There are tears, there is laughter, there are ups, there are downs, there is hugging and there is learning, but none of it will leave an impression. Instead, it leaves you only with a faint yearning for a proper, scary-Simmons chair-hurling freak-out.

Leads Thorne and Schwarzenegger are mildly charming in a TV-soap way, but it’s all so desperately clean and savoury (even her XP is photogenic – unlike in reality).

It’s a CGI-heavy fantasia that will pop your eyeballs, but giddy as it is, it never quite sells its characters or gets much purchase on your emotions.

As ever with this filmmaker, symmetry is a hallmark, though both visually and narratively, this busy film lacks the serenity and jaw-dropping beauty of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Nor is Isle of Dogs as well-rounded and satisfying as Fantastic Mr. Fox. But as its curious canine cousin, it’s a movie that Anderson fans won't want to miss—as if they could anyway.

There’s a directness and swift pace to the first hour or so that works on an elemental level, and the final act is a delirious sugar rush of city-smashing spectacle (in Tokyo, of course, which has been evacuated to avoid any pesky collateral damage), delivering precisely the goods the movie promises.

Alicia Vikander makes for a scrappy, spunky Lara Croft, even if the overall concept remains less a movie and more of an exercise routine.

Love, Simon feels lived-in and self-assured, two traits its fans will want to adopt as well.

No Hollywood film can ever solve the central problem of adapting this book, in that it inevitably does too much of the imagining for you. DuVernay makes a big-hearted go of it, even if she seems slightly dazzled by her own magical mystery tour.

Still coasting on once being the director of the first The Fast and the Furious a full 17 years ago, Rob Cohen is unable to muster true engagement with the banal plot and characters, or deliver the kind of inspired ridiculousness that makes for a guilty pleasure.

Thoroughbreds plunges you into an ice-cold bath of amorality, but debuting writer-director Cory Finley has such a command of details—the perfectly soigné clothes and hairdos, the lavish Connecticut living rooms and attentive gardening staffs—that you’ll laugh your way through the shivers.

This moving, surprising documentary offers a tale of Hollywood pigeonholing that feels particularly timely.

Whether he’s delivering a monologue about anal beads or singing ‘The Hokey Cokey’ while sledgehammering a pool table, Cage’s performance is wildly in sync with Brian Taylor’s over-caffeinated direction.

It is a simple, touching story that is sweetly, undemandingly entertaining. It would be very easy to pick holes in it but it doesn’t give you much reason to want to.

Garland’s creeping pace lulls you on an almost molecular level; he’s made something akin to an end-of-the-world film, but one in which the changes afoot might not be wholly bad, title be damned.

Pfeiffer is nothing short of heartbreaking in a part that requires her to be completely unvarnished.

The movie’s only vaguely human presence is Sharon Horgan (the gifted writer and star of TV’s Catastrophe), who gazes upon the manufactured gags with an air of chagrin. If the movie had risen even an inch to her level, Game Night might've had some game.

The movie’s most shocking feature isn’t any of its twisty plot reveals—mainly involving Dominika getting romantically mixed up with a CIA operative (Joel Edgerton)—but the exploitative brutality it rains down on Lawrence.

Handsomely mounted by Creed director Ryan Coogler and starring an enviable slate of black actors that makes cameoing comics godhead Stan Lee almost seem lost, the film is provocative and satisfying in ways that are long overdue, like its ornate, culturally dense production design and the deeper subtexts of honor, compassion and destiny.

There’s pleasure to be had in seeing Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens expertly used as a backdrop for bougie romantic frustrations. If you miss the JakeWalk, here’s your opportunity to see the bar revived as the perfect place for neurotic conversations; if you ever ambled down Smith Street in your own mess of emotions, you may be feeling this one.

The sex scenes are, save the occasional bit of exposed flesh or brandished toy, fairly mild—Freed is probably the least provocative film of the trilogy.

Dramatically inert and flatter than a buzz cut, the movie ends up diminishing their moment of heroism by turning it into a defiantly amateurish piece of junior-high-grade theatrics.

It’s certainly a new spin, but those who make the leap will do so vigorously.

A gripping, chastening study in what it’s like to spend your entire life behind enemy lines, A Fantastic Woman offers uplift, too – as well as the odd surreal touch.

It’s well performed and a periodically fascinating study of Bradford’s seedy underbelly that’s rarely seen on film

If it lacks the originality and sheer muscle of the best horror fare, this does offer an astute take on fragile thirtysomething machismo, and Spall treads a convincingly anguished path towards potential redemption.

It’s brimming with fascinating insights into the skill, conviction and sheer slog that went into tackling several rogue states, climate change and the odd dead cockroach on the West Wing floor without losing optimism, sanity or custody of the kids.

Kalashnikov eschews submerging us in twisted metal and carnage. Instead, The Road Movie is a study of human nature under unusual circumstances, revealing the often stoic and nonchalant nature of the Russian character

Clapton has led a fascinating life, and is a contradictory and inspiring figure. Save for a few moments, this film just doesn’t serve him well enough.

