards the heartstrings) when it might have gone deeper

Its powerful moments are too often swamped by melodrama that undercuts the director’s skills as a storyteller.

It escalates past the point of absurdity, but all you can do as an audience member is shake your head and laugh.

This is a gentle, genial update, consistently amusing and always likable; it may not break new ground, but it finds enough of new jokes, and Morgan’s obvious love of language gives it an extra charge.