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.

It’s a strange, sad, fragile little thing that should make us snicker, but instead it fills the screen with grace and beauty.

Though the documentary’s early musings about athletic integrity in general are ultimately usurped by a tale of personal responsibility and nefarious global power, the disruption feels acute and essential.

The Incredible Jessica James is an enchanting, deftly-written and witty movie for lovers and haters of romantic comedies, as well as for all those in between.

If you can block out that verbal frenzy, though, the last chapters of Antarctica: Ice & Sky are, finally, a compelling narrative (who wouldn’t be interested in the idea of “fossil air?”) and yet another scientific explanation of global warming.

T2 Trainspotting isn’t a bad film at all. In places, it’s terrific, but it too often drags in a pool of its own despondency, a miserable and melancholy movie that almost looks a bit embarrassed to be so.

It’s made with campfire-spooky care rather than an abiding need to impress you with his gifts.

In a strong field of excellent performances, the standout is easily Shalhoub, who is enthralling and almost entirely sympathetic in what could have been a monochromatic bad guy part.

Although Tommy’s Honour has clearly been made by a golf obsessive who loves the links, it’s the rare sports biography that keeps its eye on the ball of character and milieu.

Had this well-meaning movie been more willing to directly embrace its origins in Barnes’s luminous prose, it’s quite possible The Sense of an Ending might be something special rather than something worthy.

Levy and Till prove to have chemistry together despite their predictable romantic arc. Wedge (whose other previous credits include “Robots” and “Epic”) knows how to keep the proceedings generally casual and breezy. The action sequences unfold with an air of lightness and youthful irresponsibility.

Claire in Motion has an appealing stillness and intensity. It works as both a quiet, meditative study of grief and a muted examination of identity, but not as a compelling mystery.

The existence of a movie like Sleepless constitutes definite proof that there aren’t enough good scripts to go around; Foxx, Monaghan, Mulroney and Union (who finally gets introduced into the action in the silliest way possible) deserve much better than this.

Reset becomes incrementally less interesting as the performance pulls together; although it’s a visual feast to watch dancers in slow-motion executing seemingly impossible moves, the directors can only go to that well so many times before it gets a bit dull.

Title’s command of the material is haphazard, her direction not artful enough to know when expository clunkiness is undercutting the chance to dig into the meat of personalities in deterioration.

Selene seems ready to put this story behind her for most of Underworld: Blood Wars, and it’s hard not to wish that for Beckinsale, as well.

[Cox and Hirsch] add depth and dimension to the mystery they’re trying to unravel, even and especially as they unwittingly become part of it.

It’s a movie that both understands the basic desire to strike it rich and our deep understanding that one person’s wealth often comes at the expense of another person’s well-being. This isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s admirable for its ability to keep more than one thought in its head at a time.

Toni Erdmann is a thoroughly confident and impeccably executed comedy of oddball family functionality.

The period detail is rich and worth watching, and there’s a deep bench of strong character actors to give the movie occasional jolts of life. Overall, however, the usually charismatic Affleck never manages to bring gangster Joe Coughlin to life.

The plot is that most dreadful of mixes: both laughably silly and needlessly complicated.

When the characters hit rock bottom, the movie quietly gets more emotional and more sure-handed.

It hasn’t always been easy trying to figure out what’s going through the mind of the 44th president of the United States, but Barry is a satisfyingly curious, honest attempt to make his inner struggle a beautiful part of this groundbreaking statesman’s biography.

As a big sci-fi entertainment, it hardly feels like a movie about the problems of two emotionally desperate people in a crazy situation, and therein lies the problem.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is for the fans, all right, but in that expression’s worst way.

Collateral Beauty is certainly a case of outright sentimental damage, not beauty, but of course the word collateral also means money that can be bargained with, and hopefully that’s what the ill-fated cast of this picture received in some abundance.

Why Him? is the kind of movie that makes trendy sophistication and homespun values look equally unattractive; the only remaining alternative is anarchy, an ingredient that’s sadly lacking in this bland, formulaic comedy.

Hidden Figures is feel-good history, but it works, and it works on behalf of heroes from a cinematically under-served community. These smart accomplished women had the right stuff, and so does this movie.

It’s an invitingly austere movie, designed for both searching believers and curious others. The film can be cinematically rigorous, but it’s never ritualistically flashy.

Ultimately, though, All We Had is exactly the kind of movie of which people say, “Oh well, its heart is in the right place.” A clichéd comment on a clichéd film: what could be more apt?

A busy but witless and stale comedy that rehashes every raunchy gag we expect from R-rated comedies, it also wears its hackneyed sentimentality and cookie-cutter underdog story beats as proudly as adhesive nametags.

Issues of continuity and logic pale in comparison to how the film forces Eckhart to act. It’s rare that we see someone as talented as Eckhart be relegated to work this shoddy and dispiriting.

This is an intelligently made film about an intelligent woman, but it’s also emotionally engaging.

He offers glimmers of what lies beneath the near-mythic, elegant exterior, but Larrain’s take is more impressionistic than revelatory, more presumptuous than knowing.

The Founder never steps up to become the biting satire of American capitalism it so begs to be. The film is not here to praise Ray Kroc, but neither is it here to bury him.

The real accomplishment of Mifune: The Last Samurai, and perhaps of any successful documentary about cinema history, is that it makes you want to run out and see the movies all over again.

It’s the kind of movie that wouldn’t exist without awards, and makes a compelling argument for phasing them out altogether.

Can you tell it’s a play? Absolutely. Does that mean a damn thing? Not when the writing is this richly evocative, and the cast so often soars with it.

Allied is ultimately a thin love story, with creaky suspense machinery and star turns from Pitt and Cotillard that feel more like matinee idol dress-up than a meeting of the magnetic.

As a retelling of a tragedy that had its moments of heroism among uniformed personnel and indefatigable civilians alike, it gets the job done.

The wistfulness on display is touching and funny, often both at the same time.

The boxing drama Bleed for This has a powerful story and a strong lead performance in its corner, but falls short of knockout status. Hampered by clichéd writing and stereotypical portrayals, this extraordinary true-life account feels run-of-the-mill.

A movie that, if never exactly a cathartic experience, carries you along in its clenched grip with an undeniable power. It’s sad and funny and real.

It’s impossible to watch Bad Santa 2 without getting the sense that people who knew how to do their jobs were studio-noted out of their minds and forced to run a futile obstacle course hampered by budget restrictions, shortened shooting schedules, and general carelessness.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has all the makings of a huge family blockbuster, but all the bloated traps of those, too. It hasn’t quite got the balance right.

You’ll come away from this film remembering some of the better moments, and a few of the quieter interactions between the characters, but they’ll be mostly overpowered by the stench of everything else.

Rather than take the time to let us really get to know and understand its complicated title character, the movie instead goes for cheap, gotcha plotting that undermines the entire project.

Ideologically, morally, and narratively, the film contains no point of view, no perspective that suggests human beings joined forces to create a piece of art they can stand behind.

Crisply written by TV producer Ethan Sandler (“New Girl”) and directed by theater veteran Lee Wilkof with an eye for small details and a lifetime of experience, the film is a loving, if slight, excursion into the world of New York theater, actors’ division.

While writer-director Warren Beatty’s movie about Hughes is crafted of the finest materials, it too remains mostly earthbound, defying gravity only in fits and starts.