Don’t expect Austen-style humour, though: ultimately, you may be frustrated by a narrative that punishes its pleasant protagonist so thoroughly. But credit to Brizé and crew for an impressive piece of filmmaking with a refreshingly contemporary approach.

It seems a strange thing to say about a film featuring a giant man-eating mallard, but a bit more eccentricity wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Any longer-in-the-tooth fans of gritty sci-fi action will find this maze a little too easy to escape.

If you want to feel good about a war with no end, this one’s for you.

This is poor-man's action cinema with zero characterization.

The elements are all in place – superb acting (lead actor Konstantin Lavronenko won the best actor prize at Cannes in 2007), masterly camerawork, an ethereal score, ghostly locations – but the problem is that the story never really connects.

The gang-war intrigue is strictly formula, and too much of Mary’s character development is delivered through expository dialogue.

This bearish sequel will leave you with a heart so warmed, you could trek across the Antarctic in shorts.

It’s a zingy set-up but just as quickly, it hits the skids.

They get at the essence of Vertigo, haunting us via ghostly transmissions.

Hard-core fans get the loud noises they came for, but true fear vaporizes.

Happy End is more meandering and less contained, though, and it doesn’t have a central, gripping mystery like The White Ribbon to make you lean in more than you recoil. Rather, it’s a more diffuse film, and a more despairing one, although there are flashes of gallows humor to lighten the pileup of downers. As for the happy end? Happy hunting.

Ex-Glee geeks and those who sing in the shower: Your passable time-waster has arrived.

Welcome to the Jungle is mostly great fun, with Jack Black outrageously entertaining as a teenage girl. But we need to talk about Karen. As Ruby Roundhouse, Gillan is stuck in less clothes than one of Rihanna’s backing dancers. It’s a dig at the hypersexualization of women in video games, apparently. If so, perhaps the male director (or one of the four male writers) can explain how fixing the camera on a skimpily dressed female character makes the point.

But while it may not be strong on nuance and the story moves with all the careful pacing of a human cannonball, it’s got gusto and verve in abundance. An old-fashioned musical with a none-more-zeitgeisty songsheet, it may not be a flawless piece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty decent show.

A sharply judged edit stitches together three separate timelines, shaping Molly as a complex and razor-sharp character in a world dominated by entitled mansplainers. Forget Rounders—here’s a poker movie to go all-in on.

At times, you'll find yourself wanting more of the perspective of the Cheyenne, but Cooper still does right by his story of historical reconciliation, charting Blocker’s moral transformation plausibly. Hostiles‘ disarming finale packs an earned, radiantly optimistic punch.

Deceptively hidden under layers of gorgeous surfaces, Paul Thomas Anderson’s borderline-sick romance waltzes toward a riveting tale of obsession.

Undeniably, The Post feels timely, but there’s a counter-argument to be made that, in our current era of “fake news” and easily swayed public opinion, it’s actually a dinosaur of a film—and not Jurassic Park. Thank God for the owners, it ultimately says, who sometimes do the right thing. That’s a perfectly fine idea, but our times could use something sharper.

David Scarpa’s nail-biter of a screenplay—based on John Pearson’s 1995 account Painfully Rich, adapted with a free dramatic license—amps up the tension with phoned-in demands and impulsive raids by knuckleheaded local police, yet it never loses the bitter, fascinating taste of imperious wealth.

The animation is beautifully old-fashioned.

A triumph of comic irreverence and dramatic purpose, Episode VIII dazzles like the sci-fi saga hasn't in decades.

The resulting account contains a quietly powerful political statement.

Solet has turned out a very slick product and handles some of the action with brio, particularly a chase-across-buses set piece. But with too little freshness for crime-drama devotees, too many furry corpses for animal lovers and a thoroughly predictable wrap-up, Bullet Head ultimately screws the pooch.

Destroyed yet defiant, Robbie walks the emotional tightrope of the most fabulously, tragically American film of the year.

One of the most absurdly earnest exercises in paranoia you'll ever have the good fortune to see.

It’s all very theatrically crafted, with sweeping cameras and intricate design, and feels just the right side of an art-world joke: knowing and amusing at points, serious enough, never just a gag. Call me boring, though, but it could have done with some footnotes.

Along the way, though, it is as infuriating as it is inventive, as it Just. Never. Stops. It is Quirkfest 2017. It is Paris Through the Looking Glass. But it’s certainly pure of vision, an ambitious accomplishment, and undeniably sweet.

The story itself is fascinating. And for any wannabe explorers out there, there’s joy to be found in hearing about how one woman fulfilled her wildest childhood dream.

The film has no easy answers, but it does strenuously challenge all sides of the argument. Which is exactly what you want from a great documentary.

The performances are thoughtful, and like a pinch of chilli, heat things up from time to time. But director Oren Moverman’s portrait of smug, toxic privilege misses its mark – and at the end of two long hours, this feels about as fresh as last night’s chips.

