Those moments that land, whether funny or moving, occur when Ball isn’t getting in his own way and instead trusts in the characters he’s written and the actors who are performing them. Overall, the film works, but there are times during this road-trip saga where one wishes Ball would apply the brakes.

There’s a lot that’s frustrating about George Clooney’s new film The Midnight Sky, from its egregious borrowing from any number of better movies to its pacing issues, but thanks to a few grace notes, its shortcomings are mostly forgivable.

If you can get through the excess of characters, and the requisite butt jokes, car chase and tween pop songs, the film does keep both the physical and the verbal comedy coming at a steady pace.

13 Minutes is well-acted, with authentic settings and an involving structure, but it’s undercut somewhat by a rather flat love story.

It’s not just "Netflix holiday rom-com good." It’s actually very, very good.

The loss doesn’t hit, and the comedy doesn’t land, leaving Dean a wasted opportunity that offers a few talented artists the chance to do fine work in the service of an empty vessel.

The lack of stakes in this film come from its quirky style and shoddy writing. It’s perfectly possible for well-written film to be silly, but the levity in Four Samosas fizzles into nothing.

A twisted piece of grandly entertaining provocation. ... This is a dark satire that finds a way to make a case for understanding.

We’re watching extremely talented artists try to accomplish something grand and potentially embarrass themselves in the process, and it works because they’re committed to taking that risk.

At 75 minutes, the resulting feature is the definition of slight, but just winsome and optimistic enough to justify itself.

That the film occasionally succumbs to certain rudimentary hallmarks of industrial studio horror is regrettable, but for the most part it’s agreeably suspenseful, date-night arm-squeezing genre fare.

Unfortunately, The Deer King fatally (and repeatedly) stalls as its plot starts winding down and its creators lunge for a character-driven moral to a symbolically freighted parable.

A road movie that, considering who made it, starts pretty far down that road, Cry Macho is familiar and loose, sometimes rattly, occasionally wince-inducing, and in a few moments genuine in ways no one else seems to know how to do anymore.

It succeeds about half the time, making for a split decision where Sweeney and Christy both emerge as champions while the film itself can’t quite go the distance.

Unlike its levitating heroine, it never really gets off the ground.

Body Parts has a lot to say about onscreen objectification, but it would benefit greatly if — like Quentin Tarantino’s camera on a young woman’s feet — it maintained its focus.

For a film that’s so politically risky — Stone hasn’t named names and pointed fingers (at both sides of the aisle, incidentally) in a mainstream movie like this for years — it’s surprisingly safe aesthetically.

A Hologram for the King succeeds at putting us in Alan’s meandering headspace, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find his journey as meaningful as he does.

Landon, who wrote four of the “Paranormal Activity” films, knows a lot about reverse engineering scary scenarios from mundane situations, but as with later installments of that series, he overcomplicates the logistics and mythology of the premise, aiming for something more raucous (and fun) in tone but lacking the intensity — or inevitability — to make its repetition feel truly chilling.

The High Note is a character study, it’s a romance, it’s a dismissive look at the music business and a celebration of the power of music, it’s a movie that refuses to go down the path it’s been telegraphing and a movie that pulls out all the stops to get where you figured it would all along.

If Howard and Sweeney can make movies together like this all the time, may neither of them ever stop.

It is, most importantly, amusing and creative. It may not follow its storylines to the most logical conclusions, and it may not reinvent the action movie as we know it. It’s still an enjoyable blockbuster sequel that tries to infuse the original idea with a couple new ideas, while setting the stage for more exciting adventures to come.

There’s nothing particularly terrible about Moana 2, but the fact that it’s necessary to write 'there’s nothing particularly terrible about Moana 2' means something still went wrong.

It’s a sanitized, Cliff’s Notes version of the original with a few songs thrown in. It’ll be great for audiences to see Renee Rapp, if they don’t know of her already, but she’s not in it enough to help save the rest of the film. This may not be your mother’s “Mean Girls” but it’s doubtful it’ll be anyone’s.

With everything a little bigger and the film significantly more beautiful — the wonderful Robert Richardson (‘Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,’ ‘Casino’) behind the camera — the stakes feel worthy of their larger-than-life star.

Well-acted, understanding, and literate ... But when the emotional honesty still doesn’t make for compelling drama, you’re left wondering why, even with all the lights on, there’s a conspicuous lack of galvanizing human detail in the contours of this story.

Trueba excels at those well-meaning, exquisitely realized, vividly acted human dramas. “Memories” translates those sensibilities to South America, and even if the product can’t exactly be seen as rousing, one can’t entirely resist its affecting charm.

This is the sort of film in which we’re told that a certain action is impossible, until it isn’t, or that a certain thing would never happen, and then it does, so even with all those lives on the line, the movie can’t effectively build up stakes or consequences.