The story isn’t wildly original – think ‘Leon’ with throwing stars – and it’s overlong, but the action is unrelenting, thrillingly staged and occasionally even flat-out hilarious.

Dan Stevens turns in a vibrant comic performance as Charles Dickens in this drama about writerly inspiration that plays like a smarter Shakespeare in Love.

Like that giant metaphorical carousel looming over them, it’s a movie that’s spinning its wheels.

The world's worst film gets an affectionate making-of dramatization that's half as weird as the real thing.

The year’s most shocking transformation arrives in the form of Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill, a creation for the ages.

At 134 minutes, the film may seem challengingly long, but the strength of its ensemble cast and unusually evolving narrative results in a satisfying watch that’s reminiscent of tucking in with an engrossing book.

A committed Denzel Washington is wasted in a legal drama that never gets around to making closing arguments.

The whole film pinballs between reverence and poop jokes in a way that feels far more blasphemous than anything Monty Python ever did, while a cloying R&B soundtrack further cheapens the tone. Unless you have tiny religious children, it’s probably best to avoid it.

Although the film takes place in a fantasy version of brownstone Brooklyn, it’s more cutting than the book, especially for the way it shuns the concept of a star vehicle and sharpens the material into a forum for several moments of guilt.

Being dead has never looked as fun as it does in Pixar’s latest adventure, bursting with skeletons, magical spells and Mexico’s annual Day of the Dead.

Justice League gets the band together but remembers to bring the banter along with the boom.

Mayhem is an energetic genre flick that looks stunning and moves at a ferocious pace...But contrived dialogue and a bewildering narrative tarnish this otherwise enjoyable pulp effort.

It’s hard to know if this clunky comedy is part of Mel Gibson’s redemption arc or some strange new form of karmic retribution.

It’s anchored by a dangerously glum performance by 21-year-old Ross Lynch, who becomes more interesting the more you watch him.

Thank You for Your Service is as necessary as top-flight journalism.

It plays like one of Linklater’s most intimate gifts, an adult rumination on the tricky subject of patriotism.

Despite its meticulously detailed gore, Jigsaw is rarely scary.

Betts aims divinely high and succeeds in both understanding and respectfully critiquing organized religion. Is faith escapism or an act of surrender? In grappling with the essence of spirituality, Novitiate—not unlike Martin Scorsese’s Silence—asks more questions than it supplies answers.

More time could have been spent developing the bond between the men, but ultimately this is quite gripping: a weepie bromance. You don’t see one of those every day.

Quietly epic and sad but never sentimental.

Geostorm is a watery blend of Armageddon and 24, with enough action to entertain on a basic level. It’ll probably be most appealing to scientists looking for a good laugh.

In a world of portentous blockbusters getting ever darker, it’s a joy to see one throwing on the disco lights.

Despite the looming threats on display, Kosinski never imbues his movie with a real sense of danger until it’s too late to take the threat seriously. For all of the movie’s flare, Only the Brave lacks dynamism.

Marshall isn’t as flashy as it ought to be.

Macdonald, playing an outsider with wisdom, is by far the most sympathetic character; the movie has plenty to say about the parenting traditions of the wealthy, not much of it favorable.

The movie sometimes strains for visual impact: A German medical facility is designed like a Kubrickian nightmare. But by film’s end, Robin and Diana’s devotion to each other wins you over — as does Serkis’s devotion to his story.

It’s a film class, yes, but the most invigorating one you’ll take.

It all really happened but surely with a lot more passion than writer-director Angela Robinson’s script would have it.

Brawl then becomes a nightmare in scenes of skull-splattering violence that are truly sickening (and wonderful). Don’t look for a deeper meaning. Just soak up the grindhouse.

Indie wunderkind Sean Baker continues his celebration of communities on the margins, in a movie that vibrates with compassion and energy.

Mostly, it's hackneyed horror devices uneasily mixed with softball dramatics of atonement, to increasingly plodding effect. Somebody get a defibrillator in here, stat.

Actor turned director John Carroll Lynch gets out of the way of his star and lets him cast his spell one final time.

Arrival director Denis Villeneuve pulls off the dare of the decade, hatching a thoughtful, expansive sequel to a sci-fi classic.

The film’s best scenes are a series of hilarious father-son encounters where the son wants to be loved and the dad just doesn’t get it.

It’s a fun setup with a rousing finale that broadly compensates for a baggy middle section (at two hours, the film seems a little too long).

There’s plenty of action—and laughs here and there—but when a repeated cameo from Elton John is the best thing in a movie like this, you know you’re in trouble.

It’s a weird and unusually honest film.

A film about the importance of cultural history and truth (two things deeply under siege these days), Wiseman’s epic Ex Libris might make you cry with happiness; it’s the good fight being fought. Movies aren’t usually a public benefit, much less an essential one. Here’s the exception.

Director George Clooney raids a leftover script by the Coen brothers that lacks the snap of their more vicious crime comedies.